Pay It Forward

The Happy Seamstress is currently participating in Pay It Forward 2011, a fun little game where you get to receive and give hand-made gifts. Since I like both these things, I figured I'd hop on board!

The rules are as follows: I will make a handmade gift for the first five people who comment on this blog post as long as they promise to blog about this and send a gift to the first five people who comment on their blog post.

If you want to participate, simply leave a comment on this post with a link to your blog post. If you're one of the first five people to comment, you'll receive an extra-special handmade gift from me before the year is through. I'll be emailing you to get your mailing address so please leave your email with your comment.

If you're not one of the first five commenters, feel free to participate anyway! If nothing else, this is certainly a good way to spread the joy of craftiness.

Big socks, small socks, short socks, long socks

One of the major advantages of having small feet is that knitting socks for myself tends to take much less time than it does for the larger male friends of mine. This became very apparent earlier this year, when I knit a pair of socks for the boyfriend that took about 6 weeks and a pair of socks for myself that took less less than 2 weeks. Mind you, the socks for myself were stockinette knee socks and the ones for the boyfriend were covered in mock cables, but that's besides the point. The boyfriend's socks are much more interesting, so I'll talk about those first.

Ever since I showed him June Oshiro's DNA cable scarf pattern, the boyfriend has wanted me to make him a pair of DNA socks (since he doesn't really wear scarves). It took me a while to get around to it, but I started the first one during the X-mas holidays and managed to finish at the beginning of last month. The wait was totally worth it, apparently, because he wears them regularly (which is more than I can say for some of the things I've knit for him... sigh).

I decided to go the toe-up route because I'd already tried it with those X-mas socks, and as I said then, I'm not going back to top-downers. I cast on 40 stitches (for a total circumference of 80 stitches), so that the central cable would take up one quarter of the total stitches, and so I'd have an even number to do 2x2 ribbing with mock cables on each side. I even made the second sock have the mirror image of the cable pattern so that they would be symmetric. When I got passed the heel, I continued the mock cable pattern all the way around the leg, but I had to finagle something in the back of the sock, with a 2x2 cable and an increase of two purl stitches, because it was no longer symmetric. I finished off with a 1x1 rib and Jeny's Surprisingly Stretchy Bind-off, which worked great. The yarn is something called bbbperCALZE, which I picked up at the Creativ Festival in October and deemed manly enough for boyfriend socks.

The socks I most recently knit for myself were infinitely simpler. I more or less followed the Knee Socks! pattern by Diana Parrington, with a short row toe and heel. I did the calf increases as indicated, and finished off with the super-stretchy bind-off again. Being simple stockinette, I was able to get passed the heel turn in the first day (mind you, I was sitting through talks at a conference all day), and the rest of it came together in about 12 days.

The yarn is a couple of skeins of Diamond Yarn Luxury Collection Fancy Free that I managed to pick up in the bargain basement of Romni Wools for cheap. It's a merino-alpaca-nylon blend that is just so soft and wonderful... and the colours are pretty awesome too. I love how the calf increases caused the yarn to pool differently along the leg of the socks. I'm calling them my Lightning Socks because of the yellowish pooling pattern on the blue and because of how little time they took. These are definitely my favourite socks right now, and I'm itching to make myself another pair!

Happy Belated Pi Day!

Every year (or at least, every year since I moved to Toronto) I celebrate Pi Day, the semi-official holiday commemorating the mathematical constant pi, on March 14th (3/14, get it?). According to the Wikipedia page, it was invented by Larry Shaw in 1988 and was first celebrated at the San Francisco Exploratorium. There are many ways to celebrate, including contests to see who can recite the most digits of pi, or pi day jeopardy, but we generally just eat a lot of pie and drink a lot of mathematically-themed cocktails.

My friend Greg brought a pi cake, which wasn't a pie, but since it was a mint chocolate chip ice cream cake, and he totally confused the guy at Baskin-Robbins by asking him to put the greek letter pi on the cake, we forgave him.

We made pi day cocktails with pi cubes.

Almost everyone brought a pie, and they all happened to be different flavours! Win!

All photos courtesy the Happy Seamstress.

I wrote a tutorial!

That's right, I know stuff that you should know too, and so you should check out my new tutorial at the Happy Seamstress! It's basically just a simple way to pick up dropped stitches without a crochet hook. My mom probably showed me how to do this when I first learned to knit, and it finally seeped into my brain far enough that I felt I had to share it with the world. As a fun preview, here's my attempt at a video (using my new Gorillapod!):

Yeah, I sort of screwed up at the end there. That'll teach me to make a swatch with a stiffer yarn. Anyway, if you want the more serious, probably easier to understand version, you really should check out the Happy Seamstress.

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Speaking of the Happy Seamstress, you might recall that contest I mentioned a while back, you know, the one where you could submit a picture and story of a project you made (or were inspired by) one of the Stitch 'n Bitch books. Well, the contest is now closed, but you could still win a prize! If you vote for an entry by leaving a comment, then you have a chance of being randomly picked to also receive a free copy of Superstar Knitting. Not bad, if you ask me. So go vote!

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The even more overdue X-mas knitting post, part 2

I mentioned last time that I overcame my fear of stranded colourwork with those Spidey Socks. Well, as part of my X-mas knitting, I also overcame my fear extremely fuzzy silk-mohair blends (à la Cracksilk Haze). For my mom, I knit Romi Hill's Ice Queen from Knitty. I didn't use Rowan's Kidsilk Haze, but a slightly cheaper similar yarn called Filatura Di Crosa Baby Kid Extra in a gorgeous silvery grey colour.

I love this pattern. It's so simple, just a feather and fan kind of design, but it works so well with this yarn. And fuzzy mohair blends are just made for knitting with sparkly little beads. I used some little shiny purple ones from my bead stash. It ended up stretching out a little more than I'd hoped for, but Mom still likes it, so it's ok.

The beads I used for the Ice Queen, I also used for my second attempt at chainmail jewelry. I made Mom a nice necklace to match the earrings I made her last summer.

I used the basic rosette from the Chandelier earring pattern in the Anticraft book and then attached them together using these beaded wire thingies. I think the hardest part was making all the loops for the wires, since opening and closing jump rings is pretty easy after a while.

Finally, for my Dad, I made an iPod cozy... Yeah, it seems like I copped out a bit on that one. However, I also got him Sean Carroll's awesome new book, From Eternity to Here, which hopefully makes up for the lack of hand-made gifts.

I used "The BEST iPhone cozy EVER" pattern by bethanye. It's really simple, but works perfectly. I love the little pocket, to which I added a little button for extra security. I also made it a drawstring pouch. I used the left-over yarn from Stevie's socks.

I've actually been doing a LOT of knitting recently, and making a slight dent in my stash, so the lack of posting hasn't been for want of things to write about... I've just been incredibly busy. Hopefully, over the next week or so, I'll be able to catch up on my most recent FOs!

The long overdue X-mas knitting post, part 1

Yes, I know. It's February. I should have posted about what I knitted for everyone's Christmas/Brumalia/Newtonmas presents at least a month ago... Well, better late than never, right? Right?

I'd like to start off with socks. I like socks. A lot. They're pretty much the perfect project. Simple enough to work on while watching TV or sitting through a lecture, yet small enough to be portable, and with that heel-turning in the middle they have just enough of a challenge to keep me interested. And after inheriting a drawer-full of hand-knit socks from my grandmother, I know the awesome squishy comfortableness of wearing them.

This X-mas, I tried my first toe-up socks and ohmygod I'm so not turning back. I love the short-row toe because I always manage to do my Kitchener stitch too tight. And of course, you can try it on as you go, and knit until you run out of yarn. I also tackled my life-long (ok, maybe a few months-long) fear of doing serious stranded colourwork. I'm still not a fan, but at least I can say I tried it.

Sing it with me! Spidey Socks! Spidey Socks! Friendly neighbourhood Spidey Socks! These are totally the coolest thing ever, by the way. The pattern is Even Big Guys Love Spidey Socks by Terri Frid (Ravelry link) and I made it for my brother. It was quite a challenge for me because I wanted to make sure the floats wouldn't catch on bro's toes, so I ended up twisting the yarns together every two or three stitches. It's a work of art, I tell ya... I wish I'd taken a picture of the insides.

Also, then ended up being a little long in the foot for the bro, mostly because I took his shoe size and based the sock size on that without actually measuring his foot. Well, I'll know for next time and he said he'd wear them anyway. And hey, they might shrink a bit in the wash! Then again, the yarn I used is mostly Knit Picks Stroll, which is superwash merino, and likely won't shrink... sigh...

So you're probably wondering what that thing between bro's Spidey Sock-clad feet is. Well, I'll diverge a little from the sock topic to tell you that it's just the most awesome beer cozy ever! It's the Booby Coozy by Keesha Arthur. I made mine an ebony-skinned Amazonian, not only because that was the only yarn colour I happened to have on hand, but because I thought it would look cool against the yellow bikini.

Warning! The following image is not work-appropriate! Teeheehee!

Ok, back to socks.

For my friend Stevie, I also made a pair of toe-up socks and didn't ask for his proper foot measurements and made socks that were way too big. Ah well, he promised to wear them as well. I made them from a lot of left-over yarns I had lying around. I used the left-over Stroll from the Spidey Socks for the blue, and an unknown gift yarn for the brown, and then some leftover red from my Monkey Socks and green from a new ball of S.R. Kertzer On Your Toes.

And that's a long enough post for now... next time, the parentals!

Happy Seamstress launch!

I'm a little late on the uptake here, since Joanna actually relaunched the Happy Seamstress a couple of weeks ago, but I've been busy writing my first first-authored paper, so cut me some slack. Anyway, the Happy Seamstress site looks amazing. My favourite part of the site redesign is actually the pink bubble with the site logo... there's just something about that bright pink colour...

The site currently has some sewing patterns and one knitting pattern, some beautiful lace opera gloves (seen left), but more will be there soon. She already a few great free tutorials worth checking out.

Also worth checking out is our Stitch 'n Bitch contest! Following my review of the latest SnB book, Knitting Superstar, the publisher agreed to send out free copies to winners. The idea is to submit a photo and description of a project you've made from one of the SnB books, or a project that was inspired by these books. It doesn't have to be a project made recently or anything, but it does have to be your own work. If you knit or crochet and have ever used any of the SnB books, you should definitely have a look at the contest page!