Commission Knitting

In December, a friend suggested that I advertise custom knitting services on the website of an organization we are both active in (the North American Guild of Change Ringers).   She had a lovely idea to have custom knits available with the organization’s logo, and I designed a chart so it could be knitted.   I was surprised at how long (about 10 hours) it took me to get the chart looking how I wanted it to in Excel.  After all, I was just tracing!  Still, I’m pretty happy with the result.  I also decided to offer custom knitting of change ringing method scarves as well, using Asher Kaboth’s A Scarf of Cambridge Major as the base.  Asher even offered to make new charts for me if someone wanted a non-Bristol or Cambridge scarf.

Soon after the notice went up in the “Store” section of the website, I got my first two orders, one for a child’s hat with the NAGCR logo and one for a scarf of Cambridge Major.

For the hat, I used Knitpicks Shine Sport, since I needed something fairly fine-gauged in order to have enough vertical space for the logo.  This yarn was recommended to me by a friend who knits a lot for her daughter, and said it was her go-to yarn for kids knits because it’s so washable and wears so well.   At the time we were having this conversation, she was visiting, and happened to be working on a design of her own using this yarn.  It seemed soft to the touch, and like it would be nice to work with, but it never really came up again until I was searching for something for this hat.   It really was quite nice to work with, and I’m generally not a fan of cotton.   The one problem I had with it is that it’s quite slippery, so the fairly involved intarsia pattern wasn’t necessarily a good fit for the yarn.

The scarf I was a little nervous about.  I’ve never gotten very into cabling, and the hat I just finished didn’t really endear the technique to me.  I just cast on yesterday, but my fears have evaporated.  The pattern is very well written and the cables are ridiculously satisfying.  The pattern calls for cabling on both sides, which slows things down some (I’ve just finished the fourth change) but it’s really delightful to work on.  Contributing to that, of course, is the yarn.  It’s Rowan Cocoon, in a lovely dark mauve (812 Bilberry).  Not only is the color wonderful, but this yarn is amazingly soft and buttery to work with.  This picture mostly captures the color:

 

Photo Shoot — Laurel and Lush & Lacy

Today after Knitting Lunch, Dawn took some pictures of my hat and sweater:

The first picture is my favorite.  For some reason, the color was coming out really oddly, hence most of them being black and white.

 

Laurel

This past weekend was the MIT Mystery Hunt.   I mostly go to see people I don’t get to see often, and helping with a puzzle or two is an added bonus (and I did get to work on two puzzles this year, but sadly not the knitted one).  This means that there is a lot of time that I spend hanging out with people while they work on puzzles, which is excellent knitting time.

Several of the people at my regular lunchtime knitting group complain that I never spend enough time on making things for myself, so this winter I decided I would make myself a new hat, scarf, and mitten set out of Jared Flood’s Made in Brooklyn book.  With many interruptions (*cough* holiday gifts *cough*) I have now completed the first part of that project, the Laurel hat.  I had started it in October, but got sidetracked, and started it again in December, but got sidetracked, and Mystery Hunt finally provided what turned out to be the ideal time and space to finish it.  Also, my team won, which is super exciting!

James likes the side view better, but I’m partial to the top view myself :)

Of course, I could not have accomplished this task alone, and was aided by a very cute baby I was watching while her parents solved puzzles:

 

Maryland

On the recent trip to visit my husband’s family, there was lots of knitting.  My mother-in-law Karen is a knitter, so this isn’t terribly surprising.  On the plane ride to Baltimore, I finished the body of the Huron sweater I was making for James and started the first sleeve.  This sweater knit up crazy-fast.  I started it Christmas morning, and finished as the train we were taking home was going through New York City.   There was a lot of sitting around, hanging out time, so that definitely helped me make progress (that and the the miles of stockinette before you get to the yoke).    Our niece and nephew were fascinated by the knitting, but in very different ways.  Lily, who is two, kept asking if she could help me by holding my ball of yarn and tape measure.  Ethan, who is four, was fascinated by the mechanics of the knitting process as well as how the design worked (“Aunt Mira, why are you knitting with the blue AND purple now?”).   I’m hoping that while they and my sister-in-law are living with my in-laws, my mother-in-law will get him started on spool knitting.  He definitely seems ready and interested!

In addition to working on the sweater for James, my mother-in-law and I went to Island Yarn Boutique in Chester, MD.  It’s her LYS, and we’d tried to go a couple of times before, but had always only had time on Mondays, when they’re closed.  It was very much worth the wait.  It’s a charming yarn store with a really great variety of yarns (some local handspun, some plymouth encore, and everything in between it seemed like!).   I bought four pairs of socks-worth of Jojoland Ballad in the following colors:

It was only $4/ball (so $8/pair).  Sock yarn doesn’t get much cheaper than that!

Here is James’s finished sweater:

 

The Long-Awaited Holiday Gift Post!

Ok, maybe nobody was actually waiting for this, but, I bring you the holiday gifts:

For nephew Ethan:

For niece Lily:

For SIL Becky and BIL Larry:
Two of these:

And one of these:

For SIL Darlene and BIL Frank:
Two of these:

And one of these:

For SIL Kim:

For nephews Thomas and Joseph:

For nieces Elizabeth and Lydia:

For BIL Michael:

For FIL Jim:

For BIL Daniel:

For MIL Karen:

For Douglas:

 

Huron for James

I had promised James that I would start his Christmas present by Christmas, since I knew it wouldn’t be anywhere near done in time. I’m making Huron for him, out of Jared Flood’s new booklet Made in Brooklyn. It’s a super-fast knit, and  I’m starting to think that I might be able to finish it by the time we leave Maryland on January 10th. I really just started Christmas day, since I had to rip out about two inches once I realized that my tightly-coiled knitting needle had been hiding the fact that I had twisted my knitting while joining in the round.

Despite that early setback, I now have 11 inches of the body done. If I were doing a by-the-book size small, it would be almost time to start the armholes and back shaping. Seeing as how James is built like a beanpole, however, I still have four more inches to go. After that though, I basically just have the sleeves and yoke. This sweater might take less time to make than the sweaters I’ve made for myself, which have all taken around a month.  One of the reasons I think it’s going so fast is that the yarn, Cascade 220 Heathers is just a joy to work with.  It not only feels nice, but is also visually interesting.  James picked a blue yarn with traces of purples and teals, so even this endless plain stockinette section seems not so bad.

I am a little bit worried that we’re supposed to be flying to Baltimore on the 1st of January. I’m not really worried about the plane blowing up, since, after all, the safest time to fly is right after something bad has happened. No, I’m worried about the “nothing in your lap for the last hour of flight” rule, which, in the case of this flight, would be the *entire* flight. That probably means no knitting, no book, no magazine, no nothing :( I don’t really see how knitting could be dangerous, but I kind of understand how, if you spend less time with knitting needles, they might seem a little bit dangerous (although why pens are less dangerous-seeming I’m not sure). Oh well. I’m guessing that there will be a fair amount of sit-around-chatting time when we get to the in-laws’, and luckily I married into a family of other knitters, so they don’t mind if I knit while we chat.

 

Sweaters

In October, James’s mom gave me her very first colorwork project, a sweater she made herself in 8th grade.  It was missing buttons, so yesterday, I went to Windsor Button and got some for it.  Here they are:

And, after knitting holiday gifts for 20 people, I decided I should get my very own as well.  I finished up Lush and Lacy today by putting on the buttons (neck band and button bands were done yesterday).  Here it is, pre-blocking.  It’s now been washed and blocked, and maybe I’ll wear it for New Year’s Eve :)

 

Making a list, checking it twice

I feel like the end of the Christmas knitting is in sight, and at the moment, there is only one baby I need to knit for, and s/he isn’t due until May (of course, their currently-four-year-old was three weeks early, so I shouldn’t put it off TOO long…).  Today I re-arranged my ravelry queue so that I could have a clearer sense of what’s there.  I had been blithely adding patterns to my queue without really thinking about the length at all, and after some culling, it stands at 122 projects.  Seventeen of those are now at the very top of the list because they involve yarn that’s in my stash and I have specific plans for.   Otherwise, it’s now sorted into mittens, sweaters, baby stuff, socks, shawls, etc.  It makes me feel all productive and accomplished to have it so organized.

In other news, I’m getting a little bit more proactive about marketing the fact that I offer custom knits.  My friend Dianne suggested that I offer bellringing-related knits at the North American Guild of Change Ringers’ Website, and the listing has just been put on the site.  See more at the bottom of the page here.

 

Raha Scarf, Socks, and a cute kid

The holiday knitting is almost over — I’m done with everything except for half of three gifts! When those are done, it’ll be some quick baby knitting, then quickly finishing up my Lush and Lacy cardigan, then onto James’s sweater (patient boy that he is!).

Of course, one of the reasons that he’s being patient is that I made him some surprise socks for Chanukah. He had been getting more and more enthusiastic about the socks my mom made him a couple years ago — despite the fact that they are thinner than he would generally want for warm socks, they are warmer than his thick cotton socks (we had a little chat about different fibers’ warmth). However, he still really wanted thick socks for around the house, and watching movies (we keep our apartment pretty chilly in the winter). I hemmed and hawed and made a big deal about how long my queue was, and said I’d think about it when I was done with the holiday knitting and his sweater. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to him, I headed over to Stitch House and picked up three skeins of Cleckheaton Country Silk 8 Ply.  It’s very soft, and between the wool and silk, I figured it would be warm, and the silk would add strength so they would wear well.   After hearing about how quick and easy Thuja was, I decided to tackle it.  The socks just flew off the needles, and between subway knitting and lunchtime knitting, I was done fewer than 72 hours after I started!  Here are the socks:

My mother’s Chanukah gift was the Raha Scarf, from Knitted Lace of Estonia.  I used the green Hempathy yarn that I got the last time I went to Woolcott, and she seemed to like it. Here is Joyatee modeling it last week:

On Friday night, we had our fourth annual Pick-Your-Spelling (C)han(n)uk(k)a(h) Party.  I made a little something for the (three year old) child of some friends of ours, and he was very cute when he opened the gift:

D: What is it?
Me: You’ll see when you open it.
D: Is it a surprise?
Me: Yes.
D’s father (when he had unwrapped the gift): D, do you know what that is?
D: (looks at his father like the answer is completely obvious): It’s a sweater!
D’s father: No, what is it? Is it a sock?
D: Yes!
D’s father: No, it’s a hat!
D: It’s a sock!

(It was, actually, a hat. Pictures forthcoming after Christmas because our nephews are getting the same gift and I don’t want to ruin the surprise).

 

Holiday Knitting Update

This time with pictures! I still can’t post about most of the knitting that I’ve been doing, because the recipients read this, but I can post about my grandmother’s gift. This summer, when I made myself a Swallowtail Shawl and Aeolian Shawl, my grandmother looked longingly at them and made noises about maybe asking me to make her one. I didn’t have time for something quite as involved as that, but I did have time to make her an Ishbel Shawl. Here are some pictures I took yesterday after blocking it:

I think it turned out pretty well, and it was very easy! The yarn was Elsebeth Lavold Hempathy — a Cotton/Hemp blend. It was surprisingly nice to work with, and I would definitely buy it again. It didn’t seem to bother my hands quite as much as the straight cotton.