A Bitter Knitter

At the end of 2017, I finished my 200th project.  It was part of a small handful of projects I crammed in for gifts at the end of the year even though I swear every year that I will not do Christmas gift knitting.  In my defense of breaking my no-deadline-gift knitting, item no.200 was for my mom, who expressed a need for a hat.  And, before I show you the picture, let me tell you that it is really hard to get a picture of the back of one's own head, but I wanted a picture that showed off the back and I need to get a picture really quickly before I gifted it.  So, with that in mind, here is my 200th knitted item : I've been knitting for just over 8 years now, which means I'm averaging 25 projects a year.  This average is totally skewed because of 2013 in which I managed to complete 48 projects.   I made a whole bunch of beaded bracelets... maybe I should make more of those this year... 2013 was also the year in which I hit the 100 project mark....

At the end of last year, I knit up a handful of little random things for my toddler. First is a big mouth monster: The pattern is Rebecca Danger's Pocket-Sized Phone Friend , but I knit it out of bulky weight yarn held double on size 10 needles.  He's big enough to hold all sorts of odds and ends that my toddler picks up. Second is a pair of slipper socks: I improvised the pattern based on gauge and the size of her foot.  She, of course, promptly outgrew them. Third, a hat with rabbit ears. She got a Christmas book called,  "Shall I Knit You a Hat?"  about a little rabbit whose mother knits him a hat to keep his ears warm because a big snow is coming.  It has a pattern in the back that I heavily modified to create the above hat.

In the past couple of months, several of my friends have had babies.  Naturally, I knit. One friend decided not to find out if she was having a boy or a girl.  May I just mention at this moment how inconvenient  this is for a knitter?  Ahem.  I'll stop there.  I'm sure I'll mention the subject again some other time. Anyway, for this friend, I pulled out some "gender neutral baby barf" yarn from my stash and knit up a hat and booties.  Then I waited until the baby was born and added the relevant coloured buttons: I ended up affixing the pink ones for her baby girl: And for a couple of other friends who were both having girls, I knit up an apple hat: and a pair of purple booties: The bootie pattern is Natalie Larson's Bitty Booties , which I modify so as to not need a provisional cast on. The square hat is Carol Ullmann's Square Baby  with pompoms instead of tassels.  The apple hat is Iryna Boehland's Lil' Apple Hat , ...

Once upon a time, while I was wandering around Ravelry , I came across the wonderful pattern that is Megan Wood's Vincent Cuff .  The Vincent Cuff is a wide beaded bracelet designed to remind one of Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night knit on lace weight yarn with size 0000 needles.  When I saw it, I immediately thought of two people - my Doctor Who loving friend Pammie and my Starry Night loving mother.  So I ordered some deep blue lace weight yarn and some itsy bitsy pointy needles and picked up beads at the craft store.  And then created a labor of love. 1.  For the first one, I didn't have access to a color printer as mine having died after some toddler who shall not be named fed it cheddar.  Printers don't eat cheddar.  It kills them.  Poor printer - death by cheddar.  I copied each row with colored pencils onto grid paper. 2. The beads then had to be strung one at a time in the right order.  (For the record, the best bead needle is...

Early in 2013, one of my friends posted a notice on Facebook announcing a Pay-it-Forward.  The way it works is that she had signed up to receive something from one of her friends and in return would knit five things for other people who signed up, if those five people would agree to make five things for the people who signed up for them and so on.  I signed up to receive something from my friend and posted a notice on my Facebook wall asking for people who wanted to receive something from me and in return make five gifts for others.  One of the people who signed up was my husband's best friend, which caught me a bit by surprise as I don't know him very well.  As soon as he signed up, I went to my default knitting gift for guys: a hat.  Husband did some recon and came back with "black."  Oh, yippee.  (Sarcasm.)  Black is boring, and I had to do something  to make it more interesting or I would die with boredom before the hat was done. Enter...

2013 was the year of the beaded bracelet.  There's a pattern that I like that I'd made once before so beaded bracelets became my standard gift pattern this year.  Really, it takes more time to string the beads and seam it at the end than it does to do the knitting. I knit it in orange: Red on black: Aqua (x2): "Moonstone" on grey (x2): Blue: Pink (x2): And I've got beads for at least a couple more... I may be developing a bead addiction.  Sometimes I used toggle clasps, like the one pictured above, but then I found magnetic clasps and switched to those.  One of the aqua bracelets got a bead clasp (which is pictured above) because the recipient is allergic to nickel, so the bead is plastic. My toddler really loves these and I think I may modify the pattern and make one or two in her size.  (She loves bling.) Until my next drive by blog post!

Hello, again!  Here comes another quick blog post.  Earlier this year, I decided to knit a baby doll for my toddler.  She has the doll I made her for her birthday  but I wanted one that was smaller.  Upon searching Ravelry , I came across the Rainbow Babies  pattern by Jean Greenhowe (free pattern). It's written to be knit flat but was easy to tweak to knit in the round.  The end result was: Jo's Baby She's about seven or eight inches tall and she coordinates with the doll (pardon the late night bad flash picture): Then I knit another for her cousin's birthday.  My niece didn't appreciate my nephew using her dolls, so I made him one of his own: Cousin My nephew has sandy blond hair and blue eyes, so his doll is made to look like him.  When he opened his gift and saw the doll, he said "no!" and threw it on the floor. My sister tried to play with the doll to get him interested in it, but he wanted nothing to do with it. ...

Well, another winter gifting season has come and gone, which means I have hand-knits to show you.  I'm trying something new this year with the blog, as I was such a terrible blogger last year, only typing up four very photo-full entries.  I'm going to aim to (maybe... we'll see how far I actually get) post at least twice a week on Wednesdays and Fridays for WIP (Work in Progress) Wednesdays and FO (Finished Object) Fridays. Today, though, lots of photos again because of all the stealth projects I gifted. First, a pair of gifts for Redhead Sister's baby, due sometime this month, Team Yellow (they decided not to find out whether the baby is a boy or a girl): Pompom Hat : (I love how these look on itsy bitsy people) Knit in a soft green colour (actually in the green left over from the frog hat I knit for Elder Sister's son). Little Red Sweater : This one actually shares yarn with Jo's Little Red Riding Hood cape I also knit another GA...

Well, maybe not for everyone , but I have been spreading the hand-knit love... and now that all those stealth projects have been gifted, I can share them. Last blog post (four and a half months ago!), I complained that I had too many WIP s (14) and vowed to finish a whole bunch of them before starting another, aiming to have no more than six WIPs at a time.  Let's see how that went, shall we? Mid-May, I had two pair of socks on the needles.  I finished one pair: and then cast on for another.  Having a pair of "vanilla" socks in progress at all times is a must... they are the best "on-the-go" knitting.  I may not have as much time with my hands free while I'm waiting around that I used to before I had a baby, but I still need my plain socks.  Since I did not finish the other pair of socks, I still have two pair in progress. I also had two pair of mitts in progress.  I finished these: but did not finish the other pair.  They are made from uns...

This November, rather than NaKniSweMo (a sweater in 30 days), I participated in NaKnitMo, knitting as much as possible in 30 days.  Over the course of those 30 days, I competed: A blessing dress for my little one : Booties to go with it : (somehow already lost one, and she's not even born yet.  Ah, well.  Just have to knit some more...) And a Dalek jumper for my little one as well: Plus  I finished another Gaptastic Cowl for a friend of my mother's , a pair of stealth projects (Christmas presents) for my biggest and smallest nephews, and got good progress made on a couple other stealth projects for Christmas as well.  The Gaptastic is pictured on my Red-Headed Sister below: So, all in all I completed three works in progress, started and finished three new projects, and got half-way through two more... all in November!  I feel highly accomplished, especially in comparison to a few months ago!  I aim to finish the two half-done...

I've been keeping secrets... Secrets about a "stealth project" and I've been keeping them for months now... That's the reason that I've gotten nothing done and haven't written any posts... I might've spilled the beans... But now it's bean-spilling time.  Oh, it's still a work-in-progress, but I've reached the point where I'm willing for it to not be so stealthy anymore... This WIP is about two-thirds done and should be finished in January: (The photo is a few weeks old; it's time for a new one.  My bump has gotten much bigger since!)  Oh, and for those of you who will ask, it's a GIRL! As such, I have reexamined my knitting goals ...  (I was off knitting for a few months when everything  made me nauseous and caused motion sickness, including watching TV, being on the computer, or knitting.  I read a lot...)  I set a goal in January to complete at least 24 knit projects.  I have thus far completed fou...