Granny Squares

I worked up a bunch of granny squares this weekend. I still have a small pile that I need their ends woven in, but most of them are done. I’m trying to decide between making a purse like this one or a pillow. I’d use the purse a lot this summer, but a pillow would look nice on the couch in the house I’m living in next school year. They both use about the same number of squares. Well, I have some time to decide since both projects will require a bit of sewing and some hardware. I won’t do the construction stuff until I’m home for the summer.

I used leftover Knit Picks Wool of the Andes and my 5mm hook. I have a hard time making truly random things so my colors transition in the same order on every square.

Le petit renard

I was standing in front of the magazine rack a the grocery store looking to see if there was a new issue of Empire when something bright and colorful caught my eye.  It was Cross Stitcher magazine and they had a cute little fox cross stitch kit as the insert. I think it was the orange that drew me in.

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It wasn’t hard to figure out how to cross stitch. It’s pleasantly simple, but I found flipping my work back and forth to be a bit annoying. I was also pretty slow because I was new at it. I thought cross stitch might be fun because I could use all of those intarsia charts that I doodle up but don’t have time to knit, but I definitely knit faster. I also prefer the results of my knitting to the results of my cross stitch. It hasn’t hooked me in.

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I made a few mods to the chart to make things look a little less clunky, but most of the changes were small mistakes that I didn’t feel like fixing. The outline is pretty sloppy. I had a hard time figuring out where to make the lines. I would have left it off completely if the pale blue background and white fur weren’t such similar colors. The white disappeared when you looked at it from a distance, but the little fox looked pretty cute up close without the outline. Right now he looks awesome from far away and sort of average up close. I don’t think it’s a bad compromise because he’s going up on my bulletin board.

Sort of Finished!

I sort of finished a sweater! This was an insanely quick knit. If I hadn’t had an essay to write and studying to do, I think I could have knit this in only two weeks. I used 3 (I think) skeins of Cascade 220 and I used 5.5mm needles on the body.

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It’s a simple top down raglan. The stitch pattern is a modification of a pattern from one of Barbara Walker’s treasuries. I think it was originally called Rabbit’s Tails or something like that. I’ve been calling it modified bunny butt. It’s interesting because it isn’t an eyelet pattern or a cable. You work a bunch of new stitches into one stitch and it stretches out the give you something that looks like an eyelet.

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The stitch pattern originally staggers the little bunny butts, but I wanted neat rows so I changed the stitch pattern around. Half way through my sweater, I realized that staggering the pattern would keep the stitch count even. I hard a hard time figuring out my gauge and how many stitches to cast on because of the way I modified the stitch pattern. My stitch count varies massively from row to row, but I think it turned out just fine because everything stretches like crazy.

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You might have noticed I called this sort of finished. Well, I was binding off the sleeve and feeling relieved that my sweater mojo came back and extra pleased that I didn’t have to knit any major part of this sweater twice. With a sort of cocky attitude, I went ahead and knit my button band. I liked the way that the 3×1 ribbing turned out on my last cardigan so I decided to do that again. Anxious to wear my sweater (because it’s cold), I sewed on my buttons and weaved in my ends. Bad idea. The button band does all kinds of weird things. It gaps horribly. It curls in. It pulls up. It hangs strangely when the cardigan is unbuttoned. It has to go. And sadly the coral buttons have to go too because I only have four of them and this clearly needs more buttons.

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But as I mentioned, it’s cold. I’d like to keep wearing this guy so I’m going to leave the strange button band for now. I’ll fix it when I get home for the summer because it definitely won’t be cold there. I’m pretty damn happy with the sweater, despite the button band.

Farewell My Friend

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I packed up some of my heavy stuff and sent it home ahead of me. Heavy things includes my tripod and knitting reference books. Irrational me doesn’t know how I (and this blog) will continue to function. Rational me knows that it’s only a month until we’re together again and I will survive. Sometimes people ask who takes my pictures for the blog. The answer is my dear friends tripod and digital remote. They make blogging so easy and convenient. I miss my tripod already.

Audrey in Unst Update

Today I was feeling too lazy to write a real blog post, but then I remembered that I made this video last week!

Vlog 2 from Andi Satterlund on Vimeo.

Short version: I knit a sleeve, but I’m not sure about it because I’m on an indecisive kick. Should I attempt to make full length sleeves or should I rip back and make slightly shorter 3/4 length sleeves?

Tell me of your favorite wool sweater yarns!

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The title sort of covers it. Almost all of the sweaters that I’ve knit have been worsted weight and most of them have been made with Cascade 220 because I know how it behaves. When it comes to picking out finer weights of yarn for sweaters, I tend to go into my LYS, flail around a bit, and grab whatever I see first. There’s very little method to it. I thought it might be a good idea to ask what your favorite wool sweater yarns are so I something to think about next time I go yarn shopping. What do you recommend? Is there anything you hate?

Dog Lady? Yup.

I made a new woolly addition to my cluttered bulletin board.

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It’s Bean! Ever since I figured out how to make charts on Illustrator last summer, I’ve been entertaining myself by doodling intarsia charts. Most of them are for knitting patterns that I’d like to write in the future, but some are self-indulgent ones like a chart of my fat dog. At the time, I didn’t think I’d actually use that chart. I generally only knit things to wear and I can’t imagine wearing a sweater with a giant picture of my dog’s face on it.

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I was having an “I don’t know what to knit” moment when I realized that I had the right colors leftover from my Alice sweater to work the chart of Bean. I still didn’t know what to knit so I just slapped the intarsia onto a rectangle and bordered it with seed stitch. Voila! A knit portrait of my dog! I might try to find a frame to stick it in when I get back home.

Travel Loot

During my spring break I got a change to go visit two of my friends who are also studying abroad. Instead of buying the usual touristy souvenirs, I bought crafty stuff!

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I bought the yellow gingham when I was in Paris. I’m going to make it into a summery full skirt. I’m trying to decide between making a circle skirt and having the gingham be tilted in some spots or making a skirt with a gathered waist so the gingham hangs straight.

I bought the hot pink 4 ply in Edinburgh. I’ve got about 1050 meters of it. I’m going to knit something from A Stitch in Time or A Stitch in Time Vol. 2 with it. A lot of those patterns use 4 ply so I just need to pick one and go with it. I want to knit pretty much everything in Vol. 1 and I imagine Vol. 2 will give me even more options.

I really just want to play with my new stuff, but I have to put myself in essay writing mode and I have exams coming up so I should also be studying. Barf.

Teeny Tiny Sweater

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I was trying to make a decision about picking up stitches on the underarm of a raglan. I decided that the best solution would be to knit a teeny tiny raglan mock-up instead of trying to use my imagination.

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It’s so cute and small. I’m one of those people who thinks that everything is cute in miniature form. I wish I had something that could wear it. For now, it’s being modeled by a film canister full of sewing notions.