And again...

I swear I didn't knit most of these in one day. In fact, I started these in February for a friend's birthday. They're now a Christmas gift. Pathetic, I know. All I had to do was knit up a few fingers! I had these about 75% finished, and just chilling as UFOs for a loooong time. My friend knew I was working on them, and has been very gracious about not giving me grief for their unfinished state. He doesn't know I picked them up again! Won't he be surprised when they show up in his mailbox?

The pattern is Knitty's Cigar, with all of the fingers fully formed. The yarn is knitpicks Alpaca Silk, leftovers from a sweater I made myself. Hope he can deal with gloves that can't be machine washed. Because of all the alpaca goodness, they'll be super warm, though!

Post 100!

Keeping in the "knitting machine" theme...




I think I'm done with hats for now. Until I crank out a few as holiday gifts, that is. I was going to hold off doing this one, but the yarn showed up in the mail on Monday, and I just could not resist casting on. It's Leticia from Blue Moon Fiber Arts in one of the uber-gothic "raven" colorways. It's so sexy. I opened up the package and just swooned at the super-soft thick-and-thin merino in the charcoal, fuchsia, and back. The pattern in the Harlot's Unoriginal Hat.

Bring on the snow. I have a slew of new wool hats just begging to be showed off.

Knitting machine

Tangled Yoke is done.



It's a personal speed record: November 6th - 24th. I used Silky Wool rather than the Felted Tweed, and it could't have worked out better. It's lightweight, but still incredibly warm. Six skeins of silky wool was much cheaper than the Rowan it called for. For once in my life, I had stitch gauge and row gauge! So exciting.



There were only two real challenges: Understanding the decreases in the body rib (I couldn't get them to add up nicely in my size.) and getting through the cables. I had to tink back a row or two trough the cable rows, but the end result has been so worth it.




I also finished a second folialge, this time out of Malabrigo Chunky. Now I have three awesome new hats for the winter. It snowed like hell today; bring it on, my head will be warm and stylin'!

The time of pink, part 2

I totally forgot to show off the OTHER pink project on the needles.



That would be the body up to the armpits, one sleeve, and the start of the second sleeve of the Tangled Yoke Cardigan. I'm not known for having luck with patterns by Eunny Jang. I'm really hoping to break my streak of bad luck. I stared on November 6th, and am going along at a pretty good pace. I almost feel like I should be participating in NaKniSweMo!

The yarn is silky wool in dusty rose. With size 4 needles, I got stitch gauge AND row gauge. That never happens to me.

The time of pink

I have two FOs to show off.

The first is the one I'm less excited about: Magknits Fake Isle.



There's nothing wrong with the pattern. It's just that my damn head is so small I have to fold up the brim. (Okay, and I heard that these hats turned out small so I made the bigger size. Whoops.) It's okay though, I got to use some stashed Kureyon and black wool, as well as polish my fair isle skills. My floats aren't crazy tight anymore.



Do you need proof that law students are the coolest? Foliage was designed by Emilee, who started into the lawyer endeavor at the same time as me, coming up with this fun hat in the process.



I do have a small confession. I didn't like this hat at first. It wasn't until I saw it on a girl on the bus that my interest was piqued. It was funny. I thought the girl's hat was storebought at first. I said to myself, "That's a cute hat, and that yarn looks remarkably like Malabrigo... say, isn't that in the new knitty? Nah... the crown increases don't look like that." Lo and behold, when I raveled it, I discovered that it was the same hat, crown increases, malabrigo and all. Naturally, Amanda and I rushed to our LYS to scope out the malabrigo, and one day later, I have a new pink hat. Good thing for watching lengthy movies on Netflix! Two, really. And I'm working on a pink sweater.

It's the time of pink. And I have a week off for some studying and some relaxing. Now, if you'll excuse me, it's time to curl up by the fire with my knitting and some pudding shots. Gosh, we're classy people.

FO: Beaded gloves

I feel oh so productive.



I finished these garnstudio gloves out of a single skein of their Drops Alpaca. Admittedly, it was leftovers from Claire's Branching Out (not pictured on this blog). I majorly modified the cuff, if you can't tell; I just did three-by-two rib rather than that fancy picot edge that the pattern calls for. Oh, and because the chart was in a different language and I didn't know which double decrease the triangles were, I used a s2k1p. I don't think that's what it called for.



I was inspired by the work of lillstrumpa's on ravelry. The link goes there, so apologies if you're not in yet. I mention her because it was not my brilliant idea to add beads to the pattern. I used some size 6/0 black seed beads I had laying around and a size 12 crochet hook to do the magic. I like the crochet hook method WAY better than beading them all in advance. Deb has a great tutorial here.

Incidentally, blogger's uploader appeared to be broken, so I used flickr. Uhhh, I already had the post and just wanted to add images, and I'm a little peeved that flickr has stopped giving the direct URLs for its images! When I go to "blog this" it wants to make a whole new entry. No way. I had to control-click (right click for you PC folks) and "copy image location" so I could write my own tags. What the... Maybe I'm missing some integral part of flickr because I only really use it for ravelry...

Incidentally, I hope they're not huge images.

ETA: Okay, so blogger's uploader magically started working and I edited them. Because they DID look crummy.