Mitered Hanging Towel

All it took was a dish towel to get my knitting groove back.

After my trip out east, I got really sick, and then I just wasn't into knitting for a while. But one day, as my mom was making the Mitered Hanging Towel from Mason-Dixon Knitting Outside the Lines (free pattern link), I decided to knit one, too. I keep it on the refrigerator:I've washed it at least three times and am happy to report that it is a pleasure to use.

And then I knit another Mitered Hanging Towel, this time for my cousin's bridal shower gift, with a coordinating dishcloth, from the first Mason-Dixon book (free pattern link):
Today, I finished up another, in nifty holiday colors:
My piece of advice for anyone wanting to knit their own Mitered Hanging Towel: use a stitch marker to mark the center of the row (as it says to in the pattern). I tried one without the stitch marker, figuring I would just be able to see where I was supposed to decrease, but that didn't work for the garter ridges. If you're tempted to single-strand the top, don't. Double stranding the yarn at the top means that it doesn't stretch out at the top when you hang it. I've given mine a lot of abuse, and it still looks good. My (minor) modifications to the pattern are given on my Ravelry project pages.

I often go through phases (knitting phases, no-knitting phases, reading phases, baking phases, gardening phases, etc), and I'm pretty happy that this dish towel brought me back into a knitting phase. (Maybe I should note that the dish towel phase was greatly helped by Michael's putting Sugar n Cream on sale for $1.) I'll be posting regularly from now on, I have a lot of other stuff to share! And now I'm off to go watch fireworks... Happy 4th!

knitting a wedding garter

I put all of my other knitting aside to work on the wedding garter. Instead of doing the easy sure thing, I decided that I should keep trying knitted edgings from Barbara Walker's books until I find what I like. The problem is that I like trying out patterns so much I haven't made any progress on the garter! I can't decide which to use. Because most of the patterns I'm trying are from her second book, they aren't charted (the charts didn't start until her third book). I'm getting lots of good practice charting patterns! (Not because I can't follow written instructions, because I just like to chart things.) I really enjoy this part of knitting--playing around with stitch patterns and other design options. But tomorrow I will have to come to a decision and get started knitting the garter! Here's one of my possibilities:

May sweeps, wedding garters, gauge issues, and Mother's Day

Well, I wasn't very productive over the past few days because I didn't feel well last week (I was kind of worried that I had the swine flu b/c of a headache and just feeling lousy, but it never got any worse than that so I survived), and because I've allowed a lot of distractions. As always. I enjoy television way too much in May, and watch shows that I never normally watch just to get in on all of the May sweeps escapades. All of the tv weddings, hook-ups, break-ups, near death experiences, natural disasters, man-caused disasters, outrageous stunts, and shocking episodes of Oprah have me watching WAY too much television. Rotting my mind. And not doing enough yard work (though I did put in a full day on Monday, it's a jungle out there). OH WELL. I can hardly wait to watch House tonight, even though I'm worried that the House/Cuddy hook-up last week will destroy the show.

My Blossom has been sidetracked by intense gauge issues. I've gone up a few needle sizes, but am still getting 6 1/2 sts per inch, instead of 6. I figure if I walk away for a few days, it will magically resolve itself. haha.

I have a few weddings to attend this summer, and I have been thinking up gift ideas that involve knitting (I have a lot more time than money nowadays, so I figure knitted gifts are perfect). I was thinking about working up a lace edging for a set of pillowcases as a wedding gift. And I was stumped about a shower gift, until Kniterary Club on Sunday, when I remembered that Caitlin knit up a garter for her friend, and I got some info on knitting garters from her. EXCELLENT. I came home with a ball of crochet cotton so that I would be able to get started on my lace edgings, and I ended up using it to experiment with lace patterns for a garter. It was fun! I tried the Beech Leaf Edging from Barbara Walker's A Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns (pg 362). I'll see where it goes.

For Mother's Day, my mom told me that she wanted to get take out ribs from Ruby Tuesday for dinner. At first I was kind of upset that she didn't want me to cook for her, but on Mother's Day, mom gets what she wants! And it was good to do take out, because it can be stressful to take grandmother into a restaurant. What I did do is make a dessert she requested, Pistachio Pudding Bars. Which I managed to not get perfect, despite the fact that it involves very limited baking and impossible-to-mess-up convenience foods (cool whip, jello pudding). Though no one complained, I'm going to make them again to get it right (I kind of made up the recipe I used by combining several things from the internet, so I should really get the actual recipe from my aunt) and maybe then they'll merit a blog photo. But it was a good day for my wonderful mother, and I'm really glad we didn't buy any tender plants at the nursery for a gift yesterday, because there's a frost advisory for tonight (it affirms my conviction that you don't buy sensitive plants until after Memorial Day in Michigan).

Baby's first Birthday Socks

I FINISHED SOMETHING!!!

I had forgotten what it feels like to finish a knitting project. It's wonderful, isn't it? I had a hard deadline of Wednesday night to finish these socks, as Teresa's birthday is today (Saturday), and I had to mail them by Thursday. I didn't have much to knit... at Kniterary Club on Sunday, all I had left was one toe and two heels.

I finished the knitting, buried the ends, and washed them.
I "blocked" (I laid the damp socks on a towel, I didn't pin them) the socks to the following dimensions: 5 1/2 in foot, 4 3/4 in circumference.

As they dried, I reflected on what I would change:

1) I'm not 100% happy with the way the afterthought heel looks. It is a cinch to knit, though. My mother said she read somewhere that in order for the afterthought heel to be big enough, you have to do it over more than half of the stitches. I'll have to look into that. But I think that I would rather look into a short row heel, maybe the one Caitlin suggested.

2) I would get the measurements of the baby's foot before I started. That would have saved me a LOT of grief over sizing.

3) After I got the measurement, I would have stuck to 5 inches in length. I didn't know how many inches the toe and heel would add (answer: one inch each). I knit three inches between the waste yarn for the heel and the first decrease round of the toe. The main factor here was that I started the toe when the yarn went to purple.

What I would repeat:

1) I LOVE LOVE LOVE the scallop edge at the top of the sock, which came from Lucy Neatby. It made all the difference.

2) It used up leftover sock yarn!

3) They're pink and girly and ruffled. YAY.

I hope to visit Teresa soon and get a picture of the socks on her feet. She'll probably need some time to grow into them. Oh, well. Live and learn.