ARGH....

My room is such a mess that I cannot find my camera to take any pictures of anything that I've been knitting. (Or my increasingly growing stash, and other WIPs that I found lying around.)

I didn't get to start my adventures in sock knitting last Sunday, even though I had planned to. I went shopping at the mall instead. I did find a tote bag that is my new knitting bag. It's actually huge enough to hold all of my needles and more.

I also started on a new hat, nothing fancy or exciting, but I wanted to do a hat. I hadn't in awhile and they're my favorite projects. This hat is going to get a matching scarf too. (I hope. Scarves tend to take FOREVER when I have to knit them.) It's super bulky weight yarn (the thick and quick that I bought Saturday) and on size 10.5 needles. I would have liked to use 11 or 13, but the circular needle kit didn't have a cable length short enough to get a 16" circular, and the 10.5 was the largest 16" circular that I had bought. So much for the cable needle kit ending my need for purchasing individual circular needles. (I've since bought both size 11 and size 13 16" Addi Turbos to prevent any future trouble.)

Hopefully, I'll find my camera soon.

New Yarns!

So, I broke another one of my rules concerning my knitting. NO NEW YARN until I've knitted the old yarn up. But I went out and bought loads of yarn today. I got 4 skeins of a cotton/linen/silk blend, 3 in a turquoise-ish blue and one in a magenta-ish purple. Plus this skien of really soft kind of fuzzy polyester yarn that was too nice and too cheap to pass up. Plus 2 skeins of thick and quick for a project that I have in mind, 2 other Bernat satin acrylic skeins that I will use for something, and 2 skeins of ribbon yarn. And 3 more that were chunky 2 color woven yarns... 2 brown/taupe/white and one blue/white.

It's very exciting. I can't wait to get to my knitting.

I'm going to start on my first ever attempted sock project tomorrow with Aynsley. We're going to use worsted weight slipper socks as our first sock project. I'll post pictures later.

PS: I've not made any progress at all on my current WIPs. I did, however, make a skinny "house unity scarf" that didn't get finished in time for the Deathly Hallows release despite my crazed super knitting speed, shortening of my desired length, and the ussage of large needles. I'll make a post with pictures for that too, eventually.

Luke's Slytherin Scarf

Despite my rule of "MUST FINISH OTHER PROJECTS (=stupid ravenclaw scarf) I went ahead and started on Luke's Slytherin Scarf.

I'm using the Atypically.net pattern. Plus, the yarn that she recommends, but I got a darker grey because Luke really wanted a darker scarf. I also cast on 80 stitches instead of 90. That was because I used out 12" cable needles (rather than 16' ones), and we don't particularly need super wide scarves in Las Vegas.

Here's a closeup to show some of my stitching:

These pictures also show my semi-successful attempt to make stitch markers that resemble a golden snitch out of clay. They didn't turn out too bad, except that they burnt in spots, so I had to use gold and silver paint to clean them up. They serve their purpose.

YARN USED:
MC: Plymouth Encore in Dk. Forest Green (#0204) - Lot #61916
CC: Plymouth Encore in Dk. Fog Grey (#0389) - Lot #35274
NEEDLES:
Addi Turbo US #7 12" circulars

Ravenclaw Scarf - 1x1 rib - Movie Colours

This is my Ravenclaw movie colour scarf that I started. It's been on the needles FOREVER, due to the fact that I only started it because I was itching to get a HP scarf worked on. BUT I'm not a fan of the movie colours, I'm a die hard stick to the books person. It's also done in really cheap (Red Heart Super Saver) acrylic. I've since become quite the fiber snob, and wouldn't use this yarn ever again. I've bought nice merino wool in bronze and navy to eventually make myself a book colour scarf, but until that's done here's what I've got.


The other thing about this scarf is that since it was my 2nd ever knitting project the stitching in the beginning is... well, not neat. The other thing is that I was carrying the yarn to avoid weaving in ends, and I didn't quite get the technique quite right at first. Both of these can be seen in this picture.

I'm hoping to finish this soon, mostly because I've gotten sick of have WIPs all over the place.

EDIT: After seeing the last picture on the computer screen, I've determined that the colours are actually kind of pretty looking on screen. They don't look nearly as nice in person though. It could be because I'm so sick of it that I can't stand them anymore and they actually are nice colours, or it could be that crappy yarn photographs well. I'm more inclined to believe the latter, due to my feelings as stated in the former.

Ginny Weasley GoF hat - 1st attempt/prototype

I saw patterns for the orange bucket hat that Ginny Weasley wears in GoF, and I attempted to make my own version of the hat. I had several issues with the design once I had finished that I intend on fixing and trying again. For reference, I have a screen cap from the movie. It's not the best picture, but it shows the basic design of the hat. In making my own hat, I didn't quite want the "beehive-ness" of the original, I wanted to try and make it fit more like a beanie. I'm planning on making more of an Inspired by Ginny's hat rather than an actual reproduction.

The first thing to point out is that Ginny's hat was ORANGE, not grey. I used grey because I had a ton of it sitting around. I also didn't thread a pastel rainbow ombre through the eyelet round, because I didn't have one at the time. I've since noticed that her hat in the movie also had burgundy at the top eyelet rounds, whether or not I'll stick to that will depend. I'm not even sure that I'll ever make a bright orange hat either, because despite it being accurate for the movie, I don't know if I would never wear it. Also, I'm not exactly going for movie accuracy so the color is totally up to me.

Here are some of the major problems and things that I had with the hat: The first for me to point out is the brim. I know that in order to get this to look like the movie hat the brim is going to be loose, but I don't like having loose hats. It drives me crazy, plus it curls up. I'm thinking of doing this in ribbing and EITHER not having the bow or the rainbow threaded through on the first tier OR threading it through the ribbing. I haven't decided.

The second one is that I needed to do more than 1 row or purls in between the tiers. Probably 3 would look the best. Another thing to add to my brim issues is whether or not the hat will separate into sections as nicely if the first bit is all ribbing. I think the only way to figure that out is to go ahead and knit it. If I don't like it, I'll take it out and start over.

My final problem I have had to do with threading the contrast yarn through the eyelets. I didn't like doing it. It was always either too tight or too loose. The eyelets weren't my favorite part. Another thing I'm debating about doing is skipping the "eyelet round" and just placing removable stitch markers as I go to thread the yarn through. I'm pretty sure that the threading issues are mostly personal issues.

Hopefully I'll get my second attempt started and completed soon enough. I don't think that I'm going to be going for perfect movie match. I like the style of the hat, and I want one similar. I want to actually wear it though, and if it has a loose brim I won't ever want too. The orange is debatable, I may actually wear it, if it turned out to be cute enough.

EDIT (8/2/1007): New ideas for a tighter brim. I'm thinking I could do the 1st half of the brim in ribbing, then switch to stockinette. Then the "eyelet" round could be in between the ribbing and the stockinette and it would look closer to the way it should. Not sure yet. I'll probably start this project soon since it is a fairly quick project to finish. I did the first one in a day.