The motivation for learning how to knit was actually borne out of my desire to figure out how to do crochet entrelac properly. I thought learning how to knit it would help things along. So, once I had the basics of knit and purl down, I tried out knitting entrelac. I learned how to increase, and decrease, and how to pick up stitches (though, I’m not convinced I’m doing that right yet – entrelac should look like rectangles not trapezoids). I taught myself how to do cables and knit in the round and change colours, too.

With all of this knowledge, it’s only natural that my very first finished knitting project be…

Wait… garter stitch?

Yes, my first knitted item ended up being a Doctor Who scarf for my brother-in-law.

For those not familiar with this pattern, it is the knit stitch, worked over and over and over again until the scarf is freakishly long (and then you add tassels). (Specs: Vanna’s Choice yarn in Brick, Burgundy, Charcoal Grey, Beige, Toffee, Mustard, and Olive. 4mm circular needles)

Even though I had to go out into the main hall of our apartment building to get a picture that showed the length, the scarf did end up a bit shorter than the authentic one worn by Tom Baker (the fourth Doctor). It was supposed to be 20 feet long, but mine is only 14 feet. I do believe it’ll stretch out over time, though!

Come to think of it, taking pictures of this thing was quite a challenge. Usually to display scarves I employ the services of my trusty sidekick, Roopurt,

but…

In a neat turn of good luck, a few days after I finished the scarf, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee was launching her new book here in town. I, of course, brought the scarf to show her:

I think she was impressed. ^_^
(Also, I love that the people in line behind me are knitting while they wait to have their books signed!)

I’m knitting… please don’t tell my hooks.

(Although, it does occur to me now that you could probably immitate this pattern nicely with crochet-on-the-double, if you’re not a knitter.)

I happened to be at Michaels one day and noticed that Vanna’s Choice yarn had the perfect colours! Not knowing how much I’d need, I naturally over-bought… just in case.

And so I present to you: how to wing an R2D2 hat!

First, start with a sketch:

Next, decide how big around you want the hat to be. I figured 20″ would do the trick, so I did a foundation-dc row about that long, trying (successfully) to get a number of stitches that were evenly divisible by 12 (ended up with 60).

Now, I made the first hat working from the bottom up, then, now having the pattern, I made the next one working top down. (And then had to make a third one because the second one was too big for me and my abnormally large head).

The basic pattern is as follows (from top down) :
R1: 12 dc
R2: 24 dc
R3: 36 dc
R5: 48 dc
R6: 60 dc
All following rounds: 60 dc.

13 or 14 rounds should do it for a kid’s hat. For an adult, do some increases on R7, but take my advice: adding 6 more stitches is too many! :P

Basically, just plug the colours in as per the sketch!

The final step is to make that eye thingie… with black, do a round of 12dc. Then a round of *5dc, hdc, hdc* four times in blue and sew it on.

Of course, I had to make scarves to go with them!

They’re about 3.5 feet long… I think…

This one used post stitches (both dc and tr)

This one used back-loop-only dc stitches:

The green part worked out even better than I thought it would.

I started with a row of foundation dc stitches approximately 3 feet long. Then I did 5 dc stitches into the base of the last foundation dc, then did 1 dc stitch into the bottom of each foundation dc that followed until I had worked into all of them.

Next was a turning chain, 1dc in each stitch until the rounded end, where I did 2dc in each of the 6 stitches making up the rounded end. Then 1 dc in each stitch until the end.

Turning chain, 1dc in each stitch until the rounded end. Then *2dc, 1dc* 6 times to get around the end, then 1dc in each stitch.

Turning chain, 1dc in each stitch, *2dc, 1dc, 1dc* 6 times to get around the end, 1dc in each.

When I got to the flat end this time, I did ch1, then worked sc stitches along the flat edge, basically working 2 sc into the side of each dc, plus an extra one right in the centre.

I then switched to grey and made up the hilts as I went along. If you’re not comfortable with this, a nice, simple hilt could be made by working a dc in the back loop only into each stitch, for as many rows as you think look nice.

Rounded end:

I just love how well working into the bottom of the foundation stitches worked! I think it looks really smart. I’m going to have to use this technique again!

Check out the adorableness:

All is well now, so check out this scarf I made:

This is a Queen Anne’s Lace scarf using Bernat Mosaic yarn (Psychedelic colourway). I believe this pattern is available in many places; I found it as a free download on Ravelry (you need to be a member of Ravelry to get it, I think!)

It looks more complicated than it actually is. This pattern had a bit of a tricky bit, at least it seemed so to me! Whenever it says “work into the first (whatever)” it means to work into the one closest (to the left) of your hook. Clear as mud? ^_^

ETA: I posted this project on Craftster and it was declared one of the “Best of 2010″. Go me!

I’m a Craftster Best of 2010 Winner!

Why? In short:

- they have stolen money out of my bank account (by doing something they *specifically* claimed was impossible) then wouldn’t give it back until I involved my bank

- they’ve cut off my phone service for not paying *someone else’s* bill, and even after it was proven that was the case they still wouldn’t reconnect it, and still wouldn’t even after we proved that it was, in fact, their fault that it was possible at all

- they’ve sold me a service that didn’t exist (which lead to me having to pay the cable company an extra hookup charge since they had to come to my house twice)

- and most recently they failed to fix a connection problem. For two weeks. They claim to have made 6 appointments for techs to check out the problem, but we only saw 2. Each of those techs “fixed” the problem, only to have service go back down within 24 hours. (They also both complained bitterly about working for Bell!)

So, what’s a gal to do during this internet outage? (Did I mention that the internet wasn’t working at work either because of a computer virus? *yanks out hair*) Well, I certainly didn’t plan any part of my wedding! (Whose idea was it to keep our notes about it in a Google document? Oh wait, that was me…)

I crocheted, naturally! I also loom-knit.

You all remember Mom’s sorority’s charity thing with the kids hats and scarves right?

Check it!

The plan is to fill a bin with these. The current count is 23 complete sets (I took this picture before finishing a few of them… all of those hats in front of the pile have matching scarves now, plus there is another set not pictured… and a blue hat I still need to make a matching scarf for…)

I also made quite a few dishcloths. And a crochet-on-the-double hat using Bernat Soft Boucle (that still needs sewing up), and blew through a few more balls of red on the Ladybug blanket. I’m woefully behind on motifs, but expect to see a rush of those soon, as I’m in another motif swap. ^_^

A possible conclusion from all of this might be that having no internet access can be really good for my crafting! Another conclusion might be that having no internet had the potential to drive me so crazy that I needed that many projects to distract myself with just to get through it…

*eye twitch*

The other problem, which I suspect affects all types of blog is: computers suck sometimes. :P

I can’t do a whole lot about that last problem, but take a look at these not-Christmas-presents I made using crochet-on-the-double.

A pink and purple hat for Maddie:

Purple side, pink side:

One wedge shape (hat consists of 8)

And a matching scarf:

This yellow one is *slightly* bigger and is for Katie:

Side:

Flat dark yellow, flat light yellow:

The folks on Craftster seem to think these are pretty good (I’m glad I’m not the only one!), so why not give these as Christmas gifts? Three reasons:

1. I’m not entirely certain they’ll fit, as I’m just figuring out the pattern… and giving items made for testing a pattern you’re writing seems somewhat unthoughtful.

2. I already made them each something else.

3. If they were gifts I wouldn’t let myself blog about them. :P

Come January I’ll be looking for more test subjects, including adults, so stay tuned!

Remember this?

It’s bigger now:

(Colours are a lot closer to real life in the first picture.)

And it is officially the First Finished Christmas Gift of the Year. Let’s have a round of applause!

I also made this, which the always lovely Roopurt is modeling for us:

Here is a close up:

I used a single ball of yarn I found in my stash that was unlabeled. I’m pretty sure it’s Astra but they don’t seem to have this colour anymore (even though it looks like this colour is the featured picture… weird).

To make this kind of scarf, you make a base chain approximately as long as you want the scarf to be, then do 2dc in each chain on the first row, and 1dc in each dc for the following rows.

I wanted to see if the “no base chain” foundation row method would work for this… and it did! It’s a bit complicated to write out, so I’ll save a tutorial on this for another post. If you simply can’t wait for that, do a search for it on Youtube. It’s pretty neat!

Here are the hat/scarf sets using the scarves from before:

Two strands of Bernat Soft Boucle:

Orange Patons Melody:

Black Patons Melody:

Green and Variegated Patons Melody:

(I didn’t realize it when I made the scarf that that was the last of my Apple Green yarn. Luckily I had a variegated that had that green in it!)

Purple Patons Melody:

And some new ones!

Purple and black Patons Melody:

Red and black Patons Melody:

And a magenta scarf to match a hat I gave Mom ages ago:

Whew! What have we learned? Well, when I get on a roll, watch out! ^_^

It was when I went to make the matching hat that I realized I had only been able to get one ball of that colour. This is what I had left after making the scarf:

I don’t have any variegated yarns with this colour in it, so what to do?

Find a colour that goes with it! (Those who know me know that this is not my forte…)

I think I did ok…

Here I am casting on a light pink:

Not a bad set, really:

I’m on a hat-and-scarf-making kick, so it was time to dive into the stash. I’ll tell you more about the actual hats and scarves in another post, but first, let me show you what I found while sorting the stash.

This is my Patons Melody stash, which makes up most of the yarn I’m using to make hats and scarves.

A mixed bin:

Another mixed bin:

I don’t think any of us are surprised about how much yarn this is, I mean, you saw the picture of the car!

Mom and I started out buying this yarn at Michaels, one ball each at a time, using the weekly 40% coupons, sometimes roping Dad and other unsuspecting loved ones into our plan.

Then Herrschners had a sale. I had a coupon for free shipping, and this yarn was on for an amazing price… including tax it worked out to $1.52 per ball (regular price was about $5 +tax per ball at the time, if I remember correctly).

How could we resist, really?

So Mom got some, and I got some (and I convinced some friends they should get some, too), all in one big order.

Anyhow, while sorting the stash, I noticed that I had a lot of black Melody. Two bags of 10, in fact:

(Look at that, they aren’t even opened!)

I think we’ve officially crossed into, “Boy, that’s a LOT of yarn” territory.

What’s that? What about the yarn that didn’t fit in the car? Why, yes, we do have a storage locker here, what’s your point?

Oh, ok, let’s go look. I mean, I did bring the last of the yarn home this past weekend…

Those purple bins? Er… you don’t want to look in those; it’s really not that interesting…

Ok, so there’s a whole bin of black… that’s not so bad… right?

The bin under it? *tugging nervously at my collar*

It’s not even in focus! That doesn’t prove anything.

…

Hey, take a look at my beautiful view!