Baseball Sack

I started this bag yesterday while in the CCE office waiting to head out to a Kornell Campaign event and finished it up today while watching Hot Fuzz with Aaron.  The bag is a bit shorter and a bit wider than the pattern, but I didn't think we really needed a huge bag to carry our 5 baseballs, 1 softball and sweat rag. 

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Quoi de neuf?

The semester is coming to an end and I find myself less and less interested in studying, but I am trying my hardest! I've been working hard on memorizing my french essay for my test on Saturday, its about a vacation my mom and I took to Montréal. Since my last update I finished my Thé tissu and started working on a rug!

For the thé tissu I ended up using my pattern for Brits Facecloth but modified it to be sort of like a clapotis... when I finished the increases I did a section where I increased at the beginning of each row and then did a decrease at the end of the row before I started doing the decreases. I ended up with a parallelogram which I folded in half to make a square. After folding it in half I crocheted an edge around it. It looks a bit more like a potholder than a dishcloth but I wouldn't trust it to keep my hands from burning! In the photo I have also pictured with it a yummy smelling local soap that I will include with my package.

Next, I started working on a rug, Im disassembling an old navy sweater to get the yarn for it. Its orange and white and a lot of mindless knitting, perfect for in class and for knitting while watching movies. Its just simple Icord, and to make it less annoying when I am done, every 10 rows I connect it by picking up a stitch and knitting the picked up stitch together with the last Icord stitch. It's really thick and will feel great under my feetsies when it is finished! Oh and if you were wondering... I still have not made any more progress on Jessica's scarf. I'm a bad cousin!!

Recently, I went to Arizona for my cousin Jen's wedding and as a souvenir I bought cactus seeds! I've had a bunch of them sprout already and here is a shot of my four organ pipe cacti. Sorry for all the blur in these pictures, my fisheye was probably not the best choice of lenses for these shots.

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Chocobun done!

Finished her up just in time to pack her up in my sisters birthday present box along with a knit purse, headband, facecloth and a number of store bought items. Hopefully she likes everything.

This bun was a super quick knit, I could have easily finished in one night had I not started at 3AM. The pattern was flawless and my only complaint is that the ears ended up a little more pointy than I would have liked.

I think I am going to frog these fingerless mitts I started making in brown manos thick and thin and turn it into another chocobun.

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Cabled headband

I whipped this headband up during the 2nd portion of game 5 of the World Series for my sisters birthday. I used some sort of pink worsted weight yarn I got for free off of Craigslist some months back. It worked up so quick I was able to finish it before the game ended, keep in mind the game was almost over by time it started due to the rain delay.

My sister is 11 so I made it a little smaller than I would have for myself (about 20 inches) and worked it in the round in a 4x2 rib cabling every other rib.

Pattern:

Note: I used Worsted Weight Yarn, size 8 Circular Needles with a gauge of 12 stitches per 2 inches.

CO 108 stitches (or any multiple of 12 stitches closest to the size of your noggin, you may have to mess with the gauge)
Join in round.
Round 1-5 work in 4x2 rib (K4, P2)
Round 6 K4, P2 C4B, P2 until end of round.
7-11 work in 4x2 rib (K4, P2)
Repeat Rounds 6-11 until desired width is reached.

Abbr.
CO - Cast On
K - Knit
P - Purl
C4B - Cable held to the back. Slip 2 stitches purl wise on to cable needle, hold cable needle behind your work, K2, K2 off cable needle.

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Argyle Hat

I finished up this argyle hat for aaron in 2 days. I have decided that I love knitting argyle so I forsee a lot of argyle things in the future. Next up for now though is going to be a Chocolate Bunny.

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Cowl-O-Ween part 2

Cowl-o-ween - follow the link for a printable word doc.

Materials:
1 skein Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk Aran weight yarn. 1/4 skein jaggerspun zephyr lace weight yarn. For this project I used Black DB and Plum JSZ; any Other brand aran and lace weight yarns will Work for this project.
Tapestry needle
Optional materials: 3 buttons
Needles:
US Size 6 needles
Gauge:
A 4x4 swatch should be 15 stitches over 30 rows , with 3 rows of the aran weight and 2 rows of lace weight repeated 6 times. The width was measured over the aran weight yarn.


Directions:
Cast on 30 stitches holding both strands of yarn together.
K all rs rows.
P all ws rows.
Work 3 rows with both yarns held together.
Work 2 rows with only the lace weight yarn.
Repeat this pattern 27 times or until desired length is reached.
Bind off.
Sew buttons about 2 inches from the edge of the cowl. If the buttons are small enough it is not necessary to make button holes in the cowl itself.
Pattern notes:
This pattern can easily be modified to be larger or smaller.
You may also want to sew the edges together after buttoning the cowl together, I find that it is easier to keep it buttoned and just slide it over my head. My head is 22 inches around and this 24 inch cowl still easily fits over my head, even with 3 inches of overlap from where I buttoned it closed because it is still very stretchy.

Cowl-o-ween ©2008 Naomi Chaney http://lev3.blogspot.com

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Face Cloth!

I worked on a quick knit at work yesterday to pass the time. I made a pretty pink facecloth for my sister for the impending holidays. I plan on making a few more and paring them with some cute hello kitty soap.

A basic idea of how I knit this was:

CO2

row 1-11: K to last stitch K front and back of the last stitch.

row 12, 24, 36 & 48: K2tog, before dropping stitch from the needle knit the 1st stitch on the left needle.

row 13- 23: same as rows 1-11

row 24: same as row 12

row 25-29: same as rows 1-11

row 30-35: K until 3 stitches remain SSK, K1

row 36: same as row 12

row 37-47: same as rows 30-35

row 48: same as row 12

row 49 to end: same as rows 30-35

once only 2 stitches remain BO.

Find me on Raverly!

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Hot Pads FO

The last few nights I have been working on knitting up quick and easy hot pads/pot holders whatever you want to call them out of my spare yarn. The first one I knit I used a new (to me) stitch pattern:
RS: [k1 s k1 psso] repeated until 1 stitch remained - k last stitch
WS: p2tog but p 1st stitch in the group before taking the sitch off the needle.
I had cast on 28 stitches but I assume you can use any multiple of 3 + 1 additional stitch that is an even number. It came out okay, a tighter piece all together so I am not sure I would want to use it for a scarf or anything. I also did a small crochet border around it. It doesn't lay very flat and I kind of wish I hadn't used Patons SWS because I would have frogged the border and made it nicer, but that yarn does NOT want to part ways once it has been knit or crochet together. Oh well c'est la vie. It is only a hot pad.



The second one shown was knit on the diagonal with left over Manos, the odd little green triangle is where I ran out of the wonderful color way I started using. Most of this yarn was used to knit a beautiful purse for my mom which she never uses, the rest was a small monster toy an odd little bowl to hold my silverware in place. I love working with that skein, it made me fall in love with Manos, then I got 2 more skeins the green you see in the corner and a brown skein. Both of which I hate working with.
Its tougher and a lot more thick and thin.





This last one I made also on the diagonal, knit on
both sides to make it nice and thick and springy was made with Patons SWS in 2 colorways. I know it's kind of ugly as far as the colors go but it will serve its purpose well. Plus, the more of these I knit up the less balls of yarn I will have to move with me to Florida. I got rid of so much yarn when I moved to Philly, I don't want to have to do it again so I am trying to put what I have to use before the big move.

Oh and in case it isn't clear what 'on the diagonal' means, since I am sure that is not the real term for it.. It went something like this:
CO1
K Front & Back of stitch
All Odd rows: S1, P to end
S1, K to last stitch, K Front and Back (until desired width is achieved)
S K until 3 stitches remain, SSK, K1 (until 1 stitch remains)

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Finished my Clapotis

I didn't like how my clapotis was turning out but it wasn't too bad to start over so I opted to sew it together at the ends and make it into a cowl. I'm glad I did, I'm very pleased with it.

I took photos with my real camera so you can actually see how nice the colors are in this yarn.

I  only did 2 repeats of the increase and worked it to be 24 inches long bound off and sewed it together at the ends. I would reccomend stopping short of your desired length and doing the decreases. Mine has a weird angle where I sewed it together.

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Old FO's & a small status update on my Clapotis

So it has been a while since I have been able to knit more than a few rows at a time. So between getting no real progress and nothing terrible happening I haven't had much to say about my ever growing clapotis. She's slowly getting bigger and I'm slowly starting to hate the dropped stitches less. So I think all is well. I hope to get a lot of work done on Thursday as it is my day off and it's supposed to rain so I won't want to do anything.

So on to a small group of my recent FO's! These are all the things I have recently finished that I have photos of on my phone. None of which I knit from a pattern.

These were the mitten like things that inspired me to try and jot down a pattern. The one I am trying to write a pattern for uses a different style cable and is a little smaller but is basically the same. The only thing I don't like about these fingerless mittens is that theyre currently just a little big for me and since theyre knit on alpalca I'm sure they will only grow. So they will most likley me my boys. I knit this with wonderfully soft Alpalca and we have a matching hat somewhere at home.

Though not exactly finished in this photo (I hadn't finished the 2nd handle) this is now finished and although a little on the small side I do bring it to the grocery store with me when picking up a few items. This was knit with some free yarn I found on Craigslist. I believe one (dark) was a wool acrylic mix and the other was straight acrylic (lighter color). The bottom of the bag was knit with both strands held together in seed stitch to make it stronger and more likely to hold its shape when empty. After knitting the base I picked up the sticthes all around it and knit in the round. It was a very relaxing knit which mostly happened in my off moments at work.

This bag was knit in the round with a mix of patons anna and manos. It proves to be rather useless when attempting to carry items. So I am going to end up giving it to my baby sister for her birthday. It will be fine for toting toys around the house. Not so much for things like wallets and keys and other random crap that I would want to have with me. I do think its kind of cute though. Maybe I will try and improve the design in the future.

I like how this purse came out with the exception of the stripe in the middle. In hindsight I would have made the pink middle stripe as a knit stitch instead of a purl so it wouldn't look as awkward. It didn't bother me enough to frog it though. I do really like the pattern I made with the purl in the MC; you can sort of see it here it looks like "<". This was also, knit in the roud (oh how I love my circluar needles) at work with a crochet border around the top and a crochet handle. I added a little button and flap so it can stay partially closed. I do want to eventually add a liner to it so it doesn't stretch out too much.

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