Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Teeth and Traumas

Poor Denise is in the wars at the moment. The wisdom teeth came out. Actually, it was only two that came out, the next two come out in a week. And she's taking full advantage of the sooky time. My poor girl has been sitting on the couch for the past 4 days, with an ice pack against her cheek watching Buffy, and Star Trek, and the Muppets, and lot of other things in the DVD shelf.
But it's been a good excuse for me to join her in sitting around, watching TV and knitting.
I've got another repetition of the shawl done. Although I mainly knit that on the bus because I can concentrate on the stitches. No one talks to the crazy lady with the knitting needles.
Instead my TV watching project has changed from stash slashing beanies to a acrylic/mohair crochet granny square rug. It's finished dimension is 120cm across. It might add to it if I find any more yarn later. But at the moment its a throw rug that we'll keep on the back of the back of the chair for when we're cold and too lazy to get a blanket from upstairs.
As you can see, the correct way to use the new rug. It's surprising warm, if only the weather wasn't.

Saturday, February 17, 2007

Beanies, Beanies, Beanies

These are my beanies I started the other day on Australia Day when I cleaned out the stash. This has only been two weeks worth of knitting too.
Starting with "I hate the colours, but my sister loved it and I bought one too many balls for her scarf, so what can I do with it?"
It's nasty and chunky and acrylic, but it's one less ball in my stash now. It was knitted on a 6mm circular needle, but I think I should have gone up higher to 7mm. It was the excuse I gave to justify buying a pair of Addi Turbo's.
Next is "too much of the ball left over to throw out, not enough to make anything on its own, what else goes with it?"
The orange is a bit of Zhivago I got in a bargain bag from Spotlight. Next time I won't knit it on 6mm needles. The purple and green are nice and firm, but the orange is a bit loose. And the beanie is too big for my poor model.
And this is "What the hell was I thinking when I bought this yarn?"
It probably doesn't show up in the picture, but its boucle type fluffy acrylic. I can't even remember why I bought it in the first place. Well it's all used up now. I added the pompom to finish off the last bit of yarn, and because it seemed a little too pointy.



I know what you're thinking. Is that Feathers yarn I see knitted in this beanie. Sadly, I say yes. I called this monstrosity "what to do with the Bargain Bag yarn you didn't really want, but bought because of the three balls you did want."
See, even Teddy was trying to get away from this beanie. But while I may hate the beanie, its fluffy and soft, and I'm sure someone will love it.



This is the leftover yarn from Denise's cousin's drop stitch scarf. I tried not to make the top of the hat such a sharp decrease so that it puckers and turns into a BHH (butt hole hat). I think I ended up with the other extreme.



This is my first beanie like this. The purple fuzz over the top is some fluffy stuff that originally was going to be for a beanie. When I started knitting this into a beanie I realised that despite using 6mm needles, I was getting no where fast with it, the beanie material felt more like polar fleece, but no where near as warm. So I frogged it, and found the pink wool (Denise swears it is red, I claim deep pink) and started knitting it double. I love this beanie. The really nice wool combines with the not so nice fluffy stuff, and makes a nice soft woollen beanie with a fluffy coating.
I loved the previous beanie so much, that I had to do it again. This time I used a ball of green wool, and some purple fluffy. Unfortunately I ran out of purple/blue fluff halfway thought, so I went back to the other purple. Actually, I meant to do that. It's part of the style.


And number eight is in the same style as the last two, I'm using the same fluffy purple, I started with the green, but ran out, out I went back to the deep pink. I'm tempted to keep it, but do I really need another beanie?
And lastly I had to show off the shawl I'm knitting for Denise. I've got the pattern mostly written up now, although I've had to re-write it a couple of times. I still haven't figured out how I'm going to finish it, if I change the large heart pattern to smaller heart mixed with a few big hearts, or if I just continue on. I'll wait for another few repeats and see what Denise thinks. I also have to figure out how to edge it. It's got a nice edging that will be easy to crochet and edge to, or create stitches on. Here's hoping inspiration will hit soon.