William and Wool and Hippie Gear

I've had a productive weekend. I managed to make not just one, but two hats for William, and mitts. The first hat I made him was too small, so I gave it to Lizzie for baby Jake, when he gets here. Should be anyday now!

These wool hats were made from JL yarn. Not one I've used efore. I had a few surprises, for example, the yarn that appeared to be green and blue, surprised me with lots of purple. So, I cut a several purplish color sequences out, so the hat would be boy appropriate. I was a little disappointed with the colors in the yarn, but the texture and the feel of the wool was nice. It's very squishy and fairly soft, before first wash. It's really very soft after wash. It will be a good warm hat for baby hippies.

Chris named the first one a "Hippy Hat" based on the colors. When we gifted the first hat to Dan and Lizzie, Lizzie sent us a "Thank you" for the "Hippie Hat." We never called it a hippie hat to them, so it seems the sentiment is prevalent. No dispute, this is the hippie hat, so one guess what I called the mitts. :-)

The hat was made based on a pattern, but the mitts were pretty much improvised. A lot of things I'll do different next time. At the end of all the photos, I'll put my notes of how they were made.

Notes on the mitts:

Well, I thought I’d give this a try, I used “Mitts 101” from Knitty.com as a guideline. I’ll consider this a good first attempt. I know the things I’ll do differently next time, and next time won’t be too far away as these won’t fit for very long. LOL.

Made for William, almost 10 months old:
Cast on 20.
Knit 10 rows of twisted rib (k1 in back, p1)
Begin St st. & Knit 9 more rows then knit in waste yarn for the thumb.
Continue St st until it measures 2 1/2 inches from the beginning of St st.
Decrease 2 rows (start of each needle k1, ssk, k to last 3, k2tog k), then knit one row even, Twice.
Decrease 1 row (same decrease pattern as above) and one more row even.
Graft.

Next time:
Ribbing should be doubled (at least) I want this to go further up his wrists to cover any gap left by a jacket. It’s okay for now, but not great and no room to grow.

I measured his hand and started the decreases at the exact point (2.5 inches) which is the distance from wrist to tip of pinky. If this yarn doesn’t grow, next time I’ll know to leave a little wiggle room, but he did seem to get a good grip (even without the thumb being done).

He loves the gloves. I could hardly get them back from him. He wanted to keep feeling everything with the glove on.

Definately not a perfect job, but I still consider it a win!

Note on the yarn: Will not buy again. I lost almost an entire skein of yarn to purple that had to be cut out. Didn’t expect purple on a skein that appeared to be all green and blue on the outside.

Also, there was no consistancy between the color repeats within one skein, nor between the two skeins used. Same dye lot. I tried cutting out the purples, then as I started finding knots (one in one skein, 2 in the other) I figured why not try and cut color sequence so I could match the gloves, but the same colors used in glove one did not show up again for glove two.

Resolution Update!

Okay, first things first, obviously I've already gotten off to a poor start with the "write in my blog once a week" resolution....but I have an excuse (to this, I hear in my head, my father's voice saying, "Excuses are like assholes, everyone has one...")..

Quiting the Red Bull took quite a toll on me. I slept almost a week straight. Only waking for a few hours each day. It was rough. I finally broke down and did decide to allow myself one soda a day, so I didn't have such a shock to my system, making such drastic changes all at one time. (I also quit smoking as well, but didn't list this, as I never really felt like a smoker, no one smokes in the house, and I primarily only smoked at work, to get out of my office cage, but I decided since I never really "want one" why smoke any at all? So I dropped those completely...haven 't had one since last year....in another month or so, I can consider that I did quit!)...

well, back to the one soda a day. This definately helped. I now wake up in the morning and actually get out of bed....LOL....

Since I decided to allow small amounts of caffeine into the diet (still, no Red Bull yet this year) I have exercised almost everyday, and I keep increasing the time I exercise...hopefully I'll see results soon. Also, now that I am awake, and among the living again, I will try to get on track with the one blog post a week resolution!

I made some mitts for Pamela this week, to go with her hat...

I also made a hat for Christopher, to go with his beer shooting mitts....these have really gotten a work out!!

I joined a Kauni KAL, but haven't managed to participate. My new schedule of helping my daughter with William while he is at school is pretty intense. I've only gotten as far as winding the first skein of Kauni...

Watching William has been fun. The biggest hurdle I have, is keeping him from biting the dogs nails (I've heard of biting your own, but the DOGS??) LOL

Some Smiles and Lots of Rippin!

I didn't work on many of my existing projects this week. Primarily, I focused on a hoodie for Willilam. It was a first for both of us. His first hoodie, and my first hoodie to make! I started it on Monday and it was done this afternoon. It was cold enough for him to wear tonight. Another nice suprise was that Christopher kept going on about how cute it was, in fact, he asked if it would scale up to his size. He doesn't want the camoflauge though. He actually spent time looking for colors he liked. He sent me three choices. Wow!!! Something I can make for him and he will wear it! Woooo Hooooo! Maybe I should make a matching one for the baby so they can abe twins?

I (almost) finished Pamela's off the shoulder cowl neck. It's designed to be a shorter type sweater, and that's what it is. Unfortunately, Pamela wants it to be longer. Arrrgggghhhhh! I'm posting it as finished for now. I haven't weaved the ends in yet, but until I rip it, it's kinda-sorta-almost done. LOL. That's going to be sooooo much ripping! Ribbit Ribbit!

Does anyone know a better way? I toyed with the idea of casting on more ribbing, but figured it would look pretty bad, and this is some very soft and luxurious yarn -- lama and silk Adaigo

So, I suppose, I do have a bit of a devious streak. To make myself feel better about having to rip back so much of this sweater, I thought I'd share a few pictures of Pamela from the past week.

My darling, graceful, elegant daughter, has trouble walking sometimes. Something about her feet must confuse her. Well, quite a commotion last week in the living room...John came running in my room, desperate to get ahold of my camera. I gave it to him, mildly curious as to what all the excitement was. I've posted the pics below...It seems my daughter tripped and landed in the laundry basket. Yes, she made a full basket. Then to add insult to injury, she couldn't get out...I'm not sure why, but no one was in a hurry to help her. Go figure....
And, guaranteed to make you smile...I want this to be my new ringtone!

Adorable, eh?