check this out!

Get ready, friends, for I have several non-stripey things to show you this week! (Don't worry, I'll probably have to have a Stripe Day soon, because I've got plenty, but first, some other stuff.)

Remember that grey laceweight yarn I did my Vernal Equinox Shawl out of? It used to be a Gap turtleneck? I had a goodly amount left, even after the shawl, and let's face it, I love grey knitwear, but grey is not my best color. I really don't need two grey shawls, you know? So I dyed it green!



This was my first foray into the world of dying. I used good ol' Paas, because there was some in the cupboard left over from last Easter. It turned out a nice uneven mossy green, which was kind of hard to photograph, but you get the general idea from these pictures. I think next time I will remember to stir the yarn a bit when it's in the pot, but I think the erratic dye job will actually look really nice when it's knit up.



And yeah, that's right, I said 'next time.' I've done my best not to get started with any dying or spinning or any of that, because the last thing I need is another hobby or something else to spend money on, but it's kind of fun to make yarn be the color you want it to be. I've got some white yarn left over from my mom's Christmas sweater, and I might have to turn it some kind of orange. Just because you can never have too much orange yarn.

Next up (oooh, a teaser!) we will have a big red hat made out of ribbon yarn. I kind of love it.

cables!

I've been working on my cabled vest sort of sporadically. Sort of an every-other-day thing. I should really just print out the damn chart so I can work on it while I watch playoff hockey, but so far I have been too lazy. Anyway, here's where we stand:



And a dramatic closer shot! It's almost impossible to capture the actual color of this yarn. It's a dark teal with purple flecks.



And the start of a pair of red-and-blue stripey mitts, because you know I can't help myself.

more baby hats!

So this year my knitting creed seems to be "roll with the obsession, kid." First we had the stripes, and now we have the Baby Hat:



They're so darn cute! And they knit up in, like, four seconds! And you can put dangling leaves on them. Believe me, I did not make just one of the leafy yellow ones. OMG. Luckily these baby hats will be able to do some good: they're all (or most, I'm sure someone I know will have a baby eventually) headed off to the NICU to make worried parents smile a little.



But don't think I've forgotten the stripes. :)



Last year my mom mentioned that red-white-and-blue potholders would be nice for the patriotic chunk of the summer, so that's what she's getting for Mothers' Day. I just wish I wasn't so terrible at embroidering stars. I can do freestyle cute flowers no problem, but my stars always look like they've been melted or squashed. Or both. Sigh.

some stripes, some not . . .

This will be a bit of a scrambly sort of post, but hey, I'm not one of those marvelous sorts of bloggers whose posts are nearly works of art, so I suppose we're used to it. :)

Behold some things I've been making!

A small green hat. I am smote with the cute of this hat. I want to make more cute green hats with flowers on them, but I don't know any babies small enough to give this one to, so I'm trying very hard not to make more. Sometimes you've just got to knock out a cute hat, though, you know?



This will (hopefully) be a cabled vest with (hopefully) a hood. I am hoping I have enough yarn for the hood. I'm very much enjoying knitting this. I feel like I haven't done real cables in ages! Oh, right, the pattern is this Lion Brand Cabled Vest Thingie. (Not the official pattern title.) I'm doing the small size for the back, and will probably do the fronts as a medium and fudge the decreases so the shoulders are the same sizes.



And then we have the stripes. Yeah. I think the obsession may be fading a bit, but here's the current stack:



I did a whole bunch of singles for a while, and now I have a rule that I can't start a new one until I've made one of the singles a mate. I finished a mate yesterday, sooo . . . I do have to have a Thumb Day sometime soon, though. Three or so of them need thumbs.

You will notice the red and rainbow gloves are no longer in the stack. I gave them to a friend--I made them for her, after all!--and she was pretty stoked. Yay stripey mitts!

Here's one of my current singles: a laceweight stripey elbow glove. I wish it were pink and orange, but I didn't have any pink or orange wool sweaters in the 90's, and so I can't unravel them now.



I kind of adore this glove, but I might not be cool enough to wear it. I might have to find someone more goth and make their day.

omg--it's not stripey!

I've had this skein of Malabrigo Sock for at least two years now, and I've tried to knit it up into various things, but I haven't liked any of them. Finally, in complete despair, I knit it into a fairly plain shawl-thing: The Age of Brass and Steam Kerchief.



I modified the pattern for fingering weight--basically I did 30 rows in each stockinette section--and it turned out a decent size.

I still don't like it much. I tried it on, you know, with the point in front all stylish and whatnot, and I look like such a poser.



I did have some fun with the macro feature on my camera, though! And here's how much yarn I had left:



I think this may end up in the handmade grab bag this Christmas, unless I figure out someone who really needs it as a gift before that. I do have one friend and one cousin who really really like purple . . .

a fit of the stripeys.

You guys. I can't stop. I might need an intervention.



I have several color combinations I still want to try.



And I'm making a purple thing out of this damn Malabrigo Sock that just won't look nice no matter what I do with it. Let this be a lesson to me: Don't Buy Variegated Yarn.

Stripey Mitt Recipe

Because what the heck, right?



Anyway, if you want to make your own Stripey Mitts, here's the general scoop. And by the 'general scoop' I mean this is How I Made Mine. Your hand size and gauge may vary.

Fingering Weight Stripey Mitts

I used:

Patons Kroy FX in Clover Colors
Patons Kroy in Black
Knit Picks Palette in Garnet Heather (the Palette is noticeably thinner than the Kroy, but it works out ok)

US 1 (2.25mm) dpns

My gauge appears to be 8 1/2 stitches per inch. I would say these mitts would fit a ladies small or medium hand. My palms are about 7.25 inches around.

Here's what you do:

Cast on 57 stitches, join to knit in the round. Don't twist them!

Knit 5 rows seed stitch.



Start striping! I did five-row stripes, and you'll probably want to do jogless joins, where you knit one round of the new color, and then on the first stitch of the second round of the new color you pick up the stitch below it (in the old color) and you knit those together.

Knit stripes for as long as you'd like your cuff to be. My red-and-rainbow mitts have seven stripes before the thumb gusset.

Now decide where you want your seam to fall. If you're jogless joining, it won't be much of a seam, but I like to put them on the palm of the hand anyway. So for one hand you'll want to start your gusset about sixteen stitches after the start of the round, and on the other hand you'll want to start sixteen stitches before the start of the round.



For the gusset, knit to the desired spot, place a marker if you want, and then M1, K1, M1. Knit two rounds. Repeat these three rounds--still striping!--until your gusset is the size you want. I increased to 19 stitches, at which point I was about halfway through the red stripe. I finished the red stripe, not increasing any more, knit one round in the rainbow stuff, and then on the next round put the 19 gusset stitches on waste yarn, cast on one to cover the gap, and striped to the end of the mitt.



For the final stripe, knit one round plain, five rounds of seed stitch, and bind off.

Now go back to the thumb and put those stitches on your dpns. Pick up two stitches to fill in the gap, and knit the four rows of rainbow stripe, decreasing a few stitches if you need to to make it fit. Re-attach the red, knit one round plain, and then three or so rows of seed stitch. Bind off, sew in all the ends, and there you have it!



Clear as mud, right?

The worsted gloves are pretty much the same, only I cast on 36 and did stripes of four, with two or three rows of garter stitch as the 'cuffs.' ETA: Oh, and unless you have ginormous thumbs, you'll probably want to keep the gusset around 13 stitches. :)