I used Cascade 220 left over from the Cobblestone (see a Jared Flood trend here?) I made for Ira, and some handspun thick and thin with oranges, blues and browns that I bought in Alaska quite a few years ago. 

I sometimes worry about giving handknit wool gifts to people who might love them but not wear them due to the itch factor.  So I decided to line the hat, making  it more comfortable and adding a bonus layer of insulation.  I started with an old cotton and spandex shirt  – very soft – just didn’t fit me well.  I found a great tutorial for lining knitted hats,  pinned the hat to the shirt, cutting around it through two layers with about an inch extra all around.  Then I sewed the two pieces together on the sewing machine and tested the fit in the hat.  It was perfect other than the bottom hanging out a little too far, so I trimmed the edges off.  I pinned the lining and the hat together while it was on my head since my head was the only one around - with no major accidents.

Then I hand stitched only around the rim using blindstitch and it turned out wonderfully!  I’m going to do this for the next hat I make myself.

On another note, I’ve noticed that if I leave my knitting on the bed after taking pictures, it always has company when I come back

Roni loves to cuddle with all my shoes, any purse and of course, wool.

The second looks like a barely spun bulky single with black and bright jewel tones

I’ll unravel these and do a swatch to test for felting. 

What else have I been up to?  I finished the Let’s Go Met’s Scarf for my MIL – I’ll post a pic on my Ravelry page.   I also made a headband that uses the All Fool’s Welt or Wager Welt stitch from Barbara Walker’s A Treasury of Knitting Patterns.  It has a funny story that there was a ‘wager’ concerning how many rows out of eight are purled, as it’s hard to tell from its appearance (the answer is one).  The yarn is Berroco Denim Silk a rayon, silk blend, and the color is a light icy blue.  I need to find a button for it and then I just hope it holds its shape.  I knitted it using short rows – very similar to Calorimetry.

I’m trying to grow out my hair and this should come in handy on bad hair days, with warm ears as a bonus.

I’d better get working on my sock pattern.  I’m almost finished – if I could stop casting on new projects!  Focus, focus focus.

The yarn is Brown Sheep Lamb’s Pride Worsted yarn for the wonderful color choices they have and matched them to a Met’s hat.  I was winging a pattern trying out argyle, forgetting that the back of argyle isn’t too attractive.  Frogged.  Then I found a reversible diamond textured stitch pattern and decided to knit it up in blue, thinking I would add some orange stitches in small patches after it was finished.  Frogged again. Then I wasn’t sure how wide a normal scarf should be so I checked some patterns on Ravelry and it was fate that I stumbled onto Danica, an entrelac scarf using 2, 3 or more colors. 

I’ve never done entrelac before and love trying new techniques.  This is simple as you’re only working ten stitches at a time, but each block of color is worked separately, meaning you turn the work a lot.  I had tried purling backwards many years ago and decided to try again.  I’m not sure if I’m saving time as it’s somewhat slow going, but I’m getting faster and I love not having to turn everything around.  Here’s a great link on Knitty about it.  This pattern also requires picking up around ten stitches for most of the color blocks – not something I love to do but I’m getting quite good at it.  Weaving in all these ends will be fun too.

I’m about halfway done and when it’s finished I’m going to block it and see how the back-side looks.  I’m thinking about felting it just a tad to blend the colors a little.  The pattern calls for a main color, cc1 and cc2, so because I wanted the scarf to be mainly blue, I chose that as the main color.  It turns out the main color is the color of the two rows of whole diamonds, which to me looks like blue diamonds on an orange background – not what I wanted.  By the time I realized this, I was too lazy to frog it and change it around, especially because I know the recipient of the scarf will love it either way.

Now I need to knit a scarf for myself!  It’s getting cold around here.

With all the great knitting blogs I read, I was feeling a little left out and decided it’s time to jump in.

My name is Elise and I live in New Jersey with a husband and a cat named Roni.  I’ve knitted on and off for over ten years and started designing my own patterns in the last two years.  I’ve tried a lot of new techniques in the past few years, like lace and fair aisle, and I want to learn everything I can about knitting.

I learned to knit in my twenties from a friend of my sister.  Her family raised sheep for wool and she was looking for a willing victim to teach.  Of course I was like a kid in a candy shop, immediately tracking down the LYS and buying enough wool for a button-down cardigan, a hat and a scarf, along with numerous bamboo needles and accessories.  

My first project – the scarf – ended up being knit with each stitch twisted.  But it looked great and I must have given it to someone as I have no idea where it is now.  The second project was a Garter Stitch hat that was beautiful.  The pattern came from the LYS and I’ve searched to find it with no luck (although now I think I could improvise a pattern that simple).  It was a gift to my sister, who is now living in Alaska, and her 8 year old daughter wears it often.  The sweater, thank goodness, was never made.  Looking at the pattern now, it wasn’t something that I would have worn for long – changing styles I guess.  I still have the yarn, a charcoal grey alpaca in a sport weight.

So I didn’t do much knitting after this – a little here and there – until friends started having babies.  I was knitting simple garter stitch baby blankets, and then moved on to a more complicated pattern.  At the time I was watching Vickie Howell on Knitty Gritty and the bug had bitten again.

It wasn’t until I found a knitting group close to me that I finally had knitter friends!  They are the Northwest NJ Knitters, where I’ve met so many wonderful people.  I was inspired by Barbara Walker and Elizabeth Zimmerman to design a few of my own patterns because it never seemed the sweaters I knit fit me perfectly.  I love knitting in the round and avoid joining seams whenever possible.  Knitting sweaters from the top down allows me to try on and adjust fit as I go and I can make the sweater as long as I want.

This is my most recent design, Not So Vanilla Socks

Not So Vanilla Socks

They are toe up, lacey socks with tiny cables on the sides.  The yarn is Tofutsies which is soft and wonderful. 

Because I didn’t write down the pattern as I made them, I’m knitting these again to make sure the pattern is written correctly.  As soon as I’m done with that I’ll publish it for anyone who’s interested.

I’m so happy to join the blogging community and hope to be meeting many wonderful people along the way! 

Elise