Saturday, January 1, 2011

greetings from michigan

Where I am without my usual photographer for a few days, so in order to document the Christmas gifts I made this year and gave to Michigander recipients, I was forced to use my little point-and-shoot. So please excuse this momentary lapse in artistic quality, but the blogging gods demand sacrifice. The knitting must be recorded!

molly's gloves

Hey I made gloves! I made gloves in a week! And they were very nearly finished on Christmas morning...but not quite. I made these for my sister out of the leftover Cascade 220 from my Central Park Hoodie, and some Dale of Norway something-or-other for the trim. I used the Garter-Cuff Gloves pattern in Weekend Knitting, a book I've gotten a lot of nice gift patterns out of. These were my first-ever knitted gloves and I had fun making the fingers and trying on the gloves as I went (and throwing up the horns 'cause the pattern has you knit the pinky and index fingers first). They don't gap at all between the fingers (as far as I know...Molly will have to let me know how they stand up to wear) but the fingertips are a little pointy - perhaps a different bind-off would fix it.

My only other yarn-type gift this year was a set of ornaments for my mom:
ornament

That's a lousy picture, but you get the idea - I used scraps from some past projects to make tiny knitting ornaments, using this tutorial. I used mod podge to tack the yarn to the "needles" in an effort to prevent them from falling apart in the future, but I don't think that's actually much of a risk as the balls are wound tightly.

And what is Christmas without a little stash enhancement?
oregon yarn

Oregon yarn, from Jim's brother (thanks Jon!)

michigan yarn

Michigan yarn, courtesy of my grandma


And super soft Debbie Bliss yarn, from my dad with the condition that I make something for Molly, as this is her color - I'm thinking some kind of shawl as she's constantly cold and draped in blankets.

And if you'd like to enhance your stash as well, Kate is having a giveaway on her blog where you can win one of three lovely-looking skeins of yarn. So go comment!

I'm working on a list of all of my UFOs, but it's going to have to wait till I'm back in Ithaca and can look through everything - so far just based on the blog I've listed about 9 projects...eek! Maybe I can make the start of 2011 good and productive on the knitting front.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice gloves and such a cute ornament! Looks like you got plenty of nice skeins for Christmas too. All around a pretty great Christmas it seems like. :)

Good luck on finishing up those UFOs for next year! I know I have quite a few of those lying around.

Anonymous said...

those instructions to knit the thumb and pinky first - was it as dumb as it sounded? could you have done it differently? i've never made gloves and would just follow the pattern blindly the first time, but that sounds so bizarre! they turned out beautifully, though. happy new year!

Kitty said...

Gloves? You're brave! They really look amazing!

Kate said...

@Lori, yeah...it's a bit silly. They tell you to finish up to the fingers, then cut the yarn (when you end by the index finger), do the thumb then pinky then index finger. Why...? On the first glove I obeyed just to see what would happen, on the second glove I just went ahead and knit the index finger first without cutting the yarn. Nothing bad happened :)

Linda said...

Lovely gloves, that is something I have never tried ... the fingers ... it looks hard!

Kitty said...

Hi there!

You've won a skein of yarn! Send me an email with your address and I'll get it right out to you!

Congratulations-
Kate

Lindsey said...

that's some beautiful stash.