leap day cast on crazies

Today is Leap Day, and in celebration I'm going a little crazy casting on! I know most of these will have to be set aside, but it's fun to go a little mad every once in awhile!

Campside cardigan, but with top-down set-in sleeves thanks to Ann Budd. Using Miss Babs!

 Test knitting the Feyre shawl for Brandy using Miss Babs and Madtosh.

My second pair of kids' tube socks!

A lowbrow hat in appropriate Bulldawg colors.

A second sweater, this one is Pasture using Colinette Jitterbug and Blue Moon Fiber Arts.

60 days strong

Wahoo! Still going strong! My strict yarn diet continues.

funky finishes

It's not all that often that you see my duds on this blog. That's for several reasons. Either I rip them out and destroy the evidence, or I abandon them to solitary confinement in a closet until I later rip them apart. So for something different, here's a couple of projects that I feel kind of "meh" about.

Project number one: a dog bowl placemat for my sister. This is the pin that I saw on Pinterest that inspired me to make this project. My version is pretty laughable looking at the pin now! Turns out that the original crafter of this project is from Europe. So I used Google translator to get the free pattern, which mostly worked ... or maybe not!

Problem number one: obviously doesn't lay flat. Problem number two: does this really resemble a dog bone? As much as I am tempted to send this to my sister, I'm probably going to rip this bad boy apart!

Funky project number two: the Molly hat. This is a fantastic free pattern that's been very popular on Ravelry, but somehow my version just didn't turn out so fantastic. I followed the pattern exactly, but my version is just simply too short. Look how short it looks on my hand! It barely reaches the top of my ears. Luckily the recipient likes her hats this way, but in my book any hat that doesn't cover your ears is a dud. Which was disappointing since I love the look of this pattern and the ever shrinking cables are fun and cute! I will make this one again, but I obviously have row gauge issues compared to the designer's gauge and need to repeat an extra cable or two to achieve the correct hat length.

Pattern: Molly (link to my Ravelry project page)
Yarn: Malabrigo worsted (colorway: vermillion)

knit your library, vol. 5

Are you tired of crocheted blanket edgings yet? Too bad, because I'm not! Hehehe. I just finished another one, making it my fifth blanket I've finished in 2016 and a whopping 7.5 yards of fleece out of my stash. I'm planning on working my way through my entire fleece stash this year, selling blankets at my knitting guild's booth at a local craft fair in April and gifting the rest. This one though, with the extra complicated edging and yarn named snapdragon (appropriate right?) is for me, oh me!

Pattern: double-scallop edging, from p. 148 of The Needlecraft Book (link to Rav project page)
Yarn: Knit Picks Stroll Brights in the snapdragon colorway, used 2.28 skeins held double
Hook: size H 5.00 mm
 

And since I've felt a craving for simple sock knitting lately, I've cast on for the child's tube sock recipe. This is a free pattern I've had in my library for awhile now, since I was intrigued by the idea of socks that would last longer since there was no defined heel. (they'd get shorter and shorter and become anklets, right?) We'll see how the kiddos like the fit and feel with the first pair before I go crazy making tons of these!

catch up!

It's always around this time in the semester that I catch something. And you can tell because I disappear from this space! I'm on the mend from whatever cold-head-sinus thing I had this time, so here's a little of what had been finished since my last post in January!

First up, a bit of stashbustin' and charity crafting--I just finished 10 crocheted beanie hats for newborns that my local knitting guild will be donating to our local hospital this year. This was super satisfying on several fronts--it's one of those patterns that is super fast and I used up two skeins of Hobby Lobby Baby Bee yarn that had been sitting in my stash forever with no end in sight. That's 754 yards out of my stash! Yippee! I held yarn double since the pattern (basic beanie, a freebie!) calls for worsted weight. Baby Bee seriously felt like fingering weight yarn to me (maybe sport weight at best!). I was shocked to see that it is listed in Ravelry as a DK weight yarn. More details on my Ravelry project page.

And my other big finish was the cowl pattern I was test knitting for Jennifer Weissman, the betangled cowl. Oh, how I LOVE this one. It used 1.5 skeins of Malabrigo worsted to make the small size. It's the perfect close-to-your-neck snuggly cowl size, but yet not too tight or constricting on your neck. I put green buttons on it since I love a pink-lime green combo and envisioned wearing it with this coat, but now I'm second guessing this look! Ha!

Pattern: Betangled cowl by Jennifer Weissman (link to my Rav project page)
Needles: size 8 Knit Picks Harmony
Yarn: Malabrigo worsted (colorway: fuscia), used 1.51 skeins
Mods: none!

That's a grand total of 1,071 yards out and the month is just barely started!