Swatchless

This past week has been a whirlwind.  I got a chance to knit on Thursday while in the car for an extended period of time.  This is the result!

Today the glow in the dark wired icord and pompom were added to finish off this hat.  It’s a fun one since the pompom bounces from side to side when the owner bounces…and believe me, he’s a live wire!

We’re spending the weekend at robotics, in a warehouse.  It’s cold in there, so hats are a great addition!

Here’s another hat…I didn’t knit this one, but I did add the ears!  The ears are wired icord so they can be horns, or ears, or heart shapes, or anything else!

A great excuse to get back to knitting!  A long time friend of mine is having a baby pretty soon, and I was thrilled to get an invitation to her baby shower.  Since nobody knows if the little one will be a boy or a girl, neutral coloured clothing was requested.

I’m not really sure if rainbow and blue count as neutral, but I sure think it is cute!

The blue acrylic is left over from the secret santa mittens I knit, and the rainbow superwash wool is from my excellent score at value village.

The hat is my favourite baby bonnet pattern (Top Down Bonnet with Anime Character), and the wee baby booties are a version of Saartje’s booties written for seamless construction and published on Fleegle’s Blog.

I look forward to seeing pictures of the new little baby wearing these bright happy colours!  Best wishes to the mom-to-be.

Finished this weekend:  HAT 40

Hat 41 has been started, but progress is slow since most of my time outside of working hours is spent helping with the robotics team.

30 minutes to design and build a ball winder from scratch….possible?  NO!  well…not yet at least.

A friend at robotics decided to get a group of students to work really fast and gave them this challenge to solve.  After brainstorming a bit they decided that a ball winder could be made in 30 minutes.

Step 1: draw lots of ideas on a chalkboard.

Step 2: commandeer a cutting tool and make circles.

Step 3: mount the circles on an axle.

Step 4: Attach a slanted piece and give it a try!

Verdict:  a very good attempt for a 30 minute design process.

But it doesn’t wind a center pull ball.

Prototype #2 will be worked on at a later date I’m sure.  I have some very creative and persistent engineering friends, and they have lots of eager helpers.

So….this past weekend was the kick off for robotics build season.  It turns out that I’m putting in over 40 hours this week in robotics mentoring, so the knitting time is seriously limited.  I did start hat 40 one evening while at a mentor meeting, discussing robot designs and competition rules.

I did a little bit more over dinner (yes…with another robotics mentor)

To see robotics progress check here.

This is something that I’ve wanted to try for a while–thanks Santa for getting me Flying Saucer Sock Yarn from Schoppel Wolle and making it possible!

The spool of wool is wound with two strands, then injection dyed in a very small skein, so that when unravelled, each strand will form one ball, and if knit with the same needles and same tension, and from the same end of the sock, it will produce identical yet really crazy socks.  I’m keen on trying it out!

On Boxing Day my aunt and I set about winding the two balls from the one skein.  This is NOT AS EASY AS IT SOUNDS.  I don’t know how well it would have gone as a solo project–I was glad of the extra set of hands helping me out.

I didn’t see this video until later, but this shows how to do the unwinding.

The instructions state to pierce the center of the spool with a knitting needle/pencil, and suspend it with a string tied to both ends, looped from a handle or door knob.  That was easy enough to figure out.  The hard part came in the unrolling–maybe duelling ball winders would have been a good idea, but maintaining identical pacing of unwinding was the tricky part.  Just don’t be in a hurry when you are doing the unwinding.

I now have two balls of sock yarn ready to go!  I think toe up plain socks will show off the craziness the best, and allow for me to use all the yarn.

This year I went home for the holidays.  Every year since I moved out I have returned home for the holidays–at most I am a 12 minute walk from home on most days, but for the holidays I pack my stuff and sleep over–this year we were all there, both brothers, my parents and me.  We take comfort in many holiday traditions, some of which have just sort of evolved over the years.  Take our Christmas Eve dinner–It has been lasagna ever since an unfortunate self-timing-oven-broiling-incident about 20 years ago; Mom had the timer set so the lasagna would be done after the 5pm church service.  Ever since I can remember we’ve all go to the midnight service where I now sing in the choir, and my brothers–both grown men–sing descants from the congregation.  From where I sit, I can usually see the giggles from my family, and others around them.  It is tradition to see choir friends returning from university, or from jobs far from here–some come with spouses and kids now!  After late church, giddy as anything, we head home to eat a Yule Log that my mom makes, and listen to a compilation of interesting Christmas music that my brothers put together before we hang up our stockings.

Christmas morning we open gifts slowly-a tradition that we didn’t really like when we were little, but we appreciate now that we are older.  I’m not sure how it is in most families, but I get the traditional gifts of shampoo, pantyhose, life savers, and gingerbeer every year!  A new tradition, that I’m not sure will stand the test of time, is that my brothers and dad grow Christmas mustaches–I bet that they will be gone by New Year!

grandmother's tree

We gathered for dinner at my grandmother’s house.  This is her 96th Christmas, and she had a great time.  Many days are spent in preparation for this feast.  My aunts and my mom and my grandmother all do lots of cooking and organizing.  We gathered on the 23rd for the annual smoothing of the table cloth and setting of the table.

We had a lovely turkey (note the mustache).  My mom and dad have been the turkey preparation team for the past few years.  It was delicious!

My grandmother made the pudding again this year.  Every year there is a concern about how the pudding will turn out.  It was delicious as always…

..and it flamed really well too!

The tradition of doing it all again on boxing day is something else I love.  We are dressed more casually, and can bring a gift to show and tell.  We used to play never ending games of checkers with all of the cousins, but this year everyone was watching football because their proline tickets were still good by 6pm.  It was an exciting time for them.

I knit more of my pathetically late secret santa mitten.  At least I’m knitting the thumb now–Deadline #2 is Jan. 3rd.  Fingers crossed it will be finished by then.What are your Christmas traditions?

For the last few days I’ve been having a rather challenging time explaining how to make a mitten thumb via email.  Here’s some pictures to go along with my words.  Hopefully they will help my friend Shawna, and others working on the same issue.

To make a mitten fit your hand, you need to make it larger on the thumb side.  The regular increases create what is called a thumb gusset.

image source http://www.jessica-tromp.nl

Here’s an interesting photo tutorial: I’ve got a hard time photographing my thumb gussets since I knit in the round, on DPNs.  I don’t know that I’d ever knit a mitten on two needles, but it’s neat to know that it can be done.

Once the gusset is long enough and wide enough, I always get someone to try on the mittens to check, I put the gusset stitches on a scrap of yarn and leave them until the hand of the mitten is done–I finish by knitting the thumb.

So, the gusset stitches are on a scrap of yarn, and you are ready to knit the hand.  My general pattern is to cast on several (note: this will change depending on gauge) stitches to finish off the thumb hole on the upper side.  To cast on these stitches, it’s probably easiest to turn the mitten over (so the wrong side is facing) and cast on, then turn back again.

When it finally is time to knit the thumb, you will use the stitches from the scrap of yarn, the stitches that you just cast on (pick them up).  This would make a nice mitten, but over the years that I’ve been knitting mittens I’ve had a pet peeve about holes appearing where the thumb meets the hand.  To avoid this issue, I pick up an extra stitch from a row back between the gusset stitches and the cast on stitches on either side of the thumb.

Here’s a view of me trying it on for size.  Click to make bigger.

thumb stitch count = gusset stitches + cast on stitches

or

thumb stitch count = gusset stitches + cast on stitches + 2

There are, of course, many ways to knit a thumb.  I’m eager to learn more.  What’s your favourite method?

P.S. Yes, this is mitten number 2 for my secret santa.  It’s been slow going.  Things like sleeping, cleaning, singing and holiday preparations have gotten in my way a bit.  I am here still, enjoying my holidays.  Thanks so much for the comments of concern!

Between baking and icing batches of cookies, and while watching a few mindless hours of television this weekend I’ve made good progress on my goal.

Today, while my family decorated the tree, I completed the first mitten.  It was lovely to sit and watch as all of our quirky ornaments were carefully unwrapped and discussed while they were put on the tree.  It seems that almost every ornament has a story, and means something to at least one of us.

Some ornaments are less permanent, but much more delicious!  The recipe is a traditional one passed down from my great-aunt.

Some of you may be wondering what’s going on….I’ve been showing lots of pictures of robot hats, and that’s about it.  There are some other top secret knitting projects going on, but most are for Christmas gifts, so they will be revealed later on. 

Something that I can show now is the new pair of mittens that I’m making.  We’ve got a Secret Santa going on at work, and this year (unlike last year) I got my act together and signed up in time!  I’m having fun thinking of small gifts to deliver each day, and at the end of the week have a pair of mittens waiting in their mailbox.

The problem is that the self imposed deadline is in a week…and I currently have only an inch completed.  I guess this means that these will be a traveling project….a spend-every-free-waking-moment-knitting kind of project…the kind of project that seems to pop up every year in December.

What’s on your December needles?