Orange flower washcloth

Flower Cloth
Originally uploaded by sukogirl

I decided to knit a lot of my x-mas presents this year. Here is a flower washcloth from Weekend Knitting. I think it would be neat to learn how to make soap. Has anyone done this before?

knitting backlog

I worked on several knitting projects this summer/fall that I finally photographed. zigzag & linked rib were some good stash-busting projects from the book "knitting new scarves" that I got for my birthday. brioche cable was just because I wanted a blue scarf :). And lastly, a co-worker of mine had a baby so I had to make a hat. They subsequently took photos of him posed next to a bunch of real pumpkins :).

scarves

I've been on a scarf kick lately. It started with these two birthday scarves, one for my neighbor and one for Greg's grandfather. The cool thing about the second photo is the spinning wheel in the background. That belonged Greg's aunt's great-grandmother, who brought it over from Norway.

Needle holder

Needle holder
Originally uploaded by sukogirl

With a little hand holding, I finally managed to get my sewing machine up and running. It wasn't as difficult and intimidating as it looked. After practicing on some dish rags, I decided that my first project would be to make a hanging needle holder to organize my knitting and crochet needles. I didn't follow any particular pattern, just winged it. I backed the top fabric with canvas to give it a little support. I even played around with some of the "fancy" stitches.

mountain peaks shawl

FINALLY. I've been working on this shawl a long time - the mountain peaks shawl from mimknits.com. It's a belated gift for mother's day. The first chart took forever... there was lace patterning on both right and wrong side. I'm pretty happy with everything except the border... it was attached perpendicularly to the edge and at that point there were HUNDREDS of stitches, no stitch markers, and I was in such a hurry that I didn't notice that i had done the 90-degree turn (at the very bottom tip) incorrectly so the lines don't meet symmetrically at the point. Notice how it's conveniently obscured in this photo... I also tried to hide the mistake with forceful blocking. There's so much going on that hopefully no one will notice, but I will admit, somewhat shamefully, that I was completely, inconsolably hysterical when I first saw it after almost 2 straight days of knitting. Fortunately for my sanity, I simply did not have time to frog and redo, so it's done, shipped, and I never have to knit that border repeat again.

icky catnip bun

A couple of weeks ago I knitted the catnip steamed bun from this pattern. My yarn was thicker so it came out rather big. Jake instantly went bonkers and became very possessive of it and started to destroy it so these are the only decent photos I got. The loose stitch in the third photo... well, that's Jake's fault.

Go try this now - Middle East Cast-On!

I have gone crazy with the knitting this past week. Maybe it has something to do with a local yarn store going out of business which led to my sudden ownership of beautiful yarns and knitting books with wonderful projects. My husband had to finally put his foot down b/c I would wake up and immediately start knitting and would knit until bedtime. Sigh .... Anyway, one of the projects I have been working on is a pair of socks for my grandmother. My recent yarn discovery has been the Koigu sock yarn. I love the colors and texture. Though I'm usually not a fan of entrelac, I was very intrigued by this pattern by Eunny Jang published in the Spring 2007 issue of Interweave Knits that I found while browsing through Ravelry. I thought it was well designed. A knitting friend of mine actually owned this issue and so luckily got a hold of the pattern sooner than later. I have gotten this far on the project. I'm not going to make the socks as long since they are for my grandmother. The socks are knit starting at the toe. My favorite thing about this pattern is that I learned the Middle East Cast-On which results in a seamless toe. It's very cool! On the other hand, I probably won't do another entrelac project.

I also just finished this headband for a friend of mine (also found on Ravelry). Here is the pattern. I used a skein of Noro Kureyon. I casted on only 100 sts. and used #7 needles. It's a little small, but I think it will still fit.