Sunday, December 12, 2010

Knee deep in holiday knitting

But first, a digression in craptastic costume sewing.  Monkey1 & her class did an "in-house field trip" called A Walk Through the American Revolution, so she asked me to make her a costume.  Unfortunately, when we were Thanksgiving vacation in the Sierras, we kept having power outages.  I had to rush towards the end and there are a lot of crooked stitches in there.


We also had a little debate on what color fabric her mobcap & shawlette were supposed to be, so I did two.  The dusty pink she eventually chose to wear during the "play," and the muslin set that I felt was a little more authentic.


At least my sister's layette set is done.  The Austermann Mosaico blanket swatch actually survived the washer & dryer fine, so she'll probably get the blanket too.


Yarn: Lion Brand Cotton Ease (the baby is a tropical one)
patterns: Baby Yoda Sweater, Kiddie Cadet & Waves of Babies Booties
needle size: mostly 8's
Sweater mods: body in the round 'til armholes.  Sleeves picked up & knit from the armhole.  Applied i-cord edging to the vertical edges.


I'm done w/the teacher gifts, but I'm waiting for the fog to burn off before I can take a pic of Monkey1's teachers black mitts. But first up, Monkey2's teacher's hat in Cal Bears colors.  Hard not to like a teacher from my alma mater, the University of California, Berkeley.

pattern: Cascade's Pittsburgh Steelers hat
yarn: Knit Picks Swish worsted in Dusk & Semolina
needle sizes: 9 & 10 KP circs
no mods


By the time I got to the Cal hat, I started to improve on my colorwork.  The first one I did, the Norwegian Star Hat, unfortunately came out too small for the adult recipient.  (No gauge stated in the pattern & I guessed wrong on the needle size I needed to get the gauge I think I needed.)  It barely fit Monkey2 unblocked.  While it loosened up a little after a wash & block, I still did another one.


This one was much better once I went up on needle sizes, but I also had to switch stash yarns since I was too anxious to wait for another Knit Picks order in the mail.


This took me forever, but my second-to-last pair of holiday socks (yup, I've got one more!) are done for a college friend of mine.  Though technically it's not a gift since he's going to trade me one of his art pieces for it as part of our negotiated agreement.  He actually wanted a sweater & my other college buddies who knit & I are still saying no.  LOL!

Pattern: Nemesis
pattern size: Large
yarn: Zitron Trekking Pro Natura 
needles: size 2.50 mm


And for a little holiday fun while we sat around during the power outage during the day. (No knitting in the pitch dark at night of course.):

yarns: bits of Knit Picks Palette doubled
needle size:  KP 5 circs

Hope everyone has a nice holiday season!  And see you on the post-holiday knitting recovery side.

4 comments:

dianne said...

Great gifts! Your colorwork looks wonderful with nice even tension! I think it's a tough skill to master.

You did a nice job on Monkey 1's costume too.

Discoknits said...

You MADE that costume?! Wow, awesome job. And great knits too :0)

Batty said...

Great knits. And I'm crazy impressed by the costume. That's the kind of work you do when you're in a hurry? Your sure have some amazing sewing skills.

Flow Blue Bud's Blogspot said...

Yo,ho,ho, awesome costume. Where's that mini sweater, heh-heh? Nice color on that Cal cap, too; for some reason, it's reminding me of a sound wall that Mike may have worked on once, long ago (kind of my fave sound wall, so this is a nerd compliment). So glad to have been able to catch up with you and your monkeys this trip. Thanks for making the trip out to visit the sickly (although I'll note that I remained healthy as a horse, knock on wood).