#70: Knit something useful
My most recent hobby fad has been knitting, and in the past few months, I’ve knit up a few things - some are more useful than others. This all started when I was part of a project with Utata, a group I found on Flickr. This project was to have a little stuffed animal travel from one person to the other, and go on grand adventures. Each person would get to host the traveler for a little while, take pictures of him in your area, and then send him on. Kind of like the traveling gnome. Anyway, the person who was supposed to send the guy to me disappeared, and our traveler was lost. So, it fell to me to make a new creature to send on. My sewing abilities aren’t so good, so I didn’t make the standard sock monkey, and I decided to knit something. And thus, Charles was born:

He’s a colorful little octopus, with a mischievous little grin. I had a blast making him (although I did get a little sick of the legs after doing 8 of them…) He’s got pipe cleaners in his legs to make him pseudo-posable, and he was sent off on his travels after a brief stay here with me.
After finishing up with Charles, I had a fair bit of yarn leftover, and I wanted to try my hand at something a little more complicated. So, since I always have a need for new socks, I thought I’d try my hand at a pair of those. The first time I tried, I got to the heel, was convinced I was doing it wrong when I got to the part about short rows. (I’d never done them before, the pattern didn’t explicitly say that you didn’t knit all the stitches on the needle, just gave a count, and I had no clue what I was doing!) So, I ripped the whole thing out. Then, of course, I found a Sock 101 page (which now seems to be broken), and realized I was doing it correctly all along. Ah well - I tried again, and made these:

They’re fun, and colorful, washable, etc, but unfortunately, I made them just a tad small, and the fabric isn’t the most comfortable for walking around all day. I’ll probably still wear them around the house a little - they’re extra thick, designed to be slipper socks, so they’ll stick around. I think I’ll try socks again, but not with this yarn, and I’ll err on the side of too big next time.
When I worked on the socks, I ran out of yarn just before finishing, so I had to buy another large skein, which meant, of course, I had to knit something else with it, too. Deciding to continue with the increasing complexity trend, I decided to try my hand at some fingerless gloves with a mitten cap. (Glittens!) I was afraid of the pattern at first, but I didn’t really need to be. It’s not as hard as you might think. I’m really happy with these. My glittens don’t quite match, as I changed my mind about how far up I wanted the finger part to go after finishing the first one, but I still wear them all the time now. So, these definitely qualify for my “knit something useful” goal. Check! I’m still pondering about lining with mitten cap with a soft, fuzzy fabric for added warmth, but I haven’t yet.
It’s a mitten!

No, wait! It’s a glove!
Now that I’ve started knitting again, I’ve been doing a lot of it. I’ve got a number of projects and some dreams. This morning I put the finishing touches on a hat for my friend Peter, I’ve got a scarf in the works for Logan, and a super-secret project too. I’m getting the urge to start a sweater, but we’ll see. I’m in love with this pattern, but I think it’ll be awhile before I get there. I’m finding I’m getting better though - I wasn’t sure the hat would work out at all, but by the time it was all done, lo and behold, it did, even with me modifying all the stitch counts to match my gauge! Do you like it?











Kristin’s Playground