Part of the throw - it changes on a daily basis as I add on a square or two.
While I've been completely captivated with knitting on my mitered square throw lately, I do have a couple of finished projects to show you, and though I'd share a bit of the thought process that goes into how I make something.
First up is a hat I made for my dad's birthday. I wanted to make one that was a little lighter weight than the other hats that I've made for him - this way, if it's not super cold, he can still wear a hat when he's outdoors and not get too hot. Of course, I didn't count on this year being the winter that never ends for Oregon, so it may not be warm enough quite yet, but when I started this, I thought surely their snowfall would be trailing off...apparently not.
I had some yarn that I wanted to use, plus I had enough of a coordinating color that I knew I wanted to do some sort of stripe in the hat; I searched in Ravelry using the yarn weight and yardage I had on hand for hats, which brought me to a pattern by Tanis Lavalee called Grammy's Hat - there were over 500 projects made with it, so I figured it was a well-written pattern, plus I could see variations that other knitters had made, including stripes. Perfect! I cast on and played around with stripe widths and ended up with this:
Yarn is Cascade 220 Superwash in Turtle colorway, with Madelinetosh DK in Worn Denim colorway for the stripes. I used a size 8 needle for the body of the hat (size 6 for the brim), which made it have a looser, softer drape.
I really love how the variations in the blue stripes look so good with the green of the main color.
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Another project that I've been working came from one evening when I was knitting in front of the TV - it was one of our rare cold winter days, and I was wearing a pair of thick wool socks that I've had for ages. They were faded and boring, and I thought, why haven't I made myself a pair of pretty house socks? So I went hunting in my stash for a heavier yarn - these weren't going to be worn in shoes, so I could go up in yarn weight and really get the warmth from the socks. I found this yarn, which I'd originally bought to make a pair of mittens with, but never made them because I was always unhappy with how the thumb turned out and I didn't want to waste the yarn on something that I wouldn't wear - but I could picture the bright colors on my feet, and that made me happy:
Yarn is from Blueberry Pie Studio, colorway is My Box of Crayons.
I used my standard sock pattern - just reduced the number of stitches (44 instead of my usual 64) because the yarn was heavier, and knit away. I was nearly finished with the second sock when I got distracted by my mitered square blanket, but one afternoon my feet were cold, and that was the final push I needed to finish them:
I didn't even block these, just put them on the sock blockers for a picture. Once I finally block them, the stitching will smooth out a bit.
THIS is where they ended up - on my feet! I love my new house socks so much! Bright colors, happy stripes, warm feet...exactly what I wanted.
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I still haven't picked up my sweater to finish - blame the mitered throw. I did read on another blog about "second sleeve syndrome" - which is similar to the well-known "second sock syndrome" and of which I am well aware, having three single socks waiting for their mates:
I have the toe and part of the foot started on the sock on the far right, at least...
And on any given day, my knitting area looks like this:
Two projects out, cart with more projects pulled close. Actually, this was a fairly neat day if I'm being honest. Two water cups because knitting is dehydrating. Or else I'm lazy and don't want to have to get up to refill as often.
I had all of my leftover sock yarn strewn about on my coffee table and finally got tired of that mess, so I went looking for some sort of tray and found this one - I like it because it makes the yarn mess look intentional now:
Yarn on a table is a mess, but yarn in a tray is art...?
As always, I'm enjoying what I'm knitting - life is too short to knit what you don't want to. One of these days I'm going to have to break into more of my sock stash yarn and knit up some more socks in order to get different leftovers for my throw. But that day is not today - right now I'm still playing with mixing and matching the yarn in my tray for the throw. Back to my squares I go!
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