Back with a new look

Hello after a long hiatus. I've decided to restructure this blog to be about knitting, books, music, pets, and anything that strikes my fancy. I hope it will be enjoyed and that I will be able to keep up with it better.

So, first off, Merry Christmas! I hope it was wonderful for everybody. Mine was certainly fantastic but went by far too fast. I got some dishware and pots/pans for wherever I end up living after college graduation and everyone in my family got me something to do with knitting! I received 6 skeins of Lion Brand Homespun in Prairie a sort of greenish blue colorway, a Knifty Knitter Long Loom and 2 skeins of Bernat Berella "4" the Afghan Yarn in the Neutral Ombre colorway, The Cool Girl's Guide to Knitting by Nicki Trench, and a gift certificate to the upscale LYS. Sad thing was, I can't start any projects to do with the above until I finish some of the 6 projects I'm currently working on!
I have as of last night finished 3 of the projects including the Bernat Softee Baby Brick Pullover for my professor's baby, the Wildflower Headband of my own design, and the Goat for my brother.
The Brick Pullover came out wonderfully with the pattern definitely looking more complicated than it is and is soft and pretty without being too girly since it uses a purple solid colorway and the Rock-a-Bye Baby colorway which is a purple/blue/green multi. I recommend this pattern from the Bernat Softee Baby "Little Guys" Bonus Book to anyone who wants an easy but still interesting pattern for a child from 3 months to 4 years.
The Wildflower Headband used hand-spun and hand-dyed yarn from Rising Fawn Fibers Studio in Georgia. The yarn was a beautiful pink/white/purple multi. I've never worked with hand-spun yarn before and I have to say it is a treat, such a solid, thick, and smooth fiber that flies off your fingertips. The pattern was basically a 10-stitch wide super long rectangle with alternating wildflower stitches. I also knitted a flower from The Cool Girl's Guide to Knitting that I plan on sewing to one of the ends of the headband once I block it. The flower should add some dimension and extra interest once the headband is flattened.
The Goat was made with two beautiful naturally colored solid yarns that I'll have to get back to you on the brand name. It turned out a little wonky and sort of lopsided but my brother still said he thought it was adorable. This came from Knitted and Felted Toys by Zoe Halstead with the colors modified from the Ziggy Zebra pattern and the horns taken from the Maisie Moo pattern. I would definitely say that finishing a stuffed animal is not the easiest thing in the world.
Since I finished all 3 of these projects in two days man did I have a lot of finishing to do and I hope to never have that same circumstance again. I will upload pics of the above soon.

In the world of reading, I would sincerely like to recommend the novella "Shirley, Goodness, and Mercy" by Debbie Macomber. It is a heartwarming Christmas story that turned out to be a page-turner. Anyone who wants an easy holiday read should try it out!

More yarn!

So, I haven't really done that much knitting in the past couple of weeks. But I have been in the process of knitting up the baby sweater. It's turning out really well so far - I love the brick pattern and the colors are adorable.
I came home to visit so was able to visit Michael's and will hopefully get to a couple of LYSes tomorrow :-) I bought some amazing new yarn on clearance - Patons Be Mine in Lovely Lilac and Sweetie Aqua which I will be using for the baby booties instead of the Bernat Baby Coordinates - it is SOOO much softer! I also purchased (not on clearance) 3 skeins of Lion Brand Homespun in Corinthian to knit up the triangle shawl pattern on the Lion Brand website for my Tanzanian homestay mama (The Corinthian colorway is absolutely gorgeous with reds and golds and blues!) and some Patons Allure in Aquamarine for knitting up a steering wheel cover from a pattern in "Stitch n' Bitch Nation."
I have too many "to be knitted" projects!!!! Ahhhggghh :-P
I'll be posting photos of the new yarn soon.

Versatile Knit :-D

Turns out that the Garter Stitch Skinny Tie is perfect as a belt, tie, or headband - my favorite use so far is definitely the headband :-D

It's been 10 days?!

Sorry for the super long wait. Going home to visit my Mom for her 50th birthday and then getting back in the swing of work this week, took up most of my time, although in the land of knitting I did get a lot done!
First of all, that special someone, if you haven't already guessed was my Mom for whom I knitted a beautiful handtowel of the Corner to Corner Striped pattern from the Lily Sugar'n Cream Kitchen Kolors booklet :-D I do not have the photo yet of the handtowel since it is currently on my Dad's camera, but will get it soon. I knitted the handtowel with Sugar'n Cream yarn of the colors Sunshine and Over the Rainbow for the outside diagonal corner parts and White for the diagonal middle -So pretty!!! and Soft!! I made a discovery: I LOVE COTTON YARN!!! I want to knit everything with cotton yarn now :-P



To follow up the handtowel I knitted a Mosaic Flower Dishcloth with Hot Blue and Sunshine from the same booklet and Sugar'n Cream yarn. This dishcloth looks so super cool and the pattern is ridiculously amazing - I keep thinking - how was it so easy to knit such a difficult looking thing - the wonders of knitting I guess.

I'm now in the process of knitting a gauge swatch for a baby sweater for one of my Professor's new baby! This'll be my first real sweater attempt so hopefully it'll turn out well! I'm using the Bernat Softee Baby Bonus Booklet for Little Guys, although I'm adjusting the colors since the baby is a girl. I'll be doing the Brick Pullover in Bernat Softee Baby Soft Mauve and Rock-a-bye Baby. Such a cute little pattern although I have to admit that I purchased this booklet mostly for the amazing Toy Dragon design - lol :-P So far I'm a little skeptical about the softness of this yarn knitted up for a baby, but if it says baby yarn, I guess it really is.



All else is on hold at this point, while I work on the baby's gifts - I'm looking at bootie patterns as well, for which I will use Soft Mauve in Bernat Baby Coordinates - the same yarn with some more bulk and some silvery shine.

Update

So, I've begun the Indiecita Baby Alpaca Scarf and it is lovely! I love the look and feel of the yarn and I've never knit on such tiny needles - granted their only size 6 - amazing how much smaller they are than size 7s. I'm wondering what It'll be like to knit on even tinier needles, guess i'll see when I start socks huh?:-P Well, I've only gotten 5 rows done so far, so there's really nothing to show picture wise, but I will say that I'm very proud of my newfound ability to purl and knit variously on the same row, to think something as simple as just moving the yarn in front for purling and in back for knitting would have escaped me.

I'm also currently working on a gift for a particular someone, that I will say more about in a couple days, for now I'll just say that it's very practical and very colorful :-)

Also, once I complete the gift, I will be starting a pillow case pattern from an old library book to use up 1 of my 6 Red Heart Super Saver skeins that I bought when I thought that that yarn was perfectly good for a sweater - not so sure about using itchy acrylic for such a thing any more :-P

Pictures will be posted as soon as I have enough of a product to show, also I will have a picture of the goat since it will be finished this weekend!!

(I haven't forgotten about the Patons Rumor Moonstone Heather yarn...I am still planning on making the Waistclincher from Dixon's Not Your Mama's Knitting and handwarmers, although I'm looking through more handwarmer patterns to decide on my favorite.)

Pics of my Win! and goat update

Hiya!
To the left is a picture of my wonderful prize yarn and other goodies :-) If you didn't notice, my photo editing skills suck -lol.
I'll be starting that scarf really soon now that I have room on my needles and since I finally figured out ribbing!!! It took me awhile to figure out when to put the yarn in front of and when behind the needles to produce a good rib, but I did some practice last night and it actually looked pretty nice.



As far as currently on the needles goes, all I have left of my brother's goat is seaming it up and stuffing it!! Yay, I'm going home to visit this weekend and hopefully it'll be done by then :-)
Well, I'll be booking it today as I look through patterns to figure out what I want to do next since I'm almost finished with the goat too. I've checked out a large number of library books that have some great patterns for really small things that are super cute + embellishments that I could just knit up and use later...i'll get to that full-size sweater eventually :-P

Tie is now an FO!!

So, I have just finished the tie which actually posed quite a challenge in getting the stripes to look good - I wasn't that successful, but it still looks pretty nice. The colors are great but hard to match and I really did enjoy working with this yarn. It was all - pattern and yarn - in a kit I got for Christmas a few years ago called I believe Knit III. My roommate realized that it would make a pretty belt, since I already wear ties as belts and it looks really cute, I actually wore it today - it's so much fun to wear a hand-knitted project! All in all, a pretty cool FO :-)


I have a few other updates, but I need to leave those until tomorrow, cuz it's late...more tomorrow!

I won my first knitting blog contest!!

Hello,
I'm so excited about having won my first knitting blog contest!! It was from Jane at quiddity.typepad.com whose blog you should definitely check out :-) The prize was some beautiful purple/blue 100% baby alpaca yarn - so soft - I can't wait to start knitting the pattern she sent along with it - the Indiecita Baby Alpaca Scarf. It should be a lovely knit - the pattern looks really pretty - and I haven't really done much pattern work yet (meaning stitches besides just purling straight, knitting straight, increasing, and decreasing) so I'm really excited!! I also received a lovely notebook with an adorable sheep on the cover and a fridge list magnet with the same motif. :-D Thanks Jane!!
I have a lot of updating to do, but will have to wait until tomorrow to do so, I also have several pics to post :-) I will say that I have completed all the pieces for the goat except for one horn!! Yay- now just a lot of seaming :-P
p.s. My days have been crazy since I've been getting up at 5am every morning to go out and do field work tromping around in the woods :-P

I BROKE A NEEDLE :-(

I've been using the pretty plastic colored needles - forgot the brand name, and one of them just broke!!! Thankfully I have another set of 9s with me, but I don't have a duplicate of every size needle :-( Better be more careful next time!! Ahhhhhhhhh!!

Plans for the next few days :-D

     Since I have finished my super cute shrug with the amazing Patons Rumor yarn, I would like to continue knitting with Patons Rumor!  I'm planning on knitting the Waist Clincher from Dixon's Not Your Mama's Knitting and the Picot-Edge Gauntlets from Knit.101 with this same yarn because I ended up having so much left over, although I might still have to buy one more skein, not a big deal - I probably currently have about 120+ yards left and the two patterns require <50 and <160.    
I'm also back on the goat train, trying to finish it up so when I go down to visit my bro I can give it to him.  It's actually more fun :-D  than I remember to knit with the particular yarn I'm using, update later on what it is, I don't have the label with me.    
I haven't worked on the tie in awhile.  I'll get started again eventually :-/.

It's funny how much of a high finishing a project that looks good really is :-P

SO CUTE!!!

Updates coming on my next plans :-)

Finished with shrug :-D

I finished the cap-sleeved shrug (Barbi) from Dixon's Not Your Mama's Knitting. I used Patons Rumor in Moonstone Heather and it turned out so cute!! It's so cool that I chose a yarn I liked much better than that in the pattern and intuitively knew to knit it on a size smaller needle than the pattern asked for, resulting in a perfect guage - yes I did do a swatch. I'm super excited because I loved the process of knitting this pattern and it turned out so quickly, it's actually only 36 rows. I was afraid it wouldn't fit, but it in fact fits quite nicely. I will be posting a photo before the days up :-) Of course there are the few beginnner's errors, but for my first "sweater," I think it's pretty darn good. Also, the needle lenght thing ended up not being a problem, It's incredible how many stitches you can comfortably fit on a regular length needle - this was up to 121. I'm super excited about starting a new project now - I have no idea what I'm going to do, but I do need to get back to finishing up my brother's goat :-)
Also, I'm back at school for the summer to start working on my Pileated Woodpecker research and I'm quite excited about having the evenings for knitting and reading :-)

Needles

I need longer needles!! My current project is growing as I add new loops (on purpose) to every other row and I'm running out of needle space...oh no!! Hopefully it'll all fit on the regular length needles I'm currently using, if not I guess I'll just have to wait until I can find some long ones. I didn't realize how invaluable longer needles really are...oh well :-P Just felt like expressing my laughable beginner woes :-)

I'm Back :-D

So, I finally realized that it wasn't just my being sick for the past 3 weeks (I've been well for 1 now...yay!) that caused my decrease in knitting activity, but that I was bored with the project I was working on - the green and blue tie - probably because there was nothing new and interesting about it...no cool new stitches or techniques to learn (although it is my first attempt at striping - not the most fun technique to me).  Well, I started over on the Barbi cap-sleeved shrug from Heather Dixon's Not Your Mama's Knitting and looked at four different books to figure out how to do the kfb or knit front and back or bar increase or increase in an existing stich (the reason why I had stopped this project originally)...why does this stitch have so many friggin' names?!?  It was so rewarding when I finally figured out how to do the stitch and to find that it is such an easy stitch! - great instructions found in Jennifer Worick's Getting Started Knitting!  I love the Patons Rumor yarn that I'm using it's so soft and has such fun colors - I can't wait to see the end result, but the actual knitting process is a lot of fun at this point as well since I'm practicing some new stitches/techniques now :-D  Here's a little pic of me happily holding the beginnings of my first "sweater."  Yay for new-found knitting happiness :-P

  

Ravelry

Hello, I haven't posted in a week because I've been feeling a little under the weather and haven't really been knitting much. But, I would like to update the fact that I'm now on Ravelry! My username is KnittyKittyLove. I'm so excited about having a place to enter my stash and search for projects other people have done using that yarn!! Should be fun - now I'm just trying to find time to do exactly that :-) Hopefully I'll have a knitting update soon! Oh and Happy Mother's Day - bad KnittyKitty for not making anything for your Mom :-P

LYS gone!

So I went to the nearest LYS to my house today and lo and behold it was their last day of business!  Huge bummer because now to get fancy yarns I can't find at Michael's, i'll have to go all the way to the richer side of town.  A nice enough place, but I don't always feel like I fit in over there.  Plus, I really liked the LYS closer to home, it was quainter and had super-friendly southern people working there.  I was hoping to start taking a knitting class there as well.  Guess not anymore, but that's okay because I bought some more books to help me with the stitches I can't figure out.  One was "Teach Yourself Visually Knitting" which has photographs and detailed instructions for every different method of increasing and decreasing...yay!!  Also, the yarn was on sale for 70% off so I bought a ridiculous amount!  I'm planning on knitting a vest from some NY red, green, and yellow Fiesta yarn and a couple of pairs of mittens with Scenic yarn pink and orange as well as lots of dishcloths of varying colors from some beautiful Sugar N' Cream yarn.  I had a great time shopping beyond what I can currently afford, but of course you can always convince yourself that it's okay because it was a Sale!!...oh well:-P  I went to Target afterwards to pick up some metal cubicles to finally make myself a yarn shelf (Pictured above)...yaya!! I've been wanting one ever since I started accumulating yarn like crazy.  

     Left is a picture of how I'm coming with the Skinny Tie, I think it's looking pretty good for its being my first attempt at striping! :-D  I've completed 6 out of 17 stripes so far...it feels good to be completing projects again.

I'm home!

So, I'm now back from Tanzania and am once again ready to get knitting.  I did do some knitting while overseas, but it was a shawl of my own design and is not even worthy to be displayed in a photo it turned out so badly :-(  It was intended for my host Mama.  I will make her another shawl though, following a pattern, and send it to her by mail.  Hopefully it'll get there!  Mail when it comes to packages is super iffy between Tanzania and the US.  Another issue with knitting in Tanzania was the utter lack of yarn stores!  I knew of one, but it was so out of the way that I never got to check it out and from what I could tell by the different yarns that my host Mama bought, they were just one color very simple acrylics.  Nothing fancy at all.  So it is nice and dangerous money-wise to be back in the world of beautiful yarn!!  Something I fell prey to a couple days ago when I went to Michael's and purchased 3 skeins of Patons Rumor in Moonstone Heather (pictured right), an incredibly 80's looking pattern a.k.a. super cute and colorful!  I'm planning on making the Barbi cropped sweater from Heather Dixon's Not Your Mama's Knitting - the gauge worked out perfectly!! Excitement :-P  The only problem with this pattern is that I'm having serious issues on the whole knitting into the front and then back of the stitch or kfb thing, which is why I'm heading over to the local yarn store tomorrow to figure it all out.  Also, as I have just returned from this semi-hiatus from knitting I have jumped into the world of way too many UFOs.  I'm still working on that goat for my little bro (I have what is completed of it so far pictured below) and I just started a skinny tie (from a kit my mom got me for Christmas some time ago) with thick green stripes and thin blue stripes (super cute colors) and I'm still working on my green and blue blanket of various swatches for GTU (although this project is also a learning process in stitch patterns).  Also, I unraveled the scarf for my dad cuz it was just way too girly looking and I don't think he even wears scarves anyway (I'm gonna have to rethink the whole making my dad something thing).  With the yarn I was going to use to make his scarf, I'm planning on knitting the Cable Access purse also from HD's NYM's Kntg, although I'm having issues there too, once again reason for my venture to the yarn store tomorrow.  I hope all this confusion works itself out and I can start knitting away again on all kinds of new projects.  I do still have the simple project of my cross necklace to begin (amazing bamboo yarn is involved!).  So current actually begun projects = 4 and Soon to begin projects = 2.  I better finish one soon so I'm not too overloaded :-P (That goats been around for awhile!) 

p.s. Tanzania is an amazing country!!

I forgot to show off the Moose pin :-P

My Mom's Two Gifts

I had this sorta-tacky red, green, and white with silver metallic Christmas yarn

and wasn't so sure what to do with it, so I decided Christmas coasters for my Mom might be the best idea.   I have so much yarn left over, I should start thinking on what else to make from it (maybe Christmas placemats?), since the coasters did turn out well and my Mom liked them :-P  These pictures don't really show the metallic bits in the yarn very well, but they are pretty obvious on the coasters, kinda neat.    

         

 She then wanted a scarf so I took her to Michael's to pick out a yarn she liked.  The first one she chose was way funky and thin and would only make a good summery-type scarf (and I don't even know if I'm ready to work with that type of crazy yarn yet) so I made her keep looking and she ended up finding this amazing Lion Brand Homespun yarn

that is super soft and warm and thick.  Also, it is a beautiful blue, her favorite color, with some nice greens mixed in.  The scarf ended up looking ridged because I doubled up the yarn following a pattern on the back of the yarn label itself.  She wears it a lot too which is definitely rewarding :-)

The Beginning of Knitty Love

Hello, this is my first post and I'm very excited about starting a knitting blog.  I actually only learned how to knit last month, but surprise! I'm now an avid knitter.  :-D

So, I wanted to go ahead and post my second FO ever which is the Three-Way Tassel Hat from Knitting for Dummies.  My biggest modification was in the cuff where I just let the backwards stockinette stitch roll up instead of trying to tame it straight and flip it up.  This resulted in a rolled up cuff displaying garter stitch and it works great by being quite easy to pull over my ears.  I used 2 skeins of Patons SWS (Soy Wool Stripes) in Natural Blue.  This yarn was really frustrating at first but I have since realized that that's just because the first few rows are always frustrating.  The finished product is super soft

and adorable.  I can wear it as either a double-pointed hat or as a dog-eared hat.  I prefer dog-eared, but I'm

sure a child would love keeping this hat double-pointed.  It's such a fun item. 

 

The picture uploading is going much slower than I thought it would, so I think I'll have to wait until tomorrow to post a close-up of the adorable brown moose pin!

Thanks for listening and happy knitting!

p.s. I'll be posting my other so-far FOs within the week.