Tag Archives: blue

Totally Bare Bears!

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Or at least one bear.

My bears are coming along!  I’ll admit, I’m slowing down a little bit, but that’s just because I’m actually working on the projects I should be working on.  You know- Christmas presents, birthday gifts, etc.

Unfortunately, that means that I’m working a little less on my bears.

This one, I believe, is number 5!   (So, still not bad)

But, there’s something missing on this one… What can it be?

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Oh right!  Clothes!

I had a big, full skein of this bright shade of blue, so I thought, “Hey, why not?”  Thus was born the naked blue bear.  (I followed the pattern, but instead of changing colors for the sweater and pants, I just kept going with blue.)

The only problem is, he looks a little oddly proportioned without differentiation between top and bottom.  (Look at his stubby little legs!)

See?  Here’s one of my other bears:

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I think he looks much more well-proportioned.  But, maybe it’s just me?  Or maybe it’ll look better once I stuff the bears and give them little faces and everything?

How are your Mother Bears going?

What’s that?  You haven’t ordered your pattern yet?  Click here to help out!

The Husband Sweater: Yarn!

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My husband picked out the pattern for his sweater, and the yarn, too. And here it is:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAKnit Picks Comfy Sport in Planetarium and Whisker (AKA, navy blue and gray).

Let’s just take a moment to remember the example pictures on the pattern:

img_4328_medium2_medium[1]I wonder where he got the idea for a blue and gray sweater?  A sweater with stripes is far enough out of his comfort zone, so I’m not going to raise a stink about the color choice.  (And, he is a Ravenclaw, so I suppose blue and silver is pretty on point.)

The yarn is a cotton/acrylic blend, which I usually wouldn’t use for a sweater.  But, my husband runs super warm, so anything with even a touch of wool doesn’t get worn, except on vacation to the Great White North.  So we’ll see how it works as a sweater.  Have any of you knit a sweater out of cotton?

I worked up a little swatch on size 5 needles:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI got gauge with size 5 needles, not size 7, like the pattern suggests.  Which is weird.  I’m usually a pretty average knitter, but I guess I won’t argue with the swatch gods.  Maybe it has to do with the fiber content?  Cottons don’t really stretch, but wool (like the pattern asks for) is quite stretchy.  We’ll just have to see.

Cross your fingers for me!

 

 

A Swatch Dilemma

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I’ve been knitting away, and have swatched up my Biggo yarn for my Grandma’s Christmas Sweater.  And, well…

I am not pleased.

I give you Figure 1 (Gray Snowflakes with Pink Border):

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAEw!  No!  The contrast between the blue and gray is way to low.  All that work, and you can barely see the snowflake pattern.  (It looks even worse in real life…. ugh!)

I give you Figure 2 (Pink Snowflakes with Gray Border):

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERABetter, but not great.  I think the gray is just too low-contrast.

So, I have three options:

1.  Just deal with it.  Knit up the sweater as shown in Figure 2, and let it go.

2.  Forget about trying to use both gray and pink, and just make the sweater out of pink and blue yarn.

3.  Order more gray yarn from Knit Picks in a lighter shade.

I will sit here and sulk for a while, then, I suppose I’ll make a decision.  (At least I did the swatch first… That would have been so frustrating if I’d already started working on the sweater?  Ugh.)

Grandma, Don’t Read This Post!

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I’m 99.9% sure that my grandma doesn’t have the internet any more.  I believe she got rid of it a couple months ago.

That being said, if I’m wrong: Grandma, stop reading!   Christmas spoilers are ahead!  You have been warned.

OK, it should just be us now.

Remember last January when I made a sweater for my grandfather?  Well, this summer Grandpa asked me to make a sweater for my Grandmother, too.  He asked for something similar, but blue, and well, I can’t say no to a request like that.

I’ve decided to knit up a Norwegian-inspired sweater for Grandma this year.  I’m thinking a top-down, yoked sweater (because I love making top-down, yoked sweaters).  I’ll include a Norwegian star/snowflake pattern across the shoulders.  And, because that’s basically all she wears, it’ll be a cardigan.

Something like this, but simpler, and with buttons:

IMG_3358ny_medium2[1]The next step was to pick out yarn.  I am a big fan of Knit Picks (as a naturally frugal person), so I decided to give their Biggo yarn a try.  I have worked with it before, and it is lovely, soft, super thick, warm, and washable.  (Since there’s only three months until Christmas, having a big gauge is especially important.)  Mom and I talked about colors, and we settled on Sapphire Heather (main color), Dogwood Heather, and Cobblestone Heather.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI think these colors look lovely next to each other.  Unfortunately, there isn’t as much contrast between the Cobblestone and the Sapphire as I would have liked.   But, sometimes colors look different in the skein and knitted up, so I’ll need to work up a swatch to see how the colors play together when they’re knit up, just in case I need to get a different gray color.

I’m itching to get started knitting up this sweater.  I can’t wait to see how it goes.  (But unfortunately, I have to wind up all the skeins into balls, first, or I will spend the next three months fighting with big tangles of yarn.  Woe is me.

Inspiration: Knitting the Sky

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My friend Jenny visited me last weekend.  We have known each other for years (since college).  Actually, we met through the Knitting Illini, our university’s student-run knitting club.  (I’m still trying to find a knitting club as fun and welcoming as that one, but that’s a whole other story.)

Anyway, Jenny pulled out her needles and several shades of blue and gray yarn.  She whipped up a couple little garter stitch squares and put her knitting back in her bag.  I was curious what she was making, and she said she was “Knitting the Sky.”  I had never heard this concept before, and had her explain.

Apparently, Knitting the Sky is the idea that you put aside a few minutes each day to look at the sky and then pick a yarn color closest to the color of the sky to make an afghan square, or a few rows of garter stitch to add to a scarf.

As far as I can tell (and correct me if I’m wrong), the first person to do this was Leafcutter Designs.  They sell a kit (yarn plus directions) to make a Sky Scarf.  It’s a simple garter-stitch scarf, but the subtly shifting grays and blues make the scarf look almost like it’s made with hand-painted yarn.

sky-scarf-kit-3 Gorgeous, right?

But Jenny is an overachiever (in the best possible way), so instead of just making a sky scarf, she’s making a sky afghan, like this one.

Finished+Sky+Blanket+4How beautiful is that!  Who could have imagined that wrapping up in cloudy and rainy days could be so cozy?

And, imagine extending the idea of using a color to represent a day in other projects.  How about a striped cardigan that shows your mood each day for an entire year?  Or what about a pair of mittens that represent what you ate for breakfast for a month?  OK, I’m getting silly now.  But, the point still stands.

This is a fantastic idea, and a great way to get some knitting in while getting more in touch with the world around you.  Too bad that if I was to make a sky scarf it would end up being a uniform Seattle-gray.x354