Check off: Moebius knitting

Finally, a post about something I managed to learn how to do. Moebius knitting is the ingenious technique of making a knit-in-the-round Moebius strip. Cat Bordhi's got the awesome instruction videos and books. The basics can be found in her video here, on YouTube:

Moebius cowls were all the rage a few years ago, but at that point, I was a new-ish knitter and had many other things I wanted to learn. I decided the technique would keep. And it has.

When E. was born, a friend gave me a skein of yarn that she told me I had to use to make something for myself. It's gorgeous yarn, from Sweet Fiber. Melissa does beautiful yarn. It's just a skein of her Merino Twist in worsted weight, but the colour is deep and saturated, with enough variation in the shade to provide interest without being distracting. The colourway name is "Temperate" and it's one of my favourite shades of green.

So I wound my yarn into a ball and went out to Valley Yarn and picked up a set of knitting needles in a length appropriate for Moebius knitting. I cast on the night before we left for the Christmas holidays so I would have something to work on in the car. I used a pattern that involved ribbing and a picot bind-off, titled Sprong Moebius.

All in all, it went well. I think I miscounted my cast-on stitches, so there's a section where the two-by-two ribbing is actually four by two, but it's just one section of four stitches, so it's easily ignored. I am not a perfectionist (though I was, a bit, as a child).

There is something very remarkable about watching one of these take shape. A Moebius cowl is knit from the centre out, so each Moebius round is the equivalent of two rounds on a conventional cowl. It feels as though it's knitting up faster that way.

I want to do another one, but what I want this time is a stockinette cowl with a garter stitch lace edging. I'm plotting out the lace right now and figuring out what it'll look like. Should it turn out well, I'll post it on Ravelry as a pattern.

Checking Off: Buttonholes

I finally braved the buttonhole setting on my sewing machine and made a couple of wonky buttonholes. I don't have pictures of them (black fabric, black thread, not the best subject), but I do have a picture of E. in her finished outfit. Not the best fit, but I'm new to this pattern-drafting thing.

E. likes her jumper, but finds the camera flash startling.

Basically, the straps don't fit as well as I'd like. But she has a jumper made out of Space Invaders flannel! When I bought the material at the fabric store, the woman looked at me and said, "You aren't putting that cute little girl in this, are you?" I replied, "It's for a blanket," neglecting to mention that I was planning a jumper as well. And shoes. I didn't really feel like arguing about gender stereotypes with a complete stranger.

I have plans for a baby dress that will require more buttonholes, so I will do pictures of that when it's done. My machine makes it easy, although the last time I'd done buttonholes on it, I'd been supervised by my grandmother and I wasn't much older than ten. Of course, this is what the manual is for.

Checking Off: Socks

 Now that I have a to-do list of crafty things on this blog (see that page next to my designs page), I thought it might be fun to do the occasional post on one of the techniques or materials. This may turn into tutorials for some things, but not for others. For today, I'm picking something that I've already done, but in the future, I will use this as an excuse to check some items off the list. Today, let's talk socks.

I love socks. I loved brightly coloured, interesting socks well before I became a knitter, so I knit a couple pairs of socks in my first year of being a knitter. Then I knit many more pairs. Obsessively. I'm on a quest to replace all my store-bought socks with hand-knit ones. My Ravelry library has over 300 sock patterns in it, and I currently own 4 books dedicated to sock knitting.

Socks can be as simple or as complex as the knitter prefers. They can be worked toe-up, cuff-down, or started somewhere in the middle (haven't tried that kind yet, but I will at some point). There are numerous ways to do the heels and toes. It's hard to get bored with something that is so simple and ordinary, yet has so many permutations that it's impossible to try them all.

I have a fondness for intricate sock patterns. One of my current sock projects is Hunter Hammersen's "Khotan" pattern from her book, Silk Road Socks. It's interesting and lacy and I love it. I'm using a nice yarn for these socks that's a mostly solid colour, because otherwise the stitch pattern will get lost. I love good solid and semi-solid colourways when I'm knitting the more complex socks.

But simple socks are also a favourite. They're much faster to knit, and they require less thought when being carried around in my purse because I don't have to bring a pattern to consult (although very, very simple pattern repeats don't usually require a pattern copy once I've knit through them a couple times). I'm knitting a simple pair of baby socks right now for my cousin's daughter. The only weird thing about these ones is that they're so small that it feels a little awkward to work them. These are perfect for self-striping sock yarns. There's the obligatory pink in the colourway, and it's pastel-ish, so it looks appropriately girly (my cousin doesn't seem to be too insistent on pink everything, so these look girly without being over the top).

Socks aren't for every knitter. For some, the thought of tiny needles and fine yarn puts them off. For others, they just aren't interested. For some of us, though, they become a favourite project, and we end up with many balls of sock yarn in our stashes (I've even heard it said, I believe by the Yarn Harlot, that sock yarn "doesn't count" as stash). We can justify this by pointing out all the shawl and mitt patterns that can be made with sock yarn--our sock yarn stashes don't have to be exclusively for socks.

But this is about socks. I think I'd better go cast on the second baby sock.