So How Am I Going to Do This?

I've decided to make fingerless mitts for my Minnesota nieces for Christmas. It seems that fingerless mitts are a hot fashion statement this year. I messaged the elder niece on Facebook and asked for current favorite colors: red and orange.

The mitts need to fill several requirements.
1. Warm for the Minnesota winter.
2. Machine washable - a biggie.
3. Bright and colorful - got a leg up on that with red and orange.
4. Unique, yet not in an Aunt Ethyl ruffled underwear sort of a way.
5. Relatively quick and easy to knit.

Numbers 1, 2, 3 and 5 can all be covered in one fell swoop. Superwash worsted weight wool, variegated for interest.

The red was pretty easy:
Cascade 220 Superwash Paints in colorway 9958 (such an evocative color name.)

I think a simple big cable down the back and we're cooking with gas. I can sound like Aunt Ethyl even if I'm trying to not knit like her.

But try to find a nice, bright, orange worsted.

Ha!

I finally ended up deciding to combine two yarns, Cascade 220 Superwash Sport colorway 822, two 136 yard skeins, and Knit One Crochet Too Crock o' Dye sock yarn in #250, variegated oranges, one 416 yard skein; held together to knit doubled.

One thing I really prefer to do when knitting pairs is knit both pieces simultaneously on one circular needle. That way they're pretty sure to come out the same.

Geeze, I thought, ain't this gunna be fun, knitting with two skeins of orange sport yarn and one skein of variegated sock yarn, pulled from both ends. The possibilities for tangles would be endless.

Fortunately, in my case, laziness is the mother of invention, and when I realized I was going to have to ball all three skeins anyway, I decided to try to pair up my strands early on.

The Cascade and Knit One Crochet Too skeins were almost identical in circumference once I got them unwrapped, so I placed the sock yarn on my swift first, then stacked the first sport skein on top, making sure that both would unwind in the same direction and start at about the same place.

Know what? It worked! I now have two skeins of doubled yarn all ready to knit with.

Let's hope that my offerings, unlike Aunt Ethyl's ruffled undergarments, are kid-cool enough not to end up living out their lives in the back of a dresser drawer. That's requirement item number 4, by the way. The one I still have to make sure I cover.

The Mother Who Raised Me Is So Tight She Squeaks

As a relatively new knitter, I am still trying to answer that timeless question: "What the heck do I do with the ends of all these skeins?"

The Engineer suggests throwing them into the trash can.

Waste!

Sacrilege!

You know that within a week after throwing something out, it's going to be needed in a very urgent way. Besides, if my Mom was dead, it would make her spin in her grave. (Fortunately, she's alive and bouncing off the walls like a ping-pong ball.)

I do have some uses for the remnants:

• Tie up hair (or other things) when it's getting in the way.
  
• Use instead of ribbon when wrapping small packages.
  
• Keep some of the shorter left-overs in a baggie in my knitting bag -- especially cotton yarn, it's good for provisional cast-ons.
  
• Use as contrast color/texture in new projects.
  
• Test out new techniques/stitches instead of ruining part of a new skein.
  
• Stick in plastic bags and save forever - this is the most commonly done.

Came up with a new idea a couple of days ago in response to the Engineer grousing that I have been horribly remiss in sewing a button back on to his work shorts. Not that I don't have a very good excuse...

My sewing machine is in the basement along with all the rest of my sewing gear. To sew a button on his pants, I not only have to remember to do it in the first place, I have to remember to go downstairs and get the stuff to do it with and not get distracted before getting back upstairs to actually do it.

Then, of course, there's the problem of finding the right color of thread. Or to be more accurate when trying to match the Engineer's wardrobe, the right colorless of thread. He goes in for such stimulating shades as taupe, khaki, beige, putty, etc.

So I decided to make up an upstairs sewing box.

I had an empty stationary box with a magnetic clasp on the lid (way cool, that's why I bought the stationary, I liked the way the lid thunked shut) and filled it up with the necessaries. JoAnn's was selling thread for a dollar a spool, so I bought a selection of drab colors along with a box of straight pins, a packet of needles and a pair of embroidery scissors and put them into my little box. It fits into the drawer of my nightstand. I wanted a pin cushion too, but all of the ones at the store were too big to fit in my cool box.

Then the light bulb went off. I got out the remains from the Technicolor Dragon Skin Scarf. Though it was only a couple of yards, it was already rolled into a bitty center-pull ball. I went at it with my felting needle. With only one shallow stab wound and minimal cussing, I ended up with a lovely little pincushion.

Still looks like a ball of yarn, but it's one fairly solid mass; it won't unwind.

Spiffy, huh?

Travel Knitting

You know you're addicted when you take your knitting along with you on a photo expedition. Not that it's unreasonable; one cannot, after all, take pictures twenty-four hours a day. So while I was touring the red rock country of southern Utah, I brought along a skein of half priced yarn to while away those evening hours in the motel room as GuiGirl and I talked about color, shadows and light conditions.

I must have been inspired by the landscape. The end product of my knitting was the Bryce Canyon Cap, seen here modeled by GuiGirl.
Note unexpected undulations of rust and ocher so reminiscent of the geological formations of the area. There are swirls of dark green like the omnipresent junipers along with leaf patterns and twisting trails in the lacework. Wow, after that analysis, I'm thinking I maybe should have been an English Lit teacher. I can find hidden meanings in the knitting of a hat like they can find hidden meanings in the prose of Moby Dick.

Either that or I can really pitch some bull...