FOs: House Stark Fingerless Mitts and Fifth Doctor Socks!

It's still not Friday (but it's kinda close) and these have been finished for two weeks now, but better late than never, right.

In my post about my resolutions for March, I alluded to these finished objects, so I should probably show them to you. Plus they're pretty awesome.

First: T.A.R.D.I.Socks by Anna Richardson (round 2)

It's really hard to photograph your own feet.

So... I mentioned above that this is round 2 of these particular socks. I also mentioned in my resolutions post that these socks resulted in a net gain of yarn. Here's the story.

You can first start here with the story of how I decided to knit myself knee-high socks for my Fifth Doctor (Doctor Who) costume even though I had never knit a single sock before in my life and previously had no desire to do so. So I knit myself knee high socks out of a cotton/bamboo/spandex blend yarn (because the costume was originally for summer) following a pattern that's lovely and beautifully charted, but presumes you've actually done some moderate amount of sock knitting and are using wool and know how to adjust socks to fit your feet. Needless to say, I was setting myself up for failure before I even started. So I knit them over the course of 6-weeks desperately trying to finish them in time for the convention I needed my costume for (the only time in my life I've ever knit more than one thing at a time. I will never do it again.), and I was pretty proud of myself. For one thing, I've heard many people who attempted these socks either don't finish or take forever to finish since there's a lot of purling and cabling and charting and they're REALLY LONG, so I was pretty impressed that I not only managed to make socks that look like socks, but that they were also socks that experienced sock knitters don't even finish. So I put them on for the convention and they were HUGE. Four inches too long, too big in the gusset, bunchy in my shoes and didn't stay up if I took more than 10 steps. So...they were socks, but they weren't socks that fit.

Fast forward to now. I needed to re-wear the costume for a Doctor Who panel at a convention in April, and I knew I needed to re-make the socks. I'd been trying to knit my way through the basic sock patterns in Wendy Johnson's Socks from the Toe Up book so that I could have some knowledge of how to make socks fit my feet, and I'd also knit the (still don't fit) butterfly knee-highs to try to figure out the calf sizing. Armed with this knowledge, I ripped out the socks (3.5 balls of RIDICULOUSLY SPLITTY YARN), re-wound, and started again with a modified pattern. I dropped a needle size so I didn't have to modify the width, but I took out a portion of the chart and recalculated the row count so I could shorten the socks and still keep the calf shaping. I managed to use about 55 fewer yards (50 fewer meters)/15 fewer grams of yarn this time, which is where the net gain came in. But the socks are the right height and fit better around my calf (though still not perfect, but I devised a solution with a ribbon that holds them up just fine) and I'm much happier with them. They are a bit of a slog though, so I can definitely see how people who don't need them for a specific purpose on a deadline would get tired of doing it. The only reason I made it through without quitting was that I knew I needed them for the costume.

In addition, this yarn is terrible. I won't mention what it is here (although you can see it if you look on my project page), but I don't think I'll ever knit with it again. I chose it because I wanted lighter weight and hopefully cooler socks to wear with the costume in the summer, but the cotton and bamboo don't have the memory to hold the socks up and the spandex makes the yarn INCREDIBLY splitty, making it very difficult to work with, especially when you're knitting and purling and cabling with yarnovers. I'm not impressed and it definitely wasn't fun to knit it twice.


Second: Game of Thrones House Stark Fingerless Mitts

These are for the Game of Thrones swap package I put together (which I'll tell you about as soon as a package actually arrives for me and I can do a sent/received post like I did for the Downton Abbey swap). These are my own design, modified from a very basic fingerless mitts pattern. I've done the same sigil on a hat and on an eReader case, so it was just a matter of modifying the stitch count and re-charting it. The grey main colour is Knit Picks Palette in Ash and the sigil colour is Knit Picks Imagination Hand-Painted in the Castle Walls colourway, which screamed Winterfell to me from the moment I saw it.

These were super quick and easy to knit up and my recipient loved them. I'm not really into fingerless mitts (I find them hugely impractical) but I'm thinking about modifying the other designs I have (Targaryen, Lannister, and Night's Watch) into the fingerless mitts too. Someday I'll write up the patterns for actual. I started writing up the hat pattern, but I never finished it. These are super fun and a great way to show your support for various houses. If you're interested, I sometimes list the hats (and may eventually list the eReaders and the fingerless mitts) on my Etsy page. Let me know.

FO(s): High Tea Cuffs and Jabot

Hi all,

I have one totally finished object today (blocked and the ends woven in) and one that is completed, but hasn't been blocked or had the ends woven in, so I figured I'd talk about them together. They are a set, after all.

If you've been following along, you know I've been working on the High Tea Cuffs and Jabot by Andrea Jurgrau from the Unofficial Downton Abbey Knits 2013 for my swap partner for the Subway Knits Downton Abbey swap. Well...they are done. 

The jabot was easy and basically took the lace motif from the knits, applied a second panel of the lace motif that you attached over the top, then knit the scarf in the twisted ribbing for a desired length, then repeated the lace motif. It's a nice construction and very straightforward. Again, I was using the Knit Picks Imagination Hand-Painted Sock Yarn in the Ruby Slippers colourway, and I am no less enamoured with it than I was at the start. It's beautiful yarn and has a really nice hand and just the littlest bit of the alpaca halo. The hand-painting is gorgeous and I think it made a really beautiful end product.

The cuffs were also easy, but because the Imagination yarn (never stops being funny) is fingering weight instead of lace weight, it did require me to do a bit of math and chart fudging. I knit both the mitts and the scarf on a size 3 needle instead of the size 1 called for by the pattern, which meant I got the row gauge right, but not the stitch gauge. I thought I'd calculated my gauge right, but apparently I hadn't because the first time I made the mitts they were far too small to fit any adult-sized hand, so I re-knit them. Thankfully they're a very quick knit and once you're out of the lace section it's just 20 or so rows of the twisted stitch ribbing with a few decrease rows and check points and they go pretty fast. So I re-knit them with 3 pattern repeats instead of the 2 I started with and the 4 called for by the pattern, and they are slightly large on my very tiny hands pre-blocking, so I think they will fit just fine. Here's hoping. The scarf is probably skinnier than it's supposed to be because of the gauge things, but it's working out okay for me so I'm going to leave it. It's a scarf, it doesn't exactly have to "fit" a particular size as long as it's long enough.

So, this part of the swap package is done. Still much to do, but it feels good to have the knitting over with. The added bonus of this project is that I can count it toward the Stitch Red KAL that Geknitics and Knotty Knerd at Knerd Girl Knits are running! Hooray for one project serving two purposes! I love it when things come together like that.

WIP(again): High Tea Cuffs

As anticipated, even after blocking the High Tea Cuffs by Andrea Jurgrau that I recently finished are FAR too small, even for my delicate little wrists, which means they 100% will not fit an adult human being, so I am re-knitting them.

I'm still using the Knit Picks Imagination Hand Painted yarn in the Ruby Slippers colourway and still using the 3.25mm DPNs, I just decided to cast on more stitches. The pattern repeat is 18 stitches and the last time I'd cast on 36. This time, I decided to cast on 54 stitches, although I worry this will make them too big this time around. My swap partner has gotten back to me with their wrist size (which is bigger than mine, but not a LOT bigger than mine), so I 'm going to just knit one of these (they go fast) and see how big it ends up. If it's more than 3cm too big for me then I'm either going to have to scrap the idea of making the matching cuffs and scarf set or I'm going to have to hope that if I knit this on a 2.75mm needle, I can just make up the difference in row gauge by adding rows to the ribbing and that it will still work out okay.

The cuff on the left is the original one I knit with 2 pattern repeats and the one on the right is the new one, just for comparison.

I'm hoping to have these done by the end of the weekend, so here's hoping you'll get a good FO post by next week. Unless it's all too large and has to be re-done yet again and then I finally decide to scrap the project.

FO(ish): Downton Abbey High Tea Cuffs

So, once again, it becomes clear to me that although I keep saying FO Friday, it's really more like FO Saturday or Sunday, or even Monday. We do what we can around here. Anyway, here are the High Tea Cuffs from the Unofficial Downton Abbey Knits 2013 out of Knit Picks Imagination Hand-Painted in Ruby Slippers in their more finished form.

These are only finished in the sense that they're done being knitted the first time. By which I mean these are waaaaaaay too small for my tiny little wrists so there is no way they will fit an actual human being and I'll have to reknit them. I'm unsure if I have to go up another needle size and re-knit the whole thing, or if it's just the part of the ribbing where I listened to the pattern and went down a needle size that screwed it all up. These are the perils of knitting something designed for laceweight yarn on fingering weight yarn and thinking you're good enough to figure out this math.

It doesn't help that the bind off the pattern tells me to use has absolutely no give whatsoever. I mean, right now I can't tell which one I bound off in pattern and which one I used my regular bind off on, so that's hardly the only thing I've got going on here, but it certainly isn't helping.

So...these are done and they're a quick knit and I love them and probably if you're the sort of person who knits with laceweight yarn they're even easier. The pattern is clear and easy to understand. It only gives you charted instructions for the lace pattern though, so if you're the sort of person who prefers to have things written out rather than reading them from a chart, know that you might have to create the written instructions yourself. That and the fact that I'm skeptical about the bindoff are the only issues I have with this.

You'll probably be seeing these again soon when I re-knit them. I'll let you all know if it was the full pattern that I needed to fix or just not dropping a needle size on the ribbing.

WIP Wednesday: High Tea Cuffs

Let me start out here by saying...these are so close to done it hurts! I can almost promise you that pending epic disasters you'll be seeing these again for FO Friday. I know I said that with the sweater and then it didn't happen, but if I can get the few internet things done that I need to do relatively quickly, I may even be able to finish knitting these tonight and get them blocking. Plus they should block much faster than a full worsted weight sweater.

I'm knitting the High Tea Cuffs (and eventually the matching Jabot) for my swap partner in the Subway Knits Downton Abbey swap (shh...don't tell!). The pattern is from the Unofficial Downton Abbey Knits 2013 and actually calls for laceweight (which I do not have and will never have), but I spent the better part of a week and a half swatching and am confident that my new adjusted gauge math works out just fine. I chose to knit them out of the Knit Picks Imagination Hand-Paints in the Ruby Slippers colourway that I had in my stash for a number of reasons. First...I thought the hand-painted nature of the yarn would add interest while still showing off the lace pattern. Second, my swap partner said they like royal colours and I figured Ruby was pretty royal! Third, it's fingering weight, which is a reasonable substitute for a laceweight. Plus the little bit of alpaca in the yarn makes them soft and gives them just a little of the halo. I really like how they're turning out and I hope my swap partner will too.

The only complaint/problem I have so far is that I did the bind-off as instructed in the pattern and it's WAY too tight. If it doesn't fix itself after blocking I'm going to rip it out and re-do the bind off with a stretchier one. I don't want it too stretchy because it should grip the wrist a little bit, but at the same time I can barely get it over my hand and I have tiny little hands/wrists so I figure that's a good sign I should make it bigger.

Stay tuned for more on Friday, I imagine.