Heartbreakingly cute

The Mason-Dixon phase continues! This is the Heartbreakingly Cute Baby Kimono, knit in Sugar and Cream, colorway Something Ombre. I twisted every single purl stitch without realizing it, but I rather like the effect it had on the fabric. This was a new-baby gift for my aunt and uncle's fourth child -- they and their first three children gave me a place to stay last summer when I was working in California.

Leading by example

When she runs out of BABY babies to knit blankets for, my mom takes requests from the bigger babies in the family. For a recent Christmas, she knit me this gorgeous -- and enormous! -- version of her standard basket-weave baby blanket. It's big enough to use as an extra blanket for my queen-size bed! That's a lot of knitting.

The Warshrag Phase

Last October, Mason-Dixon Knitting took over my brain (as it does with most knitters sooner or later). Of course, I had to start with a warshcloth. In fact, the warshcloth urge was so strong that I negotiated my beloved sidekick into stopping at a craft store with me on our way to visit friends 3 hours away. It took me quite some time to realize how deeply this book had embedded itself in my brain: I honestly thought that I had discovered a creative and interesting color combination. Which was true, except for the "discovered" part, since Ann and Kay put the exact same warshrag in their book. Only they got a better picture of it.

Knitted math

About a year ago, I conquered my fear of DPNs forever: I knit a cross-cap projective plane. This was an insane challenging decision for a not-too-experienced knitter, since the trick to knitting a projective plane is that it intersects itself -- parts of the fabric you're creating actually pass through each other. This requires some fiddly knitting on the intersection row. It's a little like double knitting, except with four or five needles to keep track of.

I don't like the finished look of most knitted mathematical objects, like Klein bottle hats, but it is fun to see how knitting makes it possible to create tangible models of things that can't be made correctly from paper or clay. You can't get paper to intersect itself without cutting it up, but two knitted pieces can pass through each other and still be distinct, solid pieces.

This projective plane is even kind of cute -- a colorblocked square -- and if you don't sew all the seams, it has a couple of pockets. My boyfriend uses the tiny one I knitted to hold little notes on his office wall. A bigger one might make a fun potholder. (Since a projective plane, like a Moebius strip, has only one side, your pots are technically always inside such a potholder, but the double layer of fabric would also be convenient in more practical terms.)

I don't seem to have a photo of my projective plane handy, but here's a picture of one created by Mark Shoulson, with a link to his instructions and more cool information about this mathematical object.

The Return of the Knitter: Baby hat adventures!

It's been months and months since I've posted here, which I suppose is appropriate, since it was a good few years between that first scarf and the next thing I finished knitting.

For several years now, my mother's been making baby blankets for her new nieces and nephews and the children of friends. When I was home for Christmas in my second year of graduate school, all that knitting looked so cozy and soothing. When I got back to Maryland, I decided to give knitting another try.


This photo is from January 2006. This browny-red Wool-Ease sock was the first thing I ever knit WITHOUT LADDERS on double-pointed needles. Unfortunately, I had no idea what to do when I got to the heel; trying to wing it, in a new color, in the middle of a department seminar, was not the answer. I had cut the original working yarn, too, and wasn't all that sure how to re-join it, so this sock disappeared back into ball-of-yarn form. Still, I was completely hooked -- knitting in class, while reading or watching TV, any time I could squeeze it in.

I had a better success with a preemie-hat pattern my mother gave me. The yarn -- Sugar & Cream Fiesta Ombre -- was left over from a vain attempt, almost ten years earlier, at finishing a baby sweater. The hat was knit flat, with the top decreases cleverly concealed in garter stitch. I had no idea that seams in knitting were any different from regular sewn seams, but the hat came out looking nice anyway. The pompom was such fun to make!

Unfortunately, preemies' heads are SMALL, my knitting was tight, and my cast-on edge was tighter. This inelastic little hat fit just perfectly on my fist. It was definitely not going to fit the full-term baby it was intended for.

That baby's mother was headed off to Japan, so I knit furiously to finish the corrected version in time for her going-away party. This time, I cast on more stitches, more loosely, in soft, dusty blue acrylic yarn (Caron Simply Soft). I knit this hat in the round, I think, and ribbed it all the way up -- the spiraling caused by the decreases was a fun surprise.


Just as its cousin was tiny, this hat was far, far too big; I could wear it pretty comfortably myself. But Mama K was going away, and the baby might grow into it.


Suddenly, everyone I knew seemed to be having babies! I knit two more baby hats that spring, both in Bernat Baby Cotton. I followed a pattern from About.com to make the yellow tam. When I made the other one, I was trying to design a puffy tam shape from memory, partly inspired by Knitty's berry tart hat. It didn't resemble my imagined hat a bit, but I grew to like the shape I got, and really enjoyed the process of designing and re-designing it.

My first FO

In my benighted youth, I started a few projects and did a lot of sampler-type knitting, both for practice and for the fun and relaxation of it. The first knitted item I definitely remember finishing was an ENORMOUS scarf made out of (I think) Lion Brand Wool-Ease Thick & Quick.

I designed the scarf myself (not that there was much design to it). I usually wear a scarf wrapped over my head instead of a hat -- it's easier than wearing a hat and scarf, and warmer than a hat alone -- and I wanted a scarf that would be wide enough to cover the back of my head when I wore it that way. I also wanted the scarf to be soft and squishy, but reversible and reasonably sophisticated. As I was thinking about this, I noticed that the t-shirt I was wearing was made of knit material, reversible, squishy, but very smooth. After examining it closely, I decided it was K1P1 ribbing. So I took the needles I already had (size 10's) and cast on enough stitches to make a nice wide scarf (this probably took a couple of tries).

I kept knitting until I'd used up most of three skeins, which took me about half a summer's worth of occasional knitting. The scarf was plenty wide and plenty long! Unfortunately, it was also extremely stiff -- I had no idea, then, that changing needle size could change the texture of the finished fabric. At first, I told myself that this undrapeable scarf was lovely; it just wasn't very feminine. For a while, I planned to give it to my dad for Christmas. I did see the light eventually, though. The scarf wasn't bad at all for a first design, but it wasn't really wearable either. Rolled up and tied with a bit of its own yarn, it makes a nice objet d'art for my closet shelf.

Welcome!

This is a place for me to keep track of the various things I've knitted over the years.