A Star is Born

I have for you today two more Christmas items I actually made over the holidays this year.

The first is an ornament ball crocheted out of 34 gauge craft wire (two strands). The beads were prestrung on the wire and added after every other stitch.

I used a very simple ball pattern from Dragonfaeriee Crochets, originally intended for children or pet toys. Instead of doing it in two halves and sewing it together, as the pattern says, I made it one piece. I could get away with that because I wasn't stuffing it with anything.

I was hoping the ball would be a little more malleable, but it's not too bad a shape--not quite sphere, but close enough. (Next time I'll think about stretching it over a clear glass ball if I want it to be more "perfect.")

It was a quick project that I finished in a "bonus" afternoon when a flight I was supposed to meet was canceled. Working with wire is always a little fussy but no worse than some fussy yarns I've worked with!

The second project was a little more involved (to grossly understate the situation). It certainly took more time, for one thing. And it had a lot more shaping and fiddly work. But the pattern caught my eye just at the right time to take advantage of some clearance yarn and...ta da! a star is born!

It is a dodecahedron, (in the "small" stellated version according to Wiki); that is, a twelve pointed star. How could that not catch my eye, right?

The pattern is by the prolific Norah Gaughan, well written and easy to follow. Each point is made in the identical way and joined as you go by picking up stitches off of previously made points. There's a lot of casting on, however, and it all goes in fits and starts as each point is quick, but there are 12 of them to do.

Things zip along like holiday traffic (fast in between bouts of stop and go) until you get finished the penultimate point. Then you have to stop and stuff:
Then you have to figure out how you're going to pick up all the stitches around the opening for the final point.
Things are a little stretched out and although it is quite straight forward, that doesn't mean it's simple to actually do!

But I managed. Then you proceed to knit the final point, stopping occasionally to stuff it while you still have the chance.
(That opening is only going to get smaller.)
Until finally, the point is knit; the star is stuffed; and you are holding a perfect 12 pointed star in your hand:
It really came out great.

Project Stats
Started: 12 Dec 09
Finished: 2 Jan 10
Pattern: Celeste (free)
Materials: Blue Sky Alpacas Alpaca & Silk (color 144), 1.2 skeins @ $7.50/eaI'm very happy I used a "luxury" yarn for the star--it is a tree-topper after all and should be worthy of that position of honour. The silk gives it a very nice sheen without being as gaudy as actual sparkles!

I was planning to just lay the star on the top of the tree next year (removing the center spike that's usually there), but Troy has plans for suspending it from the ceiling so it hangs just above the tree. Should be nice.

I haven't had a tree in years, so this will be a nice incentive to get going on it next year.

Good Things...Little Packages

Have you been wondering what happened to the little projects I wrote about starting in this post? (Be polite: say, "Yes," even if you have no idea what I'm talking about.)

I have finished the delicate pink cotton bib (pattern here):

It was a fun project, especially good for "travel knitting." I think I'll add a couple more for the gift. Not the kind of bib I think I would enjoy using (on a child--not myself), but I assume perfect for the person who likes the very similar cotton knit washclothes everyone's doing these days. I certainly hope the person I give it to is such a person. What's great about them is that the bib can protect the baby's clothing during dinner and then afterward be dampened and used to wipe off hands and face as needed. Then it's time for the laundry...

The other small project was the toy ball in Toronto Maple Leaf colours:

Now this was really fun. Lots of short rows and knitting "backwards."

The pattern is brilliant in how it works to achieve the swirls. It could be written better, but it gives you a really good start to getting this done.

The knitters out there can see how the rows line up horizontally in the following picture:

So even though initially it seems you might knit along the length of the stripes, you actually knit across them with short rows. "Short rows" are where you stop knitting before finishing the row and then turn around and go the other way. It's a very effective way to shape knitting into 3D shapes. In this case it also means you do a lot of short rows of only 9 or 10 stitches. Turning a project around that often can be a real pain so I prefer to knit "backwards" (moving left to right). It's a little more awkward, but still more convenient and efficient than turning so often. I've included a short video of knitting backwards in case you want to try it yourself.

Go forth and experiment!

What's on Your Needles?

That's a common question among knitters and thread topic on discussion boards. Having just finished two major projects (the Snowflake Illusion Blanket and one other I will post soon), this morning I spent some time preparing for and starting a couple projects. They're smaller and easy to pack and carry along. (Ie. what I call "travel knitting.")

1. A cotton bib for some lucky baby who's expected this year.

It will turn into a diamond shape, getting wider and wider until it starts to get narrower and narrower. They're are lots of patterns out there, but I liked the shape of this one, and how the straps flow naturally from that shape and then around the neck. The pattern was written up by Merin and posted on her blog here. I found it on Ravelry.

I will add that there was another pattern that I liked a lot but it was $3. I probably could have figured out the pattern just from the pictures, but decided in this case that would be close enough to stealing not to do it. I think knitting has a lot of grey area of what's actually protected, what's original, etc. But in this case I didn't do it. It didn't hurt that it was the same designer that put up a wonderful shawl pattern on knitty.com (for free) I plan on making as soon as I convince myself that I would wear it.

2. A toy ball. Knit up with swirling colours and stuffed. In one way, not a very practical gift, but in another, kids have to play with something! And knitted fabric is really easy for little hands to grip and hold. These colours were chosen because they resemble the Toronto Maple Leaf colours. (Just a little hint to who the recipient will be.)

And 3. I'm still plugging away at my toe-up socks. I think last time I posted about them, I was still working on the swatch. I've gotten a little further since then:
I'm following Kristin Bellehumeur's very excellent tutorial. Or mostly following. (It is a "tutorial" for making your own socks, not a "pattern," so I am allowing myself some leeway.) I couldn't find it when I was ready to cast on, so I followed another pattern and used a different number of stitches. The tutorial said to increase to 64 sts which matched what I had swatched, but it was way too big. So I frogged back to 44 sts. And even though by measuring this should be almost 2 inches too narrow, it fits great. So I'm going with it. (Apparently socks need some stretch.)

I did follow the tutorial for the short row heel, and I invite you to admire it:
You can see it sort of straining across the top of my foot (diagonal line from the heel) and this is pretty typical for short row heels as far as I've read. But it was a good tutorial and I wanted to follow it. I have in mind another tutorial to show toe-up heel flaps, but I will worry about that in the next pair. Meanwhile, these are fitting well, and feel great, so I think that is the main thing.

My wool is holding up well. I was...well...I was somewhere between "curious" and "concerned" about how the wool would stand up because of all the breakages I had while unravelling it. But it wound up into a ball with no troubles, and even when I had to frog back the toe the wool held up like a champ. (Phew.) It also seems that I will have plenty of wool which was another not-quite concern that I had.

Last night I gave myself some extra knitting time after work by leaving my car lights on at lunch. (Oops!) As I waited for my ever-helpful hubby to show up, I looked all the 2x2 ribbing I have to do for the cuff square in the face. And I couldn't do it. So I've added a little twist to the rib:

I will put that in every four rows moving the twist to the next rib to the right each time. So it will sort of make a spiral around my leg. It should spiral twice before I get them long enough. I thought I was going to just make some very basic socks so I could try out the pattern/method before getting fancier, but it's just too much plainness. Having something (anything) go on in your knitting every 4 or 6 rows--be it a colour change, a cable, or some other pattern--is a great tedium buster. And after knitting for 30 minutes, being able to look back and say, "Oh, I did 3 twists" or two stripes or whatever, is so much better than just looking at an ocean of sameness and not being able to see your progress. All part of eating the elephant one bite at a time, I guess.

And now that I have lots of knitting ready to take with me, I guess I have to give it up at home for a time and get to things like laundry, cooking, and doing the taxes...

More Christmas: Ornaments

A dear friend wanted to do an ornament exchange at a Christmas party and this got the balls rolling, so to speak. The idea didn't actually pan out for that party, but it did get me inspired to make a few ornaments from a Vogue Knitting pattern I had seen...somewhere...hmmm... Yes, I found the pattern in the Holiday 2007 issue.

The balls are pretty quick knits, but still about 2 hours each. And that's plain and simple; no beading, special patterns or striping. I had some 3" styrofoam balls sitting around so I adapted the number of stitches and went to town. Ok, I did make a few changes. If you follow the link to the pattern, you'll notice that the knitting is not very smooth; it's all bunched up where it gathers at the top and bottom: this will never do! So 1. I used a crochet cast on so I could have live stitches and gather each stitch up (instead of every 4 stitches like the pattern called for); and 2. I ribbed for the first and last 5 rows so it would more naturally pull together. It makes the balls slightly bulkier there, but much smoother. A worthwhile trade off in my mind.

The first ball was done straight and simple with a red sparkly yarn I had left over from an aunt's "Red Hat Society" Hat I made her a few years ago. Observant readers will notice it's the same yarn I used for the Joy Pompom Hairband. Whatever you might say about its rather hideous appearance as a yarn, it performs beautifully as a Christmas ball.

With that success under my belt, I went a little fancier on the next one. You see, my friend had been rapsodizing about some chocolate brown Christmas balls she had seen in the store, and I happen to have some chocolate brown yarn interwoven with gold sparkles. (Left over from a beautiful Vogue pattern for a sleeveless sweater which turned out to flatter me not in the least.) And I also happen to have some leftover gold lame (yes the said same from the Christmas postcard). So I knit the pattern up but added a few rows of YOs [yarn overs] to make some peak-a-boo holes. Then I covered the styrofoam ball with strips of the lame pinned into place before covering the whole thing with the knitting. It all worked out great:

Next up was an attempt with some beads for sparkle. I needed some sock yarn which was all the excuse I needed to visit my favourite Red Purl. Amy had some sock yarn on sale so I chose 2 colours: the closest to red (really a taupe) and a variegated green. So far I got the beads strung on the taupe and a ball knitted up. The bead stripes aren't quite centered but I can pretend that was a design feature.

And this still leaves the green yarn to play with. Haven't quite gotten to it yet though. Too many Christmas parties and other activities!

Have fun decorating your place for the holidays!