MagKnits

Back in the fall, I decided that I was going to knit Nikki an owl hat.  I began looking for patterns but every single one was for babies, which wouldn’t do at all.  Finally, I found a photo of one I really liked, but couldn’t find the pattern for the life of me.

No matter.

I decided that I would try to just knit the hat myself by looking at it, which was a complete fail.  Then I just got a pattern for a basic earflap hat and adding the embellishment myself.  2 hours later, it was done.  I really like how it came out, even if it is huge and floppy.

I bought TARDIS colored yarn yesterday.  I am inexplicably excited about that fact.

This blanket.  Where to begin?

I made it for one of my sister’s co-workers (a different sister/co-worker than this one) for her new baby girl.  When Colleen commissioned me to make it, I didn’t realize how much of a daunting task I was getting myself into.  I found the pattern for the hexagons on Ravelry and made up my own color pattern, gauge, and layout using Lion Brand Baby’s First (a lucious velour-feeling wool that has a tendency to unravel, making the multiple plies quite obvious at certain times, but not all).  27 hexagons and 108 color changes later, I was done.

The biggest thing was weaving in those freaking ends.  If I had to estimate, I’d venture to say that it took me longer to weave all of them in than it took to actually crochet the blanket. I wanted to shoot myself in the foot.  I mean, just look at how many there were:

I’ve never made anything with as many color switches, so I didn’t understand quite how long it would take.  Now I know.

I fell in love with Doctor Who in December.  Yes, I know: I’m relatively late to the party.  My friend Cara kept prodding me to watch it, and randomly one night I decided to see if they had it on Netflix.  The rest is history.

Cara’s birthday is January 23, so while I was home for break I was thinking about what to get/make her for this momentous occasion.  I was on a random website relating to Doctor Who when on the sidebar there was a link for Doctor Who knitting and crocheting patterns.  “WHAT?!” I thought. “THOSE EXIST?!”  The answer was yes, and there were a lot of them.  Eventually I came across a pattern for a crocheted Doctor, a version of David Tennant’s tenth reincarnation.  I knew I had to make it for her.

The result is above.  I’m so happy with how it turned out.  It took so much work, but it was very worth it.  I loved seeing it come together bit by bit.  It was so much fun, and was the first stuffed knitting/crochet project I had ever done - and it opened up an entire new world of pattern choices when I realized I loved doing it!

The pattern is here if any of you are Doctor Who lovers and want to try making one yourself.  :)

Here’s another hat that I finished this summer.  I made it for my friend Alina’s 20th birthday.  I love love love this pattern, Insou by Berrocco.  I’m admittedly obsessed with knitting cables and this one is a braided cable pattern which I immediately fell in love with.  I used Caron Dazzleaire.

It’s always awkward trying to get photos of yourself wearing hats, so I had to contort my body to get the first one.  The second two are close-ups to see the stitching and the crocheted flower, but the colors in those photos are way off.  The closest color is the last photo, in which I’m wearing the hat even though that’s Alina sitting in the middle next to me.  (Oh, and Alina and Nate, if you ever see this post, I apologize for the photo in advance…)

I need to make another one of these hats really soon.

Here’s another hat that I finished recently.  I bought this wool from one of the yarn shops I frequent down here in DC, Knit and Stitch = Bliss in Bethesda, Maryland.  It was a semi-splurge buy.  The yarn itself wasn’t too expensive, but I bought it when I specifically told myself not to buy anything.  Oh, well!

It’s made of Berrocco Ultra Alpaca (one of my favorite yarns) from a pattern that I found for free at my yarn store back home.

I made this hat last night.  It was about 2am and I really didn’t want to do my history reading, so I began looking up patterns on Ravelry and came across this one (links to Ravelry, but it is available on the Rowan yarns site), and it only took me a little over an hour!  It called for fairisle with two yarns, but I only had the one I wanted to use, so I just continued stockinette stitch where the fairisle would be.

I used Austermann Torino.  I bought a couple skeins of it a few years ago when it was in the sale bin at my local yarn shop.  It’s such an interesting and eclectic wool, but everything I’ve tried to knit up with it has never looked right.  I finally decided to just go with it for a hat, and I really enjoy how it turned out!

I edged the entire thing with a single crochet and when I go home for Thanksgiving, I’m going to buy some fleece to line it.  It’s just a little too thin to be a good warm winter hat with just the yarn itself.

Here is the finished product of the bear I made for my friend’s graduation!  I knitted a gown to go with it, but I was knitting with a different gauge then the pattern called for and failed to remember that for the gown, causing it to be humongous.  So I nixed the gown completely and stitched the gold sash right to the bear.  Carly was in the Phi Kappa Phi Honors Society, so that’s what they Greek letters are about, and she wore lots of ropes, but I chose three to braid together for the bear.

So cute and I want to make one for myself now!

Back in February, Hannah asked me to make something for her nephew’s first birthday.  She told me that her brother and sister love homemade things and that they would love to get something that someone had made by hand.  After much searching, she came up with a pattern for this elephant, Flo.  When I went home for Spring Break, I bought all of the wool for it and started making it.

It took way longer than I thought it would.

I knitted it mainly while sitting at my desk at work (my boss and co-workers enjoyed seeing my progress) but by the time the end of the semester came along, it was clear that I wasn’t going to have it done in time for her to take back home with her.  I promised that I would finished it as soon as I could and send it off to Los Angeles when it was done.

Above is the finished result.  I love how it turned out and am contemplating making one for myself when I have time!  It took a while to make, but I’m sure it would have been much shorter had I not been in school at the same time!

I made the elephant with Cascade Yarns 220 Quatro in color 5019 using size 7 needles.

I just discovered this adorable shirt from Ravelry.com.  It’s a maternity shirt that has a ball of yarn and “wip” (“work in progress”) on the belly.  I totally want this when I’m expecting a baby!

Click through for the site.  Will only work for Ravelry members.