1Hat, 2Hat, Peel an Orange and Simmer!

The red skullcap for Steve is done! He seems pretty excited by it, as noted in the thumbs-up picture. =)

I think if I had made it just about an inch longer, it would have covered his ears nicely, but I'm not sure if it's even possible to fix that kind of an error, since you knit from the bottom up, closing it at the top. If anyone has any suggestions on whether it's possible to add a few more rows onto the bottom at this point, let me know! The pattern can be found here at Woolly Wormhead.

One of my favorite holiday memories was simmering orange peels on the stove with cloves. I'm not sure how my mom came up with the idea to do this, or if she learned it from my grandmother, but it's one of the best ways to get an incredible Christmas-y smell in your house! If you associate the smell of Christmas with oranges, I guess!

Anyways, I bought us a box of Clementines (the smaller sweeter type of oranges) the other day at Costco. As soon as we were done devouring at least one of them, we started a small pot on the stove with the peel in it and a bit of water, just enough to cover the rinds. Since we didn't have any cloves around, Steve suggested nutmeg and vanilla extract. Simmering on the stove it smelled delicious and quickly filled up our small apartment with it's warm scent!


It's something you can get pretty creative with. Steve decided he wanted to try tossing in some dried cranberries and cinnamon in the next batch, and YUM, did that ever smell delicious too! Not to mention, it looks pretty in the pot!


I've also finally started on the Terry Matz Chevron Hat.
An arty picture (for fun) next to the gorgeous quilt my mom made. And my plants. =)


I have to admit when I started there was a bit of confusion on the sl1, k1, and then what do you do with the stitch you slipped? I was swinging it over the knit stitch, but then I was knitting the slip stitch together with the next stitch instead of just letting it fall like you're supposed to. So, I wasn't taking it off the left needle. Once I realized the error of my ways, I finished out the row like that (because I didn't want it to be asymmetrical!), but was sure to start the next one correctly. I am starting to see the chevrons appear, but hope they become a bit more defined the further along I get! I'm loving the blue and white variegated yarn though!

Hopefully everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I'm off to start on Christmas cards!

Socks and Booties and Toesy Warmers All Around!

There was an awesome DIY Trunk Show in my old neighborhood this weekend that I attended with my good friend Vel. We are both 'wanna-be' crafters, taking baby steps when we have the time to complete projects, and both probably think our jobs get in the way of these more fun pursuits. There were all sorts of cool people there with their fun items. Lots of knitters and bag-makers, jewelry makers, and even a fun guy who made coasters out of rocks! But 'due' to (pun intended) a pregnant friend at work, I have been keeping my eyes open for the perfect baby gift for her. I knew I had found it when I came across these adorable little webbed booties!

Not only did she sell me the booties, but I also got the pattern (which also can be made into little orange/yellow ducky feet), and then she offered to give me yarn to make another pair of froggy feet! The designer is Jen, and her lable is Blue Canary Creations. AREN'T THEY JUST THE CUTEST LITTLE THINGS YOU'VE EVER SEEN? I about squeeled when I saw them.

In other news, which is totally unrelated, except for the fact that it sort of has to do with feet as well, I think I may have found the photo of Suki I want to submit to StuffOnMyCat.com :

This is one of her favorite spots...inside Steve's sock 'drawer'. Those are all clean socks. But they won't be for long. It's better than having cat fur all over his clothes though!

Binging on Hats!

So since someone has a birthday coming up, and also because I had so much fun making my last/first hat, I decided my next project would be a hat for Steve. I gave him a few choices of different patterns, of which he picked out this fine little number:

There's a yarn shop a hop, skip and a jump from the train station he picks me up at nightly, and so we stopped there on our way home early last week so he could pick out the color of yarn he wanted. Since it had to be of a certain "chunky" weight, the colors were a bit limited to choose from, but we actually found one that looks very similar to the pattern: Addrienne Vittadini Trina in color 109. It's a mixture of 55% Merino Wool, 35% Microfiber, and 10% Cashmere. Super soft and stretchy!
I'm a bit further along than the picture alludes to, since it was taken a few days ago, but not much. Yesterday I had to rip out about 2 1/2" because I accidentally K2 instead of P2. Taking the circular needles out and putting them back in was pretty difficult, but I got through it. I discovered one other tiny error long after I had started restitching....at which point I just decided the hell with it! It's good enough...anything else I find will just add a little bit of character!

Once I'm done with Steve's hat, I've picked one to make for yours truly. It is the Terry Matz Chevron Hat.

I found this divine blue and white variegated yarn to make it with:
Stay tuned for pics of the completed noggin' covers!

Pumpkin Hat a.k.a. 'Halloweenie Beanie'

It has been SO LONG since my last post! The main reason for this has been because I just don't do that many crafty things in the summer. It just seems like my time is better spent outdoors enjoying the warm weather with friends than indoors, by myself, working on projects.

That being said, Fall is here and I have been bitten by the knitting bug again! There's just something about cold weather that makes me want to work with soft yarn. Awhile back, I found this lovely little pattern for a pumpkin hat on Crazy Aunt Purl's site http://www.crazyauntpurl.com/archives/2007/10/reversible_
knit.php. I thought it was so cute, but didn't know when or where I would wear a hat that looks like a pumpkin! Of course, I didn't need to wait long until the third annual Crazy Hat Bar Crawl came around and two weeks before the event I decided that I would make this lil ol' punkin' hat just for that occasion!

At Witt's, the first bar on the crawl.

My pumpkin getting some sun.

As you can see, my hat does not look like the one in CAP's pattern. I swear I followed all the directions correctly, but I think somewhere along the way I must've missed something. Or my stitches were off way in the beginning - because how else would I have gotten a totally different pattern? I LOVE MY HAT, however, I am going to have to get better at following the patterns.

In the middle of transferring stitches from circular needles to the double-pointed ones (DPNs)....

...and the successful completion of the transfer! I just stitched away. CAP wrote that for her first few times with DPNs she "slipped the stitches off my circs and onto my double-points without knitting them, evenly distributing stitches over the three dpns." I'm kinda proud of myself for just diving in and knitting while transferring. Of course, since I was finishing this hat the day of the bar crawl, I couldn't really afford to take any extra time. This was probably a good thing. I work well under pressure!

I had a lot more fun using the circular needles and the DPNs than I thought I would. I think my next project will be another hat! I would love to learn how to make really funky hats like these:

http://www.diynetwork.com/diy/na_knitting/article/0,2025,DIY_14141_5261873,00.html

The Scarf is Not Flowering....but the Amaryllis Bulb Is!

So sorry for the delay in postings! I wish I could say a lot has happened on the scarf, but it is taking me a bit longer than I had wished, as you can see!

I thought that I would have more done by now, but I think if I want a project like this to go faster, I am going to have to learn the continental style. I may also have to start taking the train to work more often to give myself a few more hours a day to work on this!

This is the Amaryllis bulb that Steve's Aunt Sue gave us for Christmas. It's finally flowering! Isn't it pretty?

I realize that this posting is mostly just pictures, but it's late and I should get to sleep! I regret to say I watched a movie tonight but didn't knit at all while watching it. "The Breakup", with Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn, while not being that great of a movie, does it's job as a light romantic comedy. It really is just a really long commercial for Chicago! Also, if anyone has seen HERO's or What About Brian - no spoilers, please! They are Tivo'd and ready to go for tomorrow! What did I do before TiVo?

Since the knitting picture leaves something to be desired, I will leave you with what I consider to be one of the most hilarious things I have seen in a long time. This is just a clip of the highlights, I believe the entire episode can be found on YouTube. Watch this: http://www.youtube.com/v/Ws8QOF6x4rc

È rifinito!

I love the internet. You can go to Dictionary.com and translate any text about 24 different ways. I mean, this kind of stuff used to be hard. You used to actually have to crack a book for this, and putting together a sentence would take several minutes. Now, we're down to SECONDS. Three words: internet = awesome.

Anyways, here's the finished product! Let me know what you think. Here are the pretty buttons I sewed on:


I also added a little red leather button closure at the top. It needed some type of a closure if I was actually going to use it.

Ah ha!

The other night I finally figured out how to "bind off" on the fabric for my cablenon purse. The purse had been sitting on the pretty red knitting needle, last row complete, for about 2-3 weeks now. I had attempted to understand the diagrams of binding off before, but sometimes you just have to take a break from something and come back to it and it will make more sense. I also have been Tivo'ing the HGTV network's show, Knitty Gritty and watching a lot of that lately. I think that just gave me a feel for how to read the diagrams in a fresh way. That show is awesome!

Cable-knit Purse?

My first knitting project! After it's completed, it will be folded in half, a lining will be sewn in, and I will stitch it onto a cute set of wooden handles. I admit, the cables are a bit hard to see, and I don't think I can really blame it on the color of the yarn. =)

Hello!

Inspired by all of the very crafty blogs I have seen out there, I have decided it would be fun to start one myself! Hopefully this will help keep me motivated and on track with some of my projects that otherwise tend to get forgotten somehow. While the name of the blog is Suki Knits, that is really only because I wanted to incorporate a picture of my cat with knitting needles in the headline somewhere. =) There will be other things besides knitting crafts on here. Knitting just happens to be my most recent adventure in the DIY arts!