Birthdays - Scarf and Afghan.

So, this post is a birthday post - I'm combining a scarf I made for Kendra's birthday in February, an afghan I finished for my grandmother's birthday in March, and some slippers I just finished for Angela's birthday in early June.

The scarf was a nice, simple knitting project with super soft yarn I found at In The Making - a yarn store in Cahaba Heights. The pattern was free with the purchase of yarn - they had a great scarf display in the winter with many different yarns knitted up and labeled with yarn and pattern - many of the patterns were free which is how I found this one. I love this yarn - so sorry I'm so disorganized, but I did actually get up and look for the yarn tag so I could post the info - can't find it. I promise to be better about this in the future - keeping track of yarn and fabric stats with every project so I can post details. The yarn is bulky, super soft, and hand-dyed - very rich, warm colors. It was such a quick project that I actually delivered on time for the birthday and just in time for her to take it on her birthday NYC trip. :)

The afghan squares are from the PBS show Knit and Crochet Now. The link is to their website where they provide all patterns from the show for free. They have either a knitted or crochet square every week to eventually make up an entire afghan. I printed the pattern for the whole afghan (last year's), then picked four or five of the squares I really liked and repeated them with the colorways mixed up some. I wasn't crazy about every square in the blanket, so that was my solution. I really liked the fancy edging from this pattern, but I ended up shorting it a round, since I was out of time. I would apologize for this blurry and not-so-flattering photo of my grandmother with her new afghan, but she's still so cute blurry and un-smiling that I'm sure noone will mind. ;) I didn't get a photo before taking it to her for her big birthday bash, so this pic is from my sister's fancy phone. I cut it so close with time that I was embroidering and sewing in a fabric tag on the plane. Ha!

I LOVE these slippers. Saw them on the PurlBee blog (from Purl Soho) and knew I wanted to make them for Ang's birthday. I'll eventually make some for myself. They didn't take too long to make - it was fun to finish each of the granny square sets then seam them all together. The arrangement was a bit tricky and I ended up having to make a little sketch for myself to clear up my confusion, but not sure if my doodling would help anyone else. The instructions on the blog were very good, but I still had trouble visualizing. Wahoo! I actually have these yarn tags - three colorways from Manos del Uruguay (Wool Clasica), colors: Q (blue), 68, goldish-green, and 57 (fuchsia).

Handwarmers.

While looking for handwarmer patterns, I stumbled across this blog by an Italian chick who has quite the handwarmer obsession. I love her designs and really appreciate that she shares the patterns. She also sells handwarmers in her Etsy shop for those that don't care to or don't have the time to make their own. Both of the handwarmer styles I tried for Christmas gifts this year were using or based on her patterns, which can be found in the Free Patterns section of her Creative Yarn blog.

The first pic is of Angela's Christmas present this past year - they're a knit/crochet combo pattern that has a soft, fuzzy mohair for the knitted, cuff portion and a mid-weight yarn for the hand portion. The other pics are of the style I made these for Meg and Jules. It's a straight knitting pattern working mostly in a take on my favorite stitch - she's calling the double moss (aka seed) stitch. Both patterns involve knitting/crocheting a rectangle, then sewing together lengthwise to make a seam and leaving a gap in seam stitches for the thumb.

I'll admit that it took me a couple of months this past fall to really figure out handwarmers. I initially tried increasing and decreasing to make them more fitted and struggled with the weight, doubling light-weight yarns or using a heavier weight, then experimented with smaller vs larger hooks. With the to-shape-or-not-to-shape question, I decided on not, since most yarns have enough stretch to make them fit nicely. The thicker the yarn, though, the more it might be nicer to have some shaping, since the fabric won't hang as nicely. For Meg and Jules, I ended up doubling hand-dyed, sock weight yarn from Kitchen Sink Dyeworks. KSD is owned by Mercedes, who used to own Knit Nouveau in Homewood - was my favorite yarn shop. She's online only now and devotes most of her time to hand-dying wool.

I'm not always (ok, rarely) good about taking pics before I send gifts, so the best I came up with for the Meg/Jules style were these pics of us goofing off. One is of Meg (donning handwarmers) and me at our Elementary School... oh, the nastalgia - we all walked there from my grandmother's house. The other is of Jules stylin' it up with her handwarmers when they were on a hike. Oh yeah. There isn't a long handwarmer season in Phoenix, but these globetrotting girls will have plenty of handwarmer appropriate weather in other places.