steeking

Friday Roundup: A Whole Lotta Knitting

What I’m Knitting

Thanks to the Indie Design Gift-A-Long (still in full swing until the end of the year!), I’ve finished several projects this week!

First, this adorable aviator hat for my son. Seriously though, I don’t know how this kid is so adorable. I had about 12 unbelievably cute photos to choose from here.

Here are the specs on the hat:

Pattern: Jules for Aviators and Explorers, by Gabrielle Danskknit

Yarn: Knit Picks Wool of the Andes Worsted Bare, hand-dyed by none other than my husband! He gave me this yarn a few years ago as a present and I was saving it for a special project. I was worried Ronan would find it too scratchy, but he doesn’t seem to care at all! He loves the hat and keeps insisting on wearing it around the house. Mommy knitter win. :-)

Notes: This is a great pattern—very easy to follow. The designer has a whole range of adorable aviator hats in different styles and yarn weights in her Ravelry store, so it was hard to choose just one! This might be my new go-to gift for baby showers, since the finished hat is so darned cute and the earflaps make it practical for fall and winter babes.

I also finished two more projects this week, from the same pattern. I had decided that the GAL was a great opportunity to try a technique I’ve been avoiding for years—steeking! I started out with two yarns I thought were both 100% wool and knit up this coffee cozy:

It looks all innocent there, but it almost fell apart completely! Turns out one of the yarns I used, despite being exactly the same color as a 100% wool yarn I have in my leftovers stash, was actually mostly acrylic. So when I crocheted the reinforcement and cut the steek, the slippery yarn ends started popping right out of the crochet steek. I only managed to salvage it by stitching all the ends down:

Not pretty.

So, determined to get this steeking thing right, I tried again with actual wool. This time it worked very well!

I need to work on doing the crochet reinforcement properly on the cast-on/BO row so my edges are a little funky, but the ends stayed secure! And it looks a whole lot better on the inside:

The pattern I used was Bucket List Coffee Accessories by Michele Bernstein. I’m happy to have steeking checked off my own knitter’s bucket list!

I’m working on one more GAL pattern, and then I need to switch over to a commissioned secret design project that yarn just arrived for. But hopefully I’ll have another FO to show off next week!

What I’m Cooking

The next recipe up in my Appetite for Reduction cookbook challenge was a roasted root vegetable Thai-style curry. It called for rutabagas and parsnips, which I never use, but I was surprised to find that I quite liked them both. An even bigger surprise—my son LOVED the roasted rutabaga pieces. He probably ate a quarter of the rutabaga all by himself.

I went off cookbook for my weekly meal-for-a-crowd. This is a spaghetti squash lasagna, made with a totally delicious tofu and basil based vegan ricotta. It came out really, really well! I love the idea of using spaghetti squash to healthify lasagna when I’m craving comfort food, so this is definitely going in the “make again” file.

What I’m Reading

I started a new young adult series this week. I’ve read the author’s previous series and I liked them a lot, so it’s no surprise that I’m already halfway through this one and enjoying it!

Blog Week Day 7: Looking Back, Looking Forward 5KCBDAY7

Look back on last year’s Day Seven post. Did any of the techniques, ideas and hopes for the last 12 months that you wrote about ever make it onto the hook or needles?

One year from now, where do you hope your crafting will have taken you to? What new skills, projects and experiences do you hope you might have conquered or tried?

In my Day 7 post from last year , I was hoping to incorporate short rows, steeking, and the contiguous sleeve method into my designs by Blog Week 2014.

Well, I got one out of three. No steeking or contiguous sleeves, but I used short rows in three sweater designs last year.

They’re used to form the cap sleeves in Roanoke:

And again for the sleeve caps on Basia (Ravelry link), a newly-released cardigan from Harrisville Designs (stay tuned for more about Basia later!):

I also used short rows to form a snuggly shawl collar on a cozy long cardigan, but its release got delayed until this fall, so you’ll have to wait a while to see that one.

I do have an idea brewing for a steeked vest, so that may be coming up soon. I’m not sure about the contiguous sleeves, though… looking at them again, I’m not quite as much in love with this method as I was at this time last year.

As for goals, I’d like to release my first collection of baby/child garments and accessories this fall. I’ve got a good start on it already:

Here’s to another successful Knitting and Crochet Blog Week! Like the past two I’ve done, it’s been a little challenging to blog every day, but also fun to think outside my usual blogging box. It’s also fascinating to look back on the posts from previous years and see how far I’ve come as a crafter and a designer. I’m interested to see where the next year takes me!

Day 7, Looking Forward: 4KCBWDAY7

Here we are at the end of Knitting and Crochet Blog Week already! Feels like it went by really quickly this year. Guess I must be getting used to this blogging thing. :-)

Today’s prompt asks us to look forward. What new skills, projects and experiences do we hope we might have conquered or tried?

I have three skills I’d like to have incorporated into my designs by the time Knitting and Crochet Blog Week 2014 rolls around.

First, short rows. They are a special kind of knitting magic. You can use them to shape shawl collars, as I did in this little Baby Sophisticate I knit for a friend:

You can use them for bust shaping, which is nice for those of us who are well-endowed but prefer to avoid the giant-sack look. The Shapely Tank by Joan McGowan-Michael is a great example of this:

And you can also use short rows to knit top-down, set-in sleeves in the round, which I think is especially cool. You can see an example here in the FlyAway Hoodie pattern by the phenomenally talented Joji Locatelli:

The next thing I want to incorporate into a design in the next year is steeking. I’ve never done any steeking before, but the idea both terrifies and intrigues me!

And finally, I’d really like to try out the contiguous method of top-down sweater knitting, as developed by Susie Meyers (SusieM on Ravelry). If you’re not familiar with this method, do check it out! It’s an ingenious way to knit a set-in type of sleeve in one piece with the body of a sweater. Here’s an example, Papillon by Svetlana Volkova:

Keep an eye on my blog to see if I manage to incorporate any of these design elements into upcoming patterns!

Thank you all for making Knitting and Crochet Blog Week so much fun. I found several new blogs to follow and have really enjoyed reading all your nice comments. :-)