red fraggle

i love halloween. here are some pics of more knit accessories.



fraggle hat: this was knit in the round on size 10 needles. i cast on 88 stitches. starting with ten rows of orange and yellow held together. then 30 rows of red (one strand). next came the decreases. i went for two seams, so four decreases every round, on two sides. with stitch markers at the center, it looked like this: odd rounds: k2tog, *marker*, ssk even rounds: k2tog, k, *marker*, k ssk the little pipes supporting the pom poms were made by casting 10 stitches on size 10 needles of orange and yellow held together. knit 6 rows. break yarn leaving 1' tail. draw through open stitches. sew side seams together with yarn tail from casting on. attach to hat on seams, leaving drawstring bit facing out. pom poms were made by wrapping red yarn around a DVD case the long way 50 times (i find it best to lay a strand of yarn across the side before wrapping, otherwise it can be a bitch to keep the threads in a tassel even). this was attached to the hat through the pipes, and then the pipes were drawn tight and tied up.



fraggle tail: super easy. i cast about 60 stitches of orange and yellow yarn held together onto a size 13 needle. knit four rows. broke yarn, leaving a 2 yd tail. threaded a tapestry needle, and joined stitches still on needle to cast on edge. then wrapped red yard around the short side of a DVD case 50 times and snipped for the fuzzy bit at the end. the whole thing took less time than an episode of south park.

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here's waldo

though some people say it's christmas, halloween is definitely the most wonderful time of the year. people get all dressed up, put on alternate personas, and get fa-schnickered. personally, i always get really excited about costume making. and this year, with knitting under my belt, i went a little crazy.
here we have the crazy. i made waldo. the vest was simple off a pattern for a WWII sweatervest. i was actually pretty good about following the pattern, aside from the obvious stripes. other than that, i only ribbed one inch at the bottom, and didn't sew up the bottom 2" of seam. (i hate gathered things). also, the 1" of ribbing at the sleeves was done in red on the white rows, for a ringer shirt type of feel. the hat was knit in the round in a 2x2 rib knit. Co 80 st, knit 35 rows red, 35 rows white, then decrease 6 st every other round. i decreased next to the ribs, and am not sure how i feel about the look. but it worked for the occasion. see how the center rib pops out a bit and the side ones branch off like...er...branches? i don't love it. and now for the rating...

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guest crafting

sometimes a webcomic will have a guest artist. sometimes a blog will have a guest writer. knitten ninja is having a guest crafting. for this entry, no needles were used. but it's still pretty crafty.
i was recently faced with the challenge of a birthday gift. as last year i presented the recipient with a knit jock strap, it was a tough thing to outdo. but sticking with the underwear theme was clearly necessary. so, here is the underwear.

please note the brand name, "4him". *chuckle* but all in all, fairly unassuming. so these undies were crafted as follows.
the first was bedazzled. from this pair we learn an important lesson. don't drink and bedazzle. the damn arrow looks like a lightning bolt.
the next pair fared much better. this involved iron-on letters.
amusing. but wait, it gets better...
now that, that's something of which i'm proud.
finally, another iron-on. i think these speak for themself. due to the non-knitty nature of this enterprise, no ninjas or stars will be used in the rating of this entry.

yarn on the cheap

so i's po'. and i will proudly admit that i often get my yarn at the dollar store. cheap vibrantly bright and mildly itchy acrylic. i love it. i will not say which dollar store, otherwise one of y'all in the city is going to buy all the pink and leave me with nothing left to knit. and that would just be plain sad.

i was shopping at the dollar store the other day. now this is your standard run of the mill dollar store, except in one respect. it has decent knitting supplies. not good knitting supplies, mind you, but ones that don't suck to use. and these, oddly enough, are the only things in the store not a dollar. go figure. and because of this special high-value $1.99 status, they live behind the register.

so i stand at the register with a ginormous hank of fire engine red yarn, needing appropriate needles. "do you have size 8 needles?" i ask the woman at the register. she is probably about forty five, but has lived the kind of life that makes her look over fifty. and some sort of slavic. i'd guess ukranian. "what?" she takes down an 8mm needle. "no no no...size eight." this went on for a while, as she proceeded to pull down every set of needles they had. and a few crochet hooks. i debated her grasp on not only knitting, but the english language. "no...look...this size" and i pull out my hat. it's being knit in the round on size 7 needles, maybe halfway through. "oooh!!! you do yarning!" i admit that yes, yes i do. "how do you knit? like this?" and proceeds to demonstrate amazingly competent english and continental styles. i showed her how i knit. by this point i think the woman behind me could sense her excitement. oh, yeah, there's a woman behind me. That Woman who stands wAy Too close. so TWAT is butting up against me as i happily chat with my newfound doppleganger. upon realizing that i do yarning, she shows be the full bounty of her wares. stitch markers, needles, and the like. TWAT holds up the shampoo she would like to purchase, drops a dollar, and leaves. this, as you may notice, is not actually the correct price when tax is figured in. but my nordic kindred does not care. she also does not have size 8 needles, but we agree that size 9 will most likely suffice. she became particularly excited about stitchholders. (if you don't knit, trust me, they're awesome. a kind of hybrid between a bookmark and a safety pin.) i sadly admit that i am not yet that advanced. she frowns, and tells me they'll still be up there right on those hooks when i get that advanced.

she's right. and i can't wait.

[update: i used a stitch holder. they are as awesome as i had suspected.]

nothing ventured, etc.

unfortunately, sometimes the contrapositive is true. actually, i am fairly certain that is not at all what i am trying to say. but i really love that word. point is, sometimes you try something new and fail miserably. case in point: after finishing up my skully wristwarmers i was on a creative high. i wanted to try new and dangerous things with my needles. so i tried another intarsia pattern. i think i chose unwisely.

in this photo, the wristwarmer clearly has a pattern. what that pattern may be is a bit hard to comprehend. one suggestion was a turkey. if it had taken me longer to knit this, i would have cried.


in this one, you can get more of an idea of what i was going for. i fear this warmer may not warrant a twin. *sigh* for size reference, these were knit with cheap acrylic on size 10 needles, co 36 st in a 2x2 knit.

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knitting is fine by me

so if i've been chatting with you over the past few months, you know i have become an insane knitter. i simply cannot be stopped. to this end, i attended several knitting events today, those being "knit out" (a sort of festival for all knitters in union square), and a men's knitting night downtown (currently entitled "dicks with sticks"). this is all well and good, however the really amusing part happened on the way home. on the bus. to sidetrack here for a moment, i personally believe little people to be harbingers of good fortune. now, this has nothing to do with people of diminutive status per se, but i have noticed an extremely strong and perhaps mathematically provable correlation between my personal sightings of little people and bizarre events in my life. tonight i saw three. so i'm on the bus, and decide to continue knitting my current project. it's coming along nicely and i'm quite excited about it. and then some other people hop on the bus and sit down near me. BeerSwiller and his LadyFriend. in case the code names were not descriptive enough, BS has decided that budweiser (in cans) is the beverage of choice for busgoers. your humble narrator does not necessarily look down on such behavior. so, i'm happily knitting when BS and LF sit down next to me on the back bench. apparently LF had been having some foot troubles, and BS had to massage them. this was abhorrent, but i try to focus on my task at hand. BS has been sputtering nonsense since he's entered the bus, and was showing no signs of stopping, despite LF's apparently weariness. so then other people get on, and the back of the bus is becoming rather crowded. i continue with my craft. i notice that a young gentleman not too far away from me is beginning to look rather uncomfortable, and keeps looking in my direction. at this point, i find it advisable to remove one of my headphones. i hear BS concluding, "...fucked up the ass. i just want things to be alright for you and me." at this point, i realize he is most likely a ragining homophobe who may or may not tend towards violence. i banked on the latter, and removed my other earphone. then i stared at him. now i'm not one for confrontation. but i am not a tiny man. standing well over six foot and weighing in over 200 pounds (i'm actually quite thin, it's well spread out) i like to think that i pose a rather formidable persona. if you haven't met me, at least. so i decided since we were in the confines of a mobile public place i'd probably fare alright. and i stared some more. immediately, he flushed. then turned to continue prattling on at LF, "not that there's anything wrong with knitting. knitting is a great way to improve your coordination. and you can make some really nice things by knitting. not that i'll ever start knitting. but knitting is fine by me..." luckily the next stop was mine. so i turned and smiled before i disembarked. ah, to be a fly on the wall to find out where that conversation went when it continued. hopefully i'll never find out.

skully warmers

after finishing the skullycap i was riding high on my newfound abilities with intarsia. so i embarked upon another version of the wristwarmers.

this is the same pattern used earlier, but near the top i added a black patch with the white skull pattern. now, what makes these super awesome, is that they are reversible. i added two thumbholes so the skull can be on either side.

the black patch is two purled columns, 11 knit columns, and two purled columns. i picked up an extra stitch in the middle because the pattern had an odd number of columns, and stitched it back in at the top. also, i carried the white stitched through when knitting the white stripes, and did a simpler intarsia bit on the black stripe. there is a mess of sloppy end tying, because i did not have the patience to figure out how to knit in all the end stitches.

yeah, that is kind of sloppy. which is why it is nice to have a wrong side on these guys. but it's worth it. let's get a closeup of the sexy skull.

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skullycap

i found a site with awesome patterns. particularly, i fell in love with this skull pattern. and wanted to use it on a hat. this was my first experience with intarsia, or slip knitting, or whatever you want to call it.

here is more or less how i made it. co 72 st with two strands cheap acrylic wool on size 10 needles. knit for 12 rows in black. knit 2 rows white knit 1 row black skull pattern (spaced 1 black column between each): the little one i carried the WS yarn around back, and tacked it in every 3-4 st to try to cut down on floats. knit 1 row black knit 2 rows white then i screwed up with the decreasing going down 12 st every other round. this makes it kind of a bucket hat. i think a 6 st decrease every other round would be more traditionally hatlike.

what technique is this?

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