Keeping Heads Warm

Hats, hats and more hats!  Great way to use up scraps of yarn! Not really needed right now but they will be come winter.  These hats are destined for the kindergarten children of the Choctaw Nation Head Start program in Oklahoma.  A friend of mine has  been collecting 310 hats each year to send to this program. Here is her blog if you want to follow the progress:  310 Hats


So far, I have made 7 hats to contribute.  Here are pictures of the first 6 hats. It has been fun to see what sort of variations I can come up with!

The knitters from our church are also making hats as well as scarves and mittens to give out this winter as part of our mitten tree project.  I will have to keep knitting so I can contribute to that one too.  Fortunately, hats are a quick project!

Finished blankets for the afghans for Afghans project

I have put together two blankets so far to send to Afghanistan for the current Youth Campaign. These will be put in a box and sent to SanFrancisco. From there the will be put into big shipping containers and sent on to Afghanistan. They will not arrive there until next winter. This shipment will go to children in schools operated by "Help the Afghan Children." It takes so much planning to get these things where they need to be to help.



Here are the first blankets. Many of the blocks were donated by other knitters. Then I have crocheted them together into bright, warm, woolen blankets. I have more blocks to work on yet so I hope to make at least 3 more blankets in time for the arrival deadline of Feb. 14.

Afghans for Afghans--Youth Campaign for Next Winter

Lately, I have been working on blanket blocks for this organization of knitters and crocheters who send afghans, mittens, hats, socks and sweaters to the children and adults of Afghanistan. If you noticed, the project right now is for next winter, winter 2011-2012 not this coming winter. It takes time for the shipments to arrive in Afghanistan and more time for distribution at the grassroots level. This particular organization has successfully sent thousands of items to this desperate country over the past 10 years.

I would encourage you to help if you can. You can donate knitted or crocheted items in wool or you can make a monetary donation to help with shipping costs. Click on the button above to find out how you can help.

Here are some of the blocks I have been working on. I will be crocheting these together to make a small blanket to send.

Mitts and Mittens, oh my!

I have been knitting a lot of mitts and mittens this summer. You would think that I would want to knit tank tops or something cool for summer wear. But this summer mittens really took over my knitting.

In August before I went to Norway I sent off a couple of pair of very simple children's mittens to a Ravlery group project called For the Children of Pine Ridge. They were bright orange and purple. Should go over well with children on the reservation there if they are anything like my own children. I used my own pattern for these. I have knit so many basic mittens this way that I finally wrote up the pattern for it. You can find it here.


Then I started a pair of Latvian Mittens from the book of that name by Lizbeth Upitis. I chose 5 colors of Lamullgarn that I liked together. I really wanted to learn some new techniques from this book. There are beautiful scalloped edges, braids and rows and rows that use up to 3 colors at the same time in the row -- yes, I am a glutten for punishment when it comes to kntting. It was really hard to choose a pattern because there are so many beautiful mittens in this book. I finally decided to make mitten #5 because it was fairly simple designs, had the scalloped edge and only had a few rows knit with 3 colors in the row--I have my limits after all! The braids will have to be in the next pair.


The first mitten is just past the thumb opening. I am using 2mm needles with 72 stitches. Tiny, tiny! It grows very slowly. What was I thinking? They are beautiful though, right? They were starting to get a bit tedious and they are hard to take along. It gets to be a big bag full of knitting when you are using 3 balls of yarn at the same time. So they have been resting for a while.


Last week I happened to see that a designer was looking for some people to test knit a new pattern. Sure, why not? I only have .....ahem....lots of projects on the needles already. So I started another one. These were short fingerless mitts so they wouldn't take long, right?

The first mitt came out a little bigger than I need but should fit someone with just a slightly larger hand well. They are worsted weight in a nice denim blue and creamy white. They will be great for those cool winter days when your hands are getting cold but you still need them to type or knit. Or under mittens for those really cold days when you know you are going to have to take the mitten off at some point to dig the car keys out of your pocket.


I made that one mitt and decided to try a different yarn because it was a bit lighter and might fit me better. So came this one in a dark teal green and blue. Mmmm, nice colors and a good fit too. I finished the first blue and white one and made the green and blue one on our trip to Wisconsin this weekend for a wedding. That's why I took the pictures in the car. Great place to take pictures on a sunny day, by the way. It was perfect lighting. I really didn't need the warmth of the mitts though because it was well into the 70's the whole weekend. Beautiful trip too because the trees were gorgeous, but that is another story.


So, where was I? Oh yea, I made this one mitt and then started the second blue and white one..... but once again, I was distracted. I found some dark and light purple PT5 Sport yarns just calling out to be mitts for Amy. Amy loves purple. It is getting cold soon. So Amy needs mitts. Of course, I had to start those right away don't ya' know?

Charity Knitting

I was given some yarns for charity projects. There was lots of orange Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride worsted yarn so I have been making socks for Afghans 4 Afghans. They will go to the women and children in Kabul. These are about a women's size 7-8.

I have also made mittens for the children of the Pine Ridge reservation. They are sized to fit a 4-5 year old in the Head Start program. I already have another pair started-- in a different yarn though. I was getting a bit tired of the orange! I will have to see if I have something that I can combine with it to make some other mittens that will look a bit different.

Time Flies...

As the old saying goes, "Time flies when you are having fun." It has been a great holiday season for us but also very busy. We have spent time with family and friends, helped a daughter move, rejoiced about a new baby in the family, mourned for relatives and good friends who are gone from us now, wrapped presents and opened them, played games, and laughed and had lots of fun together. I hope you had a great holiday season as well!

I also got some knitting done during this time. When I get stressed, knitting really helps calm and center me.The charity knitting is always on the needles. I have used up a lot of leftovers for these. Here are some of the hats and mittens that I delivered to the church for the Mitten Tree. There were trips to physical therapy for Amy's tendinitis in her wrist. Of course, I took knitting to work on while we were there. The therapist was always interested in what I was knitting. It always seemed to surprise her when I would pull out a different project. "It's a different color! That's not the hat you were working on last time!"


I did a lot of knitting on this sweater for Carl during those appointments too. The therapist really enjoyed seeing the progress that I made on it. This is the second Wallaby sweater that I have made for Carl. He outgrew the first one and had been telling me that he needed a new sweater. He chose the colors and their placement. It is his favorite sweater now. It is always so nice to get such appreciation for my knitting!


Carl needed a new pair of mittens this year. These are my basic mitten pattern. I knit them nice and tight to keep out the wind and cold. This winter has been so cold that we needed all the warmth we could get!
I had started these glittens for my daughter, Lisa, some time last spring. I finally finished them and she loves them! These are made in Rauma Vamsegarn 100%wool, aran weight yarn. It was a little heavy for the stranding and the extra glove inside, but that has made them extra warm. A good thing when temperatures are below zero!

I used Kathy Cochran's pattern. It was very easy to follow with all of the pictures she has posted. I would like to make a pair of these for myself as well.

I have been working on some other stranded projects too. I will put them in another post.

Knitting Pictures!

I finally found some time to take pictures of the knitting I have been doing. I really have been knitting but just hadn't found time to blog about it. I have spent that past couple of months trying to keep up with Arnhild's business as well as my own business and taking care of my family. I found some time in there to knit apparently too, as you can see!

There are hats and a cowl to go to charity. These will probably go to our church for their fall hat and mitten drive. I have been working on a couple of hats in ISU Cyclone colors, red and gold. These are the kind of knitting that I do while watching Rosie's basketball games or reading email. The striped one was finished at the last game, which they won in overtime!

Another hat and cowl set that I finished recently is this beautiful white cabled set. It is made in Rauma Vamsegarn, a worsted weight wool. The pattern is newly translated pattern -- Rauma 84-10. This one will be displayed at the Arnhild's Knitting Studio Retreat to be held in Ames in late February. The pattern will be released at that time.

I finished the sleeves for the Norwegian Man's Sweater a couple of weeks ago. I have been awaiting further instructions from Arnhild for the finishing. I have started that now. I will need to sew with the sewing machine along the center front and the sleeve openings and then I will cut through the knitting to make openings to attach the sleeves and the button bands. I will be taking lots of pictures as I do that. Arnhild and I are making up a book to give the students who are taking classes in our new Fiber Arts School. We are going to include lots of photos of the techniques involved in making these sweaters and other knitting projects.

And finally I have been learning how to knit socks from the toe up. I have knit dozens of socks from the top down but this takes some different techniques. It has been a challenge sometimes but I feel like I am learning a lot as I go. I have been wanting to learn how to do this because I have some sock yarn which is hand-dyed. I can't get more if I run out and the ball is a little shorter yardage than some that I have used. With this method of making socks I should be able to use up all of the yarn and still have my socks completed. I always worry when knitting from the top down that I will not have enough to finish the toe!

This is a photo from about a week ago. I have both of the socks past the heel now and one is almost finished.

I will try to update more as I work on the Norwegain sweater. It also needs to be finished in time for the retreat in February. There may be some other projects on my list for then too. I'd better keep knitting!

McMittens finished!

I finished a pair of mittens this weekend!!

I finally got the thumbs finished and there are no holes! YEA!


The Berries Sweater for Terri Shea is coming along too. I have completed 2 repeats of the berries now. Hopefully it won't take as long as I originally thought it would! It is going to be a gorgeous sweater.


Pattern: Esther's McMittens

Mitten Knit Alongs for Charity

I keep starting mittens! I really need to finish some of them up don't I?

This yellow one is for a Mystery Mittalong. Basically, the person leading the knit along gives us a few rows of knitting to do each day but we don't know what it is going to look like until we knit it. I am not quite done with clue #3 here. These will fit a pre-schooler.

This orange pair is from a pattern that my friend Esther (Thanks Esther!) shared with a group I am on. She wrote the pattern herself and calls it McMittens because it is an easy pattern to remember and repeat over and over again. Great pattern for charity knitting!

I am using 2 strands of a worsted weight yarn for this one so it is equivalent to the bulky weight the pattern calls for. These are very warm and will fit an adult hand.

Both of these yarns came from my friend Jennifer when she moved! (Thanks Jennifer!) They are wool and I think there was a name on the yellow one but I have been thinking of them as mystery yarn. Perfect for knitting mystery mittens right?

Both pair will be going to Macuwita-sni to warm the hands of the children on the Cheyenne River Sioux reservation in South Dakota.

Do something for someone else today. It is a good feeling!
Denise

More Charity Knitting

I have several charity projects that I knit for.

There are

• prayer shawls for our church ministry,
  
• hats & mittens for the international families -- also part of our church ministry,
  
• hats for www.knit-a-cap.org,
• and recently I started making wool mittens for Macuwita-Sni (on Yahoo) (and here on Ravelry) a project for the Cheyenne River Sioux in South Dakota

The hat that I started on my way home from TNNA is one of these pictured. I had some made before the show and I have made others since then. These are really easy and fast to make. Some of them will go to the internationals and some will go to knit-a-cap.

The red mittens in my last post are planned for Macuwita-Sni, as are these red and blue stranded mittens. These have been a fun but frustrating exercise. I do not have a pattern to work from. I just thought I should add a simple stranded pattern to make them a little thicker and warmer. HA! The first mitten didn't work out too badly but trying to make the second one match was really a challenge! As my husband likes to remind me, "It's easy to make ONE of anything alike!"

I have ripped out many, many times! But I think I finally have it. Now to see if I can figure out what to do with the thumbs!!

TNNA Knitting

Of course I had to have some knitting to do while at a trade show that was focused on Needlearts!!

On the way to Ohio we were trying to finish up some of the display projects. I made several rosettes for the green Pillpi/Chiri hat/scarf/wristwarmers set that was displayed. We needed 20 rosettes so as we took turns driving we also took turns knitting them.

Then I started a pair of adult women's size socks in our new Magi sock yarn. These went with me each day so I could knit as I had the time while in the booth. It was also a great display item so people could see how this brown/gold colorway knits up. I would set it down next to the display of Magi when I wasn't working on it. Very pretty I might add!

Back in our room in the evening I started some plain wool mittens for a charity project. These also made for easy knitting to do on the way home in the car. I also started a charity hat on the way home and knit on it until it got too dark to see to do the decreases at the top. More on that later...





Need to get those last tails woven in on these mittens!

Finished knitting

Some finished item pictures:

My Candy Wrapper Hat pattern done in Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride Worsted yarn. This will be a nice warm hat!
More mittens for the International students. They are 100% wool. Should feel good to someone who is not used to Iowa winters I hope.


And lastly, a child size hat. I knit this during Amy's basketball game. Remember how I said that I could knit simple things without looking at them? I was surprised at how quickly I finished it. I had it cast on before the game so I didn't have to worry about counting. I almost finished it during the game. I think I knit faster when the game gets exciting! Amy made the first basket of the game for her team! It was also the only basket made in the first half I think. It is a very inexperienced, young team. They lost 59-12 but they had a great time playing and felt good about how it went.

Four boxes of yarn have been donated recently for the knitters at church. Of course it came to my house because I am in charge of the group. We don't have a very large group at this point so I guess I better keep busy. I certainly won't run out of yarn any time soon!

Mitten Progress

I finished up another pair of mittens to go into the church donation box. These fit my hands with a little room to spare. They will be nice warm wool mittens for one of the International students here.

I have been working on the Elizabeth Zimmermann Norwegian mitten this week too. It is almost to the shaping at the top. I did have to rip a bunch out because the hand part was not going to fit. I started again at the wrist with larger needles. I will tell you later how I messed up the thumb.

I was having trouble following the tiny graph in the book so I enlarged it. Then I printed it on cardstock and covered the whole thing with clear contact paper. Someone suggested having it laminated and using wipe off markers but I was afraid that they might get rubbed off in my bag and I didn't know if they would work with the contact paper. I ran across this great Omnigrid Glow-Line Tape at the fabric store. It sticks well to the contact paper but peels off so I can move it easily. I have been using the same piece for the entire graph!

Warm Woolen Mittens

The weather is changing here in Iowa. The northern part of the state has already had a freeze. We haven't had frost yet but the leaves are starting to lose their color. It will be cold soon and there are lots of hands that need a pair of mittens to keep them warm.

I have been making some simple mittens for the International students at our church. These are some odds and ends of wool yarns. For this pair I used the Easy Striped Mittens pattern. I had to go up to size 8 needles to get the right gauge. I don't usually have problems with gauge so that puzzles me.

I also think there was a mistake in the pattern. There should be 3 more rows before the thumb shaping. The photo's stripes don't match the instructions. This pair should fit a pre-teen to teen. It is a little short for me. I think I will add the extra rows to the next pair so it will fit an adult.

Then I started an Elizabeth Zimmermann pattern--the Norwegian mittens from Knitting Around. Size 4 needles with a blue Nature Spun wool and a dark teal Lion Wool. I am using the snowflake design for the back of the mitten.

I haven't done a lot of Fairisle because it takes more concentration than I can usually find around our busy household!

I am enjoying this though. I have been trying to get the tensions balanced which has been tricky. The two yarns are slightly different thicknesses which I think is affecting my tension. I keep trying different holds, knitting one looser, the other tighter etc so this mitten might look a little funny when it is done. But as Elizabeth says in her books--blocking can work wonders.

There are stripes on each side of the mitten and on the thumb. Not as easy as it looks because with the increasing stitches of the thumb gusset the sequence of colors keeps changing.

The palm has a simple pattern. I kept looking at it though and thinking it didn't look quite right. I finally discovered that the white boxes in the chart should have been black and the black-white. I had to rip and restart at the wrist again! I remade the chart in my Easy Graph Designer program so it would be easy to follow.

It has been moving right along since I straightened that out. Having a yarn in each hand is becoming more comfortable as I work. I start to miss it when I pick up other projects!

Busy Summer & School has started!

Vacation is over and summer has come to an end. This past month I have been busy, busy. We babysat for 2 little girls for 3 weeks. I didn't have much time for knitting then. I was also trying to get ready for school, moving a daughter into a new apartment, making curtains for her and sewing a mother-of-the-bride outfit for a friend.

I have 3 homeschooling this year but only 1 enrolled in our homeschool assistance program through the school district. I will be teaching a Kindergarten, 9th grade and 12th grade-- mostly supervising in the case of the older ones. I have one of the two high schoolers going to band, chorus and Spanish at the local high school. That means some extra driving for me. Then there is our 5th grader who really, really wanted to go to school full time. We decided to give it a try this year and see how she does. So more driving! We are still trying to work out the timing for getting them where the need to be. Later we will be adding some music lessons and extra field trips and enrichment classes. It is making me tired just thinking about what this year will bring!

My knitting has suffered some but I can see that all of the waiting in the car for the kids may actually help. I always take a project along. My goal right now is to try to finish up some of the projects that have been on the needles a bit too long. I am trying to resist starting anything new right now so I can do that.

I am sending off a dozen hats to the Knit-a-cap project today. I have a couple of other charity packages that are going too for the Yarn Yoga group that I am a co-owner of now.

I will post some photo updates of my knitting as soon as the camera batteries are recharged!

Hug your kids today. They grow up way too fast!

Denise

Mindless knitting projects

I needed something extra for a baby gift so I started the baby bib from Mason Dixon knitting. It is one of my mindless knitting projects. Very easy garter stitch with cotton yarn.

Another mindless project is the hats I am making for Knit-a-cap and the kids at church. I vary the number of stitches, size of needles, type of yarn and even how many strands to get different sizes. I have 15 hats completed now. The top two are the same yarn with different numbers of stitches. The green one is a strand of worsted and a strand of baby yarn.

I also picked up an unfinished Baby Surprise Jacket last week and decided that I should finish it. It is a nice soft yarn from Hobby Lobby's Baby Bee line. It is a fairly heavy worsted weight and I am using a size 8 needle for this one. I think it would be large on the one year old I am babysitting this week.

I have been looking at it and wishing I had added some stripes though. It looks a little boring doesn't it? I am to the buttonhole row at this point. Maybe I can add some color with an I-cord binding and some cuffs?

What can I say?

I frogged it! I decided that I really didn't like the back side of the stockinette on this Silky Wool. The pattern has you use reverse-stockinette as the background for the cables. The yarn is rustic enough on the right side of the stockinette that I really was not liking the wrong side.

I also had really made it difficult for myself because I was knitting it in the round from the inside so I could knit all the stitches. Except that meant that I had to do all of the cable work from the back side of the top, reading the charts backwards and making all the knits into purls and the purls, knits. YIKES! It was just too much!

So off to the frog pond it went. I started over again using the front of the stockinette and adding 2 purl stitches beside the cable so it will stand out. I really like it now! I think I may leave out the design that is in the center of the top though. It is just not in a good place for my figure!


I am still knitting caps! I found some fun kid-colored yarns on sale. I don't think I will run out of yarns any time soon. I am up to cap number 10 now. The plain green one came out a little bit small for Knit-a-cap. It will probably go to the international families instead. I have more of this yarn(Red Heart Kids), so the next one is one strand of it and one strand of baby yarn on size 11 needles. I wonder what size it will come out? It really doesn't matter because there is always a child's head that it will fit!


I also did some blanket blocks and a pink ribbon dishcloth for a friend of a friend who is dealing with cancer. Some of the blocks are crochet and some are knit. I pray that these things will give her some comfort and that she will heal and live a long, full life.