Pieces
I'm coming to love my scraps bin. I used to be fairly ruthless about throwing out little bits of yarn. If a yarn leftover was under 100 yards or so I'd decide I was never really going to use it for anything and just chuck it. But these days...these days I seem to find myself knitting more than my fair share of tiny stuff. The hearts, the stars, and the acorns all came straight out of the scraps bin (the acorns especially used the tiniest bits of yarn ever). And now the cupcakes are happening (and there are at least [...]
Bespeckle (plus giveaway)
Bespeckle is up on ravelry, there's yarn to give away on instagram, and the pattern is 10% off for the first few days it's out with the code SPECK. This was just supposed to be about the pompoms. I had this burning need to put all the stuff I find myself saying about pompoms (how to get them really full and round, how to make them detachable, how to add stripes or polkadots, what tools I like) down in one place. So I figured fine, I'll embrace the delightful ridiculousness that is my life and do just that. But then [...]
Psssst…
So I'm knitting cupcakes. Which is fun and frivolous and festive and should be a carefree sort of thing, right? And for the most part it totally is! But one thing keeps happening, and I'm in a place where I want to talk about it for just a quick second. People keep saying over and over and over 'oh look, cupcakes without calories' or 'guilt free cupcakes' or 'finally some cupcakes I can feel good about' or something else that seems to strongly suggest that the other kind of cupcakes...the kind that you eat, the kind that contain food, the [...]
My on going quest for indestructible socks
So I really do mean it when I say I mend my socks. Every time I take them off, I check for thin spots. If there's just a little thin spot, I'll wash them first and then mend them. If there's an actual hole, I'll fix them before I wash them because washing them with a hole can make the hole bigger (which is maybe gross? but whatever...it's just socks...you can wash your hands after). I strongly prefer catching it while it's just a thin spot because then you can just duplicate stitch over it. (This is the bit where [...]
I got distracted
I should...I should be talking to you about the speckled hat and all its pom-pomy goodness. And I will. For it is coming out in just a second here. But...well...somehow I'm distracted. I don't think you can blame me. Yes, there will be a pattern (really, I can't remember the last time I knit something and didn't' make a pattern, so it's pretty much always safe to assume there will be a pattern). And the little gizmo down below lets you hear from me when it comes out if that's your jam! Won't be long now at all... [pextestim pex_attr_set="looking-for-this-pattern" pex_attr_autoplay="false"][/pextestim]
And now we start actually knitting
So, after all those swatches, it's time to actually knit the thing! I'm doing a rolled brim (in part because I like how it looks and fits, but also in part because I want to get to the color change bit as quickly as I can, and plowing through a solid brim in the colorful yarn lets me get there quick). And I generally cast on over two needles (not to make the cast on stretchier, it doesn't do that, but it does make the loops of my first row of stitches a better match for the rest of my [...]
Can blogs have birthdays?
So some time in the last few days, two very unlikely things happened. The blog turned 10 (how...how can that have happened), and I realized I had 50,000 followers on instagram. My first thought was "I so totally deserve a cupcake." Well no, my first though was "how in the name of all that's woolly is that even possible?" But it was quickly followed by the cupcake thing. So I knit one (and then a few more because who wants just one)! And then a moment later I realized I sort of wanted to have a birthday party. Now I can't [...]
The Progression of a Swatch
You know how I'm always telling you to swatch? How I'm telling you that like 75% of knitting questions/problems can be addressed with a good swatch? Yeah, that's today's theme once again. I want to walk you through the swatching that happened for my next project. Keep in mind this is just for a hat (that is, a small project, with no weird fit stuff...about as easy a situation as you could hope for). It started with this (way back last summer...like I think last July). I was futzing around, trying to figure out how a stitch I saw in [...]
Snip snip snip
Ok, so if I've convinced you to make your pompoms with much more yarn than you would expect (and if I haven't go read the previous post again), then the next step is to get you trimming them. There's really no secret to this other than practice, persistence, and patience. That and maybe seeing that ALL pompoms look like a shaggy mess when they come off the form. No really all of them. Every time. Every single time. You just need to trim them into submission. I do it in a few passes, shape first, tidy up second, and a [...]
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