Odds and Ends

I finished blocking Satanski's scarf, so all I need to do now is take a few minutes and weave in the ends. It came out really really well, and although it's not terribly hard to impress a three-year-old, I'm happy that he likes it so much. I also started on what will be the matching mittens. This is my first pair of mittens, and I'm kind of cobbling together several patterns, so we'll see how those turn out. Here are pictures of the finished scarf (undone ends and all) and the beginning of the mittens.

Today, the knitting Meetup group that I belong to had a trial yarn swap. I didn't prepare well for it at all; I brought 300 yards of a brown striped sock wool, 300 yards of a sunny yellow sock wool, and 600 yards of blue alpaca. I probably shouldn't have been so obvious about bringing things that interested me not at all! Anyway, I ended up trading the alpaca for some gorgeous light blue bamboo (cannot believe I got that), and the brown wool for some really cool blue cotton. I was also given about 200 yards of a cool white wool with flecks of yellow and orange (it's cute; definitely for babies/kids). I couldn't find any takers for the yellow wool, and although I may regret it later, since I still have several balls here and I have no idea what I'm going to do with those, I gave it away for a yarn drop. I hope that somebody can put it to good use!

All finished!

I finished Satanski's scarf, and it came out great! I love this yarn (Malabrigo Worsted, in Oceanus), and Satanski loves his scarf. That picture to the left shows what the scarf looked like last night, when I was about 60% of the way finished. I'm going to get started on matching mittens tomorrow, with a hat to follow soon thereafter. I need to block the scarf, as right now all it wants to do is roll itself back into a ball, but that means that I might as well block all the other stuff I've been ignoring for a while. Block party tomorrow!

Sorry, I'm groaning over here, too.
















This is what the OpArt blanket is looking like these days. That kid is due nigh on two months from now and I still don't know when we'll be having his dad's baby shower at work, so I should definitely get the lead out and start doing a lot of work on this again. Even after I'm done knitting, I'm going to be weaving in ends forever, so I should just do it already.

Revelation

I've heard a lot about short row heels, but I didn't really know what that meant until I looked it up yesterday (it seemed a little obvious, but when it comes to knitting, I don't assume anything). I was interested in trying something new on my Monkey socks, and since I was still using dpns and knitting from the cuff down, I figured that I'd innovate with the heel. I used the marvelous Kaity's clear and helpful tutorial to learn how to give my sock a short row heel. Success (mostly, but the error was mine, not hers)! Then I wasn't sure what I should do to accommodate the ankle, but both Kaity and Joy were helpful and told me that I didn't need to add any more stitches. I'm going to go get started on the bottom of the sock now!



My sock looks so bulky, not at all like the pretty pictures I see on Ravelry, and I cannot wait to block them once they're finished. Can you believe I actually want to block anything, much less this enthusiastically?? I think I've only blocked two items in my life (I should change this).