COZY KEYS

A side note:
DON'T BE AN A-HOLE AND STEAL MY STUFF!
As in, don't make these and say you thought of it, or sell them in a street fair in a booth next to mine, or manufacture 10 million Cozy Keys in China and become a bajillionaire selling them at gas stations. This all would be wrong.

Cozy Keys
by Amy

Difficulty [Mellow]

So if you’re like me, you’ve gotten tired of doing the early-morning yoga position I call The One Legged Key Fumble. This is the knee-up, hunched-over position taken as you balance all your belongings and morning beverages against your body and confront your overlarge collection of keys. As you hold your breath for a count of ten, lean back, and shakily extend your hand towards the door; you pray for some deity to aid you in finding the correct key before you topple over.

Perhaps it was divine enlightenment that prompted me in how I could solve this problem AND use up leftover sock yarn cluttering my stash. They also make quick gifts and impress your boy/girlfriend’s mother. Perhaps the rest of you are more graceful than I am - but even knitters such as yourselves, gazelle-like in your poise and physical coordination, ought to appreciate a bit of color-coded cuteness before the caffeine kicks in.
Photo credit [Amy]

MATERIALS
[MC] Knitpicks Palette Fingering Weight [100% Peruvian Highland Wool; 231yd/211m per 50g skein]; colors: Mulberry, Whirlpool, Bark, Edamame, Orange

1 set US #0/2.00mm double-point needles

notions required [2 small cable needles, tapestry needle]

GAUGE
32 sts/48 rows = 4" in stockinette stitch

PATTERN
Pattern Item [main body]

CO 16 sts, distribute evenly on 3 DPNs, join and begin working in the round.

Rows 1-3: Knit

Row 4: K6, kfb, kfb

Row 5: Knit

Row 6: K8, kfb, kfb

Row 7: Knit

Row 8: K10, kfb, kfb

Row 9: 28 sts. K8, slip 6 to cable needle

Rows 10-14: k2, p2

Bind off.
Pattern Item [sleeves]

K 6 stitches along top of cable needle

Pick up 3 stitches underneath

Knit 9 sts in the round for 6 rows.

Bind off.

Don’t worry too much about which three bottom stitches are picked up, or your technique in working them. Just try to get relatively even spacing.

FINISHING

Pull the loose ends around the sleeves inside the sweater, and trim short. Weave the ends around the ‘neck’ and ‘hem’ up through the center of the work.

One Purse Down!

This is either going to Lain as a wedding pacification, or to Meg in order to soften her up for my imminent couch-landing. The other bag is currently under the needle, ETA: Tomorrow.


Here's the liner. It has three pockets, one of them with a zipper!

Ebay Seller: nwa1970

I got this yarn off of ebay for a pretty decent price. Should that be ringing any warning bells? I've found that the colors run horribly, and that when I try setting the colors they tend to get all muddled together.

I've considered contacting the seller to see if they have anything to say about this or tips they can pass on, but even so I'm not a fan of the overwhelming magenta color. I much prefer my rainbow bag.

Liner-pa-loozah!

Over the weekend I sewed liners for the three bags that have been sitting on my non-literal project table, AND read 750 pages of "Breaking Dawn" (which was predictably written, trite, and entirely too nauseatingly obsessed with gender roles and stereotypes - but that is ENTIRELY what I get for being roped into juvenile fiction in the first place...). So in short, I was uncharacteristically unlazy.

Yay me!

Now I have to sew all the separate pieces onto the yarn by hand. NOT my favorite part... and get this done in the next two weeks before my friend gets married and I take off to visit my other friend in Brazil. I really shouldn't have taken that nap this afternoon, huh?
Pictures will be forthcoming.

Despite Many Whinings...

I have been working on a few things. Generally I've been a one-project-at-a-time sort of girl, but things have been slowly piling up on the 'to sew' table and I've been ignoring them. This is what's currently going on...

More than a slump

I don't feel like knitting.
Yeah. It's weird, I know.
I'm feeling a bit unsettled about it.

I finished knitting an unbiased bag which I semi-ruined by boiling it in vinegar because the colors wouldn't stop bleeding. It's now stiff and a muddy purple color. It might look fine once lined. If I recall correctly I wasn't that excited about MY unbiased bag before it was lined either.

I started working on some alpaca Dashing gloves for my boyfriend for his birthday - which was in early May. It sat there forever, and then I broke a needle - so things are at a standstill on that front as well.

So my plans are to buy some new double-points (maybe order a set on knitpicks, maybe metal so they're harder to kill) and work on a new unbiased bag with what's left of my sari silk. Hopefully I can figure out a way to set the color without ruining the fiber this time...

But yeah, I miss making stuff. I'm praying the lazy wears off soon.

New Newsboy!

I actually pulled myself out of my internet addiction long enough to work on something! Because my other newsboy hat is super-itchy I made a liner for this one. It makes the hat a little tight, but not unflatteringly so. I actually like that the liner fills it out and makes it puffier.

Hopefully Erin doesn't have a huge head, and doesn't mind that she's never going to get that bag I never told her I was making her.
As a wedding present.
Which happened last August.

Slump

Still been in a knitting dry spell as I noted in my last post - but I decided to start an easy project, because whether I feel like it or not, my sanity is adversely affected by not knitting.

I worked on this Harry Potter Scarf at an abysmal pace, and then left it sitting around unfinished for several more weeks after that. I have to say though, that I'm rather pleased with how it turned out. It's a great pattern, simple and authentic-looking.



Also - my kiwi newsboy hat was hearted in Ravelry. What?! Pride!

In the closet

I've got a new obsession that seriously detracts from my knitting time, and I'm honestly too embarrassed by it to 'fess up. I haven't even put my Christmas stuff up on ravelry yet!

I did spend enough time in the knitting headspace to decide that I was going to give up on giving that Zoe bag to my friend that got married last AUGUST and just make her a newsboy cap. The one I made from the Stitch n' Bitch book gets a lot of raves. I could even use up that chocolate brown Lamb's Pride - though I think I ought to line it with something less itchy if it's going to be a gift.

And then... ugh... I have to start worrying about making something nice for my other friend who's getting married this September. What's WITH everyone? What makes me the most sad is how we've grown apart, and while I still count her as one of my best friends I'm not even a little bit a part of her wedding. It was enough to make me mourn to the boyfriend, whom I love dearly, but perhaps not as much as my dreams of joining the peace corps, "I'll never be a bridesmaid OR a bride..."

Woes of a Spoiled Knitter

I've been feeling a little bit burnt out on knitting.
I was knitting constantly for a while to avoid doing my homework, but now I'd much rather cuddle on the couch or read a book, and have barely touched my project.

It probably doesn't help that my current project is a red hart coffee cozy, and I'm ONLY using the icky yarn because I feel guilty about being such a snob. I want it gone so desperately, but can't throw it out, so all I can do is knit with it and then fling the finished projects far from my sight- but I don't wanna, so there it sits.

I KNOW that using a tough machine washable fiber is a much better fit for this project than something I enjoy looking at and touching. And seriously, there are worse yarns than this. There were centuries where the only thing available was scratchy steel-like wool, and then the few decades of dull harvest gold plastic - this is NOT that kind of bad.

But even though I feel like a spoiled brat, I can't argue against the fact that knitting feels like a chore right now.

Finished the Jayne Hat!

After making two perfectly nice pompoms I finally got one scraggly enough to use. The boy seems to like it.

Failed Pompom

I put a lot of work into making this, my first pompom, only to watch it quickly consume the hat with its gargantuan size. Plus, I was told that it wasn't 'scraggly' enough for a genuine Jayne hat. Le sigh.



At least the hat in general is turning out alright.

Finished 'Vog On's! Started Jayne Cobb Hat!

Here are my finished socks! I love them, but I think from now on I'm going to go down a needle size for whatever is listed in the pattern - I think I'm a fairly loose knitter.


I've also nearly finished the Jayne Cobb hat for my boyfriend, but found that following the directions led me far astray - so I'm going to finish up the earflaps (I've only got one left) and then attempt a surgical procedure at the color change. I'm thinking of picking apart the hat, putting the top on needles, ripping out a few inches of the orange, knitting half an inch of yellow, and then use kitchener's stitch to graft them together. Yeeeeaaaah.... maybe just ripping half of it apart WOULD be less work... ugh.

Acryl-yuck

Because of my boyfriend's desire that I knit him this,

the Jayne Cobb hat, from firefly - he's gone out and gotten me some cheap yarn to make him a hat with. And I've grown into such a yarn snob that I'm ashamed to put it in the stash bag and embarrassed to add it to my digital stash on ravelry.
Whatever. Snobbery is stupid.
Ugh.

Blue Moon Fiber Arts Destashing

I spent... ::drum roll:: 108 dollars. Non knitters would think that's outrageous, knitters on the other hand, would recognize a modicum of self restraint in a room full of marked down mill ends. I got:







Isn't it EXCITING! My stash is now crawling out of the 'humiliation' category! I now have more knittable yarn than red hart and eyelash crap! Yay!

Someone hearted my bag! I told my boyfriend that I felt close to tears, and then he called me a massive nerd. Butthead. :>P

I still think it's the most amazing think ever that a fellow knitter would like something I'VE made. I feel grateful.

11th Hour WIP

My knitpicks order arrived today with my needle set! So I can finally start working on the sock yarn I've amassed. I'm got enough to make four pairs - I think I'm going to do the Spiral Boot Sock from Interweave Knits Summer 2007 first using the glossy burgundy yarn - that's the one I'm the most excited about. But doing a cute black ankle sock would probably be the wisest one to get finished - I'm looking at the Vog On pattern from knitty for that one. The other two socks I was thinking were Monkey (knitty) and Jaywalker (magknits) mostly because of their popularity and to see what all the hype was about. I am pretty into the jaywalker pattern, but most of what I like are the chevron stripes with contrasting yarn, and while it SAYS it's good with varigated yarn I'm not 100% sure I agree.

I need to get started on those handmade socks because my new shoes are a half size too large (actually in a perfect world they'd only be a quarter size too big, but whatev..) Thin socks won't cut it with these smoking new shoes, only artistic chunky handknit socks will do.


I'm nearly finished with my very own newsboy cap, but I ran out of yarn right near the end! Arg!!


I've also decided that I'm sick of laming my flickr account with photos of wips and yarn photos. I'm going to make a new ravelry flickr account.

Newsboy Duo

I am currently working on Headline News from Stitch n' Bitch Nation. Actually, there's a small but fairly uninteresting story behind this. See - I've made this hat before, read the pattern wrong, and ended up making a really cute version of this hat - sized to fit a midget. Fortunately, I know a child who seemed keen on adding to her ever expanding wardrobe, and she was the recipient of my first ever Newsboy cap.



But what about MEEEEEE!!?
So I cast on again, but decided due to the last attempt that I would add another cable to the pattern. This took a few tries, but I ended up finishing the main body of the hat over the weekend. I knew it had been a little big, but I wasn't sure if it was a matter of concern until I wore the hat for a while. About 30 minutes. But then it was settled, I had to frog.

So I've started it again. It's going well, but I am getting so SICK of this pattern by now.

Sloth and Lust

Yeah, yeah... so I haven't been updating this. Thing is, I just wanted this blogger blog so I could link to ravelry and the whole world wouldn't read all my personal crap. But life is 95% personal topics, and I have a hard time doubling up on my entries in two separate blogs.

Besides -- my knitting life has definitely taken a back seat to school and work at the moment. I started knitting another newsboy cap for myself, and tried to use up some of my stash of Red Hart casual cot'n. But I just couldn't do it! The hat sits there half finished and I hate the look of the yarn and don't want to touch it. I think I'm going to frog it this weekend. I have no idea what I'm going to be doing with all that gross yarn in my stash. I was thinking of making a load of mug cozies for friends this christmas. Even if they were prone to noticing fiber content, nobody is going to be insulted over a mug cozy. Scientific impossibility.

The plastic bag bag sits unfinished. Once the weather turned murky I felt compelled to spend my time handling much cozier materials.

I ordered a whole bunch of stuff from knitpicks, completely ignoring my yarn abstinence pledge. (they always SAY abstinence doesn't work!) I received knitpick essential sockyarn in black and meadow, only to realize that I don't have DPNs small enough to work with them! I decided on getting a set, of course, to maximize efficiency and cost (etc) and THEN decided to get a few more skeins for the free shipping. And THEN I decided that since I had chosen aluminum (I'd probably break such tiny needles, were they wood), I should probably get a WIP holder since I didn't want my projects sliding off the needles in my bag.

I'm feeling guilty but excited.

Finished Unbiased!

My bag liner sat around the house for a week, while I barely looked at it. Unlike knitting, sewing isn't something you can do on the bus, or doing class. But finally the weekend came and I found myself with free time. The straps had taken hours to sew in, but the rest of the liner, only about an hour. It was done in a jiffy, and now I have a gorgeous new accessory to wear out on the town tomorrow.