Introducing:

Less than a Latte: 3 sock patterns for the frugal knitter

This book is a really good deal – three sock patterns for less than what you might normally spend on one! They are all fun, easy patterns – maybe just the thing to knit on vacation over the summer? Grab a skein of sock yarn (don’t tell me you don’t have any you big fibber), download the eBook and you are ready for some fine beach knitting! Or hey, Sunday is Mother’s day, right? Does your mom knit? Voila, instant present! No, she won’t think you’re cheap, don’t be silly, it’s your mom, she’ll be proud that you made a smart purchasing decision and aren’t going into debt to buy her something goofy.  If you have a bit of extra cash, toss in a gift card for her favourite coffee shop and a skein of sock yarn. What knitter mom doesn’t want some quiet knitting time with a nice latte? It’ll help make up for that time in high school.  You know the one.

Now, my toys either stay here – and Punky is old enough not to try to eat them – or go to yarn shops as displays. Also not a big worry that someone will try to yank the eyes out.  But I am always concerned about people with little kids – those of the everything-in-the-mouth age.  Safety eyes are so called because when you attach them to a piece of sturdy fabric (I’m talking commercial fabric here, not hand knitting) they are pretty difficult to get off. I’ve never had one come off a knitted toy either, but I really think that a determined enough toddler could do it, given enough time.  Hand knitting stretches, and if you yanked on that eye enough and stretched out the knitting, I could see how it might maybe one day come out. However, my test knitter for Ciel, the wonderful Val has come up with a very easy solution to this problem. Take a look:

Brilliant!  Just a little scrap of ribbon, with a couple of holes poked into it so the eye posts can go through. The grosgrain type of ribbon that Val used is nice and sturdy, and in a light enough colour not to show through the pink she used as for the head. Turn it right side out, add some stuffing and…

Cute! A lady bug kind of Ciel! Thanks Val for sharing!

Knit from a super-squishy (seriously – you want one of these!) Babycakes DK kit from RainCityKnits, she is sweet, colourful and very fun!

I couldn’t help but get into some colour work with all of the pretty colours I had available. Don’t fret, it isn’t too difficult. If you’re really not into it, maybe just some stripes?

The pattern is available on Ravelry, of course. I hope she brightens your day! If not maybe this will: use the code nomoresnow to get 20% off any of my patterns from now until Friday! Whee!

Are you ready to meet the newest member of Joey’s house?

I needed something more interesting to keep me from falling asleep over the scarf. Also to motivate me to actually work on the scarf (just two more rows and you can have a wee taste of baby sweater! Come on, you know you want to!).

So.  Baby sweater starts out charming and sweet as many baby sweaters do.  Cast on that teeny number of stitches (did I mention that the scarf gets bigger with each row? yeah.) make some increases, oh look, little sleeves forming, so cute! Oh yay, time to separate the sleeves from the body, which is still not a very large number of stitches right?

Now all I have to do is knit a number of inches down to the hem. In plain stockinette. With just a bit of garter at the edges. How exciting… DAMN!  Now I have TWO boring projects on the needles!  I don’t think I planned this very well.

Well, I guess the only thing for it is to keep knitting, get them finished up.

Oh, well, hello, where did that come from?

BUNNY CUBES!

Bitty little bunnies who like to hang around in your sugar bowl and have afternoon tea.  And hey!  They’re calorie free!  In fact they’re almost yarn free – you don’t even need 10 grams to whip up one of these little guys. Strangely addictive they will soon be all over your house – the ones that guests don’t try to take home that is.

Available now for the low, low price of FREE!  Just click: bunny cubes colour to download the pattern for yourself.  Prefer to store it in your Ravelry library?  No problem it;s available there too; just CLICK!  Also available through Ravelry is a super plain version, for those of you who don’t want to use up all your pretty printer ink – same clicky as above.

But wait, there’s more!

To celebrate Bunny Cubes, we’re having a sale in the Ravelry Store! From now until end of day Sunday it’s BUY ONE GET ONE FREE on all paid patterns!  Just use the code HopToBeSquare at the checkout!  Thanks!  You’re bunny-riffic!

I went and collected all of the projects that have languished and decided what to do with them.  It has been a busy morning of ripping!

From the top: the caked yarn was a sweater that I had started for Jack, and finished about half of before realizing that I didn’t think I would have enough yarn to complete it , and that they yarn was really way, way to busy for a sweater, even a small one.  It will become socks for my mom, as I don’t mind variegated flashiness on someone’s feet, but I don’t think you need to coat an entire torso in it.

The large burgundy ball was supposed to become Hitchhiker scarf. Twice I started it, put it down, couldn’t figure out (months later) where I was, ripped it and restarted.  And put it down.  Clearly it wasn’t meant to be.  No current plans for that yarn although I did discover that it looks great in garter stitch.  The smaller balls were actually a hat, and one that I wore – although not much.  I have a really hard time finding a hat that doesn’t look ridiculous on me.  Anyway, i pulled it out yesterday and discovered a hole in it.  I couldn’t repair the hole nicely, and I really liked the yarn.  Don’t want to waste nice yarn!  RIP!

These mitts are the only thing to survive the Epic Ripping of 2013.  I was making great progress on them when I messed up the thumb gusset – the little hearts weren’t lining up properly on the thumb.  They only needed a small rip back, but got put away because… well I guess because it was August and I thought there was no rush.  Anyway, I am ready to attempt the thumb again, so it is nice to have them ready to go.

Finally, this will be the hardest project to rip back because it is actually a finished sock.

And a really long sock at that!  I have knit the leg of this sock three times now, in an attempt to get the shaping correct.  This version is the most successful, but no matter what I do there is always a bump where the decreases start. (can you see it in the picture? I can.) I have since looked into other knee sock patterns with different decreases, and I feel i have an idea that could save it – BUT, here’s the thing.  I don’t want to knit it again.  The striping pattern, while striking was not all that fun to knit.  I am not in love with them any more.  And once I got this sock figured out I’d still have a second one to knit!   That’s a lot of knitting for a project that you feel very meh about.  I’m saving this rip out for TV time tonight so I won’t have to focus on just how much I’m ripping.  Maybe less painful that way.

In other news there is a new critter on the way – hoping to get Version 3 knit up today.

Stay tuned!

After all the Christmas knitting, wrapping, decorating, blahblahblah was done I was really looking forward to knitting whatever I felt like.  After that last two pattern releases I was also looking forward to knitting a pattern that didn’t invlove me writing down every blessed stitch.  First off the needles was a pair of socks for me, in a yarn that fortuitously showed up at my door on the very day I was going to start something.  Clearly it was a sign.

These are my Block of Gnomes socks, which went by very quickly, and I wore Christmas Eve.

Yarn: Gnome Acres Sparkle Gnome Sock in the Bertie Botts colour way.  Sparkles (the yarn has stellina in it!), Harry Potter and gnomes?  Yeah, you know I couldn’t resist!  Awesome stuff to work with and it’s washed beautifully too.  Go look at her shop, it’s ok, I’ll wait.  Just don’t buy up all the Zombie Flannel, ok?

Pattern:  Block of Chocolate Socks – a nice free pattern that I’ve had in the queue for a while.  A nice easy stitch pattern that (of course) I modified slightly, by not taking it all the way down the foot so it looks like someone has been biting off blocks of chocolate.  I made each foot different so no notes were required. I also fancied up the toes.

Once I finished those I wanted to start a pair for Joey who has been so awesome during the past two months of Doom.  He has cooked, cleaned, rearranged his schedule, come flying home from work early, given up several weekends and days off to help me all the while keeping me well stocked in chocolate and alcohol.  The least I can do is socks.  But they better be really good socks.  I had seen this pattern a while ago, and then it was featured in the Sock Knitter’s Anonymous group on Ravelry.  I liked it the first time I saw it, and the repeated viewings weakened my defences.  Joey usually likes crazy coloured socks, this time it would be a crazy patterned sock.

Yarn: Cascade Yarns Heritage in the stunningly named 5627 (oh, their website says it’s also called Jade) colour.  Nice, smooth, soft, a good price and it comes in lots of colours.  You can’t miss.

Pattern: Gladys – hey this one is free too!  Looks more complicated than it is (psst: it’s just knits and purls) although I’ve gotta say – there’s a lot of seed stitch.  I’ve discovered that I like to look at seed stitch more than I like to knit seed stitch. This one just needs a toe – fortunately not a seed stitch one.

Next up:  Look, it’s not a sock!!

My friend Rose bought herself a beautiful red coat, and as soon as I saw it I thought it needed a purple scarf.  I’ve had this lovely skein in my stash for a year, never sure what it wanted to be.  Obviously it was waiting for this!

Yarn: Indigodragonfly MCS Sock, in the one-of-a-kind named I thought the email said “Present Enlarger” from last year’s Giftapalooza.  It’s squishy!

Pattern: Brooklyn Tweed’s Guernsey Wrap. Originally written for worsted weight yarn, turns out if you cast on with sock weight on 3.5mm needles you get a good scarf size.

So after knitting so many patterns with texture I was beginning to want a break.  I started to think that maybe I needed to put the seed stitch and ribbing down for a day and just do some nice boring stockinette. On the other hand, I was afraid if I did that then I wouldn’t go back to any of the textured stuff.  I struggled with it for about a day.  Then I ran into this.

In case you were wondering, the Dark Side has cookies AND Noro.