Still Life, With Cats

A couple months ago Knitty.com re-released one of their earliest patterns: Clapotis, for its 25th anniversary.

I’ve made a couple of these over the years, since it’s fun way to use up variegated yarn, and the pattern is simple enough that you can do it almost anywhere, without having to constantly refer to charts or text.

I have no idea where this yarn in my stash came from, but when I saw they had re-released the pattern, I decided it would be perfect for making a couple more of these simple shawls.

I finished this one in late November. I started this long before the election, back when we all had hope that our fellow Americans were smart enough to vote for the obvious better choice, but the aftermath of that have rather tainted this, due to the color (let’s just say that I certainly did NOT vote for the orange shitgibbon and his facist compatriots). But I am trying to keep my distaste from all things GOP separate from my joy over having a new finished object. So here it is in all its (unfortunately red) glory.

Sherman was absolutely determined to ‘help’ me with photographing this, as evidenced by the grey blur at the bottom of the second picture.

* * * * *

The expression on the cat’s face in today’s jigsaw puzzle is everything.

‘Tis the season for Holidailies.

Let’s veer back to some knitting, shall we?

I started this shawl because I was actively avoiding working on some unfinished socks and I knew if I just knit *something*, eventually my brain would decide that those pesky socks weren’t so bad and I’d be able to finish them. Plus, this pattern has been in my queue for an inordinately long time.

This is not the best yarn to use for this project, and so chances are pretty high I’m going to dye it at some point in the near future (perhaps a dull green, or a dusky blue, or even a milk chocolate color) – something that will let the full effect of the pattern itself come through, but it was what I had in the stash that was the right size, and so I was happy to find a way to use some of it up.

This is the Photography Shawl, and it is a deceptively simple pattern, in that all the really fun patterning comes about from just knits and purls. The widest section also includes some decreases, to switch it up from columns to waves, but otherwise, still knits and purls and the regular decreases.

Here’s a close-up of the ending section, which is my favorite part of the pattern.

I know it looks a little discombobulated in the pictures, but that’s because technically you’re not supposed to block it. Normally I’d pin something like this out to a proper shape, to even up the edges, except that the whole point of this pattern is to embrace the texture created by the knits and the purls, and so pinning it out would ruin that entire effect. So instead I gave it a wash and then laid it out on some blocking mats outside, and tried to pat it into some sort of rough shape, without losing the texture, and this is the result.

Making a thing a day for Thingadailies.

Technically I didn’t make this in one day, but as this is my challenge, I get to play with the rules, and so I’m going to run with it.

The last couple months I have been staring at some unfinished projects and thinking I really ought to do them, except I just didn’t want to. So instead I cast on a scarf kit that a friend gave me. The yarn is a four-stranded cotton yarn where the color of a single strand changes every once in a while, so that you end up with a fun color change throughout the course of the piece. It was the sort of project where it required absolutely no thought at all, and was perfect to take on car trips, or when sitting with family or friends. I knit until the yarn was almost used up, and then bound off, and then it sat there, lurking, in a project bag, for far too long, until today when I dug it out and finally wove in the ends.

This is a horrible picture of it, but it was late when I took it, so oh well. I do like the colors – it goes from a soft cream to a warm brown and the entire time I was working on it I thought it reminded me of a latte.

This will be perfect for when I need something soft and cozy on a trip. It’s double-sided because it’s all garter stitch, so no worry about whether I’m arranging it right, and it’s cotton, so it won’t be overly warm in inclement weather.

Making a thing a day for Thingadailies.

Now that I’ve got two headbands done, I’ve been going through patterns pondering new possibilities, and when I stumbled across this pattern, I knew I absolutely had to make it.

I used some yarn I got in a yarn swap a couple years ago, which turned out to be the perfect fit for this. I actually finished it this weekend, but didn’t block it until today.

This is definitely meant for cold weather, instead of just for keeping one’s hair out of one’s face, since it’s a bit wide for my current needs, but it was a fun, quick project to knit, and it’ll come in handy winter.

Making a thing a day for Thingadailies.

After I made that first headband, I pondered how to improve things. The first one was nice, but a little loose. So I poked around online until I found an interesting cable pattern, found yet another ball of random acrylic in my stash (let’s just say that I’m in no danger of running out of random acrylic yarn any time soon), and while we binge-watched old episodes of Flea Market Flip, I made myself another headband.

No official pattern to link; I just cast on twelve stitches and followed the instructions for the Sand Cable until it was the length that seemed to fit on my head. Then I kitchenered the two ends together, and poof, headband.

Unlike try #1, this one fits perfectly, so hooray for that. However, the nature of the cable means that it curls in on itself. So while this one fits, and does the job it’s meant to, there’s still some improvements to be made (and oodles of yarn in the stash to try).

Making a thing a day for Thingadailies.

This was supposed to be yesterday’s item except I was dithering about what I wanted to make and it turns out, 9:30 at night is not the best time to start a new project when one hopes to finish it before one falls asleep at the needles. So instead I finished it this morning.

After years and years of having super short hair, I’ve decided to try growing it out again. Fine, except that it’s now reached the stage where it’s long enough to hang in my face but not long enough to actually pull back in a barrette, and it’s been driving me crazy. So naturally I decided to knit my way out of this problem, by making myself a headband.

This is the 50’s Knotted Headband. It’s made with some random acrylic yarn from my stash, and except for some minor shaping, it’s basically just a long strip of garter stitch, tied in a knot with some ‘bow’ shaped flaps at the ends.

I wore it all day today to see how I felt. I like it – a lot – except that it is just a hair on the loose side. However, even with that, it worked great for solving the problem of the shag rug on my head, so there will be more headbands in my future, oh yes.

Making a thing a day for Thingadailies.

It’s February, which means it’s once again time for Thingadailies, where I commit to making one thing a day for the entire month of February. In years past I’ve had a particular theme in mind, but I really struggled to come up with one for this year, so….my plan is to just make whatever I feel like, and we’ll see how it goes.

Anyway. To start off the month, I am bucking the rules entirely by showing off a thing that is not finished, but on which I’m doing a little bit of work every single day this year. Yes, fellow fiber artists, some friends and I have finally succumbed to the lure of the Temperature Blanket.

The premise of this blanket is that you work one section per day, for an entire year, changing the colors with the temperature of the day (in our case we’re going with whatever the day’s high was). Number of colors used is entirely up to you and how many ends you want to weave in (we’re doing a new color every five degrees), as is the pattern.

I pondered a couple different ideas (since we’re all doing different patterns for this, but using the same set of colors), but in the end decided to make mine entralac, which is a fun technique that makes it look like the finished product is woven, and is also a fantastic way to practice knitting backwards, if that is a skill you ever wanted to learn. I’m doing one panel a day (and have mapped this out completely so as to make sure that this will work). So far I’m keeping up with it, and really liking how it’s turning out (the different blues don’t all come out very well in this picture, unfortunately, but there’s five separate colors represented so far, well six if we count the black).

Making a thing a day for Thingadailies.