Mohair. Never Again...?

Since I started knitting there is one aspect I've never attempted. Lace. 

It's not that I have been avoiding it, it's just I've never really found a lace pattern that I had to make. The BF's Mum on the other hand, found a wonderful pattern that she wanted me to make: A lacey wrap/scarf thing. She got the pattern from the Nov '11 Everyday Living magazine (from what I can find). So I accepted the challenge, and 100g of mohair 'yarn', and got to work

I have never worked with mohair before. If I had I most likely would have been not as keen to do this project. As I found out, mohair, typically from a goat, does not felt like sheep's wool (which is why its usually mixed with wool). It remains hairlike giving it the classic fuzzed look of angora and other fibres like it. The final product definitely looks nice but getting it there is a fuzzy fuzzy journey. As in, my couch is still covered in purple mohairs and I have a white shirt that will never be quite the same. (I need a lint roller ASAP.)

Regardless of the material I used though, the pattern was super easy to follow. It even included a backwards k2tog that I had never done before. Yay learning new stitches! Also the scalloped edges and ridges were super easy to replicate too. Especially with blocking.

I had never blocked any of my knitting before. That mainly being because everything I knit is usually chunky and doesn't really need it. So this was a double new adventure.

The instructions on the pattern said to soak the finished project in lukewarm water for 15 minutes. Then towel off the excess water, stretch and pin the wrap out and then let it dry. So I filled the kitchen sink with water, got out my old fabric pins and got to work. As previously discussed, mohair be moulting as %@*&. So I had to use the drain plug as a pseudo purple hair catcher (delicious). After the first soak I refilled the sink a second time to try and swish any left over purple fuzzes off the wrap. Then it was pinning time! Pretty straight forward (pun alert!): Start at one end and then stretch and pin till you get to the other end. I also made sure that the scalloped edges were at maximum scoop by pinning them down both horizontally and vertically. Seemed to work very well!  

A good, albeit fuzzy, journey.

I hope she likes it! (Now on to the next two projects! D=)

-Andrea

The Half-Assed Hobbyist

Holiday Knitting

Over the holidays there was a lot of sitting and digesting. What better to do when you've got a case of the roly-polies than knit. Best excuse to sit ever. 

Anyways. I got some pretty spiffy knitting magazines from the BFs parents and sister, so I picked out some easier patterns and got cracking. As you can see from my creations above a) I was very productive, and b) I need to buy some not ridiculous coloured yarn. 

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Hello Shopping center here come!

Or rather, I went.... I spent all my Christmas money. Now I don't have to pretend to have the right sized needles. Yay!

-Andrea

The Half-Assed Hobbyist

The Next Step

After knitting for a year I got bored with dish cloths and scarves and half mittens. I wanted a new challenge. Since I had taught myself off the internets, my stitches were top notch (or as good as they were going to get) but my pattern reading skills were the pits. So I picked an intermediate pattern from Red Heart (J27.0001-5K), bought some yarn and got cracking. Yay Socks!

Now, being two pages long and made for three different sizes, this pattern scared me for two reasons. One - I had to follow a pattern and wouldn't be able to fly by the seat of my pants into the sock knitting night; Two -  The pattern was two pages long and, after reading it through, I had no idea what I was in for. I started anyway, taking it one pattern section at a time. It turned out to, luckily, be a good strategy. The rib pattern was super easy and made up most of the sock. The tricky part ended up being understanding what the pattern wanted with regards to what needle was 'No 1' and what a psso was. (The internet helped me out with that one.) I got down to the heel where the pattern splits off onto only two needles. It recommends to place the unworked on stitches onto a stitch holder... which at the time I thought was a ploy to sell stitch holders... but seriously, buy one, so much less stress. Next, it was working in knit for the heel, which - after I figured out what a psso was - was rather easy. Picking up the stitches after the heel was done was awkward but manageable. Then it was rib pattern and knit from there on out, all the way to the toe knit.

Over all, I'd give sock making a 3 out of 5. It takes forever because you get bored of the rib pattern, but, at the end, I got a real sense of accomplishment. I made feet covers!  Rainbow feet covers.

-Andrea

The Half-Assed Hobbyist

 

The Knittering

In the spring of 2012 I was unemployed. And what better to do than pick up a new hobby! Since I had only ever half-assedly tried to learn when I was a child I thought I'd take up the yarnning past time and learn to knit. 

My first experience with knitting had been at my Oma's house when my sister and I had attempted to knit skirts for our barbie dolls. Needless to say, I took the knitting project home, promptly forgot about it, and some many years later I found a foggy plastic bag filled with old knitting at the back of a desk drawer. This second attempt, I promised myself, would be a lot better (and hopefully I wouldn't find any projects stuffed in the back of a drawer in a decade). 

So I went to the craft-iest place I could think of, Michaels. I bought some sized 7 single-ended needles, some dishcloth yarn, and a booklet for beginners. 

Firstly, if you're trying to learn to knit via cartoon pictures of needles and yarn it's very hard to know where your hands go. Secondly, Youtube is a knitting beginners salvation. And thirdly, it helps to have someone straighten you out who knows how to knit. In the last case, my Oma helped me out. 

My Oma

My Oma

So between all these sources I learned haphazardly how to knit. Even if the booklet was rather useless it did provide lessons on the lingo, knit and purl and yarn-over, etc.  Youtube provided visuals that a book can't convey (which even to this day I check out when I run into a new stitch). And Oma was there to teach me the basics of hand placement and the difference between knit and purl (even though she taught me the 'european backwards way', said another lady who saw me knitting in waiting room, who also told me I was knitting wrong). Since I really don't do things the way they're supposed to be done anyway it didn't matter much. And I still get the exact same results.

Honestly though, I was horrible at knitting. Seriously. The tension was off or I forgot what side was 'wrong'. If knitting were breathing I would be very very dead. But if there is a hobby where you can erase your mistakes like it never happened, it's knitting (unfortunately my breathing analogy falls short here...). Practice was it and since I was unemployed at the time, I had lots of availability in my schedule to do just that. 

Eventually I got better. Except at reading patterns... which I'm still horrible at. But I half-assed my way through lots of projects. My favourite was probably a multicoloured scarf whose pattern I made up because the pattern I tried to follow was hard. I even upped the difficulty to making gloves in a round with 4 double-ended needles (which sounds more impressive than it really is, but shhhhhh). 

My escapade into the old-ish art of looping yarn was a relative success. And I really only had half-assed the hand positions, the pattern reading and learning the differences between different yarns.... So basically I'm a professional now. Obviously. 

 -Andrea

The Half-Assed Hobbyist