Knitter in the Kitchen

I have a confession to make. I used to think that knitted arm warmers were pointless. I mean, if your hands are cold enough to warrant wearing gloves, then why wear fingerless ones? Won’t your fingers still freeze?

Last week Eunny posted about her Fair Isle arm warmers. I thought they looked beautiful, but I still didn’t think that arm warmers were for me. Then on Thanksgiving day I sat in front of my computer at home without the heater on, and when I got up I realized that my hands were cold. Light bulb moment! If I had arm warmers on, then I would have still been able to type and my palms wouldn’t have been so cold. Duh! And…arm warmers might be good for driving, too! My steering wheel is cold in the morning, but I don’t like wearing gloves when holding the wheel…so maybe arm warmers are the solution? Oooooh, new project!

I searched for a simple arm warmer pattern in my books. There is a neat pattern in Last Minute Knitted Gifts, but it called for 8″ circular needles. Eight inches? Sixteen-inch circs already seem small, so I can’t imagine using eight-inch ones! I guess I could have used DPNs instead. I also found a cabled arm warmer pattern in Stitch N Bitch Nation. I was about to knit this pattern when I remembered the Irish Hiking Wrist Warmers. Bingo!

I used size 8 needles and almost one skein of Elann’s Peruvian Collection Highland Wool in color #4142 (Orchid Pink). I only had a little bit of yarn left. This yarn is itchy, so maybe next time I will use Cascade 220 or my favorite, Debbie Bliss Cashmerino. It was a really quick project — I knit, blocked, and seamed them in 3 days. I have one more skein of Orchid Pink left, so I’m thinking of knitting a pink and brown striped hat to match my arm warmers.

If you know of other cool arm warmer patterns, please send them my way!

On a technical note: can anyone tell me how to use the “future” function on MT to publish posts? I set the status to “future” and then changed the publish date to a future date and time. I was expecting my post to publish at that time but it didn’t…am I missing a step? Thanks in advance!

I finished my Ruffles Scarf on Thanksgiving Eve.

I used 3 full balls of Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran. When I finished the first ball, I seriously considered ripping the entire project because the messy short rows were really bothering me. Then I tried on the scarf, and the short rows weren’t very noticeable so I decided to go ahead. I went through the second ball of yarn very quickly. The third ball seemed to take forever to knit. At this point, it crossed my mind that perhaps DB CashAran was not the most ideal yarn for a short rows scarf. While CashAran is super soft, I wouldn’t describe it as “sturdy.” Perhaps the short rows would not have looked so messy on a sturdier yarn? Who knows. I’m just happy that I finished the scarf. And while I can’t have just one chip, I am definitely satisfied with just one Ruffles Scarf.

I will post more later this week about the other projects I worked on over the long weekend. In the meantime, please take a look at my de-stashing blog for the yarns and books I am selling. My knitting preferences have changed in recent months, and I am de-stashing the items that I don’t anticipate using. Thanks for looking!

First, I would like to thank you for your kind and encouraging comments about my Kepler Sweater! Right now I think I will put it aside for awhile and re-visit it later when I’m less frustrated with the project.

In other sweater news…I am happy to report that the Frieda Sweater from Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk is going well! I finished the back last week and am currently working on the front.

I love watching the cable pattern develop! This is my first project that involves shaping while knitting a pattern (i.e. not stockinette), so initially I had difficulty understanding the instructions. Being a visual learner, I ended up making tables to map out the increases and decreases by row. That helped me immensely. I also had an “a-ha!” moment when I discovered that I misread the pattern. I thought it said that the 4th and 11th rows make up the cable pattern. I was really confused by this for a minute before I realized that it actually read “the 4th to 11th rows form the cable pattern.” Ah. One word makes a huge difference, doesn’t it? It’s not quite turtleneck-sweater-weather here yet (still had 70-degree weather this past week), but I hope to finish it in time for winter.

I procrastinated on seaming Kepler because I had a feeling that it would be rough. Unfortunately I was right. When the armholes are too large for the sleeves, and you have a knitter who doesn’t grasp how to sew set-in sleeves, you know it’s going to be very ugly. There are lots of issues with this sweater, and my guess is that they stem from the main problem of gauge. My gauge was off, and I didn’t do anything to adjust for it. Should have, but didn’t. If my gauge was correct, then perhaps: (1) the shoulders would be the correct width instead of being way too narrow, (2) the sleeves would be the correct width so I wouldn’t have to stretch them out so much, and (3) the sleeve size would have matched the armholes so that there wouldn’t be this awful bunching. And if I knew how to sew in a sleeve, then perhaps the seam line would be straight instead of crooked. Basically I made up my sleeve seaming method as I went along. I definitely need to take a sweater finishing class before I put together any more sweaters. Blocking helped, but blocking can only do so much. Oh, and did I mention that the body and the sleeves are all too long? Bottom line: I need to frog the entire sweater.

Some good things came out of this project, though! I learned how to do the mattress stitch, the three-needle bind off, and make an applied i-cord. As a side note, I referenced Theresa’s excellent tutorial on making applied-cords. I also tried the sloped bind-off at the armholes.

I’m tired of obsessing about Kepler (and you’re probably tired of reading about it!), so as awful as it is, I’ll leave you with a full photo.

Perhaps it’s time to knit another hat.

Last night I decided I wanted a hat, and this afternoon I finished this:

Meet the Rolled Edge Stocking Cap that uses one skein of Noro Kureyon. This is my fastest project ever! Part of why I knit it in less than a day is because I couldn’t wait to watch the colors change. But to be honest, when I bought this skein, I had no idea that there were so many colors in this colorway (#148). I thought it was just pink and purple. Here is another view of the hat (unrolled) so that you can see more of the colors:

And here is the top color:

A minor heads-up if you knit this hat — gauge is not specified in the pattern (not that I would have checked anyway). I am a tight knitter and I followed the directions exactly. I had very little leftover yarn. So if you are a very loose knitter, you might need to make some adjustments or use a tad bit more than one skein.

I liked this knit so much that I already picked out another colorway for hat #2! If my sister likes the second one, then it will be for her. If not, then it’s another one for me!!