Hello readers, I’ve just got a quick FO post for you today! I’ve got a bit of a backup on photographing/recording items I’ve finished so far this year – there’s already several waiting in the wings! Yikes! First up is a pair of mittens I crocheted – for myself! Because I needed mittens! This was a totally selfish project that took two seconds and got me an awesome pair of mittens.

The pattern – like the subject of this post – is called Cozy Phalanges. It’s by my crochet colleague at Loopy, Taylor. She doesn’t sell her patterns online, but if you’re in Chicago you can pick up a hard copy at Loopy.* It’s worked in bulky weight yarn at a dense gauge, so while they’re not totally wind-proof (in Chicago at least, where nothing is really wind-proof anyway) they are super warm – almost too warm for my sweaty mitts.

The yarn I used is from Romni Wools, and it was a gift from a Canadian friend a while back. Gosh would I ever love to make it to that shop some day.

I love the details in this pattern. The mittens are worked top-down, but there is a thumb gusset (a necessity for mittens, IMO! I absolutely cannot abide mittens without thumb shaping) and a ribbed-esque cuff worked in post stitches.

Next up: two FOs that are BRIGHT PINK. No one can ever say I’m afraid of color.

*Since the pattern is not my own I can’t provide readers with copies, but a search on ravelry for crocheted mittens in bulky weight yarns will show you some super similar patterns!

It seems a bit ridiculous to be posting a 2011 wrap-up at this point, but I guess as long as it’s still January the topic is fair game, right? Frankly, I just like to drag out the holidays for as long as possible. I’ll keep it short and sweet:

That’s 36 finished items, people! I’m pretty proud, if I may say so. I attribute the x-treme productivity to a couple things: 1. teaching beginning crochet about once a week (I always have to have a simple crochet project to bring to class) 2. a handful of road trips and 3. (this one being a bit sad) almost zero design output (just one thing I can’t post about yet). Here are the stats on the finished items:
2 embroidery
14 knit
18 crochet
2 a combination of knitting and crochet (the French press cozy and the baby bonnet)
14 gifts (including 1 that was actually a swap)
11 for me
11 now reside in Loopy

I have a number of goals for 2012 (I hate resolutions). Firstly, I need to take a cold, hard look at my stash and make some calls about which yarns have a plan and which I will clearly never use. The yarn situation in this apartment is approaching Hoarders material. Conveniently, my neighborhood knitting group is having a stash swap in a couple weeks – it’s possible I could acquire some new things through this (hopefully things I’d use!) but the leftover items get donated to a local prison, so I don’t have to feel too bad about destashing. Secondly, I really want to get back on the design wagon. I have a handful of ideas that are totally executable; I just need to find time and/or get off my butt and do it. Finally, I would really like 2012 to be the year when I finally finish a crocheted sweater for myself.

The state of the WIPs:
I carried over a couple WIPs from 2010, but the unfinished object situation isn’t actually too bad. I have a pink stockinette sock that needs a mate – no problem, since I always need a stockinette in the round project. Then there’s the matter of my Luna sweater – this is a bit stalled at the moment because I’m pretty sure I’m not going to have enough yarn (I’m sure I have 2 more balls than are in my project bag), and the color I’m using has been discontinued (not a whole lot of it available on rav, either). I’m hoping with my upcoming stash-assessment I’ll come across the remaining 2 balls of that yarn that I’m pretty sure exist somewhere in this apartment (why they were separated from their mates I have no idea). If not, well, … I’ll maybe just cry? I really like this sweater and I want to wear it, but if I have to admit defeat on something I’ve spent this much time on and is working well aside from the yarn situation it might have to go to the back of the closet for a while.

Happy New Year, dear readers! I hope everyone is recovering from the holidays, should you celebrate holidays at this particular time of year! Reading all the crafting year in review blog posts is one of my favorite New Year activities. I’ve got one in the works for you, but first I wanted to post about a couple Christmas presents I finished before the holiday. Each of my parents received hats this year. How did I not realize until this year that hats are like the best hand-crafted gift ever? They’re super quick to make, and you can try all kinds of fun new techniques and patterns without having to commit to a huge project! And you can make a bunch of em and not freak out about time! And each person only wears one hat so there’s no second sock/mitten ennui! (Duh – no two-headed family members here.) As a formerly curly-haired, now short-haired individual I have ridiculously specific hat needs (although honestly, we probably all do, regardless of hairstyle), but there are a ton of great patterns out there that I would love to make, if not necessarily wear, so this way I get to try a few of them out.

Enough waxing poetic about hats! First up, a crocheted hat for my mom:

This pattern is called Julep, and it’s by Mercedes Tarasovich-Clark. I think I queued it a while back, before I realized that Mercedes is one of those rare designers, such as myself, who works in both knitting and crochet. Neat! As for Julep, I’m totally filing this design under “damn, wish I’d thought of that.” It’s a straightforward beret worked entirely in puff stitch. I love puff stitches! I used up some old Colinette Jitterbug (a surprising amount of it, actually – crocheted puff stitch takes a fair amount of yarn!) and worked the pattern pretty much as written, except for adding a few extra rows around the edge. I pressured Peter into a quick hat-gift photoshoot before we left Chicago for Christmas, and he snapped this shot of the back of it:

It’s not exactly a “keep your ears warm in the dead of a Chicago winter” kind of hat, but that’s not really what it’s designed to do. So I’m glad I got a chance to make it, even if it wouldn’t really work for me. My mom lives in Oregon and just needs to occasional light head cover, so she was thrilled with it.

Next up is the Asheboro Hat, by Mandy Powers:

Now, I don’t know why my father insists on hiking his hats up above his ears, but I swear to you that hat fits him. SIGH. Here it is in a more directed photoshoot setting (heh):

I’m 99% sure I’ll end up making this pattern as a gift again. It’s a great classic design that can look really personalized with different color choices, it calls for worsted weight yarn in two colors – of which I have a metric crapload -, and it works up in about two seconds. The small amount of colorwork, which is in a simple repeat with manageable lengths of floats, means this would be a great project for a newcomer to colorwork. As a more experience color knitter, the snowflake/star design was just enough interest to keep things exciting. I actually have about a million other nice things to say about Mandy’s designs but – spoiler alert – I have a couple other of her designs to write-up soon, so I’ll save the poetic waxing for that post.

I’ll be back with a year-end wrap-up any day now. I hope every one of you had great holidays and are excited for the new year!

(Yes, I installed a special Christmas keyboard on my phone. What can I say – I love Christmas!)

Look! I finished a stripe study!

I actually finished it a couple weeks ago, but the combination of blog ennui following nablopomo, short days with little to no light for photoshoots, and houseguests kept me from posting about it sooner. While it may have taken me a while to get around to blogging this, it didn’t take me long to finish it. Apparently I’m some kind of a fiend for stripes.

Stripes keep me going. It may sound a bit simple-minded, but when I’m knitting or crocheting the idea of making to the next stripe is thoroughly motivating. Those of you who have been reading for a while might remember this post about my burning stripes socks – also completely addicting! Short rows are probably the second most addictive technique for me. Combine these things and a short road trip a few weeks ago and maybe you’re starting to see how I managed to finish this shawl so quickly.

Stripe Study is the first Veera pattern I’ve knit, and I wouldn’t change a single thing about it. Veera’s been colonizing my queue lately with those fabulous designs! I have someone in mind who might just need a Different Lines, and for myself I’d really like Plain and Simple and Buckwheat. I even already have yarn for the two sweaters!

And finally, a couple technical notes: I knit this shawl out of Plucky Knitter Superwash Merino Fingering (honey wilkes) and Another Crafty Girl Merino Sock (lagoon). You can head over to my rav page if you want to follow up on these yarns. I’ve raved about them both on here before! They’re both 400 yard skeins, which is a teensy bit smaller than the Stripe Study pattern calls for, and I just kept knitting until I used them both pretty nearly in their entirety.

Thank you so much for the thoughtful comments you all have left on yesterday’s post. I will get back to you all individually within the coming days, but generating thoughtful responses can take me a moment sometimes. Obviously I’m coming at this whole critique issue from the perspective of an academic. As a PhD student I’m pretty accustomed to being interrogated about my work, and while it can sometimes sting, especially at first, through questions and conversations and challenges from opposing viewpoints my own work has only gotten better. That is obviously something that takes place within the academic context, where we all share many common vocabularies, assumptions, goals, etc, but I think there is much to be said about how critique may or may not work similarly in a crafty context. At any rate, this issue is something I’ll continue to wonder about, so I’ll check back when I have something else interesting to say. But for now, I’d like to thank you for sticking around through all the nablopomo posts, reading and commenting as you were able (minus the one day I missed!). I’ll bit you farewell at least for a few days to give myself a blo-break. (har)