Happy Knitting

ETA: I've tried to fix the pictures. Could someone please let me know whether they are now visible? Thanks!

I mentioned in my last post that my house had been torn up for 45 days. As it turns out, 45 days is the outside limit of my tolerance for having my house torn up. On day 46, I evidently become a raving lunatic who frightens husbands and small children and causes contractors to back slowly away while laughing nervously.

However, I apparently also become extremely energetic and efficient. My house is entirely put back together, with a new bathroom, new walls, new paint, and new living room furniture. It is beautiful. I am happy. All is well with my world.

My husband deserves (he insists) full credit for talking me off the ledge. He also deserves full credit for moving enormously heavy pieces of furniture all over the house and lighting a fire under contractors who clearly did not understand the importance of getting the damned project done already.

And now I am deeply engrossed in happy knitting. I got this (at my request, and to the accompaniment of much eye-rolling) for Christmas:


This is a full bag of Noro Kochoran, one of my all-time favorite yarns. I really wanted this to make a soft, fluffy sofa throw. I cast on Christmas morning and have been happily and obsessively knitting ever since.


Note the colors. There is nothing about these colors that would appeal to a male--ever--and that is the point.


Every afghan I have made has been confiscated by someone in my family. And while I am thrilled that they love my afghans, I am also cold. I want my own blankie, and this is it. It's like the hot pink flip flops I bought when my black and brown ones kept disappearing. I couldn't keep a pair of flip flops for more than a few weeks. I've had the pink ones for three years. So this is the knitted equivalent of hot pink flip flops.

The pattern is here, and it is free. I used the Kochoran instead of sock yarn scraps, obviously, and size 10 needles. My goal is to knit one ball of yarn per day, giving me a finished 48"x 60" throw in ten days. So far, I am on track. I don't normally set knitting goals, but this is an exception: I want my blankie, darn it!

FO: Man Blankie

I finished the Feel Better Blanket a couple of days ago.


This was my first machine quilting project, and one of my first machine sewing projects ever, so be gentle.

If you look closely, you will see that there are literally hundreds of errors in both piecing and quilting, and I am quite certain that the experienced quilters among you are shuddering with horror at the way I resolved some of the many issues I encountered in making this.


For all that, I loved working on this project! I love, love, love the fabrics, which I got in the form of Freebird Charm Packs from Moda Fabrics. I did absolutely nothing fancy, just sewed the individual squares together as they pleased me.


The border is plain red cotton. I used a twin sized cotton quilt batt which I cut to the custom size of this quilt, and the backing is chocolate colored flannel to make it extra cozy.


I discovered that I really enjoy the feel of just sewing straight lines with my lovely old machine, and that playing with beautiful fabrics is just as wonderful as playing with beautiful yarns.


For the quilting, I winged it, ending up with an ad hoc plaid pattern. As you can see, I used contrasting dark brown quilting thread. I did this to tone down the bright colors a touch, since the KH declared them, "almost a little too cheerful." I think it worked well; I like the way the brown stands out against the bright fabrics, even though it makes every little quilting error jump out at you--and there are a lot of quilting errors.


I tried several methods to get the quilting to go smoothly. In the end, I found that I preferred using the original old edging foot that came with my 1962 Pfaff 360. I didn't like the even feed foot I bought, or the straight stitch foot, or the darning foot. But the edging foot has a guide that helped get the lines straight and even, or at least less wobbly and uneven than the other feet, and was smoother and quieter than the even feed foot.


To finish it, I cut off the extra batting and the wrapped the backing forward over the edge batting and folded the red edging backward over the batting and the backing and sewed it down by hand. (For the record, I do know how to make and attach bias binding, but I chose not to in this case.) As you can see, I'm no better at hand sewing than machine sewing, but at least I could do this part sitting on the sofa in front of the tv. I finished it off with a good machine wash and dry to make it all soft and crinkly.

The KH has barely let his "man blankie" out of his sight for the past two days. He carries it from the sofa to his upstairs office to our bed, depending on where he's hanging out. I have resisted calling him "Linus" because that be mistaken for criticism, when it fact it tickles and flatters me that he seems to love this blanket so much!

Noro Jag

Ah, Spring. The time when a knitter's fancy turns to thoughts of Noro...or is that just me?

I'm on another Noro jag. Happens every once in a while. Remember last year's must-have Noro Giant Granny Square? This year it's the Noro Log Cabin Blanket. The need to make one of these (Rav link) bit hard while I was in Lake Tahoe. And thanks to the internet, even though I couldn't make my intended pilgrimage to Jimmy Beans Wool in Reno (seems some of the males in my household don't see the necessity of driving two hours round trip to visit a yarn shop from which I can order yarn online in a matter of seconds--party poopers, all of them), I discovered that Noro Yuzen has recently been put on clearance by a number of my favorite yarn pushers...uh, suppliers. I ordered mine from WEBS here, but it's also on sale at Little Knits.

This is a round about way of explaining that I bought a blanket's worth of Noro last week. Wanna make somethin' of it?

And here's the current progress:

I started two days ago and have discovered, despite all the other projects on the needles, that these little squares are a lot like potato chips: I can't have just one. In fact, I'm not sure anything else is going to get done until I've turned my entire supply of ever-changing Noro colorways into log cabin squares.


(Don't mind the wonkiness. I haven't blocked any of them yet.)

I bought two hanks each of ten different colorways. Each hank makes one 11-inch square on size 7 needles at 18 sts/4 inches in garter. Don't be fooled by the gauge listed on Noro yarns. It's always wrong. I don't know whether yarn gauge is measured differently in Japan or whether it's just a Noro thing, but I find the yarn is always at least one size larger than listed; in other words, this "dk" weight yarn is really a worsted/aran weight yarn.

In case anyone is of a similar mind, these squares are wicked easy to make. After the first one, you don't need anything resembling a pattern to whip them out, and you may not even have to look at your hands, if you can resist staring at the color changes.

I worked this one sitting in Younger Son's academic awards ceremony today (honor roll-yay!).

He's the one on the far right. Congratulations, Goober!

The Antidote to Lace Knitting

A few days ago I saw this and fell completely and hopelessly in lust. My palms started to sweat and my heartbeat sped up and I knew I wouldn't be able to rest until I cast on for a Giant Granny Square of my very own. I know it's crochet; I don't care. I don't have anything against crochet, except that it's not knitting. I learned how to crochet years before I learned to knit, if by "learned" you understand that I mean I figured out how to make something resembling a square piece of fabric out of a stringy, plastic-y substance that went by the name "yarn" back in the 1970's. Come to think of it, I believe the original granny square blankets were often made out of this same substance.

But I love the idea of a single, giant granny square crocheted from gorgeous, chunky Noro yarn. I almost immediately located this and deemed it perfect for the purpose:


See how well the colors work in my family room?

So I pulled up the instructions on my computer and cast on.

Within the first few moments, I discovered that I do not know how to crochet. Whatever the thing is that I learned to do all those many years ago, it was not at all what the instructions told me to do now. It took me an embarrassingly long time to get the hang of making a simple granny square. I stopped counting after the sixth time I ripped back to the beginning.

Eventually, though, I got it working, and was reminded how delightful instant gratification really is:

This is one skein of Noro Iro, and it's a little more than a foot square. I have nine more skeins, so this should end up being a decently-sized throw for the family room sofa. Or...um...maybe my bedroom.