Tag: knitting

Knitting Patterns For Sale · My Knitting Life

Dorothy and Tara Hat

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Oh to float across the ice like skaters from the past! I love ice skating. I grew up on a lake where the neighbor kids took turns shoveling in the evenings so the hockey rink would be free from snow. There’s nothing like invigorating cold to wake up the senses during the darker days of winter.  But staying comfortable is a must! Keep yourself warm at the ice skating rink with a modified tam hat with spiral cables from top to bottom.  Imagine doing figure eights and scratch spins in style!  Using just one skein (200 or so yards) of worsted weight yarn, you can whip this beret up in a few evenings.  Doesn’t every knitter have an odd skein of worsted lying around?  Pattern comes in two adult sizes (S/M, and L). You can purchase it in my Ravelry Store: Nancy Wilson designer

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And, I still ice skate occasionally, even though I’m not a kid anymore!

 

My Knitting Life

2012 in review

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Yes, I’m still here! I haven’t posted in a few months, but I mean to be more active this year. Our family is in the process of moving from Indiana to Utah! Needless to say, we are busy and excited!  I have a new hat pattern coming out soon, but in the meantime, take a look at my blog’s year in review. In addition, look around my blog for a few free knitting patterns!

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 5,300 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 9 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.

Free Knitting Patterns · Home Projects Patterns · My Knitting Life

Twice Recycled Lunch Bag

nancyknit6 Comments

My knitting life hasn’t been great lately. I have been knitting a bit, but not as much as I want to. With my job being pretty all-consuming right now, I work all day and come home and sit on the couch trying to finish what I didn’t have time to do at work. UGH! I just want some needles in my hands! Feelin’ sorry for me yet? I hope so, but enough of that.

I do get hungry at work, and I wove a little lunch basket last year, but it has ended up being just too small for all the lunch I need to take to work (I’m hungry!). Enter thoughts about a market bag I wanted to knit. But why not just turn it into a lunch bag? Done! Leftover yarn from my “Look Twice” sweater, and it’s recycled yarn to boot, like being recycled twice!

Twice Recycled Bag

So here’s a free pattern for you. Please be a somewhat experienced knitter who knows terms like “kitchener” stitch, i-cord, etc. Hey, its a free pattern!

Twice Recycled Bag

Twice Recycled BagDownload
Free Knitting Patterns

Jackson Prairie Scarf

nancyknit4 Comments

I’ve been eyeing some stray skeins of bulky yarn in my stash.  What to do with them?  Hmmmm…how about a scarf, a crazy sort of scarf in garter stitch where I change yarn every row?  That sounds scrappy!  So here’s a scrappy end to end scarf called Jackson Prairie Scarf:

Scarf Size:  72” long and 6½” wide

What is Jackson Prairie?

When we moved back to Indiana, we bought 3.5 acres of a cornfield and built a house. An entire chunk of land around there was a treeless area where farmers planted crops. The township was called “Jackson” and the area north of “Sand Hill,” east of the Pigeon River Wildlife Area. A local historian worked at my school as the librarian. His uncle had a farm south of Sand Hill. He said that Native Americans used to keep this area as grazing for wildlife, so deer would be easy to see and track. That’s Jackson Prairie!

(p.s.  The hat is an entirely different story.  Changing yarn every row means it’s impossible to knit in the round, making not only a seamed hat, but a hat that has many ends to work in. I didn’t write a pattern for that one!)

Jackson Prairie Scarf

Jackson Prairie ScarfDownload
My Knitting Life

Christmas Knitting Done!

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For once I finished my Christmas knitting way ahead of schedule, or so I thought.  BUT then I remembered the socks I needed to finish for my mom and dad.  I had one and a half socks knit for each of them, having just turned the heels on the second sock for each of them.  So, crazy knitting ensued on December 18.  Actually it wasn’t too bad because that was all I knitted on for a few days, and then they were done  Yes, done by December 21!

These gray ribbed socks were for my dad, but I decided to give them to my dear husband.

My dad got a pair of tan cabled socks from me.

The socks below are for my mom:

And then I knitted these scarves for my nieces:


And I couldn’t forget my sweet little great niece (whom I rocked to sleep on Christmas Day because she was all tuckered out)! So I used this great yarn from Jojoland called Rhythm Superwash.  It’s super spongy and has a ton of memory.  I’ve used it on socks too, and it’s great. This pattern is called “Cute Little Buggy” and is free here on my blog!

Now I guess I’ll start next year’s knitting!

Baby Patterns · Free Knitting Patterns · My Knitting Life

Cute Little Buggy

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Buggy carries so many meanings here in Northern Indiana. We have a lot of Amish people, so we see lots of “buggies” here on the roads. Like anywhere, we have plenty of crazy people, so we call them “buggy.” AND since it’s getting colder, many little buggies are trying to sneak into any place warm to hibernate for the winter. Buggy.

Here’s a hat, however, which is meant for Cute Little Buggies. I’m hoping you have some of those in your life and you knit up some of these hats for little people on your Christmas lists.

My little model was not cooperating since she was very sleepy and grouchy, so I opted to put the hat on a couple of bowls in a small light box.  Hey, it’s a free pattern!

Cute Little Buggy

Cute Little BuggyDownload
My Knitting Life

Itchy

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I almost can’t stand it anymore. Everything I have on my needles are projects I’m tired of, or long-term projects that I’ll be working on for years to come.  The “years to come” projects are two afghans made of tiny mitered squares.  So I’m waiting for deep winter to work on those.  I also have three sweaters on the needles. Oh, and I have two pairs of socks on the needles.  And a laceweight scarf, Kernel.  Plus a cotton table-runner.  You can check these out on nancyknit’s Ravelry page.  I like these projects. Well, I love these projects, but not now.  I’m itching to start something NEW!

I want to knit some gloves

and a vest

and I want to start a new sweater.

But I guess I’ll be disciplined and try to finish some things.

Here’s my dream list of items to have on the needle.  If I can keep these items on the needles, then I feel my knitting is under control:

Socks: 1 ladies” pair and 1 men’s pair, plain, ribbed, or simple cable

Fingering: 1 lace project like a scarf or socks, or 1 pair of stranded socks

Sweaters: 1 ladies’ sweater and 1 men’s sweater

Home: 1 project for something around the house

So, I guess I’m doing well, except I have one too many sweaters on the needle right now.  I guess I’ll wait to start something new. Hmmph.

My Knitting Life

Green Tea…um…Tee

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I just rarely knit for summer. I mean, really, a sweater in SUMMER? But of course, this is my Michigan upbringing coming in to play, because there are many lightweight and short-sleeve or sleeveless sweaters to wear. Add to that the fact that every place is over-air-conditioned, sweaters really ARE practical in the summer!
So here’s a T-top that I knit this summer out of Plymouth’s Grass yarn, a blend of cotton and hemp. It’s got these great color variations in each skein so the yarn looks tonal depending on the angle.
My crochet skills (I’m using the word “skill” here very loosely) had to come into play in that I needed to crochet around the neckline and sleeves to tighten up the picots. I just chained around the neck with the chain side showing. That helped, but it needed more, so I chained one more row above that to make the picots look less like fingers and more like bumps. Then the sleeves needed something, so I loosely chained around the sleeve picots and it’s done! I think it’s very cute!

My Knitting Life

African Violet in Full Bloom!

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OK, you caught me on a knitting binge. Sometimes I’m just so motivated to get stuff done, and this project was one that motivated me! So, here are the pictures. It looks great on, but I don’t have anything to put on underneath it since I’m on vacation and have a limited color/shirt selection. I’ll post pics of me wearing it in a few days! By the way, if you want to see the pattern I used, I’ll post a link in the right column. Look for Knitty: Leaflet!

Remember! Check your gauge if you decide to use worsted weight yarn! This fabric on this sweater is a lot looser than the one on Knitty! So if you desire a stiffer fabric, you’d best choose an Aran weight yarn.

My Knitting Life

African Violet

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I guess I like purple. It’s not an overkill thing, but if there’s a choice of yarn, I always lean toward the purple. I don’t always buy the purple, I just lean toward it.  So, when my LYS had three skeins left of Brown Sheep’s Serendipity Tweed yarn in the African Violet Colorway, I knew I had to have it.
Hmmm, now what should I knit with it? I know, I’ll knit Hey Teach from Knitty. That was my first idea. I started knitting and finished half of the back. The next night when I was about to pick up the project again, I decided to surf the web. Unfortunately for Hey, Teach, I noticed that Knitty First Fall 2011 had just been e-published! Oh, My Gosh! I found Leaflet by Cecily Glowick McDonald. In 2.3 minutes, I had ripped out the back of Hey,Teach, in order to start Leaflet. Not to worry, Hey, Teach, because I’m going to come back to you some day…some day soon with the Steel Blue colorway of Serendipity Tweed. But first, I need to finish Leaflet! Here are some of the notes I posted on Ravelry:
I know, I know. The pattern calls for Aran Weight yarn, but I want to use Worsted Weight. What did I do? Well, I didn’t check gauge until I was about 4 inches into the project, and there was a small problem. The row gauge was perfect which is great, because this is a raglan sweater, and the raglan increases should make for a sleeve hole that’s not too tight and not too droopy. BUT, the stitch count was off. I need 15 stitches per inch, and I was getting 16 inches per stitch, meaning that the circumference of the sweater would be too small. So, on this top-down sweater, I worked one more body increase above the medium size because I calculated how many additional stitches I would need to obtain the medium size.  I’ll not bore you with the math, but if you have a non-Barbie mind and can wrap your brain around numbers, you can PM me and I’ll give you the numbers.
6.29.2011 I’m just a few rows from the bottom ribbing. I keep trying this on to make sure it fits, and it does!