Fruit Basket

I made some more fruit...

Apple

I'm quite pleased with how this turned out.
It's got a nice pucker in the top for the stem and leaf to sit in and I love the rich red color.

Orange

Again, quite pleased.
I developed this one without a pattern, just followed the basic increase and decrease as with the apple but made sure it stayed pretty round. I knit it in seed stitch to give it some texture and I gave it a flat little green stem so that it wasn't just an orange ball.

Peach

I was most skeptical of this piece because of the shape and color choice. I liked it a lot better once I saw it next to the orange and realized just how different it was. I'm still a little concerned that it looks more like an apricot or a turnip.

Banana

By far the toughest pattern due to the short row shaping to make the curvature. And the scale is a little off because it is a baby banana. I'm also not entirely convinced by the brown accent yarn along the edges. It does help it look more banana-like, but I don't think I did the best job of stitching it. I'm a knitter, not a seamstress.

No scurvy here!

Just don't try to make a margarita with them.

Pear

Sometimes, it's just that simple.
Pattern courtesy of Peachcake Knits.

Next time I will make the neck two rows longer and the leaf top a bit smaller. I may also experiment with a different increase technique. The knit front & back looks a little lumpy but that might be because I didn't stuff this guy very full.

This was a great one night project and I look forward to making more fruity peers for the pear.

Little Bubbles, on a baby!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CORA ELIZABETH!

I hope you like your sweater from Auntie Em :-)

Ta-da!

I finished it!Then I put buttons on it!

Ladies and Gentlemen, I have made my first sweater.

I finished up the second sleeve on Wednesday night. I then had a heck of a time picking up the stitches along the front edge to make the button band but finally got it going. Picking up the stitches was much easier on the second side, but I struggled a little with the button holes. I don't think the button holes are big enough as written in the pattern (it's just a yarn over) so I did a double yarn over. In hindsight, I should have done a button hole where you bind-off on one row and then cast-on in the next row. As it was, I ended up going back over the button holes with thread to reinforce them and get them to open up.

It took another day to weave in the ends. I think the KnitPicks yarn is particularly difficult to weave in well. It's too slippery/silky in texture so I found it unraveling in some spots. I'm already not very comfortable with weaving in ends - which direction(s) to go in, when to stop, where exactly to cut the yarn. But fortunately there weren't a ton of ends to deal with. Today I choose some small crystal blue buttons and got those sewn on. I think I could have aligned the buttons a little better, but I was so ready to be done.

The sweater is in the washing machine right now. I'll block it tonight while it's still wet. I'd really like to work on getting the bottom edge not to curl. Next time I do the pattern, I'll give the bottom edge another two rows in garter stitch. That should help build a stronger curl-barrier.

This sweater has been a fun and rewarding project. However, I'll be happy to see it out in the world and off my needles. I'm not quite sure where I'll go next... perhaps back to my other sock or maybe into the world of knitted fruit :-)

Little Bubbles... vest?

I did a bit of knitting with the Moms before vacation. I cast on stitches for the underarms, moved the arm stitches off my needles and onto scrap yarn, and started with the white yarn. Not much knitting happened over our 4th of July travels. I just progressed a little through the band of white. Over the past week, I worked the tiny stripes and was able to bind off the bottom edge. Hooray, a vest!

But... it's not a vest, it's a sweater! So, here goes one arm...

... and maybe by the end of the day tomorrow it'll have another arm!

Bubbles in Progress

After pausing on the kneesock last weekend, I went ahead and picked up the Little Bubbles sweater.

This sweater is knit from the top down. In the picture below, the green rows are the neckline. You can see one set of the pattern repeat with the yellow bubbles.


While this was the product of one night knitting, it was my second night on this project. The first night didn't go so well... my cast-on was a little uneven and my "make one" increase method was flawed. I was originally using the "knit into the strand between two stitches" technique which left little holes at each increase. Mind you, there are A LOT of increases as the sweater starts taking shape. You add at least 30 stitches at each increase row and there are 5 increase rows. So, I ripped out the first night's work and began again. I achieved a much more even cast on and my "knit one in the front and back loops" increase method (aka Bar Increase) gave me much better results.

One of the surprises of this pattern was the "bubbles" technique. I worked a similar colorwork pattern last summer when I made a baby blanket for my niece Cora:

The difference in the bubbles pattern is that instead of slipping the outline (yellow) stitches as I did in the blanket, you actually DROP the main color stitches and pick up the outline (brown) stitches. As a beginning knitter, one of my biggest fears was dropping stitches and now I had to do it on purpose! I quickly got the hang of it though. Here's a shot of the drop in progress...

Four rows of green stitches unraveled to reveal the brown stitch below.

Pick up that brown stitch and scoop up the dropped green stitches on your way back up. Then knit into the brown stitch, trapping the loose green stitches on the inside of the sweater.

My knitting pace, which is not incredibly fast, results in one row of bubbles per night. So, this is where I stood after two nights...

And after four nights...

And after five nights...


That's where I'm at right now. I've done the last row of bubbles and I've completed all of the increases. What began as 69 stitches per row is now 243 stitches per row! I've also realized the limitations of trying to re-purpose my size 2 sock knitting needles. They are 12" and 16" circular needles (I knit socks on two circulars instead of double pointed needles) which are great for the small circumference of a sock... but the 16" is not long enough for 243 stitches. So, I've divided the stitches onto both of the size 2 needles. You can see a needle sticking out near the top of the photo.

I'll be knitting again on Wednesday with the mom's and I'll take my knitting along on our 4th of July travels. I'm excited to see how the sweater body takes shape... looking forward to all those stripes!