I Aten't Dead... but I'm Full of Yarn
Dec. 30th, 2005 02:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lwoodNot dead, just been busy making WinterThing presents for many many people, which when I show them off to people who weren't on the list for Warm Things I Knit Myself caused so many compliments that the complimentor generally found themselves tacked to the end of said list...
I have gone on from scarves and fellow travellers along the Way of the Great Big Rectangle. I have progressed... to SHAPES!
First, shawls, which are all apparently Spoooooky Haunted Shawls, which get their own entry with a tighter lock on -- three of those down, with ideas for two-three more percolating amongst the internal Peanut Gallery.
But! As for gifts for human-type persons...
I've gone to mittens. I picked up the Ann Norling basic mitten pattern and realised that mittens are not only faster than scarves, but cheaper; you can get a pair out of a comparatively short skein of Noro (that's their US distributor, there) Silk Garden, which knits up very soft, warm, and cuddly.
For![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
countgeiger's stepmum, I did a tentative pair of mittens and a nice, long tube scarf, because I figured learning how to make mittens would be incentive to make Yet Another Tube Scarf. It worked, too: that package arrived well before Christmas. C's color was 230, an autumnal mix that's heavy on reddish brown.
But I wondered how they'd fit. The Northern Beans cooed delightfully, and I am occasionally a Big Softie -- two more mittens, these with some cabling on the back to up the difficulty.hyndla picked color 201, which starts in navy, spends most of its time in a cool-toned grey, occaisonally dipping to charcoal, up to dirty snow, then ends with a splash of lavender and, if there's time, a smidge of brown. The cable for hers is one of the patterns out of Viking Patterns for Knitting, a running overhand knot that I managed to get three of on each mitten.
...see? It's a triple knot? 'cos, um. Valknuts is hard. The Notorious DLP wants one -- yeah, I could cheat and do one by simple relief, but equilateral triangles tend to require a strong horizontal component, which is just as annoying in yarn as it is in wood. But it's a knot and you have three so there.
quirkwidget chose color 47, which careens through metals hot and cool, brass, silver, pewter, and tarnished silver. I haven't picked what to cable on the back of her mittens yet.
In between this, I tried a glove. The Notorious DLP prefers gloves. I found some, er, interesting pattern calculators over at the Knitting Fiend and tried one: it made "adult medium" gloves with very nicely fit fingers but a palm a dwarf could use for a tent with room for his axes. That's pretty well fixable, and I still get to wave the glove at people and crow that Dammit I Made a Glove...
But hats. I promised hats. The same pattern calculator, fed default information, disgorged a "beret" that was somewhere in the free-fire zone between "tam o'shanter", "snood", and "tent for entire dwarven family, axes and gear included". Or maybe it was really a holeless ski mask. I made some embellishments over the already-too-large design that Really Didn't Help, and so DLP had that hat for all of half an hour before I took it back and started unravelling it.
And after I peered at several beret patterns, and the output of the beret pattern generator, and decided to extrapolate Generic Beret Theory and make my own. Fuck all y'all, I'm a geek. Repre-fucking-sent.
I'll explain my findings in my next post. Eventually, I'll post pictures... but not now, the camera is far away.
-- Lorrie
I have gone on from scarves and fellow travellers along the Way of the Great Big Rectangle. I have progressed... to SHAPES!
First, shawls, which are all apparently Spoooooky Haunted Shawls, which get their own entry with a tighter lock on -- three of those down, with ideas for two-three more percolating amongst the internal Peanut Gallery.
But! As for gifts for human-type persons...
I've gone to mittens. I picked up the Ann Norling basic mitten pattern and realised that mittens are not only faster than scarves, but cheaper; you can get a pair out of a comparatively short skein of Noro (that's their US distributor, there) Silk Garden, which knits up very soft, warm, and cuddly.
For
countgeiger's stepmum, I did a tentative pair of mittens and a nice, long tube scarf, because I figured learning how to make mittens would be incentive to make Yet Another Tube Scarf. It worked, too: that package arrived well before Christmas. C's color was 230, an autumnal mix that's heavy on reddish brown.But I wondered how they'd fit. The Northern Beans cooed delightfully, and I am occasionally a Big Softie -- two more mittens, these with some cabling on the back to up the difficulty.
hyndla picked color 201, which starts in navy, spends most of its time in a cool-toned grey, occaisonally dipping to charcoal, up to dirty snow, then ends with a splash of lavender and, if there's time, a smidge of brown. The cable for hers is one of the patterns out of Viking Patterns for Knitting, a running overhand knot that I managed to get three of on each mitten....see? It's a triple knot? 'cos, um. Valknuts is hard. The Notorious DLP wants one -- yeah, I could cheat and do one by simple relief, but equilateral triangles tend to require a strong horizontal component, which is just as annoying in yarn as it is in wood. But it's a knot and you have three so there.
quirkwidget chose color 47, which careens through metals hot and cool, brass, silver, pewter, and tarnished silver. I haven't picked what to cable on the back of her mittens yet.In between this, I tried a glove. The Notorious DLP prefers gloves. I found some, er, interesting pattern calculators over at the Knitting Fiend and tried one: it made "adult medium" gloves with very nicely fit fingers but a palm a dwarf could use for a tent with room for his axes. That's pretty well fixable, and I still get to wave the glove at people and crow that Dammit I Made a Glove...
But hats. I promised hats. The same pattern calculator, fed default information, disgorged a "beret" that was somewhere in the free-fire zone between "tam o'shanter", "snood", and "tent for entire dwarven family, axes and gear included". Or maybe it was really a holeless ski mask. I made some embellishments over the already-too-large design that Really Didn't Help, and so DLP had that hat for all of half an hour before I took it back and started unravelling it.
And after I peered at several beret patterns, and the output of the beret pattern generator, and decided to extrapolate Generic Beret Theory and make my own. Fuck all y'all, I'm a geek. Repre-fucking-sent.
I'll explain my findings in my next post. Eventually, I'll post pictures... but not now, the camera is far away.
-- Lorrie
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no subject
Date: 2005-12-30 03:34 pm (UTC)I am still wearing DLP's scarf she knitted me. It has stretched so that now, when just casually around my neck, it nearly touches the floor - on both sides. This is Most Excellent as a development because it means a) I can wrap it around me multiple times and still have room to cover and warm my ever-problematic bronchii and b) I have a wicked cool Long-Ass scarf a-la Dr. Who.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-30 06:33 pm (UTC)Would you be more apt to wear a beret-ish hat, or mittens? Need something to put together for Trothmoot, after all! I could try to match the scarf if I had some idea what yarn she used, too, or I could do some other color that tickled more of your fancy.
And yeah, I'm right there with you on the long-ass scarves, although happily my bronchii are less troubled than yours! I really like the Harry Potter scarves; they come out about nine inches wide and seven feet long!
-- Lorrie
no subject
Date: 2005-12-30 06:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-30 07:39 pm (UTC)-- Lorrie
no subject
Date: 2005-12-31 07:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-30 03:35 pm (UTC)(b) Drop me a line sometime!
(c)
no subject
Date: 2005-12-30 06:35 pm (UTC)-- Lorrie
no subject
Date: 2005-12-30 06:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-30 07:42 pm (UTC)Help?
-- Lorrie
no subject
Date: 2005-12-30 04:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-30 06:37 pm (UTC)-- Lorrie
no subject
Date: 2006-01-03 04:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-03 07:18 pm (UTC)-- Lorrie