Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Late night knitting

In order to avoid studying for finals, I have been knitting into the wee hours of the morning. Tonight I have finished a bracelet and started a wallet. Yesterday I finished two snowmen ornaments and a coffee cup sleeve. These are cute little gift that can be done last minute with scrap yarn. All of the projects I have done can be found at knitting pattern central. I love this website, it quite literally has everything you can think of. The patterns are free and will satisfy any knitting desire you may have. Well it is time for me to go to bed, farewell until tomorrow.

Saturday, December 11, 2010

Four hats in month...I love Christmas

As Christmas approaches, the amount of knitting that I do multiples. Being the poor college student that I am I have decided to make the majority of my gifts this year. Here are the ones that I am most proud of and the ones that are done:



Here are each of the patterns individually, I basically finished one a week as well as being a full time student and working. I sometimes knit when I should be doing homework...oops!



This was the first one I did in November, for my secret Santa at school. I liked this pattern but I increased the number of stitched because 72 for an adult didn't sound right to me and I am glad I did. Also the crocheting on the bottom was difficult to at first but there are some great videos online to help. I also did not like the flower so I looked online for other flower patterns. Here is the flower I did but you can do any flower and just sew it one the hat.


This one was the easiest but the one that took me the longest to do. It is a simple knitted cap pattern that was based off this website:http://www.conniehester.com/free-pattern.htm. But instead of doing two colors I stayed with the solid dark blue. And used 100 stitches on size 6 needles.




The next one I am quite proud of because I basically came up with the pattern myself. I have been looking for a long time for a good hat for my niece. She is six and love, I mean LOVES dinosaurs. But I could not find a good pattern for one. So I took the dinosaur patterns from this flicker page
Cast on 72
do a 2x2 rib for 1"
I did the long neck and the t-rex (as well as some foot prints to fill space)
Remember to carry over because the space between one color and the other is big.
Then when done with two patterns decrease: *k10, k2tog* till end of row, *k9, k2tog* till end of row and so one until you have about 4-6 stitches and pull yarn through remaining stitches. Add pom-pom on top. One thing that was helpful was that I did out the two dinosaurs on pieces of graph paper so I could see the continuation from one pattern to the other.



This one was my first ear-flap and I kind of love it. I did mess up that pattern a little. I had 99 stitches instead on 90 (I made this for my dad) and I did not connect one pattern from another to make it continuous. But I think it still turned out well. Here is the link to the pattern.http://people.uleth.ca/~hodd/Knitting/ChulloPattern.htm If this one does work, or you don't like the patterns, here is where I found the pattern they have a good variety of ear-flap hats http://www.chemknits.com/2009/01/search-for-perfect-ear-flap-hat.html

With only 14 days left till Christmas I am not quite done with all my knitting (I am attempting to knit a blanket for my friend) but I will keep posting any cool pattern I find and tweak for you guys. Enjoy!