Baratto

These mitts developed out of my husband’s request for a crocheted hacky sack. I don’t crochet very well at all, so I turned to my knitting group where a barter was arranged: two hacky sacks for a pair of mitts.

At the same time I found myself obsessed with diagonal stripes - Hats, scarves, you name it, any time I picked up a pair of knitting needles I was yielding similar results, diagonal stripes. It was really no surprise that when I went to knit some mitts this pattern developed out of my diagonal obsession.

Baratto is a fast knit and makes a great last-minute gift project, especially for those knitters (like myself) who like instant gratification projects.

Pattern: Baratto

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Say it Loud, Say it Proud!

A friend of my is recently out and when I say out I mean VERY out. So when I stumbled across this vibrant yarn from Moonlight and Laughter I knew that I had to get it and make something for her to show off her pride.





Over the past few weeks I've been playing around with making a pair of mitts with this awesome rainbow yarn so that she can say it loud, say it proud. I've definitely found a good stitch pattern to show off the colors but I've had a few false starts with my gauge being off. Now I'm back on a roll again and moving along although since it's an original pattern it's slower going than normal. As always, depending on the results I may share it with the world.

I've also decided to self-publish the other mitts pattern of mine that was rejected by Knitty. I've just got a few more edits to do and am hoping to be able to post it by next week.

Sipal-oops!

One of my off-and-on-again projects this year has been the Sipalu Bag by Knit Picks. I got the kit a while back and was somewhat daunted to see just how many different balls of yarn the project contained.

Once I dove into it, however, I quickly found my fair isle rhythm and started moving along on it - perhaps a bit to fast. One of my biggest knitting rules is that I regularly need to stop and admire my work, for two reasons. One, sometimes I just need to take a moment to sit back and admire my handiwork. Two, in the course of admiring you also have the opportunity to check for mistakes. and naturally, in the course of doing so, I discovered this:



Yup, rookie mistake - I twisted my stitches when joining in the round and didn't even notice. so I naturally did what any knitter in the same situation would do. I yelled, "Ahhhhh!" in exasperation, then threw it back into my knitting bag to be ignored for about a month.



Once I was done sulking and glaring at my project bag I was able to make it to the somewhat cathartic stage of acceptance and began frogging. Riiiipppitt...Riiiipppitt!


Now I'm back on track and have finished half of the bag. For a brief moment I entertained the idea of just doing a single color on the backside instead of the full colorwork again, but then my vanity and love of fair isle won out. Don't get me wrong, it's still my favorite fair weather project and may take me the better part of the year to finish, but I figure that it's reasonable to expect that (barring no further mistakes) I can gradually finish it by the end of the year.