Check it out on Ravelry.

I used about 5 1/2 skeins of Mochi Plus, which translated to a 33″ by 23″ blanket before blocking. But after blocking…

…it turned into a 36″ square piece of fabric. Not too shabby.

I cast on 77 stitches, and knit your standard entrelac with 11 blocks of 7 stitches each. I only had four skeins of yarn at first, but I had to order two more from YarnCountry.com after realizing that amount wouldn’t suffice.

There’s not a lot to say about this blanket, other than it’s going in the mail first thing tomorrow! I hope my recipient likes it! (Also, I hope she doesn’t read my blog, otherwise it’ll be a bit less of a surprise.)

I’ll close with a couple more glamor shots.

Life won this battle. This is the first new post in almost two months. Blerg.

The good news is I have two finished objects to show you. Bonus: they’re both original designs! The first is my “Perpendicular” baby sweater [Ravelry]:

I have the pattern all written up, all I have to do now is format it and do a little sizing. Once that’s done, I’ll send it to some test knitters and hopefully have the pattern for sale online soon!

The other project was my 2010 Ravelympics project, in the event “Designer Original Dance.” I present to you my “Ombre Hat:”

I really need to come up with a better name for that one. This is another pattern I’ll be writing up. More discussions of these patterns to come in future posts, but for now I gotta get some sleep! Goodnight everyone!

I don’t know about you, but I’m altogether sick of all the retrospectives floating around right now. Sure, it’s a natural inclination to look back on the past year (or decade) and reflect on all that has transpired. And don’t get me wrong, I’ve done my own personal musing about how much difference a year and a decade can make.

But I’m not going to post it to my blog. Because it’s mostly saccharine and self-serving, and I just can’t stomach it anymore.

What I will post is knitting!

Look at Starsky (pattern | Ravelry), all finished! I finished the belt just before Christmas, and I was excited to be able to wear it in its finished state on my Lake Tahoe new year’s vacation.

I cast on for this jacket in March 2008, let it sit hibernating for about 18 months, and then picked it back up and furiously finished knitting it. It’s big and bulky and warm and cozy—exactly what I was aiming for.

(Special thanks to my boyfriend for taking pictures of the sweater.)

Rather than post a retrospective about the year or decade in review, I’ll give you 10 things that have happened since I cast on Starsky, in no particular order:

1. My book was published.
2. I drove across the country with my friend Amanda.
3. I attended six weddings and two funerals.
4. My play, Beneath Her Feet, was produced in Los Angeles.
5. I met my boyfriend.
6. I visited Maui, Santa Cruz Island, Mexico, Lake Tahoe, Fort Collins, Park City, and Portland.
7. I saw many great bands live, including Radiohead, The Pixies, Lykke Li, Death Cab for Cutie, and even “The Nightman Cometh” from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
8. I attended my 10-year high-school reunion.
9. I redesigned (and moved) my blog.
10. I didn’t blog nearly enough.

So, even though I’m sick of all the new year hubbub, I will take #10 and make a new resolution. I’m going to try and blog more frequently. No, really. I’m serious. Just watch me.

Also, I need to point out that my “official” new year’s resolution is to wear more jewelry. Not expensive baubles or anything, but I do need to make more of an effort to accessorize. Two years ago, my resolution was to wear more dresses—it was a wildly successful resolution. I now have a closet full of dresses that I wear frequently. I’m hoping the jewelry resolution will be just as effective. The only real problem is that I have basically no jewelry. In April, theives broke in to my apartment, stole my jewelry box and guitar and let my cat out the window… jerks.

Molly was recovered safe and sound, thankfully, but I can’t say as much about my guitar or jewelry box. Luckily, I have renter’s insurance, so I was able to buy a new guitar and now it’s time to start repopulating my jewelry supply.

Happy new year, everyone! Here’s to 2010!

No, not that kind of red dwarf. This kind:

The star reference is a bit more obvious during blocking:

I made this little blanket for a friend’s newborn a few months back (Ravelry). I used some Nashua Creative Focus Worsted (Ravelry) I had lying around, and while the color was gorgeous, I felt the yarn was a little hard to knit with and the resulting fabric was a bit itchy. I almost didn’t give it away as a gift, but enough people told me it wasn’t itchy enough to frog, so I left it alone.

The only changes I made to the pattern were adding the ruffled edging—a soon-regretted choice because of its tediousness—and making the blanket smaller than written by stopping on row 70 of the pattern. The ruffled edging was very simple, but took forever:
row 1: knit
row 2: k1fb each stitch
row 3: knit
row 4: k1fb each stitch
row 5: knit
row 6: knit
row 7: bind off

Those increases on row 2 and 4 make for a LOT of live stitches on the needles. Luckily, I didn’t totally lose my mind by the end, and it did look pretty cute. The blanket ended up being about 34″ in diameter after blocking, which works just fine for a newborn.

This pattern is actually a whole lot of fun to knit, and super easy to follow. I think I’d make another one in a heartbeat, just this time with softer yarn!

You have to keep them a secret. This means you definitely can’t blog about them, especially if the intended recipient is a regular reader of your blog. This was the case with my Girasole by Jared Flood [Ravelry]. I was knitting it as a wedding present for a good friend, and I didn’t want to ruin the surprise!

On March 8, 2009, my Girasole was only two skeins of Fountain Hill Brushed Mohair full of potential.

Over three months later, I ended up with this final product:

Well worth the effort! Look how pretty and sparkly the yarn is.

Now is the time to bow down in deep reverence for Mr. Jared Flood. That man knows how to write a damn good pattern. Girasole was a labor of love, for sure, but its dirty little secret is how easy the pattern is to knit! Jared’s pattern breaks each section up into small, easy-to-follow charts. They’re repetitive enough to keep track of, but small enough that you never get bored.

I do have to say that I was pretty anxious to get this sucker off the needles after a while.

Lace is so lumpy and unattractive before blocking, but I kept the faith that it would turn out beautiful in the end. A few hundred pins later…

…and you got yourself a pretty lace shawl! Shazam!

Here’s some technical stuff for the other knitters out there. I used size 8 (5mm) needles, and all of two skeins of the Fountain Hill Brushed Mohair, which comes out to 1120 yards. I skipped one repeat of chart E because I was afraid I’d run out of yarn.

Turns out I ran out of yarn just at the end of the knit-on edging. I was really pissed off. So pissed off, in fact, that I swore I wouldn’t go buy anther 600-yard skein just to use 10 yards of it. I was actually finishing the edging during the Lakers’ championship game against the Magic, and my boyfriend’s delight at his team winning the big prize inspired me to keep on trucking. I HAD to finish that damn shawl.

So, in an effort to save yarn and get the damn thing done, I proceeded to fudge the edging quite a bit. Basically, I was knitting 3 stitches together instead of 2, and I kinda smushed the ends together. Guess what? It’s nearly impossible to see the difference… plus, what’s that whole thing about needing imperfections in your work so you don’t offend the gods? Yeah, that, too.

I gifted the shawl to my friend and now I have to say I’m kind of itching to knit another Girasole! This time, I want to make the blanket size. What do you think? Should I go for it?

(I’ll buy extra yarn this time if I do.)

But then I started to read The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life by Ben Sherwood. (On my Kindle — the original version, not the new spiffy Kindle 2, but oh well.)

The VERY first story of suvival was about Ellin Klor, titled “A Knitting Needle Through the Heart” (click link for excerpt). I had to do a double-take. A knitting needle where exactly? The heart you say? Egads!

The very next day, I was knitting and watching TV, and I stumbled upon Mystery Diagnosis on the Discovery Health channel. After a story about a boy who had breathing problems, they played a piece about a woman who stepped on a crochet hook and impaled her own foot! Yikes! And the scary thing is this injury triggered a slew of other health problems (hence the mystery diagnosis) and kept her essentially bedridden for weeks.

If the universe is trying to warn me against knitting, I’m not listening. Though I’m now being a bit more careful about where I keep my needles when I’m not knitting, lest I sit down on them and pierce my behind.

Whether it’s the cosmos trying to put a damper on my knitting or just the result bad planning, I knit the ugliest bathmat in existence recently:

It was supposed to be Absorba (Ravelry), from Mason-Dixon Knitting, but since I don’t actually own that book, I decided to ad-lib the pattern. This was not a good idea. Once I realized the color scheme was all messed up, I gave up and just made the edge striped. The good news is that it’s comfy to stand on and it absorbs a lot of water, so it’s not a complete loss. Since I accidentally bought twice as much yarn as needed, I’m making a new bathmat in a different stitch pattern to atone for the ugliness of my existing one.

Final question for my readers: have you ever injured yourself while crafting? I’m curious to find out if it’s as dangerous as reported!

This is the famed adult balaclava pattern that has made such a splash on ye olde interweb.

I made this out of some spare Cascade 220 I had in my stash on size 8 needles. It only took a few days, and the results are just fabulous. Check out my friend Panda modeling:

I actually made this for my friend Mr. N, who is also owner of the eyepatch mentioned in the earlier posts.

Molly thinks I’m crazy for making the mask:

But I’ve found it’s good for brainstorming:

So, the official cure for the knitting blues: ridiculous vintage patterns! Take my word for it!