Knitting Flowers

I haven't always loved the look of granny square afghans.  Up until recently I thought they were down right ugly.  All those colors that don't seem to go with each other--Yuck!  But recently, within the last year really, my tastes began to change.  Over the past 12 months, I've been growing to love those granny square blankets with all their different colors sewn together.   In fact, I began to feel sad that I didn't know how to crochet granny squares!  

It was then that  I began to look for knit granny square patterns.  I searched through ravelry and found nothing that really excited me.  I did find some interesting ideas for knit hexagons and pentagons, but they all used one color.  I wanted to make colorful knit granny squares! 

A couple of weeks ago I began to search for knit flower patterns for a flower that I wanted to pin to my new hat.  I found one, and guess what?  After ironing the flower, I realized this knit flower was a two-color pentagon!  Did I get excited!  I headed straight to the yarn scrap basket and began to pull out some colors that I liked together, I cast-on and began knitting away!

 

Now I have six flowers done and one more on the needles.  My plan is to make 12 flowers and sew them together into a square to contribute to a group afghan the knitters in my community are making.  

The problem I ran into when trying to put these flowers together was how to make them fit together into something like a square. I thought this would be simple, but oh no!  It became a puzzle, and quite a fun one, too.  I put the six finished flowers on the table and moved them around.  At first I thought I would try to match the outside edges of the flower together like so: 

 

After messing around with the flowers for a few minutes, it was obvious they would not fit together in that configuration and make something like a square at the same time.  Plus the finished blob was way bigger than 12" x 12" which is the size requirement for the project I'm contributing to.

I twisted and turned the flowers some more until I realized that the petals need to fit inside each other to line up into a square-ish shape, like so:

I am so excited about this square.  Just three more flowers to knit!

Knitting for Winter

It is only the beginning of November, yet winter already made her first real appearance last weekend.  The national weather service issued a winter storm warning,  saying we were going to get hit by a Nor'easter and could even get accumulating snow!  "How did this happen so quickly?" I thought.  

The storm came and went.  We did get some snow--wet and sticky and it washed away with the cold rain that fell soon after.  The next morning I could see the snow topping the mountains across the bay.  Then this morning a film of ice covered the puddles in the road.   Thank goodness I started knitting my new mittens and hat last weekend!

The pattern for the hat and the mittens came from the book Felted Knits by Beverly Galeskas.

The mittens and hat nearly ready for felting.  Just the thumb to do on the left mitten!

The yarn is Wool of the Andes in blue yonder and springtime from Knit Picks.  Just one skein in each color is enough to make the hat and mittens set.

I felted them and added a cute little felted flower to the hat.  Now I'm ready for winter!

On the Needles

It's been far too long since I picked up my knitting needles and cast on.  I was actually beginning to wonder if I'd ever get that itch to pick them up again at all!  But then the cool fall weather began to move in, the days started to get shorter and the nights longer.  Tonight I picked up my go-to pattern when I just need something fun, easy, and quick.  Best of all, it only requires scrap yarn!

The finished mobile.  This was probably my favorite knitting project of all time!

I found this pattern last fall when my cousin's baby girl was about to be born. I wanted to make something other than a little sweater she'd grow out of in two months, and this knit bird mobile was the perfect thing.  Now, although that little baby girl has a new baby brother on the way in just a month, I will make the little birds just for the fun of it.  Maybe they will be Christmas ornaments, or maybe I'll make a mobile for our new house, or maybe I'll give them away to my friends.  I don't know what will become of them.  For now, they're the perfect thing to mess around with until I'm inspired to cast on a more ambitious project (maybe something for the new baby?)!

My cousin's wife, Liz, and her beautiful little girl!