The first non-practice, non-swatch thing I ever ever made was actually not a pattern:
I had just started role-playing at the time, and needed dice storage that wasn't the cheap plastic cube they came packaged in. I had some leftover fun fur from a couple Halloweens before, when I tied strands into my hair and went as Red Fraggle, and decided I could use the rest to make what was quite possibly the most obnoxious dice bag ever. It's just a garter stitch rectangle that I sewed up, and since the gauge was large enough, I was just able to weave some black cord between stitches. I learned that fun fur is kind of a pain to knit with (especially if you're a beginner), and doesn't really stay sewed up that well, as my seams started coming apart about a month later.
By that time, I had started working on this bag with Rag Doll yarn. Here's a teaser:
I've grown to dislike how it's come out, though. Don't get me wrong, I still think it's a great pattern, I just don't like how it looks with this yarn. Not to mention that my gauge was supertight at first, until I got the hang of it and relaxed my stitching a bit, so two pieces are knit at different gauges. It's probably not that noticeable, but I'm slightly OCD about some things, so it stuck out like crazy to me. I think I'm going to rip these apart and use this yarn to make a scarf with a similar stitch pattern.
I then started working on fingerless gloves and pedicure socks - both with Sugar 'n Cream yarn, because cheap can be good - but still have yet to finish the second half of both. Yeah, I'm not that great at finishing projects.
At this point, I bought some soy wool on impulse and decided to make a new dice bag out of it:
My own pattern! Kind of. I borrowed part of the cable pattern from these socks and used my knowledge of hat construction - without ever having knit a hat before. After some changes to the math and needle sizes, I had a dice bag again. This yarn's pretty tough to knit with, too, because if it gets detwisted it tends to fray apart pretty easily. But it is soft and pretty.
I also made a skull scarf for the bf. I don't have pictures since it looks essentially the same as the pictures in the pattern. I learned that felting by hand is quite painful; my hands blistered like crazy, and I was sore for days from sitting on the edge of the bathtub. The scarf was much enjoyed by the recipient, though, considering the bf wore it out of the house. In August.
I then made a hat from Stitch and Bitch, with yarn so acrylic it squeaked, in a color that kinda reminded me of a braided rug. I'm not sure I like how it came out, but hey, that'll happen sometimes.
After that, I turned to Knitty for more ideas. I didn't really like this lacy scarf at first, but it really started growing on me, so I picked up some sock yarn and went to work.
This is mainly what I've been knitting on the train, and now that I pretty much have the pattern memorized, it's going pretty fast. I can't wait until it's done, especially now that it's starting to cool down outside.
While working on that, I found some super soft fluffy yarn and picked up a skein of purple, figuring I could make a hat with it. I found a pattern I liked, but the gauge with that yarn alone would have been too small. Enter some green heathered wool I still had sitting around, combine the two, and yay! Except that I kept screwing up the pattern somehow - finding a stitch or two too few or two many in some pattern repeats - and, fearful that there were some dropped stitches that would make the hat suck later on, I ripped it out, and decided to put this hat on hold until a warmer hat is more appropriate.
So, I decided to make another hat by the same designer. I bought three skeins of #10 crochet thread - two in blue, and one in a pastel-ish variegated pattern - and wound the three strands together into a ball:
And, yes, I ended up ripping this hat apart too. That's what happens when you knit in the round with double-pointed needles and let it get twisted. There would've been a few huge holes in the brim, and no. I'm going to start it again, but maybe use stitch markers to clip the piece together where the needles meet. If that made any sense at all. I just don't want to spend $16 for a circular needle that I probably won't use much, so that's why I'm being irritatingly insistent on using DPNs.
So, there you have it! I feel like my writing in this post was eight flavors of drab, but oh well. The yarn is pretty, so pay more attention to that this time around.
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