Tag: knitting

Baseball Blanket, a new pattern

Marie Haigh2 Comments

With Phillies baseball season officially starting tomorrow, it gives me great pleasure to release a baseball knitting project.

A blanket for the baseball enthusiast!

It is an easy and fun project to work on while watching your favorite baseball team. The blanket is knit entirely in garter stitch so you can keep your eye on the ball. Three sections are knit separately and then seamed together to form the shape of a baseball. Shaping is created through simple yarnover increases, k2tog and ssk decreases, cast on rows and bind off rows. The yarnovers also serve as a visual guide of where to put the baseball stitching.

Knit one to take to the game today!

Price: $5.00 USD

This blanket would fit perfectly in a baseball themed nursery too!

I originally designed and knit this blanket because I needed my firstborn child to have a baseball blanket. Dan and I are huge Phillies fans. Of course, our daughter would be a Phillies fan too. Already, she shows great enthusiasm for the game.

Go Phillies!

More information about the pattern can be found here or on Ravelry.

Thank you to Nihart Photography for the beautiful pictures. More of her work can be seen at nihartphotography.smugmug.com.

3 Down and 13 Inches Left

Marie Haigh3 Comments

The 3rd hexagon was completed on Sunday.

About halfway through the hexagon, I realized I was going to run out of the Taos yarn. Not wanting to switch yarns in the middle of a hexagon, I ripped all the yarn out of the sample hexagon I had knit when making a gauge.

It was barely enough. I was left with only 13 inches.

More luck came my way during the finishing phase. This time the hexagon lay flat. There was no bubble in the middle as there had been with the previous two hexagons.

See the difference?

Perhaps I had seamed them together wrong. Sure enough, too much of the cast on edge was bunched up in the middle causing the bubble. I only had to rip the seam back 3/4 of the way, match the end of the cast on row with the top stitch of final section knit, ease the fullness of the cast on row and reseam. They look so much better.

I’ve already cast on for the 4th hexagon. When I get further along, I’ll post pictures. The Noro yarn is just beautiful.

2 Down and Still 5 to Go

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Another hexagon is finished.

There is a little bump in the middle of the hexagon where all points meet. I am hoping that it will lay flat during the washing and blocking stage.

I am no closer to finishing the blanket than the last time I posted due to a silly geometry error. It’s a reminder of how much I need to write an apology letter to my geometry teacher. I was so certain that I would never use any of the information he taught.

Only knitting 6 hexagons like I thought would leave a huge gap in the middle.

So, I still have 5 more hexagons to knit. I’m pretty sure I have enough yarn to see me through thanks to my policy of always buying an extra skein.

Garland or Drawstring Purse

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For 2 years, I have had my eye on SewSpun‘s Peppermint yarn.

Picture courtesy of SewSpun

The not-too-Christmasy raspberry yarn plied with snowy white wool always made me think of the Christmas Eve poem and sugar plums dancing.

Last month, I caved and purchased the yarn. Though I was so certain I would knit it up into garland the day it arrived in the mail, it has sat on our dining table for 3 weeks now.

I’m paralyzed by the possibilities this yarn holds. It would make a lovely drawstring bag to carry my phone, chapstick and keys. Plus, it would warm up my hands in a pinch being a lovely wool.

Since this is an OOK yarn, one of a kind, the pattern needs to have no real ending. I plan to stop knitting when I run out of yarn.

So, what would you knit: garland or a bag? Maybe you would knit something all together different. Don’t say a scarf though!

A side note to KGDC readers living in the Pottstown area: a call for help has gone out to restock the local food pantries. Drop off points for non-perishable food and laundry detergent in the Pottstown Borough include the Mercury office, the Cluster (Pottstown’s local food pantry), Boneyard Joe’s, Grumpy’s and Evergreen Consignment.

Revisiting Knee Warmers

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4 years ago, I knit Dan a pair of knee warmers.

After wearing them for a winter, he provided me the following feedback:

Pros
1. They were was warm.
2. They were super soft.

Cons
1. They wouldn’t stay up around his knees. He was constantly pulling them back up.
2. They were thick. He was unable to wear them discreetly at work because they could be seen beneath his pants.

Determined to figure out how to knit the perfect pair of knee warmers since it appears that Dan is not the only one who suffers from cold knees (the post where I show off Dan’s knee warmers remains one of my most popular), I have rooted through my sewing notions as well as my yarn stash.

I have chosen mohair.

It’s a bit of a risk due to its tendency to make people itch when used in next-to-skin projects, but it will dramatically reduce the weight of the warmers without compromising any warmth. Heck, it might even make them warmer.

From my sewing notions, I pulled out elastic thread. This I plan to knit into the upper cuffs of ribbing. It should more than double the elasticity of the ribbing and with any luck it will keep them from falling down.

To increase my chance of finishing this project by next winter (no way I finish it by Spring), the body of the warmers will be knit in stockingnette stitch.

Dan has promised to be the guinea pig and provide unbiased feedback. I’ll report his findings to you.

A Scarf for Me

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I am allotted only 10 minutes or so a day to knit on the hexagon blanket. So, naturally I cast on a 2nd project because as Dan likes to say “Marie, you have a magical timepiece. You always think there is more time in a day than there really is.”

He’s a realist and terribly practical to boot. How is that any fun?

Want to see how far along I’ve come on my long scarf?


(Can you tell she’s my daughter? A little bit more dexterity in her hands and I’m going to have another knitter in the household).

Well, maybe there is some basis to Dan’s belief.

It is a short row scarf, titled Self-Twist Scarf. I received the pattern at the Pottstown Knit Out. Unfortunately, I have been unable to find the exact pattern on Ravelry to share with you. But, this one looks similar.

I am knitting it in Malabrigo’s Worsted Merino verde, a lovely dark green.

1 Down and 5 to Go

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At the rate I’m going, it will take me 3 more years to finish the other 5 hexagons. It might even take me longer, since I’ve started suffering motion sickness while driving in the passenger seat and trying to work on needle crafts. The more curves in the road and the more fiddly the project, the more seasick I become. I never had this problem before. The lion’s share of my knitting has been accomplished on road trips. I feel so unproductive now.

To add insult to injury, it took me two tries to seam up the first hexagon yesterday only because I didn’t follow my own tip. I always recommend to other knitters that they use safety pins to hold the knit together while working a mattress stitch. I was in a hurry and just tried to wing it. It didn’t work. I had to rip the seam out and start all over again. The second time I used safety pins.


Accepting My Limitations

Marie Haigh2 Comments

When I first sarted publishing my knitting designs, I strived to do everything myself. I sketched my design, ran the numbers, knit the sample twice, wrote the pattern, edited the pattern, took pictures of the sample, wrote marketing material, and promoted my design. I learned a lot. Over the years in an effort to focus on what I do best, such as coming up with new designs and writing patterns, I have learned to parcel out the tasks that I do not have a calling for. I now have a wonderful tech editor that I trust to fine-tune my patterns and catch any gross errors. This year, I finally admitted to myself that I will never produce professional quality photos. Below are my attempts to take photos of the baseball blanket.


I am actually proud of this photo but it focuses on Elly more than the blanket.

Now compare my photos with the ones taken by Nihart Photography.


I love this one with Elly in it. I plan to enlarge it and hang it in our living room.

Yes, I think all my future designs will be photographed by Nihart.