The idea for this scarf materialized from seeing one my managers at work sporting a cool-looking arm-knit scarf one day and my brain going “I have to make one of those!” So one night, when I was sick with a bad cough and couldn’t fall asleep, I found the chunkiest yarn I had (leftovers from the Chunky Cabled Vest) and learned to arm knit. It looked easy – you just use your hands as needles, right? So I cast one and even knit a row easily. But what then? I couldn’t turn my right arm to the left side so I could knit the next row. So I tried pulling all the stitches off and moving them to the left arm, but that was just cumbersome. Continue reading “Arm Knit Scarf” →

When my son J was younger, I made these cute little leg warmers for him from a llama and silk blend yarn that were so soft, fluffy, and warm. Needless to say, he outgrew them fairly quickly, but the yarn was beautiful and expensive, so they just gathered dust in storage because I didn’t want to throw them out and didn’t know what else to use the yarn for. Then during a closet purge, I found them again and pulled them up on my arms. And I realized they were the perfect fit. I thought about using them as wrist warmers, but I still had a skein or so left, so I thought I would use up the yarn and make them into fingerless gloves since my old ones were becoming a bit dingy. Continue reading “Fluffy Fingerless Gloves” →

There is a long story behind this cowl, but let’s start with the yarn. I bought the yarn a long time ago without thinking much about what I will do with it (as I did with much of my yarn), mostly because I liked the softness and the color. Almost two years before I even started on the cowl, I made legwarmers from this yarn and learned three things from that process: 1. this yarn knits into a beautifully soft garment, 2. but it is very painful to knit with (the silkiness, the strands that come apart during the purl, the horrid pain that is the yarn over with the combination of the previous two factors), and 3. to say this yarn was wrong for the application is an understatement. No matter how tightly I knit, it just wouldn’t stay up on my legs, even when I used tights. So I took all that apart, bought new yarn for the legwarmers, and left this yarn until I found something to use it for. Continue reading “Meandering Vines Cowl” →

I love knitting in the round. It’s easier – no sewing seams, no turning – and it looks and feels so much better too – no seams or bumps. So when I needed to make pants, there were going to be zero seams in them. These cool toddler pants also sort of resemble the color of jeans, so it’s easy to pair anything with them. They are also very easy to scale up or down depending on the child. Continue reading “Blue Knitted Pants” →