Here are two quick FOs for you.

I knit the Alamosa Mitts in Elann's Peruvian Highland Sport in Christmas colors.




Here are the Backyard Bamboo Mitts (without the bamboo!) knit in Knitpicks' Palette. I used white, a solid blue, and three heathers and size 0 (US) dpns.



I started another pair of Zilboorg mittens and am working on a plain (non-stranded) scarf. That along with the first Whistler sleeve and the stranded alpaca fingerless gloves make too many projects for my comfort. I better hurry up and finish some more projects!

Lately I've been thinking a lot about structuring my days so I can have more time to knit. So many other less-important things get in the way of doing what I really want to do. About a week ago I stopped helping people with knitting technique questions on Ravelry and I have easily an extra hour to knit each day, maybe more. Now I have to figure out a way to charm DH into doing more of the cooking.

I finally finished adding my old mitten projects to Ravelry.

These are thrummed mittens knit in Lamb's Pride - I made these for DH specifically for shoveling snow and they are at least 7 or 8 years old.




Strangely enough the exterior of the mittens have felted over the years but the interior thrums have not felted as much. I used some non-superwash merino roving for the thrums.



These fingerless mitts were knit from my very first handspun yarn. It was the same merino roving and I used my fimo clay drop spindle. They're pilling a lot but I still keep them in my knitting basket for cold nights.

Can you believe it is almost Thanksgiving? Today is the first day it has even been cold here and I just started a nice big fire in the wood stove.

Here are some photos of Durango, CO from our visit last month.

We arrived to a band and lots of festive folks for Oktoberfest.



There were the usual arts and crafts kind of booths.



The weather was gorgeous and the trees were turning.







Here's DH (left) and our friend Brad in front of Olde Tymers where we had lunch. Unfortunately they were out of their delicious raspberry beer.

I'm going through most of my really old knitting photos to make sure they've all been posted on Ravelry even though the photos are not so great. I started with my mittens and next it will be hats. I learned my lesson when my computer died last month and I'm trying to do a good job of saving my photos. A kind friend grabbed all my photos off my hard disk for me and he is now teasing me for having 20,000 photos of nothing but bunnies and gloves.

Here's the very beginning of the Whistler sweater. DH vetoed my idea of using a different pattern for the sleeve edgings. I can't remember the last time I knit a sweater (it has been around 10 years I think) so I'm not sure how long it will take me. The solid color stockinette stitch parts will definitely slow me down - I get bored when doing solid color knitting so it takes a lot longer. I predict I'll finish the sweater in January. I need to go order more yarn though.




One of our strategies for saving money on groceries is to shop more often at ethnic markets. Here's our latest haul from the wonderful Ta Lin international market. I was happy to find fresh pea shoots and fresh maitake mushrooms and they had great prices on white and green tea. We make massive quantities of won tons using a great tofu/spinach filling recipe from the Moosewood soup cookbook and freeze them for quick meals with vegetable broth and a bag of Trader Joe's stir-fry vegetables.

I'm working on another box of knitted items for one of our city homeless shelters. The Albuquerque Rescue Mission gives out over 20,000 items of clothing each year to the homeless and poor. I already have about 10 handknitted items I can donate and I hope to double that before Christmas. I also thought this would be a good project to play around with the colors of Peruvian Highland Sport I bought that won't be used for the Whistler sweater.

Here is a new color combo for the Fields of Flowers Wristwarmers from the Wild About Color Knitting booklet. The Peruvian Highland Sport colors I used in order of appearance are: Black, Palm, Thyme, Plum Wine, Light Gray Heather, and Mesa Teal.




I also did some quickie kid's mittens in some mystery worsted weight wool.

I've finally come up with a color combo I like for the Dale of Norway Whistler sweater. Here are the colors shown on a practice hat. I used the directions for the Lake Louise hat in the new Dale Commemorative Collection booklet. Unfortunately they omitted the color chart for the hat in the booklet so I cobbled this one together using the charts for the Lake Louise headband and sweater.



I think I will get started on the sweater ASAP with the yarn I have left over while I'm waiting for the rest to arrive. I am grateful to finally get started on the darn thing because for some reason this time I really overthought the color combination.

Here's a free pattern you can knit up in a few hours.

ANKARA HEADBAND

This colorful single layer headband is a very quick knit and a terrific way to practice knitting with 2 colors without investing a lot of time and money. You only need small amounts of 3 colors of yarn for this project so it is a great stash buster.

MATERIALS: Less than one skein of 3 colors of worsted weight wool yarn

The purple and teal headband is knit in Cascade 220 yarn. (Color A is# 9420 a very dark teal, Color B is a medium reddish purple #8909, and Color C is a lighter teal #9421)

The red and blue headband is knit in Knitpicks' Wool of the Andes. (Color A is Blue Bonnet #23440, Color B is Mink Heather #24279, and Color C is Black Cherry Heather 23895) The Wool of the Andes Blue Bonnet color I used is unfortunately discontinued. Winter Night #23422 would be a good substitute.

NEEDLES: Size 8 (US)/5.0mm 16"/41 cm circular needle or size needed to get gauge.

GAUGE: To save time, take time to check gauge. Over Colorwork Chart, 16 sts to 4"/10cm.

FINISHED SIZE: Women's Large, width 20"/51 cm unstretched, length 4"/10cm Try changing the size of this headband to make it for a man or a child by going up or down a needle size.

NOTE: The purple and teal headband features a K1, P1 corrugated ribbing. I've included directions for that in parentheses. Two-color/corrugated ribbing has a tendency to curl so a twisted cast on is a good choice to alleviate that problem. I have photos and a video of how I do a twisted cast on - see the right hand sidebar of my blog for links.

With Color A, loosely cast on 90 stitches. Join, being careful not to twist. Work 2 rows of K1, P1 ribbing. (Corrugated Rib Version - Rows 1 and 2: *P1 with Color A, K1 with Color B; repeat from * across row. )

Work the 15 rows of the Colorwork Chart below. Stranded color knitting charts in the round are worked right to left, from bottom to top.

If you're new to stranded color knitting, remember that almost all colorwork needs blocking to look its best so don't worry if your tension isn't absolutely perfect. If you're unsure how to hold the yarns, check the right hand sidebar for photo tutorials of four different ways you can hold two yarns without tangling the yarns.

With Color A, K 1 row even. Work 2 rows of K1, P1 ribbing. Bind off loosely. (Corrugated Rib Version-Row 1: *K1 Color A, P1 Color B; repeat from * across row. Row 2: *P1 Color A, K1 Color B, repeat from * across row. Repeat Row 2. Bind off loosely with Color A.)

FINISHING: Weave in all ends. (See the links to the right for more information on using reverse duplicate stitch to weave in ends.) Block headband by immersing it in lukewarm water then laying it flat on a towel to dry.

Copyright 2008 by Nanette Blanchard. All rights reserved.

Apparently inside out colorwork is becoming popular. I received the November
Free People catalog yesterday and I immediately had to get scans of the following designs.

This lovely hat uses inside out stripes along with a right side out Nordic inspired snowflake.




This sweater appears to include the same motif both right side out and inside out in different locations.



Another one of the cute hats along with a sweater that has inside out corrugated ribbing and inside out stranded colorwork at the sleeve cuffs.



This purse also includes inside out and right side out colorwork in multiple directions.

So far I've knit six Dale of Norway sweaters and my favorite, by far, is the SLC Olympic ski sweater knit in Heilo from a kit I bought at Allegro Yarns. In fact it was my favorite knitting project of all time. It only has four colors (navy, red, green, and natural) but it still manages to be very striking.

After looking at these photos again I may just reduce the number of colors I'm going to use for Whistler.

Here are the yarn colors of Elann's Peruvian Highland sport wool DH chose for Whistler. The bottom right is the main color, Tapestry Blue, and the yoke will be done in natural and navy blue shown on the bottom left. I used black instead of navy blue in the Whistler hat so this color combo will be a bit softer. The back four colors are the contrast colors which will only be on the cuffs, bottom hem, top of sleeves, shoulder, and collar. The butterscotch color is much nicer in person than it looks on my monitor screen at the Elann site. The other contrast colors are a light blue, a light brown heather, and a dark green but they'll be used minimally - the main colors for this sweater will be the three shades of blue.

I'm changing the cuff and hem patterns to the ones used for a different pattern in the booklet, Lake Louise. The Lake Louise cuff patterns are maple leaves so they'll work with the main maple leaf Whistler design.

I've started another hat, this time the Le Massif hat from the same Dale Commemorative Collection booklet, to test out these colors. So far the dark green is NOT contrasting enough with the main tapestry blue so I will probably have to switch it out with either a dark red or another one of the brown heathers.

I'm really happy with this yarn for lighter weight Dale of Norway sweaters. It has a nice sheen to it and I am not noticing any pilling problems yet. I just wish they had more colors!

DH recently asked me to knit him a neckwarmer to keep his neck from getting sunburnt on his hikes. He decided that Knitpicks' Gloss would be a good yarn to use for this purpose. The more I thought about it the more I realized I needed a neckwarmer out of Gloss not DH.

Sorry about the photo but my arms are just too short for great self-portraits. I used the free pattern HERE and modified it to just fit my neck (and huge head).



I used a size 4 US circ and did the 99 st cast on. I did only two rows of garter stitch edging and used about 2/3 of a skein of Gloss. I did 2 full repeats of the pattern and ended on row 5.



Tomorrow I'll show you the colors I'm going to use for the Dale Whistler sweater.