Thursday, June 25, 2009

Projects finished in San Pedro

I've been knitting like a sweat-shop in Guatemala. I made a present for the little girl at the hotel where I first stayed, a present for my Spanish teacher, and several gifts for the family who is hosting me. First I made a hat for their son. Then I made a sweater for their youngest daughter. Then they started to request things...

Here is the Foliage hat I made for my Spanish teacher, Josefa. It's modeled first by the adorable Adamari, youngest daughter of my host family. Then you can see Josefa in the last picture, but the lighting is not very good. Sorry, I'm not a great photographer.

You can see that Adamari is knitting. Yeah! She's very sweet and wants to do everything I do, so I've been teaching her to knit.


Next up: the little hat I made for the little girl at the hotel where I stayed. I used up odds and ends because she said she wanted 'rosa' and I wanted to use some of this pink for another hat idea. It's two colors of 220, and the gray is that great yarn from the market back in Patzcuaro. The two skeins of 220 were gifts from a very kind ex-pat lady living in the hills near a river near Puerto Vallerta. Here's a photo and my attempt at a chart (it's hard to use the 'puters down here).


6 5 4 3 2 1
6

O
O
5

O O O
4 X
O O O
3
X O O O X
2
X X O X X
1

X X X





Ok, next....
I made a hat for my family's son, Juan. He's a great kid. My whole family is very affectionate.

Again, it's some of the gifted 220 and the organic, barely spun wool from Patzcuaro, MX. I generaly knit this on size 7s at about 4 st per inch.

Cast on 80 stitches and K2, P2 around for about 7 inches. Then move your marker one stitch over so that it's between two knit stitches. Knit 16 stitches and place another marker, repeat around (5 markers placed). Next time you come to a marker, K2tog on the 2 stitches before it and SSk on the two stitches after it. Repeat this around until there are 10 stitches left, K2tog around, and thread your yarn through the remaining stitches to tie it off.

Next in my knitting adventures I made a little blouse for Adamari. She's just adorable, and she asked for blue. There's a whole jumble of photos coming. I should work on my formating skills, yes. In no particular order you can see the shop where I bought the yarn, which is the crappiest possible acrylic. It cost less than 12Q for the whole sweater, which is less than $2, and acrylic was all I could find at the time. You can see Adamari and I both working on her sweater. She's adorable! And you can see some very bad shots of the nearly finished project. I promise to get some nice pictures of it on Adamari.

To make this sweater I cast on 110 stitches. That's 50 for the front and the back and 5 for each side. The sides are kept in P1, K1, P1, K1, P1 until the armpits. After 3 rows in the body I started the clover leaf lace pattern. The repeat is 10 stitches, and I started it 1 stitch in from the side stitches.
So, K1, YO, DVD (double vertical decrease), YO, knit 6, repeat until you get to the side stitches, work those, and then do the pattern across the other side. Knit a round. The K2, K2tog, YO, K7, repeat across patterned sections. Then knit 5 rounds plain and repeat the pattern but offset by 5 stitches. I'm completely making this up without looking at the thing, so it could be totally wrong. I'll try to check.





More projects to come...




Sunday, June 21, 2009

Buy it for me!

Attention to anyone who would like to buy me a present: Tewelry. They are knitting tools that are handmade to be beautiful enough to be worn as jewelry. I love it.

Sunday, June 14, 2009

Guatemala

K, I`ll have to edit this post later, too, because I brought the wrong cord for my camera.

Sweaters!

Here is my first version of Sophie, which I downloaded from Ravelry. I say 'first' because I've already started a second version in gray. Both sweaters are made of the lovely wool I bought in the Patzcuaro market. They are undyed and organic. I asked the market man where the sheep live, and he answered, 'En el bosque.' I love it. The sheep just wander around in the forest. The yarn is on the rustic side, but it's plenty soft for me to enjoy wearing it.







More of Mexico

Sorry, another place holder.

More knitting in paradise

Yes, I`m going to fill this with content later.