Teach Me How to Knit, Teach Me How to Knit

Neil was like, "Hey Meg, can you teach me how to dougie knit?" And I said, "Yeah, know why? Cuz all the stitchers love me!"

Well, maybe that is not how things really got going, but there may have been dancing at some point. Regardless of the origins, this weekend I had a fantastic Neil-Meg Saturday Extravaganza.  Neil is a wonderful friend of mine and we go waaaayyy back.  Not only is he an amazing friend, but he also volunteers his time to help me at Stories in the Garden, a monthly gardening/story reading event at my local community garden. So obviously I was more than thrilled to spend time teaching Neil how to knit.

Neil reading The Carrot Seed to
the little gardeners

For those of you who have been following the blog for a long time, you will recall that I have only tried to teach someone how to knit once, and that was a few years ago.  However, I was trying to teach 20ish 3rd graders so I anticipated that a one-on-one session with Neil would be slightly easier.  Neil really wants to knit hats and toys and lots of cool stuff but I told him a scarf would be the best project to start with.  He is a super creative person, spending his days working at Family Guy and he even has his own art blog. I have no doubt that he will be knitting up really cool stuff soon.

Cast On, Bind Off

After a beautiful morning in the garden, we needed some nourishment so our pre-lesson meal was at this amazing restaurant in my neighborhood.  Forage has scrumptious food from local farmers.  If you live in the area and haven't been there, you are missing out!

Bellies full, we were ready to walk home and get to knittin'.  Neil went through my bundles of yarn and picked out his colors.  He decided to go with yellow and grey.  I decided size 8 needles would be good...not too big, not too small, or, as Goldilocks puts it, just right!

First row done!!!!

First things first, casting on.  Do you remember how awkward casting on was when you first started to knit?  I do!  So we took it one step at a time, first with a slip knot and then the method recommended by Stitch N' Bitch that I learned.  After row one of casting on, it was time to learn the knit stitch.  Neil is a fantastic student and caught on pretty quickly.  We did get a little help with the knitting poem, "In through the front door, run around back, hop through the window, off jumps jack."  This was just the ticket to help the first row of knit stitches make their way onto Neil's knitting needles!

Cheers Neil!  Welcome to
the world of knitters!

Since Neil was such a fast learner, I showed him how to purl and add some ribbing to his scarf.  Before I knew it, our time was up, so we had a quick lesson on binding off.  Neil left with a yellow strip of knitting that could be the grown-up version of a friendship bracelet.  Tons of fun, great conversations, and a new skill learned!  I can't wait to get together again and have our own knitting party!

Thanks Neil!!!

kiss me, im irish

or at least as much as everyone else is on st. patrick's day. and for some reason, i looooooove st. patty's day. i honestly have no idea where it came from. love of guinness? preference for green? day drinking? who knows. but what i do know is that for the past couple of years, it has played a significant role in my life.

first attempt

my first "big" st patty's celebration was a couple years ago. and friend and i decided to drive to boston, stay in a hostel and celebrate with the locals. lessons learned that year? 1. there is no such thing as too much green. 2. cute welsh doctors like older women. (oh snap!) 3. breathalyzers in a bar are amazing, and said friend will be above the legal limit before she drinks half a beer. 4. when someone offers you use of their house in southern california DON'T LOSE THEIR EMAIL.
fast forward many years, and here i am. gearing up for another festive holiday. the list of rules has grown, but one thing remains the same. i'm still a fool for st. patrick's day.
so what is a girl to do without any green accessories and no money to head to the store? knit, of course!! it wasn't that hard to decide what to make- i HATE condensation on my hands from holding a cold beer and i HATE my hands getting cold from holding said beer. so beer coozies were on.
it took a bit of experimentation, holding the koozie to see if it needed to be longer, if the coozie was too loose etc., but after i made the first one i was hooked. for some reason, i thought yellow was a st patty's day color. i was quickly corrected. so after switching up my yarns, i was off. i made a couple versions with shamrocks and got a bit annoyed with knitting the shamrocks. so i decided to make one based on the flag of Ireland. This one was my favorite, the only thing i would change would be to add a bottom to the coozie.

I also learned a new binding off technique while working on the flag version. I finished knitting the coozie flat, but when i tried to sew it together, it was too short. i was annoyed. i didn't know what to do. i had previously learned to pick up stitches when i made something too short, so i decided that was what i had to do. i picked up stitches on each end of the flag and increased the amount that i decided was correct. for some reason the green side worked out perfectly, while the orange side has some weird twisting stitches thing going on. who knows. either way, when i finished adding rows, i was at a loss for how to sew the two edges together without taking a ton more time. my first option was to bind off each side and then sew them together. but in my head that would have added to much extra room and the coozie would have been too loose for the beer. so i turned to google. "how to knit two needles together." fail. "how to knit two ends together separate needles."  bingo. this magically lead me to find out that what i was actually looking for was a 3 needle bind off. which i must say is amazing. who knew this was out there? it was awesome! 

after knitting the coozies, i realized that my buffalo sabres st. patty's day shirt would not be enough to wear out. i decided i needed something orange to complete my ensemble. did you know that icords are an actual thing?? and that its not crocheted? because that's what i thought it was. and i don't crochet, so i thought i couldn't do it. but i was wrong. after about 45 minutes, i had this super cute headband all ready to go. boy i love knitting! (yes. i know. you can make fun of me.) after i finished up my last minute knitting, i headed downtown with my coozie for a st. patty's day bar crawl. below are some action shots of the koozies being used in action. so while i sit here and knit some more coozies, i hope you all have a great st. patrick's day!!! so raise your glass...

"Saint Patrick was a gentleman,
Who through strategy and stealth,
Drove all the snakes from Ireland,
Here’s a toasting to his health.
But not too many toastings
Lest you lose yourself and then
Forget the good Saint Patrick
And see all those snakes again."

btw. is it cooizie or kooize???

knitting maps, for friends

outer banks

one of the blogs i follow, Maps For Friends, is written by a good friend who, obviously, loves all things map related.  so it was no surprise when he requested some knitting that was also map related. after much contemplation, i settled on making a pot holder. in my head i was thinking this would be another "quick knit" to break up the monotony of the scarf i've been working on. i need to stop thinking i can "quick knit" anything.
my first issue was creating a pattern. a quick google search brought up tons of images of world maps, but as you might know, world maps are not perfect squares. so i found a picture that i thought would work, threw it into Knit Pro 2.0 and voila.

row of condemned, beachfront houses

then i had another problem. if i was just going to throw this together as a favor, i wasn't really going to take the time to drive all the way to the knitting store for new yarn, so i had planned on just using some of my stash. but when making a pot holder, can one use acrylic yarn or will it melt?? i googled some more, and couldn't find a consensus, so i opted to not try it. luckily i had some cotton yarn left over from my pathetic attempt at making a shirt.
so onwards and upwards. i decided how many stitches i wanted to cast on (45) and went over to ravelry to look for some hints. boy was i surprised. apparently there is this thing called double knitting that is used to make potholders which makes the project thicker and knits the design on both sides. well. after watching plenty of YouTube videos, i decided that was not for me. the plan was to knit one square with the pattern, and then knit a plain square and sew the two together.

5 balls of yarn at work!

the adventure began and it was taking forever. so when i was asked to head to the outer banks for a  weekend, i couldn't resist. finishing a travel related project on a weekend trip sounded perfect! well, that didn't happen. the weather was beautiful and i spent most of my time either walking on the beach or hanging out with the locals in a bar.
so it was back to dc to finish. once i actually settled in to work on it, the work didn't actually take that long. and once the front was done, the back only took a couple of hours, although i assume it takes much less time for a more polished knitter.  so here is the final product....

all done!

the colors seem a bit off, probably because it was taken at 1am when i finally finished it. to sew it together, i put the right sides together and started in one corner. once three sides were sewn, i flipped it right side out and stitched the two sides together in the middle, about every inch or so. my only concern when i decided to make 2 separate pieces was that they would be too floppy once put together. hopefully my stitches will stay together and keep the pot holder sturdier.

i tried to take a better picture with natural light to give a better sense of the true colors, but it was too bright for my camera w the shades open. it kind of shows a difference, although not as much as i would have hoped.
so all in all, pot holder success. if i make anymore of these, i will probably use a bigger needle and bulkier yarn, just to make the process go a bit faster. i imagine most knitters could whip this baby out in less than an hour. oh well. at least my work isn't pulling as much when i use two colors!!!

cuddle buddies

now time for an update. you may remember the post by meg about the Nikolas pillow i made and how he was scared to go near it. well, the tides have turned. Nikolas and pillow Nikolas have now bonded. and my work here is complete.