Intarsia and Fair Isle. Probably the most powerful thing you can do with sticks and yarn. I'm still hammering out the basics.





Kids' Hats, Fall 2005:



Just a couple of hats I made on the bus and in meetings, trying to put a dent in my huge box of Red Heart acrylic yarn. The pattern for the snowflake hat is from Hats On, which is a great book. I got it out from the library but will be buying it sometime soon.

The other two are of my own design, following my usual basic hat recipe, but with no ribbing at the brim and doing a few rows of I-cord at the top before casting off. It's very cheerful, and a good use of small bits of yarn.



Three-Tone Fingerless Climbing Mitts, Spring 2005:


The pattern is available for free here. If I climb with cold hands, it hurts, so I made these to wear while I warm up. They're too distracting to wear on tricky climbs, but I'm usually pretty sweaty by then anyways.



Fair Isle Mittens, Spring/Summer 2004:


Mittens to go with the hat below. Yes, a pattern will show up eventually. The colors in this picture are truer than in the hat picture--it really is the same yarn. My mom's digital camera is just nicer than mine is all.



Fair Isle-y Hat, Winter 2004:


The pattern is here. The idea for this hat started when I realized I'd made hats for everyone in the family for Christmas except my mom. Plus, there was some really lovely-looking yarn on Elann.com that I was dying to play with, so I gave my mom the URL and asked her to pick a color scheme.

This hat was a bit of a leap into the unknown for me--I typically use a published pattern to learn a technique, then feel confident enough to make something up on my own. Extensive swatching was involved--it took me longer to decide on the specifics than to actually knit the hat. I found an excellent resource in Traditional Fair Isle Knitting by Sheila MacGregor. The hat is very nice, and my mom liked it a lot.



Christmas ornaments, Summer/Fall 2003:

The white and green one was my first attempt at any kind of sock (it says "Noel '03"). I adapted the overall pattern from this toe-up sock pattern, but made up the two-color portion myself. Perfect hot-weather knitting--quick (less than 3 hours the second time around), small, satisfying.



My stuffed animal wears a sweater intended for a child, Summer 2003:

First baby sweater/first stranded color knit experiment. I randomly threw the two-color thing in to use up a tiny ball of white yarn. I like the "feminine Charlie Brown" effect. I pulled the threads in the back a bit too tight so it was a little puckered at first, but washing it helped. I also added a button at the neck to get the kid's head through more easily--ended up putting the hole too low. Now there's two holes. Oh well, it looks cute from the front. My knitting's finally starting to even out at least.








Anyone interested in how I made any of these things: You have a few options. A: Figure it out on your own. B: Contact me (tjane1216, then the "at" symbol, excite.com), although if it's copyrighted (as in, I didn't just make something up), I'll only be able to direct you to a reference. C: Never find out what I did, and wonder forever.