Mitts and hats - must still be winter

I’ve been knitting all kinds of stuff this winter, but the only things I seem to be able to finish and make fit properly are small items like socks and mittens. There are two that have gotten the most wear by far. One is a pair of fingerless gloves which were made of recycled yarn I got from a thrift store sweater. I’ve never used recycled yarn before, but I really liked the colour – and the price, obviously. So the thing went from this…

Cute enough sweater, but way too small.

…to a few of these…

Not sure about weight, it’s slightly thinner than sock yarn but knits up nicely on 2.0 needles.

… and finally these:

The 100% cotton makes them wear out a bit, but they are smooth and comfortable.

I love these. They are comfortable and extra long, so my fingers stay nice and toasty while bicycling. As you can see, they are a bit crinkly. But it is cotton and they spent most of their time like this:

Considering, they hold their shape pretty nicely.

Yep, definitely my favourite winter project. Eventually, I’ll have to knit a woolly one for really cold days. But for most days, they are warm enough without making me sweat.

Anyway, I was planning on making a matching hat, but I never really got around to it. Instead, in an act that the fashion police would probably not approve of, I’ve been wearing the mittens with this hat:

Photographing your head is even harder than your feet. Who would have thought.

It’s a slightly modified Lue à la Oleana made from Schoppel Turandot. Ahhh, Turandot… it’s an interesting ribbon yarn and comes in a lot of vibrant colours, but the two of us just didn’t get along. After this hat, I gave the rest of my stash away. I think it would be a great yarn for bags or decorative items. Or those really lacy, lofty summer pullovers. So those are my favourite knits, mittens from a sweater that no one wanted and a hat from a yarn I didn’t want.

Oh, before I forget, I did make one more thing from Turandot:

Reptiles need warm places.

It’s an adorable free pattern by Mochimochi Land, which I’m a big fan of. Amigurumi is one of the most fascinating facets of knitting to me, but I just do not have the patient for all the fiddly bits. So while my baby gator doesn’t have any knitted companions, there’s lots of prey on the shelfes in the jungle:

“I am gator, hear me roar!“

Although he is not very good at choosing his opponents wisely…

“You did what to littly Jimmy?”

I think what we can learn from this knit is that a) reptiles are awesome and cuddly, and b) I apparently have a mental age of nine. Which is also often awesome.

Recycling and Stash Baskets

A long pause in blogging means there have been a ton of finished objects in the last couple of weeks - months in fact. That is another post, however. First I want to talk about what became of my mountain of plastic bags. And if I ever had had all the bags that went into this project in their original state, they would probably actually have made quite an impressive pile.
I first read about plarn on Ravelry (surprise!) and thought the idea was rather interesting and unlike a lot of other interesting ideas quite easily replicated. There are quite a number of tutorials that explain how to make yarn from plastic bags, I picked this one and off I went.
The first thing I learned is that knitting plarn is hard! So hard in fact that I chose to crochet it instead. Even then, it really hurt the hands after a while. Plastic likes to stick to the hooks. So I did what any creative knitter would do and lubed my hook with vaseline. That's a totally normal train of thought, right? Right? I still broke three of them, the first and most sadly missed was one my grandmother gave to me a while back with a very sizeable donation of her scrap yarns. It wasn't an object of dear memory, but still... bugger. It was notable the only one where the handly just broke off, with the new ones the hook and handle just fell apart, and very easily so.

Anyway, after hours of cutting and knotting and crocheting and begging strangers on the internet for more bags, here we are:

This is the nicer side when I still had bags of varying lovely colors.

This is the still reasonably nice side where I grabbed whatever bag I could get.

The box now holds a fair amount of my grandmother's yarn. It's mostly acrylic or acrylic blends with some cotton and the occasional sock yarn scrap. I love it, some of it is really soft. I've had several ideas as to what to do with it, but the different weights make it difficult to use it all in one big project.
I'm admittedly not a very accomplished crocheter, but I did feel it was well within my scope to knit two very basic rectangles. Apparently not:

I should say that this is not just a difference in plarn thickness or that I had to switch hooks so often. There actually where at least 10 more stitches at the end of my work. It's ok though, the rim got folded and then ironed to flatten it a bit. I just turn the crooked side towards the wall.I'll leave you with a close-up, because I've got a theory that all kinds of craft displays are immediately improved with a nice close shot.