Friday, March 11, 2011

Good Deeds are Good

It should always make you feel good doing good deeds, and if it doesn't, then you should be ashamed of yourself. I have my thing where I like to do one good deed (or thing, if you will) a day, and this one should at least last me a week or so. I believe in karma so if I do something good for someone, then that should keep the baddies away from me. That makes sense, right? Yes. Moving on...

I knitted up a hat and a pair of mittens for some cute little boy somewhere for a friend of mine. She told me his story, and I had to do it! I'm a sucker for children, emotional stories (be warned if you ever end up watching a chick flick with me) and other such nonsense. I won't bore you with the details, but he needed a little extra warmth and love that can only be given by a handknit hat and pair of mittens.
I got both patterns off ravelry as I love their free patterns, and if it's free it's me. So that was a pretty easy decision there. I changed both patterns a bit as I so often do, and I ended up adding the cute little white stripes to the mittens. I don't know if you can see from the picture, but there is a button on the cuff of each mitten that the mitten-keeper cord is attached to so you can remove it if you choose to do so. I guess not everyone likes mitten-keeper cords, but I think they look pretty darn cute. I have always wondered if they make wearing mittens at all uncomfortable. I guess I'll never know.

The hat was pretty fun to make and also an interesting experience. It started out well because I just had to braid some yarn together. No knitting required! Then it got tricky. It's a fair isle pattern, and I have never ever done that before. Now I know why. It was frickin' exhausting! My yarn was getting all twisted, and I was freaking out thinking my tension was going to be horrible and there were going to be holes all over the darn thing. I was as shocked as you are now that it came out so well. I did take out quite a bit of the fair isle turning it into the solid grey background, but I was working on a deadline, and I was tired of making every single little stitch a different color. It was making me batty. The pom on the top was also a new thing for me. This was the 3rd pom I made. The first 2 sucked so I let Joey play with them a while before he started pulling the yarn out of them and then threw them away. I tried to get him to model the hat, but that didn't work well, either. He kept trying to pull it off while yelling at me for more graham crackers.
All in all, it was a great experience, and I learned some new things about knitting. So here's to doing good things!

On a different note, I've been doing quite a bit of shopping on etsy, lately, and I can't wait to post what I've bought! I'm pretty psyched about them, and I'm mostly writing it down here so I don't forget to blog about it when I get them in the mail in the next few days. Remember, Rayna!

2 comments:

  1. Let me tell you, he loves the hat and mittens! He kept the hat on all day the first day, and yesterday when we were getting ready to go outside he had a tantrum until we put his new mittens and hat on him :) sorry to hear that the hat was frustrating to make, but it has gotten a TON of compliments (and, of course, I tell them where to go for one!) Thanks again, and I agree, yay karma!

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  2. I'm so glad he likes it! I think I'm even more glad it fits. :) Yes, it was frustrating at times, but I'm glad I got some fair isle experience.

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