Knit Things Round-up

Long time, no see! It's been a wild few months over here, not near my sewing machine. My mom had a major health emergency that we dubbed The Nightmare Before Christmas, so I have been away from home helping her. She’s recovering well, though!  Here are a few things I've been working on…

Skinny Knit Tie

Another handmade gift for Tim: a skinny knitted necktie. 

All the cool kids are rocking knitted neckties these days and Tim wanted in on the action.  I stepped up to the plate to fulfill that wish, but I think I was only mildly successful for a number of reasons, so I'll have to give this tie a big ole "meh."

The good: color, shape, seed stitch texture.  The bad: the yarn feel, the stretchiness.

I generally followed this pattern from Lion Brand yarn, but made the following changes:

• I used size 3 needles and this Japanese fingering weight acrylic yarn I found at the local craft store (I can't imagine using the aran weight yarn and size 8 needles the pattern calls for! I would have ended up with a bib, not a tie with yarn that thick!)
• I did three sets of decreases and no increases, leaving the tie tail nice and thin so it could hide behind the main part of the tie.  
• I made the tie 58" long, holding it up against one of Tim's other ties to get the proper length.
• I sewed in a small tie clip/label thingy on the back to hold the tail in.

In the end, I think it looks pretty cute, but it's impossible to tie because it's far too stretchy.  It gets really bent out of shape and stretched out, so I may have to frog the whole thing.  It looks like many of the ties available at stores are made from silk or wool, which is probably much less stretchy than the yarn I worked with.  Sigh. Try, try again.

Baby Set

Made this cute knit set for Baby Dos with yarn Jamie gave me for Christmas (Lily Sugar n' Cream in Butter Cream, which I think would be better named "Sherbet").  I started with the "Pretty Baby Sweater" pattern, which was interesting- top down, raglan style, but the methodology was a little different than other similar style sweaters since the sleeves were knit before the body.

I still had yarn leftover, so I knit a hat next, based on this pattern. Rather than just do seed stitch for the brim, I mimicked the pattern from the sweater and knit several rows of seed stitch followed by a knit two together, yarn over row.  Otherwise I followed the pattern for the number of stitches and the decreases, etc.

Finally, since there was yet again yarn left, I did some mittens, too.  I used this pattern, but rather than a ribbed band I did seed stitch and then the knit two together/yarn over row.  Also added a chain stitch connecting cord that can go through the sleeves of the sweater: