Dappled Air

Now that I have switched to metal water bottle from plastic, I decided that I needed a cover for the water bottle as holding metal in my bare hand could at time be quite cold, but probably quite nice in really hot weather. As I haven't had it long enough yet to see what happens in summer, I imagine that it will also absorb condensation, keeping the outside of the bottle dry. Now my next question was what material to use and what technique? I decided on knitting as I like knitting while watching the TV shows I recorded the day before on my DVR. Ok, knitting it is, now I have to decide on cotton or wool. I want something that is not very bulky and choose cotton. I discovered a few years ago that I can knit a lovely material with the cotton threads from the sewing thread cones I inherited from my husbands grandfather. I have about 8 cones in various colors of brown. They date back to the 1950's or earlier. I used 6 threads and 3mm knitting needles. As I had already knitted like th...

With the cooler weather it is time again to dig out my 'Panta' headband that I knitted a few years ago from a pattern I found at Craftster and adapted to suite me. Here is a link to my tutorial . It also has a link to the original Craftster post which has no grown to over 90 pages. While checking out the link if it still works, I discovered that it dates back to 2005 and some of the pictures don't work any more. The headband was easy to knit and didn't take much time. I sewed it together so that there is no seam showing. I really like wearing the headband, it is very comfortable and warm and small enough to fit into a pocket or purse. It is perfect when it is still too warm to wear a hat.

While doing my research on the 'Wunderknäuel' in Google in German I saw my baby spiral socks and an explanation that in German hospitals they use them for preemies. They call them in German 'Regenwürmer' - 'earthworms'. As the socks have no heel they can be worn by any size baby and will keep the tiny ones nice and warm. Here is a link to the pattern and all kinds of other baby patterns in German.

Thanks to the Internet I am able to read German and English blogs and newsgroups. That's when I came across a post about knitting socks from a 'Wunderknäuel' - surprise wool ball in English. I remember those fondly from my childhood. It was a great incentive to get me knitting. The picture above shows a Wunderknäuel with the knitting started and some of the content from the Wunderwolle blog , it is in German. Now what on earth is a 'Wunderknäuel' - surprise wool ball? I asked at a local wool shop if they had ever heard of them and the answer was no, what is it. So it seems to be totally unheard of in the English speaking world, but quite common in the German speaking world. A 'Wunderknäuel' - 'surprise wool ball' is a ball of wool that has been rewound around a bunch of 'goodies' or surprises. For kids it was usally a toy or several that only became visible as you continued knitting. The surprises can be anything small enough that can be i...

After I had finished my husbands socks there was still some yarn left over, just enough to make a pair of baby spiral socks. As spiral socks are very stretchy and babies grow so fast, I decided to make the socks big enough for a bigger baby (up to 20 lbs), but they should also fit a newborn. So I had to make them long enough for the bigger baby, for the smaller baby there will just be a big cuff as you can see on my model, a doll that is even smaller than a newborn. Material needed: about 10 gr wool per sock 4 double pointed needles darning needle gauge: 28 stitches = 4 inches (10 cm) on 3.25 mm (U.S. 3) needles My pattern is: 2 knit, 3 purl for 3 rows and then offset either to the left or right by one stitch so that it will go like this: 1 knit, 2 purl, 2 knit, 2 purl. Knitting Instructions : cast on 32 stitches very loosely divided over 3 needles (10 stitches, 12 stitches, 10 stitches) knit ribbing pattern: 1 knit, 1 purl for 10 rows switch to spiral pattern: 1st row of pattern: 2 ...

The last time I knitted socks, I was a teenager trying to get the pair done for my dad for Christmas. My dad only wore hand knitted socks. As my hubby has always cold feed, I thought maybe a pair of knitted socks will help him this winter. So I set out to do some research about knitting socks as a reminder, that's when I discovered spiral socks. What are spiral socks, well, they are socks without a heel, basically tube socks. The reason they fit so nicely is that pattern that is used to make them. The pattern spirals around the length of the sock, hence the name. Now, my next adventure was to find the wool. I did not want thick wool and I wanted durable wool for socks. So after almost giving up, I found this variegated wool. It is Pattons Kroy Socks Jaquards 4 Ply. I had no idea how much wool I would need as I was winging it, but decided to buy two 50 g balls. As you can see, I knitted the socks with the spirals going 2 different directions. I didn't want them to both spiral th...