Finished Object Saturday?

My big plan for my first finished object Friday did not go as planned.  I was home with my 13 month old son yesterday and the day just got away from me...plus there is a new tooth breaking through.  Need I say more?  

In any event, I'm finally getting around to posting some of my latest finished objects.  After procrastinating for a week, I finally put the fringe on the Fibonacci Scarf for my Mom last night and it is now officially completed.  I'm really pleased with the end result and the fringe ended up not being as complicated to put on as I thought it would be.  I saw the word crochet hook and immediately panicked.  Luckily, I found a great read along on Deep Fried Kudzu, complete with pictures that walked me right through the process.

Here's a picture of the finished result.

I'm also just about at the end of my Christmas knitting projects, so I thought I'd start sharing some of those finished objects as well.  

Here's a shot of a hat I made for my Dad.  

It's also in Colts Blue and White and I'm hoping it will be his game day hat.  I had a horrible time finding a pattern for exactly what I wanted and this is the closest I could get.  I'm still not 100% happy with the stripe placement so I may have to do some design work and come up with the perfect sport team hat for future use.  

Also, as promised, here's a better shot of my completed Bella Hat.

I LOVE this hat and am clearly going to have to make another one for myself in the near future.  

My plan for the rest of the weekend is to finish up one of my last Christmas gift items, a hat for my brother.  I attempted the Hat Fit for a Boyfriend this week and it ended up being way too short so I'm going to have to save it for Sammy to wear one day!  

I think I may have to go back to my boy hat favorite, the Regular Guy Beanie.  It's such a nice hat and a quick knit.  Here's a shot of the one I made for my husband.  Isn't he the best hat model???

Once that's completed I just have a surprise item to work on for my husband and another pair of French Press Slippers for my mother-in-law and then my must do knitting is done.  

That leaves me plenty of time before the holidays to tackle some new projects that I'm super excited about. I spent $92.00 at KnitPicks online yesterday, a new yarn record for me.  I received a notice last night that it's already been shipped and I can hardly wait to dive in once it arrives.  More about what's planned on that note soon.

Adventures in Blocking and More on Jogless Stripes

I've completed the Fibonacci Scarf and have some news to report back from my adventures in blocking.  I had heard some real horror stories from friends about blocking mishaps so I was more than a bit hesitant to experiement with three weeks of hard work.  However, I'm shocked to say that it was a piece of cake.  

I used the spray blocking technique, which basically involves pinning the item in the shape that you want to end up with, spraying it down with water, and waiting for it to dry.  I laid the scarf out on our guest room bed, with a towel and sheet underneath to protect the mattress and pinned the scarf right into the mattress.  I used an old quilting block square that I had left over from my quilting days to help ensure that I was pinning the scarf out reasonably evenly.  I also made sure that my "jogless stripe edge" was laid out to be one of the scarf seams just to ensure that they wouldn't show.

Here are some shots of the scarf all laid out and pinned.

I then sprayed it down, turned the fan on in the room and left it overnight to dry.  And here are the results....

The scarf is now perfectly even and straight and the majority of my jogs diasppeared.  I'm extremly pleased with the results even though I was still on the fence about how I felt about my jogless slip stich experiment.  

Just for fun, I knit up the Bella Hat on Sunday without using any method to avoid jogs and blocked it last evening to see how it would turn out.  

Here it is pre-blocking.  As you can see the color changes have left quite a few jogs.

Here's a shot of it pinned out.

And here it is post-blocking.  Hopefully, you can see that the majority of the jogs are gone.  It's not perfect, but it's pretty close.

The verdict is....blocking is apparently magic and is a much better alternative to the slip stitch method because it doesn't create loose fabric.  Also, the Bella Hat is adorable and a quick and fun knit that I'm hoping my college age cousin will enjoy as a Christmas present.  I highly recommend it.  

Check back in on Friday when I'll be bringing you a new feature, Finished Object (FO) Fridays which will include a better shot of the Bella Hat and some other projects I've been working on. 

Adventures in Colorwork

I am finally back from my leadership adventure and settling back in at home.  It was an intense experience to say the least and included a 27 hour trek in the wilderness.  Unfortunately, there was less time for knitting than I had anticipated so I just finished the scarf yesterday and spent some time blocking it last evening. 

I took some shots of the scarf pre-blocking to show you how my attempts at the jogless stripe went.  This first picture is a good illustration of what happens if you just knit normally.  You can see a noticeable jog in the stripe at the beginning of the round.

In this second photo, I slipped the first stitch after I had completed the color change round.  In this case, after I had added a round of white.  As you can see the jog is much less noticeable. 

In this photo, I slipped the first stitch after completing both color changes.  So in this case, after a row of white and then after completing a row of blue.

In my opinion, the last technique produced the best results.  However, you'll notice that my fabric is looser in that area due to the number of slipped stitches.  I tired all three methods with the single row changes and wasn't pleased with any of the results.  My opinion is that for a single color changes row, just knit normally and plan to block.

And speaking of blocking, my next post will detail my adventures in spray blocking so stay tuned!