Anna's mittens - done with the felting!

Sorry for leaving the few of you whom actually are genuinely following along and reads my blog hanging, but I took a nap shortly after the washer was finished and I took the stuff out...so I kinda forgot blogging about the mittens. They turned out decent enough, so you don't have to worry about me putting a gun to my head.

As some of you might have noticed, I posted a video earlier where I checked in on the felting. That was a little over half way through the program, everything looked good in the washer, everything was going smoothly and they weren't ruined yet, so I let them go until the program was over.

When the machine stopped and I pulled them out though, they didn't turn out like I wanted to, but they're way better than I'd imagined!

Yes the diamond snowflakes are too big and placed too far up on the mittens, but the felting made them look much better than they did before!
The mittens them selfs have a kinda short in the hand and they're a bit roomy around the wrists so it will probably take a long time to get them worn in and soft...as it is will all felted knitwork. They're thick and warm and I think I have enough room inside them for a pair of gloves too.

What do you think about the result? I will have to do a little photoshoot when they're all dry and finished, so better pictures, as well as pictures on deviantART will come soon enough!

Oh! And I also felted the ugly slippers I made before Christmas that turned out too big. After the second felting they're perfect! They're thicker, smaller and I bet they'll also be warmer! Might need to make another pair to document every step on the way here so I can write the pattern down properly. It is based of a different pattern with personal changes so I can't take full credit on it.

Todays progress - 7th jan

Another day full of crafting...or half of it atleast... Let's start with the Anna mittens!
I am closing in on finishing them, luckily, but there's still alot left. I did manage to finish of the diamond snowflake on the first mitten yesterday, and I'm almost halfway there on the second, but again I burned out and had to stop before I was going to kill someone. Also the fact that I managed to misplace one stitch on the first one are killing me, but I am NOT going to undo THAT much work, now way in hell! I got a feeling that these mittens are either going to make or break my day and my look at stitching + felting.

 

After I pulled out my UFO's which you can read about in the previous blog entry, I decided to pick up and hopefully finish the chair blankets for my mother. There was a few half done ones and a bunch that needed ends weaved in so I took care of that. After a recount I found out that I'm missing 12 squares before I can start to assemble them. I know there's one square missing in this picture, one fell out of the pile before I took the picture.

So yeah! Progress! I've been working on Anna's mittens for 4 days, I will get them finished this week. I have no idea about my other projects so we'll just have to see how things are progressing!

Yesterday's knitting progress - 5th jan

Not sure if I'll be able to keep up with all these "progress of the day" posts so I might end up do them like this...the next day. Then again, I might not do one of these every day. I should quit blabbering now and get on with it!

I finished one of the diamond snowflakes, so now I only have to do the whole thing over again on the other mitten. Not really looking forward too it, seing as it makes me go insane, but then again, I can't wait to see them finished  and hopefully they will not get ruined during felting, cause then I would kill myself for sure...
Even though they're turning out to be my worst enemies right now (and I'm seeing now that I managed to missplace one of the stitches...ffffffffffff), I just love the design of this diamond snowflake so dang much! I fell in love with it and the mittens when I first saw the movie, hence why I'm now making them in real life. They are a bit missplaced compared to the one in the movie, but it was the only way it would look good cause of the round with increasing around the wrist area.

During my rage quit on these for a moment in the middle of the night, I actually started two other projects. One is a very unimportant one and just for inbetween stuff...even though I really should have been working on the granny squares for my mother's chair blankets, I started a simple granny square blanket with a bunch of yarn I don't really like using. Might give it to Pepsi if I ever finish it...though I might frog it down in a month cause I've forgotten about it. And yes, that is a Joker band aid... I cut myself while slicing a bun... Batman is freakin' awesome!

And the last project I started will most likely be another eternity project. I found this awesome FREE pattern on Ravelry the other day and I knew that I needed to make this for baby CarCar. Yes Carolyn, this is for your baby! It's a baby blanket! I dug out some yarn from my storage and hopefully I won't have to buy too much extra yarn to finish it up. I'm trying to use as much as possible from my storage, which means the main colors will be coconut grey (which is a beautiful color in my opinion) white and either green or red to spice it up a bit. It will also make it more or less gender neutral since it's too early to tell if baby CarCar will be a boy or a girl. It's not much too look at yet so don't freak out, Car...save it for when the fair-isle has started. I do not want to cut in my knitwork...cause I'm a wuss...so I'm knitting it double...not double knit, just double... I hope it won't get too bad...

My knitting progress - 4th jan.

Yeah...don't tell my mom that I'm staying up this late...

Anyway! I almost forgot making a progress of the day post so here it is now! I'm almost finished with the left mitten, only the thumb left now, which will go by fast! Then there's weaving in ends which are more tedious than anything else, and then stitching on the diamond snowflake...which is a pain and tedious at the same time cause it takes too long and it's a b***h if I screw it up.

 
I also started the third skein and I'm staying WAY below 3 skein + scraps...don't think I even needed the scraps! Oh well, all the more to use for other projects... BTW, I'm not going to count my use of yarn (you know in the yarn counter on the right here) until after I'm finished with a project...or I might start counting it like I did last year (hah, I can say that now). I noted down all the yarn I used on one of those post-it widgits on my dekstop and them added them all up and then added the numbers into my yarn counter after a certain time. I know it sounds like it would take way much more time that way, but in reality no, cause going in to edit and save the yarn counter (both on my blog and on dA) took a long time for each skein I used...or maybe I'm just lazy...

On a different note, I took pictures on how I made the thumb and was thinking about showing off how it's done this way. I know I had problems understanding how to do it the very first time I tried, so it could be good knowledge for some beginners out there. Now, I'm not saying that these thumbs are good for all kinds of mittens and gloves, they usually look and fit the best if there's a thumb gusset as well...but that's for another time. So stay tuned for tomorrow when I'll be writing that blogpost... It's gonna be a hell lot of blue pictures x_x

But anyway, bed time for me now! I should have been sleeping five hours ago but hey, I'm a night owl...and it's weekend...so sue me!

I got a new link for you guys if you want your own emoticons. They're still awesome and Annet is still a sweetie and super amazing so please go check it out!