Surprise, Surprise!

I've actually been knitting with surprising speed over the last few days. Astonishing, since it feels like I am taking forever to finish the toe on my fiancé's sock. But I have picked up quite a few commissions recently and it is bringing back my knitting mojo.

The first bunch of commissions are teeny tiny little chickens for Carol, also known as the nicest boss ever. I brought in my teeny tiny chicken to make a Thursday a little bit brighter last week and she sweetly asked me if I could make her a little flock because one of her good friends raised chickens and would find them charming and adorable. Of course, I didn't mind that at all and she did even offer to pay me on her own, without any prodding from me. And these chickens only took a few days. The only yarn I had to borrow was the yellow yarn for the beaks. The rest I had in my stash already, so it was really no problem at all. I just forgot how small they were to make. You would think that the smaller the project is, the quicker you would be able to make them. Well, these chickens took me well over six hours to get them all assembled. Of course, I was doing them in stages so it did take time to knit all of the bodies before knitting anything else.

The next commission I'm working on is for my Aunt Kathy. I had made my Grandpa a pair of socks and they had shrunk just enough that Aunt Kathy started wearing them regularly. She loved them so much that she called me up and asked me if I could make her enough pairs of socks to last a week and that she would even pay for both the yarn and my time making them. 

Since I knew that good yarn is expensive, I did agree on lower terms than I would normally accept, but I do like my Aunt and she is totally knit-worthy. Plus, I get to knit out some simple patterns I have had floating around in my head and have wanted to try out. 

For instance, on this first pair of socks I learned that once I have the right gauge for socks, a simple ribbing pattern does work nicely as long as there is enough difference between the ribbing for the body and the ribbing for the cuff. As you can see in this sock, the 3x1 rib for the body contrasts nicely with the 1x1 rib for the cuff instead of the normal 2x2 ribbing I like to do for socks. I'm going to try to figure out a similar pattern for the 2x2 ribbing so that they can be a nice matched set.

The last commission I am working on is just a simple garter stitch scarf based off of the shiny version of the fairy-type Sylveon. The scarf is going to look like a long ribbon with the two shades of pink at the end followed by the bright blue at either end and a very long piece of white in the middle. I calculated it out that I am going to have to knit 20 sets of 10 garter ridges of white in before I start the other end of the scarf in order for it to be long enough.

I am proud of myself on this one to stay with the garter stitch instead of trying to do the shaping for the ribbon end in ribbing. I mean, it is doable, but there is a certain elegance and obvious hand knitted style that garter stitch has compared to ribbing or a smoother stitch that you can find in the store. And I managed to weave in the ends of the yarn while I was working it up, so except for the two ends at the ribbon end, there will be only four ends of yarn to weave in when I am done. And because it is garter stitch, it makes for a really good movie watching knitting project.

-MegWesley