Ben Ice Cream Cozy

Yup, that's right:  I knitted an ice cream cozy.  Wait until you see it!  

Let me start from the beginning.  Last year, I got a Knitting Desk Calendar (2011) and in there was a pattern for ice cream cozies.  They fit a pint of Ben & Jerry's ice cream, hugging the condensation, insulating, protecting your hands from the cold when you eat from the carton.  How awesome is that?!?!

Pic from the Knitting Desk Calendar

I knew I wanted to knit it.  At the time I was dieting and the thought of eating right out of a pint of Ben & Jerry's ice cream was undo-able, so I did not knit one right away (I was not going to use it while on the diet).  So, when I started thinking of who I was going to knit gifts for this Christmas, I thought, "Who can I knit the ice cream cozy for?  Someone must eat Ben & Jerry's ice cream!"  That's when I realized that I do, in fact, have a friend who eats this ice cream.  She even goes online to find what store is selling the exact flavor she is looking for.  This was a no-brainer.

Perfect!

Well, Christmas was sneaking up on me and I had not started it as of the beginning of December.  Nothing like waiting until the last minute.  I was on a roll and then was out with my knitting injury (see the Origami Sweater - Part 2 post).  I still have it and when I think about knitting, my elbow and arm will suddenly hurt.  Ridiculous!

I started it on December 13th, which was a Thursday and was done by Sunday.  So, not too bad.  Here are the details:

 

I used some stash yarn: Bernat Softee Baby (100% Acrylic), in Soft Peach (looks pink in real life) and Premier Yarn Everyday Soft Worsted (100% Acrylic) in Baby Yellow.  I have used the Bernat Softee Baby in a couple projects: I Heart Hats and Vivecita Beret.  The Premier Yarn, I used in my Cookie Swap 2012, Rapunzel braid.

The Softee Baby is a DK weight and the Premier Yarn is a worsted weight.  What does that mean?  That means that the DK is a thinner yarn than the worsted and I had to use 2 strands of the DK to 1 strand of the worsted.  That brought a challenge:  I had only one skein of yarn of each, so I had to ball up the DK yarn (the peach/pink) into 2 balls.

This gave me an excuse to use my ball winder.  I love that thing!

It was kind of a pain to wind it from a skein, but after a tangle or two, I had 2 balls of yarn to work with:

This way I can hold the 2 strands together without a huge mess on my hands by trying to use both ends of the skein (it would not have worked, I tried that way before I balled it up.  Trust me!)

So, this is knitted on double pointed needles (dpn).  The pattern calls for a size 10, but I knit loose, so I went down a needle size to a size 9.  I casted-on and was off.

It's always confusing to me when I cast-on to dpn's.  I always think that I am doing it wrong, but it works out somehow.  So, I have started it, as you see above.

This 2 color knitting is called stranding or simply colorwork.  This is where you carry the unused color behind in the work.  I'll show you in a pic, down below.  I worked in a ribbing pattern, so the cozy can be stretchy.  I worked from the top-down.

Here is a close-up of the rib pattern, where the color changes for the knit and the purl stitch.

This is what the stranding looks like.  This is a pic of the inside of the cozy.  This extra "layer" of yarn behind the stitches helps insulate it, so your hand will not get cold from holding it.

Unfortunately, I completed it and then realized that it was a bit too long and looked like a sock, not a cozy.  I had to rip out about 4 rounds of the colorwork.  Oh well, I fixed it in no time.

That was an awful lot of yarn for 4 rounds.  I put the dpn's back into the live stitches and finished it off again.

Vince and I took one for the team...the Anything-for-the-Christmas-Gifts Team.  We bought a pint of Phish Food (love that one, and it is Gluten Free) and tried the cozy on it.  It fit!!!!  So, we ate the ice cream while watching a DVR'd episode of Dancing with the Stars.  I washed out the carton and gave the gift, with the cozy on the empty Ben & Jerry's pint.  I put a gift card for the local supermarket in it, so she can buy a pint for her to try the cozy out on.  I'm not that cruel, that I would completely tease her with no ice cream!

There is also a Jerry ice cream cozy that I will knit at some point.  I gave her an IOU for that one.  I do not have any more stash yarn that fits the bill for this project, so I will buy some the next time I'm out at Joann's.

What do you think?  Is this a fab gift or what?!?

Hooded Scarf

This project came as a request.  My boyfriend had his eldest daughter down from California for a visit over winter break from college.  She knew I knitted because I knitted her a scarf for Christmas.  Below is the Christmas scarf:

Third scarf of the season

The scarf I knitted her for Christmas was the same pattern as the Trio Scarf and the Quintet Scarf.  One thing that was different between this scarf and the other scarves is that I knitted this with hand-dyed cotton rather than hand-dyed wool.  I did continue to use the Katia silver novelty yarn.  I am definitely getting my money's worth with that yarn.  So, by using cotton, the drape is heavier than the wool, but I think it has charm. 

Ok, so back to the request: She had asked if I could make her a hooded scarf and a skirt.  I said that I would make her the hooded scarf, but to ask her grandmother to crochet the skirt for her.  (Hey, I have to divy up the workload, you know?)  I have a ton of knit magazines and there is a wealth of free patterns on the web; I was bound to find something.  I searched the web first to get an idea of what this will entail.  It appeared simple enough, although I did find a varied selection of how the hood is assembled onto the scarf.  I looked through my knit mags next, but found a scarf with a cap rather than a hood.  Eh, I didn't like it much.  Now, I just got a Knitting desk calendar (the kind that has a pattern-a-day) for Christmas.  Even though I vowed not to look ahead at the patterns and to take it one day at a time, I thought since this is for a purpose, that I should be allowed to look in the index and search for a hooded scarf.  So, guess what?  In March, there is an easy, great pattern for a hooded scarf!  Who knew this would be popular? 

So, I talked it out with the daughter, and the yarn she selected was not the one they knit the sample with, but it looked like a pattern that you could work up with just about anything and it will come out good.  I went to Joann's that evening and bought Vanna's Choice (100% Premium Acrylic) from Lion Brand in Oatmeal.  It is a natural-grayish-brown yarn with tweed flecks in it.  It is the very yarn that my sister knitted up my cabled blanket that I showed at the end of the Crazy Cables post. 

The right-side is wavy

The scarf in the pattern sample was made with a faux mohair yarn that gave a flatter look than my scarf was.  Vanna's Choice is very, very stretchy, so it tended to shrink into itself and give this wavy look to the right side.  The pattern alternated between knit and purl to make a sort of basketweave ribbing.  Here is the appearance from the wrong side (back side):

The wrong-side basketweave

I really liked the wrong side and during the process, I had asked if the daughter wanted this to be the right side, but, after thinking, she chose the right side to be facing.  So, this yarn, as I mentioned, is very stretchy.  I had to do a few gauge swatches to get it right (and it still was questionable)!  The pattern called for size 9, I ended up using a size 11.  I even could have gone up another size, but I did not want to make another gauge swatch, so I stuck with the 11's. 

This pattern is so simple that you knit the scarf really long, then fold the scarf in half to find the middle, then seam down from the fold along one edge about 12 " and, viola!  You have a hooded scarf!  Very clever.  The creator of this pattern is Designs by KN.  She is also known as DBKN and she has been published in several books and magazines.  Her website offers free patterns, too.  This is a great beginner project.  It is something more than a scarf, but not complicated.

The best thing about this scarf was that I bought the yarn on a Thursday night and knitted it throughout that weekend and finished it up on the following Monday.  Here is the hooded scarf complete:



Definitely will keep the chill out!

After the hood was seamed, I added fringe to the ends and added a tassel to the hood.  At first I was not going to add the tassel, but it really does add a cuteness factor to it:

To tassle or not to tassle...

The original pattern called for the tassel and not the fringe, but I think that it needed something else than just the tassel.  Maybe if I used the yarn recommended in the pattern, the fringe would have been unnecessary, but since I like to reinvent the wheel all the time, I added it.

I feel like all I have been knitting lately are scarves.  I am actually working on one right now.  I think once my current one is done (which it is for me, yippee!) I am moving on.  I like scarves and will most likely come back to them after a few months have gone by, but I am feeling overscarved right now.  I have some sewing projects in the queue and a few more knit ones, too.  I have a couple of dying projects too, but I am searching for a used stock pot that I can dedicate to dying on the stovetop.  The bucket method took a long time (remember Halloween 2010?), so I will be searching yard sales and the local Goodwill for the perfect one.  Wish me luck!