Knitting for Charity

It is that time of year where I am sewing and knitting for charity.  The company that I work for participates in the American Cancer Society, Relay For Life event each year.  We start fundraising in October, leading up to the event in April.

The way I have chosen to raise money is to do clothing mending, sewing challenges and knitting coffee cup cozies (or bottle cozies), however you want to use them.

I wrote previously about the coffee cup cozies in these posts:

• Coffee Cup Cozies
• More Coffee Cup Cozies

I have knitted up about 20 or more of them and sold about 15 of them!  I started out knitting them sort of plain, with the self-striping yarns, to keep it simple.  Well, if you know me at all, then you know I can never keep something simple.  I started making cables and making them in sport team colors with horizontal stripes.

If you would like you very own, custom knitted cozy, please email me at moxiebrown25@yahoo.com.  The price of the cozies are $5, but if you are out-of-town, then $6 (to cover the cost of shipping).  You choose your color(s), style & size!

If you would like to donate to a great cause, please go to my Relay Homepage! 

Tampa Bay Rays

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Seattle Seahawks & Denver Broncos

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Pink & White Stripes

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Zebra for Carcinoid Cancer

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Ministripes for Small Cups

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Mini Cables in a Solid Color

 

I'm having a great time knitting these up.  They are great on your coffee cup, water bottle or glass bottle!  Let me know what you like!!  Help support a great cause!

 

Thank you to those that have supported me and bought a cozy already! :-)



Star Baby Blanket - Part 3

Hooray!  I finally finished the Star Baby Blanket!  This took me about 2 weeks, I think I started on Aug 4, which was a Saturday.

Here is a close-up of a corner:

I did have to go out and buy one more skein of each blue, but I only went around the blanket with one set of two rounds with each.  These skeins will join my bin of stash yarn.  I was trying to stash-bust using yarn I already had, but alas, I'm left with the roughly the same amount.

I will have to make scarves as gifts to stash-bust these skeins.  Anyway, here is the final picture:

It came out very nice.  It's not perfect, but I think that one won't even notice.  If you look real close, a skilled crocheter will pick out the irregularities, but the layperson...doubtful.  I will send this blanket as a gift soon.

I am now at a loss of what to work on next.  I have yarn for projects, but I fell like if I'm going to make a few gifts for Christmas, I should get knitting or crocheting now and put my personal projects aside until Dec/Jan.  Doing that, I then feel some anxiety that I must do the gifts and pick a nice project or the recipient will not like it and think it some ole granny gift.  

I will think it over and you shall see in my coming posts, what I decide to work on next.  Have a great week!

Related Posts:

• Star Baby Blanket - Part 1
• Star Baby Blanket - Part 2

Razzy Socks - Complete!

Yes, finally, I have completed my Razzy Socks!  I first featured these socks in January (original post).  I really did not think that it would take me this long to finish them. 

This is what they looked like before:

I had the pair pretty much done.  I could have kept knitting the ribbon part up my calf, but I really did not want to continue anymore.  So, they sat with the ribbon about an inch high for 3 months.

My sister is my resident expert on socks, so she instructed me to bind off with a needle size that is 4 sizes larger than the original needle size.  I knit these on a size 1, so that means I needed a size 5 to bind off.  That seemed strange but hey, she's knitted over a dozen pairs already.  Who am I to argue?

I bound off with the size 5, keeping it loose.  The goal is to have the sock fit over your heel.  If bound off too tight, then it won't fit.

Here is my loose bind off.  I then slipped them on to get a feel for them....

Viola!  I'm finally done.  They fit a bit loose, with the bind off loose as well.  Well, this is my first pair of socks and I forgot all of the techniques my sister has taught me.

If (I did say if) I make socks again, I will have to do it when I'm with my sister again.  She will have to get me started again.  The next time I do a pair, I will use a size 0 to knit them.  I like my socks tight, these are too loose for my liking.

These may not be perfect, but they were created with my own two hands.  I love 'em!

Razzy Socks

When I went to visit my family in Mass just before Christmas my sister showed me how to knit socks.  I brought a skein of my own up there, but failed to take a pic of it before starting (I know, what kind of blogger am I?).

First we had to separate the skein into two equal weighted balls (50g each).  This yarn is called "self-striping" because the colors in the skein vary, but different from variegated, in that as you knit around the sock, stripes appear as if you purposely knit them there.  Really neat.

Then we took the ends of the balls and matched up the colors.  This took a few yards to get the colors striping at the same rate; we snipped off the extra yarn.  

My sister showed me the techniques she uses from the book Socks from the Toe Up by Wendy Johnson.

She showed me the "Judy's Magic Cast On" and I was off and knitting!

I am still knitting them, but I am close to being done.  See how they are striped?  That is the yarn doing all of the work.  Near the toe, it started knitting up a peach and black checker-like appearance.  It reminds me of one of my cats, Jasmine (aka Razzy); she is a Bengal cat.  Her hair shafts are striped with orange and black.

I will model what I have so far:

I am now finishing it up with a k2p2 rib.  Now I must stop blogging and start knitting!

UPDATE:  Click here to see them complete.