Colorful Finished Projects

At the risk of sounding negative, I need to say that I don't really like autumn that much. The air feels different, and I tend to get a bit depressed at the prospect of 4-5 months of cold weather. I try to hold onto summer in as many ways as possible, like wearing flip-flops even though my toes are freezing. One of the ways I cling to summer is by surrounding myself with bright colors. There are a few things I like about autumn, though. I enjoy warm drinks like tea and cider, wearing lots of layers, and getting to show off my knitting by wearing cowls, shawls, and fingerless gloves. Here are 3 projects I finished this week.

 First up is my quilt. I took a quilting class at the local Community College through the continuing education classes. This is a crib-sized sampler that taught me a bunch of different techniques. It took 6 weeks to make it, mostly because I did all of it during class time, and only had class once a week. I found this great Dia de los Muertos fabric to be my feature, and chose the rest of the colors from there. It was a lot of fun. :)

 Here's a close-up of some of the machine-stippling that I did around the edges. It's all free form, and quite fun to do. I look forward to perfecting it on my next quilt.

 A close-up of the machine quilting. :)

 And some indelible ink on the back makes it official and special. :)

 Comma likes stripes too, and thinks the quilt is very comfortable.

 Next up is a striped cowl. This was knitted in the round on size 4 needles. I cast on about 150 stitches, I think. I didn't really work from a pattern for this, just made is up as I went along. It is double thickness. Alternating colors every 3 rows, and dropping a color after 7 rows have been knitted with it. I used sock-weight yarn (size 1) to use up a bunch of little balls of scraps. I still have enough to make another cowl and possibly a few pairs of 2-color fingerless gloves.

 My final finished object for the week was a pair of fingerless gloves for myself. I intended these to be a pair of socks, but as I was knitting them, they told me they would match really well with my school shirts, and that it would be a shame to hide their pretty colors in shoes.

 These were knit on size 1.5mm needles using self-striping sock yarn from Knit Picks. Cast on 64 stitches, knit 6 stripes in the round, add thumb gusset over 2 stripes, separate thumb using scrap yarn, continue knitting in the round for 1 stripe, make 2x2 ribbing for 3/4 a stripe, bind off, pick up stitches for the thumb, knit 2x2 ribbing, bind off.

Close-up of thumb gusset.