seasonably inappropriate knitting

The nice thing about learning to knit in the spring is that I have lots of time to get decently good at it in time for christmas presents. The silly thing about it is that I now have a matching neck warming collar thing and fingerless gloves, just in time for summer...

it pulls over the head and snugs up like a squishy neck corset. my guy says it looks like a neck brace, hahaha, but I think it's cute.

Out of the eight knitting projects I have either completed or am currently working on, only one besides this set is actually for me. Which is weird, because with sewing I am totally a selfish seamstress. It might have something to do with my current skill level not matching up yet with most of the things I want for myself though, so we'll see if I'm still this generous once I get good, hahaha.

isn't the lace edge pretty?! not supper lacy compared to, you know, actual lace work, but enough to make me feel fancy about wearing (and having made) it.

 The blue bit at the top of the last picture was my rather confused attempt at a provisional crochetted cast on, which didn't end up working quite right, but got the job done. Somehow I got confused while starting to knit out again from that point to finish the second lace end, and ended up offsetting the pattern by one stitch. With the confusion of the lace and the way the top flops down a little when wearing it though, I don't think anybody is really going to notice.

standing up like this, it kind of reminds me of illustrations of how wormholes (probably) work... and now I want to learn some recreational physics.

I had two balls of this yarn, and the collar took slightly less than one, so I needed some other smallish project to go with it. Seeing as my hand are always cold, some mitts sounded like a good idea, and since I'm always wasting time on the computer, fingerless ones fit the bill nicely; you can't skill mash wearing mittens :P.

I made the finger end ribbing longer than instructed for extra warmth.

I like the way they turned out, although they are slightly too large around the wrist. Which is, I'm sure, not generally a problem with this patter, as I usually wear children's store-bought gloves and really should have made the child's size of this as well. Really, it's a little freaky how small my hands are compared to the rest of my, or a normal person. One of my friends can fold his first two knuckles over my fingers if our hands are palm to palm; granted, he's a foot taller than me, but still!

during the day, the only place in my apartment that gets enough light for decent pictures is the floor by our patio door.

I got to learn increases for these guys, and stockinette stitch; neither of which are difficult, I just hadn't run into them before. I've finally learned enough that each new knitting pattern I look at is only 75% gibberish, hahaha. Anyway, once I had my very own coordinated mitts finished, I decided to give away my first mitt attempt, because one only needs so many of these things.

this picture demonstrates the oddly small difference in size between my wrist and hand, and why bracelets often fall right off.

I made these chunky blue fellows mostly to use up the leftover yarn from this cowl, and so when they became obsolete to me, I gave them to the friend the cowl went to. Now she has a matched set too! I feel very lucky that my co-workers don't knit, because they get really excited and amazed by the things I give them and will never notice any iffy bits :P. And it makes me happy seeing them enjoy things I made for them, like a big vicious circle of love.

Now I've ended up with three knitting projects on the go, although only one is particularly urgent. A friend is going through a rough patch right now, and with nothing helpful to do besides supplying hugs and moral support, I thought pretty new gloves made just for her might at least provide a little cheering. So now I'm trying to knit some up as quickly as I can without making loads of mistakes; the pattern I'm using is so cute I might just have to make it again for myself once I've learned enough to add actual fingers.