Humping Elephants continued...possibly finished

The pot holders are felted. I'm not completely sure I like it yet though. (For more about these potholders check out this post.

Pre-felting, the pot holders were about 12 x 10 inches.

Post felting they are more like 8 x 6 inches. The ruler is in there for scale.

Partner is coming over tomorrow night and will get his final say in. If he likes them I'll probably leave them. But if he agrees with me that they could be better I'm going to try a new technique.

The color work for this rendition of the potholders was a mix between Fair-Isle and Intarsia. It didn't really occur to me until after I'd made it that it would be a good idea to look at online videos on how to do these techniques well. I'd learned how to do fair-isle over 10 years ago from one of those Learn-how-to-knit books that you get at craft stores like Michael's and JoAnne's. I never really liked it because of all the yarn carrying you have to do and how that bunches up the back. So until now I never did any real color work.

I pretty much made up a technique that isn't that effective for these pot-holders. And by not effective I mean there are obvious bumps and unevenness even after felting. I had thought that felting would even everything out.

Also where I seamed the boarders to the pot holders is a bit obvious since the white lace-weight alpaca I used didn't felt as much and shows through in some spots.

On the upside this is the best felting job I've ever done. So shampoo is better than the detergent I have.

But I'm getting off topic. The other-new-to-me technique for the potholder that I want to try is Double Knitting.

Every time I need to learn a new technique I go to KnittingHelp.com. They tend to have good videos and instructions. It was from this site that I learned in 2008 that I'd been doing my purl stitch backwards for years and not compensating for it when I did my knits in stockinet stitches.

So I went to the site to check how real color-working knitters deal with changing colors at the same stitch over and over. That's when I realized there was another way to do color work besides Fair-Isle that I actually like. Most color work that I'm drawn to is Intarsia style anyways, but Double Knitting allows you to knit two sides of a piece in mirror image and colors at the same time using rib stitching. From what I could gather it's adaptable to any color-work pattern so long as you want the image on both sides.

So I'm tempted to just remake the potholders using the Double Knit technique. And if I do I'll post the steps and progress. Still, I've moved on to other projects already, so maybe I'll get to this in a few weeks..

The "Adult Content" Post - humping elephants pot holder (in progress)

Note: This isn't actually that naughty - but I'm being extra cautious incase - and I'm sure I'll post things even more raunchy in the future.

My partner is also a graduate student - but in biochemistry. We use to joke that one day we'd be some nerdy science power couple. Well that was before my major burn-out in my second and third year. He still loves it. I don't hate it, but I can no longer see the rest of my life as a researcher.

I bring this up because his advisor is getting married this year. Partner is making beer for the wedding as a gift. I hate to show up empty handed, and since I don't even like drinking beer, the keg is not going to be from me too. So I offered to Partner to knit Partner's advisor and fiance a really intricate felted oven glove - something slightly artsy, a bit medieval looking (Advisor's fiance is a history major focusing on the middle ages), and that would use a new technique I'm not that familiar with (fun for me!). I spent a couple hours looking through Ravelry patterns search engine and picked 4 or 5 that I liked to showed to Partner and bought feltable yarn at KnitPicks.

When he came over the next weekend his response was, "What about the humping animals you showed me last week?" So I gotta give him props here. He wasn't uninterested - he was actually happy, appreciative even, that I was making something for his advisor. But we went from something tasteful and elegant to something naughty and well...funny. You can see I'm not the funny one in this relationship.

So back to Ravelry, where we search the mature and naughty patterns for humping/fornicating animals that I could turn into potholders. We finally found and agreed on humping elephants pattern that was generously provided for free by Didi B., and which can be found at Knitwithit.

The pattern looked pretty square on the grid, and

I will freely admit I hate making gauges - although enough disasters have me now feebly attempting to make gauges - so after finding out how many stitches per inch (but not rows per inch), I started in on the elephants. I thought they turned out pretty well...except they aren't square. The bigger problem is that felting causes things to shrink vertically more than horizontally. Meaning 1) these elephants may turn out really squat and 2) these would be really really rectangular pot holders. Not a huge problem. Just a bit of problem solving.

The original idea overall was to knit two sides of

the same thing but in opposite colors and stitch them together as the final project. It's bit more stitching, but instead I'm going to knit borders to attach to the top and bottom of each then do an I-cord attachment and loop and throw the sucker in the washer with some shampoo. I'd use my laundry detergent but the shampoo seems to work better. Yay Head and Shoulders.

If they turn out too squat or funky that's okay. It took less than 2 skeins of each color to at 1.99 a skein to make these. So I'll just order more yarn and try again. If that does happen though I may need to get some friends go in with me on the order. I always try to take advantage of KnitPicks free shipping on orders over 50 dollars. And I've ordered twice from them in January. And I'm once again limiting my spending limit on fiber related hobbies to 500 dollars for the whole year. So that's 10 shipments from KnitPicks...or one or two orders plus lots of visits to Local Yarn Stores (LYS) when Partner and I travel this year.