The Tale of a Bunny and a Frog

After I made the pumpkin hats, I had a little of one of the oranges, but not enough for anything, so I did random stripes of the two oranges, and did a tiny newborn hat. SO cute! Guess I should take a picture of it, LOL.

Then, I still had a LOT of the Red Heart orange staring at me, so I thought I'd do some "Mile-a-Minute" pumpkin hats (with random columns of ribbing, and a slightly different top). I think there's 4 done, but I might undo the bottom one as it's too loose (I already undone one. I started with KP 45, did one, then KP40, did one, KP35....but the KP45 was way too loose so I undid it). I was looking around for the last little bit of the great yarn I've used for the stems of the other pumpkins. A mossy green with flecks of other colours, a little rough textured.

While searching the basket under my desk full of odds and ends, uncompleted stuff, etc, I found a bunny with one ear sewn on and the darning needle dangling from the other ear. If you've never made a Heartstrings bunny, you've got to check it out! I made one, summer of 2005 of pink/purple Bernat Boa for Lucy. She loved it! But my square was more rectangular, and the bunny is long and skinny (doesn't help that the Boa stretched as Lucy squeezed the bajeebers out of the poor thing. No real bunnies for her!).
I decided I would use up a bunch of odd browns and creams yarns I had bought to make my in-laws an afghan, and I would make a pile of these squares to make bunnies. A nice simple project for the new knitting machine. Well, I have a pile of squares....
For the Knitting Olympics I was going to make a pair of alpaca gloves. Uh huh. With a 2 month old refluxy newborn. At the same moment we finally bought a new house. Yeah. I got the swatch done. I changed my game plan--I would finish a bunny a day. Knit two quick ears, some simple sewing. Uh huh. Hence, the one-eared bunny in the basket.
I decided right there and then to finish it. On the floor. And I did!

He's got a very plump behind. (Edited to add: I make the squares anywhere from 6-8" wide, instead of 4". Still keep the math easy--cast on what the ball band says plus half or two thirds.) And the back legs always end up pointy. Maybe I'm sewing them wrong. But he's darn cute. Megan agrees. I think I did the purl side as the outside. It's Bernat Soft Boucle. I remember buying it at Len's Mill and the teenybopper cashier called it "Buckle". LOL.

Now for the frog :(
While cleaning up looking for the green stem yarn...I took a close look at the Whine Wrap Cardigan. I was ticked that when I frogged the back, I got almost to the point I had ripped back the fronts, and then realized I didn't need to--the front's had the neck shaping and I had done too much between the bottom lace and the start of the neck shaping. On the back, I only had to go back to where the armholes should have started. When I put the other pieces on the machine and redid them, I used the mast from the LK150. The KnitSmart doesn't have a mast, it's like the Bond. You pull out the yarn you need for each row, so there is NO tension on it. But you have to take up the slack at the ends of the rows or it pops out of the yarn guide and you lose the sts. It appears using the yarn mast, while ensuring a more even tension (if you don't pull out enough yarn, and the carriage gets stopped by the yarn tension, it affects the garment tension, with the KnitSmart), resulted in a tighter row tension. And probably stitch tension too. It's pretty obvious.

And to be honest....I've made plenty of mistakes on this thing. I've lost the enjoyment. I don't think it's a great match of yarn and pattern. Sure, the plain Astra allows you to see the lace section, but the solidness of the colour is ....cheap looking in the vast plain sections. I like yarns with a bit of interest. Some shading, a bit of texture, not wild, but not so perfect either. So I think I will frog the rest of it. I don't think I have any other yarn that fits the gauge and my interest. And I don't know what I'll do with the 10 balls of wine Astra. Something with more textural interest I guess. That would probably mean, not on the knitting machine, unless I do something with tuck stitches... I've also got several other projects in the queue that I want to get moving on.
Like a pair of alpaca gloves :)