Knitting: Coffee to-go cup sleeves

I used Brown Sheep Company's Top of the Lamp sportweight wool for most of these coffee to-go cup sleeves that I made over the last few weeks. They're being sold at my church's holiday bazaar today. They were quick and easy, for the most part.

Sportweight was a good choice; it made this a fast project, a couple of hours per cup sleeve, usually. I wanted a dark color on at least one edge to mask coffee drips. When I got frustrated that my normal bindoff was too tight I found and learned a new binding off stitch, and that was cool. You can see that at the bottom edge of the two multi-colored cup sleeves (in the second photo, on the right).

I got fancy with the multi-colored cup sleeves. I wove in the bottom ends then brought them up and out the top, braided them with the others, made a knot, and trimmed a casual tassel -- just for something different. I think I'm gonna knit me up one of those!

Red and white

The colors of the very popular local state university.
Offset ribbing (intentionally switched from k2p2 to p2k2 halfway through the middle stripe), slip stitch rows, checkerboard stitch I think (k2p2 for 2 rows, then p2k2 for 2 rows, etc.), and a simple stripe.

Blue and yellow

Offset ribbing, multiple stripes.

Multicolored

One strand Opal pastel variegated sock weight yarn and one strand Top of the Lamb (T-o-t-L). It didn't occur to me to change needle size! Both start with 2-3 rows of deep blue T-o-t-L with the Opal. On the left the base T-o-t-L is yellow, and on the right it's white. The lefthand one is checkerboard stitch for the top half, merged into ribbing for the bottom half by way of a bunch of random decreases -- don't look too close! The righthand one is seed stitch for the top half and ribbing for the bottom half -- with fewer stitches cast on and thus no need for weird decreases.

Son2 LOVES the yellow-and-Opal version. He declares it BEAUTIFUL. I like the white-and-Opal version a lot, myself. Before I knit myself one of those, though, I'm working on a deep red cup sleeve with a wild red-orange-yellow Squiggle upper part!

Very cool: Son1 is deep into reading the knitting books I got for him at the library. Kids Knit, Kids Knitting!, Sunny's Mittens, and another beginner kids' knitting book. I think the best are Melanie Falick's Kids Knitting! and Sunny's Mittens. He now wants to make mittens, which means learning to wrangle double-pointed needles AND getting some appropriate wool yarn. In true knitter fashion, he wants to start right now with any yarn I have! I've created another knitter!!

UPDATE: Son1 changed his mind; now he's started knitting squares to make into bean bags, following Melanie Falick's recipe in Kids Knitting! -- what a good idea. He shopped my stash of old solid-colors acrylic yarn that I bought from a friend in my first months of stash building, for purposes such as this. I'm dropping hints on ways he could hold the yarn, or bring the new loop through, etc., to help with some of his frustrations. Right now he knits very evenly though a bit tightly.