Coo Coo For Coozies

I've been compulsively knitting coozies since the last post, in all sorts of new & exciting stitches. Cables, ribs, the trinity stitch, erry thang. Learning to do the 4-stitch cable from the last post was a great starting point for me. As I kept working the pattern, I started wondering how it would turn out if I left out the cabling step and just kept alternately knitting & purling on opposite sides & that's how I figured out how to do what I believe is called a rib stitch:

Even softer to the touch than it looks...

The pattern I created for this was:

CO 10

Row 1: Slip 1 PW, P 2, K 4, P2, K1

Row2:  Slip 1 PW, K 2, P4, K3

Repeat until you can stretch your coozie round your favorite cup, then bind off to where the long end of your yarn is on the opposite side from the one you started with. Use your yarn needle to seam the two ends together & BOOM.

My favorite part about making these coozies is that by the time I start to get tired of whatever stitch I'm dealing with, the project's finished & I have a cute little piece of functional art to sell!

I have done a lot of variations on the 4-stitch cable, but when I had initially looked up cable knitting, I saw that there were loads of different kinds & I've been curious about something I saw called a staghorn stitch. I immediately dismissed it as too complicated, but since I've been pumping these coozies out (eww doesn't it sound nasty like that) at the rate of a few a day, my confidence has increased a lot, so I found a pattern I could understand here and I adapted it to work with this Bernat Baby Blanket Yarn. As you can see, the original pattern calls for you to CO 20 stitches, with the cable taking place over 16 stitches, between 2 selvedge stitches on either side. I used half as many stitches in the repeat part of the pattern, so I call this Sammi Kat's Half-Stag:

CO 12 stitches

Rows 1, 3, 5 (WS) Slip 1 PW, k1, p8, k2

Row 2: Slip 1 PW, p1,* k2, C2B, C2F, k2* p1, k1

Row 4: Slip 1 PW, p1,* k1, C2B, k2, C2F, k1* p1, k1

Row 6: Slip 1 PW, p1,* C2B, k4, C2F,* p1, k1

This is what it looked like after 6 rows:

I sort of lost the plot somewhere along the line (I think i cabled back when I wasn't supposed to, sigh...) but I think it still works:

A good 1st effort, no?

After I finished this, I thought I'd add a bit more to the pattern:

Row 8: Slip 1 PW, p1,* C2F, k4, C2B,* p1, k1

Row 10: Slip 1 PW, p1,* k1, C2F, k2, C2B, k1* p1, k1

Row 12: Slip 1 PW, p1,* k2, C2B, C2F, k2* p1, k1

This way, instead of just making those kind of V shapes, the pattern creates a sort of diamond effect:

You can kinda see where I got a lil wonky with this one too...

...but it looks fierce from here!

They are available on etsy for $10 each or a set of 5 for $35!

http://www.etsy.com/listing/130138754/drink-covers-in-mardi-gras-colors

I'm not listing every single one of these things on etsy this minute, but you can contact me to order specifics!