Tag Archive | crafting

Rainbow Warrior

I have another finished shawl! This week I bound off my Rainbow Warrior shawl, all 440+ stitches in a beautiful picot edge. As tedious as a picot bind-off is, I do so love the look, and it was the perfect finish for this shawl.

I’d wanted to make this shawl for months, but I wanted to do it just like the original, which meant waiting until I could justify buying the Miss Babs yarn. And a couple of times I tried, but the Perfectly Wreckless color was sold out, and I had to wait for that yarn. I just couldn’t make it with another color, I loved the pink variegated with the gray so much. Finally, I had two skeins of Yummy 2-ply in my hands: Perfectly Wreckless and Thunderstorm.

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This was so much fun to knit. I loved balancing the garter stitch with the slipped stitch sections, how there was repetition that soothed me but also some variation to keep me interested. I loved seeing the colors pop out through the gray slipped stitches. My skein of Perfectly Wreckless had more black than I would have chosen, but overall I’m still delighted with it. I loved watching it grow each time I got to an increase row, until near the end when it was all squished together on the needles. I knew it was going to be quite large, but I couldn’t quite get a sense of how large, because I couldn’t spread it out enough.

Another thing I love about this pattern: it looks awesome on both sides. The “right” side shows off the slipped stitches and is more subtle with the colors, but the “wrong” side is just as delightful, with the colors on full display.

The pattern calls for eight slipped-stitch sections, but as I got near the end of the seventh, I realized my contrasting color was getting alarmingly low. I really didn’t want to play yarn chicken and have to frog back, and I could tell the shawl was already big enough to be wearable, so I ended with the seventh section. Since I still had plenty of gray left, I did the first two rows of the MC in section eight before starting the bind-off, to give a bigger, more defined final edge. I love this shawl. It’s exactly what I wanted it to be.

This is a pattern I’d love to make again, as soon as I decide on another color combination. The possibilities are endless! Have you made one yet?

Wonder Woman Wrap

Oct28

It’s done it’s done it’s DONE! My beautiful Wonder Woman wrap took about six weeks to make, mostly because I had to take breaks from the long stretches of garter stitch toward the end. The pattern is the fantastic free Wonder Woman Wrap by Carissa Browning, and I used Malabrigo Sock in colors Ravelry Red and Ochre.

This was my first adventure with wrap and turn short rows, and I was apprehensive at first. But once I started doing it, I realized they’re actually super simple. (Seems like that’s true for all the things in knitting I think are scary.) Somehow I did end up with wrong stitch counts after each short row section, but it wasn’t enough to mess up the pattern. The first time it happened, I adjusted with an extra KFB or two, but after that I just kind of rolled with it.

Earlier this week I made it to the end of the last yellow stripe and realized how close I was to the end, and that gave me the push I needed to power through. Yesterday I took a sick day from work (remember I mentioned poison ivy? It’s all over my chin and it was oozing and hideous, and I was miserable and needed to go to the doctor anyway to get steroids to make it stop. It’s even on my FINGERS. Thankfully it’s just a few tiny spots and the steroid cream I got helped control the itch there so I could keep knitting.) and in between loads of laundry to get rid of all the poison ivy plague, I sat and knit, all day long. By the time the husband got home from work, I was binding off.

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This wasn’t my favorite thing to knit. I still don’t love short rows, and the long rows of garter stitch got a bit tedious. But then it’s done and it’s so beautiful. I love it so much. I want to wear it tonight when we go to the symphony. And every day after that. Forever. This will be my Halloween costume.

New Gloves, Blue Gloves

Oct21

The problem with having a lot of WIPs is that it takes longer to have a FO. I’ve been knitting, maybe not obsessively, all week, and didn’t finish a single project. I did cast on a new one. Counter-productive, I know. I made a hat and glove set as a donation for a silent auction fundraiser, and one of the fundraiser coordinators liked the gloves enough that she asked me to make a pair for her, so that’s mostly what I’ve been working on.

They’re Aran weight on size 8 needles so they’re going pretty quickly. We have a band competition an hour and a half away today, so with any luck, I’ll finish the second glove today!

Furls Purple Odyssey

Oct20

I feel like I have progressed to a new level of crafter: I purchased a Furls crochet hook! I’ve coveted their hooks for ages, those gorgeous colored Candy Shop hooks and the striking black and silver Odyssey hooks, but never gave in to temptation. Partly because of cost, but mostly because once I learned to knit, I wasn’t much of a crocheter anymore. If I didn’t crochet often, why buy a $30 hook when that money could go toward yarn?

Well. That all changed when I saw the ad for the pre-order of the new purple Odyssey hooks. I ordered one immediately and started counting down the days until it would ship. Lucky me, it shipped sooner than I expected, and I finally got to open it last night. It’s so pretty! It’s a darker purple than it looks here, but just as shimmery and beautiful. I pulled out some scraps to make flowers to test it, and found that it’s heavier than I expected, but not unpleasantly so. The shape was definitely comfortable in my hand. The only thing I didn’t love was that there’s no thumb rest, so when I picked up the hook I had to make sure I was holding it right to get the hook positioned, and sometimes as I worked, it would turn ever so slightly in my hand, putting the hook in a less-efficient position. I’m eager to try it on a bigger project and give myself time to get used to it.

Anyone else use Furls hooks?

Back to Knitting

Oct16

My socks and I have reunited, but our relationship isn’t quite as obsessive as it was a while back. I do still work on it when I’m on my lunch break at work, or if I need an easy travel project, but I’m on the same pair I started almost a month ago, and I’m not even halfway through the second sock. That’s slow for me. Still, I’m making progress, and I’m quite happy with how they’re turning out. Unfortunately, I’ve discovered something sad: some wool socks make my feet itchy. Especially when it gets warm in the afternoon and my feet get too warm. There were a couple of days when I had to get them off as soon as I got home from work because I couldn’t stand the itchiness anymore. A couple of pairs are worse than others, so I’ll probably give those to the girl. And otherwise I’ll just save the wool socks for the coldest days and hope for the best. I don’t want to stop knitting socks forever, and I do like wearing the fun yarn on my feet.

My other current project is just about as mindless, it’s the Chocolate Diamonds Cowl with my Fiber Arts Expression purple silk/wool. This is my luxurious knitting, all soft and squishy and…well, silky. It’s about halfway done and growing quickly. I’m hoping that I’ll have some time in the evenings this week to get back to my Wonder Woman Wrap. I want to wear it soon, now that it’s getting colder. Plus it would be the perfect thing to wear on Halloween night, while I greet trick-or-treaters!

Nerd Girl Field Trip

Oct8

I’m lucky enough to have a fantastic indie dyer only thirty minutes away: Nerd Girl Yarns. Her colorways are exactly what you’d expect (Doctor Who, Harry Potter, superheroes, and much more), the colors are gorgeous, and the yarn is always a treat to knit with. In the recent past, she’s been primarily an online seller, without a brick and mortar retail location, but she’s in a new space now and had a Grand Opening this weekend. Of course I had to go, and I haven’t gotten to hang out much with Knitting SIL lately, so she joined me. We weren’t disappointed: the new location was beautiful!

The wood glass-fronted cabinets are stunning, especially filled with yarn. She also carries a bit of tea, so we saw tea accessories too. When you first go in, you see a cabinet full of crystal teacups and flasks, each holding yarn.

But as pretty as it all was, we were there mainly for one thing: yarn!

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Her selection of already-dyed yarn is limited, but it’s all tempting. There was pima cotton in bright pinks and oranges and yellows, plus plenty of merino in a variety of colors. There were also tie-dyed sock knitting bags, which I resisted (It was hard), and dyed wool for spinning. (Is that called roving? I don’t know.)

There was plenty more bare yarn, and if I dyed my own yarn, this would be the place to go, since she had all different weights, plus some with sparkle!

So what did I get?? This was my little impulse purchase, rainbow scissors up by the register. Love them!

This is merino worsted in a color called Too English to Say Anything. I think I want to look for a solid or two to go with it.

Originally my goal was to only buy one skein. But then I found this one, a fingering weight called Queen of the Amazons, and of course it had to come home with me.

It was a fun little field trip in an otherwise busy weekend. I’m glad we were able to squeeze it in!

Stupid Hat

Oct7

I had plans for the weekend: I was going to go to Nerd Girl Yarns’ Grand Opening at her new studio. Then I was going to go to a band competition and out to dinner with the mother. In between all those things, I was going to finish a proofreading job. Well, I can make plans all I want, and then life happens.

I’m closing my Etsy shop, as I mentioned before, and have everything marked down to cost, basically, to clear stuff out. These are things that have been hanging around for a year or so, packed up in bags in my craft show supply tub. I sold a hat last week, and in a hurry before work one morning, I packed it up and sent it out. Last night, I heard from the buyer: the hat had a big hole in it. What?? So now I’m embarrassed that I didn’t check it, worried that either I didn’t do a good job finishing it or I have moths, and disappointed that I sent out an inferior product to a customer, regardless of the price. Of course I’m replacing it, but I don’t have more of that yarn, so that means an emergency trip to my LYS to get the yarn, and then emergency hat knitting to make a replacement hat. And all of that means I will probably lose money on that sale. (If you’re interested, check out what’s left here. Low prices and free shipping!) BUT. It’s the right thing to do, and it doesn’t matter that I’m closing my shop, I’m still going to do the right thing. But. Sighhh. At least it’s a quick pattern in bulky yarn, and I do love to knit hats. This can be my band competition knitting tonight. Gotta look for the silver lining, right?

I’ve been doing some service projects instead of selfish knitting, so not too much knitting to show. I actually switched to crochet this week. We’re working on a Welcome Blanket at work, with several of us making squares that we’ll sew together into a blanket. The blankets will go on display for short time and then distributed to refugees. You can read more about the project here. I’ve got four squares done; our theme is black plus a bright color. Of course some of mine had to be purple!

I’ll be sure to share a photo of the finished blanket! It’s due by November 4th, so we’re trying to work fast. What’s your favorite service project?

WIP Wednesday

Oct4

Okay, so I haven’t gone off socks completely. I got back in the groove of my pretty purple and pink sock, and made it past the heel. And since I frogged and restarted with a different pattern (my fave, Vanilla Latte socks) I’m not even dreading the second sock! In fact, I’m wanting to get this pair finished quickly so I can wear them!Also, I have not finished Wonder Woman yet. I knit on it a lot over the weekend and made good progress…

But by Sunday afternoon I needed a break, and as I predicted, I got distracted by the purple yarn. I have four new skeins of purple to play with, and I chose the Expression Fiber Arts yarn solely because it was the one skein of worsted, and I wanted something to balance all the fingering weight yarn I’ve been knitting with. I found a pattern designed for this yarn, a lovely simple cowl that should show off the yarn and be super cozy to wear.Pattern is called the Chocolate Diamonds Cowl, and it’s free and really simple. The yarn is, of course, delicious to knit with, since it’s 50% silk and 50% wool. I’m guessing this cowl will get a lot of wear this winter!

Working on Wonder Woman

Oct1

I’ve been knitting on a sock during lunches, but that’s not the fun knitting. The fun knitting has been the Wonder Woman Wrap, which has grown significantly this week! I managed to get both side stripes done, short rows and all. I was putting it off, afraid it would be tricky or confusing or time-consuming, and it wasn’t at all. The first side went faster, since it was the knit side.

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I still don’t love knitting them, but I will concede that they are not difficult, and they can help create some awesome shapes.

The second side was all purling, and my gauge was slightly different. But once it’s all knit, I don’t think it’ll be too noticeable. Right now I just wish I could spread it out and see how it’s coming along! This is as good as it gets, though:

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Maybe I can finish it this week…if I don’t get distracted by all the purple yarn I wound yesterday, that is!

Not a Good Day

Sep27

Today didn’t start out so great. I snoozed a bit too long and got up to a puddle outside the bedroom door (Duncan isn’t great about going very long stretches without a potty break). I confess I cursed a bit as I let the dogs out.

Then when I came down for breakfast, I spotted a knitting needle on the floor. A thin size 1 DPN that should have been in a zipped project bag holding a sock WIP. Oh, that bag? Yeah, it was on the floor, says the husband. Sure enough, the bag had suspicious dog hair on it. I unzipped it and pulled out the sock, and discovered that the rogue needle had been on live stitches. This bag was my Yarn Pop bag, the one with the handy grommet in the side you can pull the yarn through. Apparently, you can also pull a needle through.

I got the stitches back on a needle, a different needle because the first had a splinter and few tiny tooth marks, and it seems to be fine. But OMG this dog. I know, I know. It was my idea, and I found this dog, and blah blah blah. I had clearly forgotten what it’s like to have a young dog in the house, and we got really spoiled with the first two dogs, who never had accidents in the house even at under a year old. So it’s a new problem for us to deal with. Like I said, not so great.

So in the hopes of turning that frown upside down, let’s look at yarn, shall we? I have marvelous friends who give me marvelous yarn. First up is my birthday yarn from a couple of work friends. It’s Madelinetosh Euro Sock in the color Daenerys. I think it might grow up to be a Miso shawl, a simple, versatile staple for my wardrobe.

Second, I have a new skein from an indie dyer, Canon Hand Dyes, in Portland. This was a gift from another friend at work, a thank-you for covering while she was on vacation. The yarn is Oscar Sparkle Fingering and the color is called Isobel Crawley (Downton Abbey inspired, as I’m sure some of you could guess). Isn’t it beautiful? I do love sparkly things, especially sparkly purple things! I haven’t decided yet what it wants to be, but I’m pretty sure it will be another shawl/scarf, something I can pet and admire while I wear it.

There. I feel better now, don’t you? I mean, I’d feel even better if I was at home playing with my new yarn, but we can’t have it all, I suppose. Here’s hoping your day is brighter than mine has been!