This was a BEAST. I used a set of five 250-yarn skeins, for a total of 1250 yards/300 grams. And of course I didn’t check my gauge first because who does that for a wrap, so mine ended up 138 inches, which is 11 1/2 feet. For comparison, the pattern shows the longest edge to be 114 inches. So I ended up with an extra two feet, whatever.
Dog included for scale.
The pattern is Walls (circus) and it’s simple, alternating garter sections with easy eyelet sections, but doing that over and over for 11 feet does get rather monotonous so I’m delighted to finally have this off my needles. And I’m happy that I used up all of the beautiful gradient set from Neighborhood Fiber Co.
Now I just have to figure out how to comfortably wear this much wrap — or maybe I’ll hang it above the windows in my craft room like a valance!
There are a lot of WIPs at my house lately. The house is the biggest work in progress, still. They’ve gotten a lot done but I’m guessing we still have at least a week of work left, if not more. I’m hoping they finish the deck stairs today, and they’ve started putting up the new clapboard siding.
I’m totally in love with my new deck. It’s 12′ deep and there’s going to be plenty of room for the grill and a table and chairs, and maybe even a lounging chair for napping in the sun, plus three dogs. I’m so glad we decided to splurge on a huge deck, since sitting out back with the dogs is my favorite part of this house. Who knows, maybe we’ll decide to stay here after all!
Of course I’ve got my knitting WIPs too. Even though I have probably six things on my needles, I’m still only working on one or two projects at a time. One is a sock and one is a bigger project. I just finished my Walls wrap, which I’ll share Friday, so right now, these are the two.
I’ve got maybe four or five rows left on the sweater before I get to join in the round. I’m still totally in love with this yarn and I think I’m going to love wearing it. And my Twilight sock is growing nicely and look, I even managed to match the stripes! It totally doesn’t bother me when they don’t match, but it does tickle me when they do.
The last bit of news is that we got the boy a car on Monday! He’d had a 1963 Mercury Comet for a couple of years, but they never really got it running, so he wasn’t able to drive it. With us working from home so much, it was no problem for him to just use one of our cars. But things are starting to open up, I might be going back to work at least part-time this summer, and he’s graduating high school this month. It was time to get him some reliable transportation of his own. We found a nice used car with super low mileage, and though it’s not the cutest car, it’s got space in the back for him to lug around his guitars and amps and other music gear.
He seems thrilled with it and I’m glad we’re in a position to be able to help him with this — though it might have been nice if it hadn’t been at the same time as needing to pay for the renovation, haha!
It’s Friday but I have zero FOs to show off. Not the knitting, and not the house. But there has been good progress on both this week. Since I finished my last bigger project (which I think was the Water shawl??), I’ve been focusing on my gradient Walls (Circus) wrap, and it’s getting enormous. When it’s done, it’s supposed to be over nine feet long! I’m on color four of five and to be honest, I’m quite bored with it. But I’m sure I’ll love it when it’s done. I do love the yarn, which is a gradient set from Neighborhood Fiber Co. I also started another sock. I stumbled onto a great sale at Webs and bought several solid colors of Cloudborn sock yarn and had to cast on for a striped sock right away.
The house project is coming along. The demo is done, and they removed the back of the house so they could do spray foam insulation. Insulation wasn’t a thing 100 years ago when this house was built, so I’m excited to get at least one side insulated. Yesterday the crew was here almost a full 12 hours doing the insulation, sheathing, and vapor barrier. It was supposed to rain today (though of course it hasn’t yet) so we’re getting a nice break from the noise and intrusion until next week, when they’ll start putting the clapboard siding back on. After that, it’ll be a deck and paint, I think!
Yes, there will be some windows and a door on this side! Overall, living through the reno hasn’t been as stressful as I expected, but I definitely miss having easy backyard access for the dogs. They’re enjoying all their walks though!
It’s been a productive week over here — hope it’s been good for you too. Happy Friday, friends.
You can decide for yourself what the FO stands for in this case!
I shared my socks on Friday, so I don’t have any to share today. I mean, I did get about three inches of a new sock done but that’s not very interesting, is it? And I have an actual finished object to share. This little cowl kind of flew under the radar. I didn’t post about it too much and it hung around for ages and then after my socks were done, I decided it was time to get this done too.
This is the Gris de lin cowl and I used my single special skein of Malabrigo Mora, which is 100% Mulberry silk, and the color is Sabiduria. I wasn’t good about weighing the yarn as I knit and I wasn’t in the mood to play yarn chicken, so I skipped the last pattern repeat and don’t feel the lack of it at all. It’s the perfect little silky cowl.
In exciting home renovation news: we have painters here today! They have been power washing the exterior to prep for paint and at first I was very excited and now after six+ hours of near-constant noise, my excitement has faded slightly. But as soon as they start painting, I know it’ll come back. No word yet on when the demolition will start on the back of the house, but surely it will be soon, if they’ve begun the painting process? All in due time, I guess. Maybe I’ll have a painting progress photo to share by the end of the week!
After I finished my Water shawl last week, I went back to socks, and that’s been my main focus this week. I finished the first Ewe Turn Dyeworks DK sock and the second Ella Fitzgerald inspired sock — and I have 54 grams of the Ella yarn left over! I’m totally going to make another pair but with purple contrast bits next time.
Before I do that though, I really need to cast on one of my new sock yarns! I fell deep into the Desert Vista Dyeworks website and couldn’t resist the yarns inspired by Twilight, West Side Story, and Wonder Woman. Pretty sure Bella & Edward will be first, and I might even do a Twilight marathon this weekend while I knit them.
I finished my rainbow shorties late last week, which meant it was time to cast on another sock … even though I still have one sock WIP on my needles. Two sock projects at one time is fine, right? This pair is with new DK yarn that Shannon sent me, part of her new yarn business, Ewe Turn Dyeworks.
The pattern is a simple purl chevron that I got from a book, like an actual book in my knitting library. I’m trying not to use Ravelry and since I have four sock books, I should make good use of them! The DK feels so thick and squishy after doing fingering weight socks but I did have some size issues. Last night I got to the toe and realized the foot seemed larger than usual. It probably would have been okay, but I decided to frog back anyway. I pulled back to the end of the gusset decreases and just did two more decrease rows. Should be a better fit now!
Yesterday Sarah and I tried for one of our outdoor knitting dates, but our excitement about “spring weather” was a little early. Instead of sunny and temps in the 50s, by 1:30 it was only 46, and it was sunny but windy. We survived two hours and even though it wasn’t as long as we’d hoped, it should tide us over until it is actually warm enough!
Hope you had a good weekend too. Happy Monday, friends.
Oh happy day! It is Friday, it is sunny, and I have a new shawl to show off! This was our Blogville KAL led by Alissa at Headknits. It started on March 1 and even though we have until the end of … um, June, maybe, I finished mine Wednesday and blocked it yesterday. It was greatly helped by two things: I am currently a monogamous knitter, and the boy has been re-watching Doctor Who in the evenings. I’ve seen those enough that I can focus on the pattern and just half-listen to the Doctor. (Tennant is my favorite but Matt Smith is a VERY CLOSE second. And Smith with River and the Ponds is probably the best combo ever.) Without further ado, here is my Water shawl:
I know, it looks nothing like water, being this dark pink color, but it called for two skeins and I had two skeins of this that needed a pattern and I couldn’t justify buying two new skeins just for this. The yarn is from The Periwinkle Sheep. I don’t remember the base name but it’s 100% merino and the color is Fuschia Agate and it’s gorgeous, so rich and vivid. It didn’t lose any color when I blocked it, either!
The pattern is Water by Soft Sweater Knits. Though she has several patterns available on Payhip, Water is only on Ravelry at the moment. There were a few tricky bits in there for me, a couple of instructions that weren’t clear for me, which is why I was so glad this was a KAL and I could ask the other girls what I was supposed to do! The lace sections are lace short rows, which was only tricky the first time around. I did use stitch markers each time I turned, and I definitely recommend lifelines before each lace section. But once I got into the flow of it, I sailed along smoothly! (Hee hee, see what I did there?) Well, until the bind off, which is apparently a knitted on bind off or some such nonsense and took ages but my goodness, it sure is worth it in the end. Look at those little loopy bits!
I used around 600 yards and probably could have gotten another pattern repeat in, but it’s plenty big enough as is, very close to the ideal shawl size for me. It is kind of hard to show the full size of it; I don’t have a great way to display it stretched out.
But the branches of my beautiful magnolia tree seem as good a place as any! Happy Friday, friends.
Okay, this is not a recent finish. I finished this shawl a few weeks ago at least, even blocked it at the time. But the weather was never good for me to take pretty pictures, what with a polar vortex and all that, plus life gets in the way sometimes. So today I thought I would share the final photos of my We Belong Together shawl, cast on in honor of Inauguration Day.
I loved this project. DK weight shawls knit up so quickly, and the pattern was interesting without being too taxing for pandemic-brain, so I just wanted to keep going and going. It blocked out wonderfully, too. The teal is Boss Babe from Forbidden Fiber and the purple is Orchid from Old Rusted Chair. Both are awesome!
Even though I didn’t share anything current today, I have been knitting a lot lately, a lot of stress knitting. I’m a bit in the weeds emotionally at the moment, maybe have been for a little while, and I’m at the point where I’m tired of myself so I’m sure the people I’m venting to are tired of me too, even though most of them have given no indication of it. But since I also get more emotional when depression is winning, I’ve lately found myself so full of gratitude and love for the people who do listen and offer love and support, and for my knitting groups which are so much more than “just” knitting groups. Knitting, guys. It’s just the best. And in that vein, here’s an article I saw this morning, an article about knitting and friendship and healing and all kinds of cool things. It’s written by Barbara Kingsolver, whose books I love. I had no idea she was a knitter; now I love her more.
Happy Friday, friends. Hope life is treating you well!
Today is International Women’s Day and it also happens to be the girl’s 21st birthday! We’re not able to be together today (darn that growing up business) but we did FaceTime this morning and we’ll see her next week. I feel both as young as I was back then and also like I’m kind of old, but not in a bad way, more of a wise badass away. And she’s well on her way! (To being wise, I mean. Not old. Though she’s on her way with that too, I guess.)
Here’s to strong women: may we know them, may we be them, may we raise them!
I do have a sock to share today, too. I started a pair of shortie socks last week with some leftovers and finished the first one yesterday. Short socks are so much fun to knit!
Pretty sure the second one will be cast on today. Happy Monday, friends, and Happy Women’s Day to all my fellow wise women!
In my last post, I mentioned one of my new WIPs, the Water shawl that we’re doing as a Blogville KAL. Last night I was able to sit down and start working the lace short row section, and maybe I got off on the one wrong foot because she uses KT= knit stitch twisted and I don’t understand why she wouldn’t just say knit through the back loop (ktbl) if that’s what she means, but whatever. That’s easy enough. I got to short row five and things just weren’t right, I didn’t have enough stitches to complete the repeats before the previous turn, and I knew that wasn’t right. I tinked back two rows and tried again, same result. I messaged my Blogville friends to whine and ask them to see if the chart and written instructions match — maybe there was a mistake in the written rows that I could avoid by using the chart. When I couldn’t find an error in either my knitting or the pattern, I frogged the five rows of lace, back to the end of the garter stitch section. At least I was smart enough at that point to put in a lifeline!
I poured a glass of wine and started again, counting carefully and using stitch markers to denote my turns, and again when I got to the end of short row five, it didn’t match up. At that point, it was 9:15 at night so I put the shawl in time-out and finished my wine and went to bed.
This morning, I printed out the chart and the written instructions. I sat down with a cup of tea and compared them on row five. Yes, they matched. I looked at my row five — it wasn’t wrong. I tinked back my row five and examined row four, and I’ll damned if the mistake wasn’t right there: I’d missed the last repeat in row four. ARGH.
So why did I struggle so much last night? I’d put in a day’s work, I was tired, I had wine, the boys were watching TV, it was darker. This morning, it was before work, I was less-tired (I mean, I’m always tired on some level, you know), the boys were upstairs so it was quiet, I had tea instead of wine, and I was at the dining room table with big windows letting in good sunshine. And, maybe most importantly, I’d taken a break, had some space between me and the frustration. So I guess when they say things like, “Things will look better tomorrow,” sometimes it’s true.
The bonus is that I got to be the guinea pig making life easier for my Blogville buddies, and anyone else wanting to knit the Water shawl (Rav link): KT = ktbl, use lifelines before each short row section, use stitch markers, count carefully, each short row turns two stitches before the previous turn, do a Wrap & Turn instead of just Turning to avoid big holes.
bonnyknits 