Tag Archive | Malabrigo yarn

Hopping around

Not that long ago, I was a monogamous knitter. I mean, I haven’t been for most of my knitting life, but there was something about quarantine that tipped me into it. However, it would appear I have reached the end of that stage. Either that or I haven’t found the right project, because my lace sock and garter stitch/short row shawl have not kept my attention. First I cast on a simple sock last week, and that’s been good, but over the weekend I needed something new.

Originally I wanted to try my hand at sewing a top, so I spent some time on Etsy finding the right beginner pattern, but once I bought it, printed it, and assembled the pattern pieces, I discovered the fabric I wanted to use wasn’t quite wide enough. Heck it all, I’d cast on a new project. I’ve been wanting to make a Ripple Bralette for a while, so I grabbed my last skein of Malabrigo Arroyo in Fucsia and bought the pattern. Well. Guess what? It calls for the old Norwegian cast-on. I don’t know that cast-on. Here’s how that went: Okay, hello youtube, help me please. That doesn’t look too bad. Let me try. Wait, are you kidding me? What? Do that again. Oops. Shit. Pause replay pause replay rewind pause replay. WTF. ARGH.

I did that for about an hour until finally the lightbulb went on and suddenly I was in the rhythm and it was super cool! After that, it’s all ribbing for several inches, so I’ve just been knitting along merrily and crossing my fingers that it will actually fit. Because, you see, to heck with gauge swatches. I wasn’t in the mood. I might come to regret it, but whatever. It’s a small, quick project, and the suggested ease is between 9-15″ of negative ease, so I just need to get close enough, right?

Oh, and just now I went and looked at Arroyo and it’s actually a sport weight, not DK. Sigh. This could be fine, or it could be bad. Fingers crossed!

Pattern: Ripple Bralette DK. I can only find it on Ravelry at this point.

Penny FO: Pretty in Pink

Jun23

Some colors are almost impossible to photograph well, unless you’ve got a lot more photography experience and knowledge than I do, I guess! I’ve tried a few different times, places, and lighting scenarios to get photos of my finished Penny sweater and the vivid pink (Malabrigo in Fucsia) just resists all my attempts to show the true color. So this is what you get, and at least you’ll be able to see the pretty lace!

AE4102DB-5D28-4EEC-AB73-54ACEB7A72AB_1_201_a This experience taught me a couple of things. One: that shit does NOT always block out. The ladders on my first sleeve are still there. Whatever. And two: Malabrigo Arroyo, or maybe all superwash, grows A LOT in the bath. I knit this according to the pattern specifications and it was kind of huge when I first got it out of the water. I had to squish it back into a more normal size and it still seems very long. But it fits pretty well and that’s the important part!

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The neckline is a bit lower than I expected, but it doesn’t bother me much since I’ll be wearing this over something else anyway. And I really like the lace detail down the middle of the sleeves.

7CC2305B-D6D8-44B0-8FCA-2C51F1E593D9_1_201_a I don’t know why but I didn’t enjoy knitting this one very much. Part of it was my confusion when it was time to join the body and sleeves for the yoke, and I felt like the instructions for the decreases could have been clearer. But I have to admit the final product is lovely, and I bet I’ll enjoy wearing it!

Birthday Penny

Mar14

When I went downstairs this morning, I saw a little red car parked out front, and that gave me a much-needed perk of happiness, because that means the girl is home! She made it home last night and it feels good to have all my people in one place. We had to cancel a birthday gathering tomorrow night with the grandparents, and I’m disappointed and sad. But my mom is over 80 and the husband, girl and I have all been around way too many people lately to feel comfortable visiting her right now. It sucks a lot. But with any luck, she’ll stay well, and I’ll just hang out at home with the kids and the dogs, and sometime in the not-so-distant future, everyone will be able to spend time together!

Last night I cast on the sweater I’ve been planning for about six months, the one with my birthday sweater yarn. It’s Malabrigo Arroyo in fucsia and it’s going to be AMAZING.

55BDC317-0B45-49BC-B969-BFCFC6FD63EE_1_201_a This bright, saturated pink is one of the hardest colors to photograph, but this is pretty close. The pattern I chose is Penny, a lacy v-neck. You start with the sleeves and body all separate and then join them. I started with the body because that’s always more fun than the sleeves. But the sleeves will be done on DPNs, so if I get bored knitting the body, I can switch back and forth with sleeves.

With all the yarn events being cancelled, I’d probably be doing a bit of online shopping to support small yarn-related businesses. But I’d been planning to shop at Knitting in the Heartland next month, and so far, it’s not been cancelled. (Which seems crazy to me and I hope they end up cancelling it soon. I mean, who among us wants to be responsible for Stephanie Pearl-McPhee getting the virus??) If it does get called off, I know I’ll be supporting some independent businesses! In the meantime, I’ll just keep knitting my from stash.

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Happy weekend, friends. Stay safe, stay happy, stay well.

FO: Peyto Lake Cowl

Jan19

There has been knitting again! I got a full night’s sleep Friday night which felt amazing and restored a lot of energy, both physical & mental/emotional. Long-term sleep deprivation is not fun, and I’m really glad Duncan is almost to the point of being left alone at night without the cone. Anyway, I spent some time hanging with Dunkie yesterday and finished a cowl I haven’t even shown you before.

You know my goal is to work down my stash, so lately I’ve just been poking around and pulling out skeins that call my name, then finding a project for them. This is a skein of Malabrigo Worsted, one of my favorite Malabrigo yarns, in the color Whales Road. (Which I also have in Mecha and the colors look SO different which is weird.) I poked around in Ravelry and settled on the Peyto Lake Cowl, since the water theme kind of went with the blue/purple colors of the yarn. The wavy lace gets a little lost in the color variegations but I don’t mind.

I’m just loving knitting worsted weight cowls again, after so long knitting with fingering weight. I’ve got another one on my needles, but it’s a totally mindless all-stockinette cowl with rolled edges and everything, so I save that for when I don’t want to use any brain cells at all. This yarn is Dark Side of the Moon by Alexandra’s Crafts, in the color Purple Rain. And it’s a merino/SILK blend, yay!

I’ve got a two days left in my three-day weekend, so I anticipate more knitting in my future. Let’s see if I can motivate myself to work on my Purple Faded Boxy, or if I’ll cast on for another worsted weight cowl. I do have the yarn already picked out and the pattern purchased!

FO: Waverly Weekend Cowl

Mar23

Okay, so I actually finished this cowl a few days ago, but it needed a bath and desperately needed blocking. Blocking made a huge difference for this one: it evened out the edges, opened up the lace, and made the beautiful wavy edges!

I blocked this one more vertically, since I wanted a taller cowl. I could have easily done it the other way and made a wider cowl, which would have opened up the lace more. Heck, I could do that in the future if I wanted too. But we’ll see how it goes like this. I will say it’s harder to see the lace and waved edge when you’re wearing it.

But you can’t miss the color, which is my favorite thing about this cowl. Have I mentioned how much I love Malabrigo yarn? They always have such swoon-worthy colors.

The pattern is Waverly Weekend Cowl and I did seven repeats of the lace pattern, no modifications. The yarn is Malabrigo Rios in Magenta.

Frog and start over

Mar18

Recently I wrote about a project that was not behaving in an appropriate manner, the Heart Check cowl. There was an error in the written instructions and after knitting the first section twice, I realized I was now holding a grudge against the poor pattern and I didn’t want to knit it again. But I still wanted a cowl in the beautiful magenta Malabrigo, so I went browsing until I found a worthy candidate, the Waverly Weekend Cowl. It says it can be made in a weekend, and maybe it can, but certainly not in a weekend like mine with two family parties, including one at my house that required a bit of tidying up. (Okay. A lot. I have three dogs and I hate housework. And also, in the future, I either need to have leather couches or no dogs. And no dogs is not an option, so leather couches it will be. Vacuuming couches is a terrible thing to have to do.) Anyway! I have at least made some progress and it’s enough to know that the pattern appears to be error-free and I’m liking the lace.

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It’s also enough to know that this vivid pink yarn is next to impossible to photograph well. This was in my backyard, in the shade, late in the day when the sun was on the other side of the house. It’s usually my best light for photos. But this pink, wowzers!

The sixteen rounds on that cowl were pretty much the extent of my knitting for the weekend, but I also got to celebrate the girl’s 19th birthday with our family, plus the brother’s college graduation, plus I went to a local symphony concert with the girl Saturday night.

The dogs all partied pretty well. Jack got a sedative so he wouldn’t bark constantly, and each dog got their own empty peanut butter jar to lick clean. But after a couple of hours socializing, they were pooped and wanted to sack out on the couch. I have to say, I felt the same way! It was a good weekend, but exhausting and I feel like Monday came much too quickly. I need a spring break like my kids!

Sockhead Cowl

Feb14

My newest cast-on is a Sockhead Cowl, which I started the night of the band concert. It was the perfect project for mindless knitting that I don’t need to see all the time, and I got to use my Chiaogoo lace needles, which I love. Those pointy tips are just my favorite! But when I pulled out the pink and black Done Roving yarn that I thought I was going to use, I decided it wasn’t quite soft enough for a snug, face-hugging cowl, and instead I pulled out some Malabrigo Sock in Velvet Grape.

It’s still not quite as soft as I was wanting; I’m thinking like cashmere or silk soft, you know? But I’ve loved wearing all my other Malabrigo cowls so this should be fine.

We’re gearing up for another round of snow tomorrow, maybe 3-5 inches, so the weekend should have plenty of knitting time for me!

ShaZAM! It’s done!

Aug4

Wow, that was like magic: this project flew off my needles! I cast on three projects last Sunday, and suddenly I’m back down to one (a sock). You needn’t be too impressed at the speed of this one, given that it was a one-skein cowl in worsted weight on size 8 needles, with a very simple lace pattern that was really barely lace. It was my comfort knitting last night. It’s not been the best week, or two weeks, or summer, to be honest, for a lot of reasons, but yesterday I was in a serious funk. I escaped for Mexican food and a margarita with the sister, which was a lovely treat that helped a lot, and when I got home I picked up the cowl and turned on an old episode of ER. I didn’t expect to finish, but suddenly I was at the end and binding off before the show even ended.

The pattern is sha-ZAM! on Ravelry. This was a fun knit. I love these one-skein cowls; they’re so easy and fun to wear. And it was a treat to get back to some squishy soft Malabrigo. Makes me look forward to fall, when I can actually wear things like this again. (NOT winter! Note the difference, please, Mother Nature!)

And now, with almost empty needles again, I am eager for my next shawl project, and it’s going to be amazing! I have 3 skeins of Zen Yarn Garden Serenity 20 Fingering in a gorgeous Vivid bundle that I’m itching to cast on. I mean, it’s a whopping 1200 yards of 70% superwash merino, 20% cashmere, with 10% nylon.

I’m pretty sure this is going to be my first WestKnits project, but I’m debating between The Doodler and the Dotted Rays – Speckled Fade. Have you made either? Both? How do I choose??

Sha-ZAM!

Jul26

With empty needles, I happily poked through my stash to see what I should knit next, and four pretty little skeins jumped out at me. The first was a skein of Malabrigo Rios, an aberration because I’ve been knitting so much with fingering weight yarn. I had an urge to make a cowl, one of my favorite things to knit. I love to knit on circular needles, I love the feel of merino wool in my hands, and I love to play with different patterns. And best of all, I love having so many cowls to wear when it’s cold.

This skein is the color Aniversario. I’ve bought this colorway before but it’s one where there’s huge variations in colors. I made a Hitchhiker Beyond in this color, but it has a lot of blue/indigo. This skein is mostly red. I chose a fun, free one-skein cowl pattern called Sha-ZAM! and it’s going very quickly.

I’d forgotten how much I love Malabrigo. It’s so soft, with that yummy squish factor. I definitely need to make my next sweater in Malabrigo!

Two weeks from today, we leave to take the girl to college in Colorado. (EEK!) I’m freaking out a little, but I’m also super excited for her. And I can’t wait to visit my mountains again. Anyway, before she leaves, I decided we needed some family time, so I declared today a Family Fun Day and we all took the day off work. We’ll visit the Jazz Museum, have some lunch, go to a fantastic big vintage record store, and who knows what else. Maybe a movie? I won’t get much knitting done, but that’s all right. Knitting can wait.

Silverleaf Complete

Oct22

I just finished it this morning and had to share it right away because I’m so excited!

It’s nice and long, and the garter stitch sections are squishy and soft.

The leaf pattern is gorgeous. It amazes me how people can take a relatively simple lace pattern and make something so beautiful. I love knitting designers.

The color is also perfect for me. It looks predominantly gray, so it should be nicely versatile, but in person it’s got a hint of purple.

This might be my very favoritest knit of all time. So much love for my Silverleaf! If you don’t have it already, go buy it and make it. You won’t regret it.