Tag Archive | yarn

Spring Rain

As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve been working on my new shawl as much as I can, and I’m loving it so much. I don’t really even understand why, since it’s not even purple! But I’ve always loved the vivid green of MadTosh Seaglass, and I’m just so delighted with how well the yarns play together.

fullsizeoutput_237c The pattern is a nice mix of lace and garter stitch, switching it up so I don’t get tired of either. Okay, well, yeah, I get a little tired of the garter stitch, but it’s fine. Worth it to get back to the lace and the green!

I never thought I’d be so excited to knit something non-purple!

I went to a yarn store

Sep22

But I had a good reason, I swear! I’ve been working on my Spring Rain shawl with the Seaglass green and I’m obsessed with it. But I realized that the 24″ circular needles I started with weren’t going to be long enough for a full shawl. I have one pair of 2.5 interchangeable tips, and I found out that one of them is stripped and wouldn’t screw onto the cord. It just popped right off. Now, I couldn’t just STOP knitting that shawl, right? It simply wasn’t an option. First I tried to be good and went to Michael’s, because I’m rarely tempted by their yarn anymore. Sadly, size 2.5 is apparently not a common size, and they didn’t have it. I was going to have to go to a LYS.

I went to the closest LYS, which also happens to be the biggest, with two yarn stores combined in one huge brick building. So much yarn. I petted a lot of it, even carried a skein around for a while before putting it back. I was just there for ONE size of needles.

But.

One of the stores had a sale section. And in that sale section were needles! Addi needles, which I love! Well how about that?? They didn’t have the size I needed, but I found two other sizes that filled gaps in my needle inventory. Then I went straight to the ChiaoGoo circs, found the size I actually needed, and went to the counter, yarn free.

But.

They had a big display of new yarn up there, all spread out before the counter. Colorful new yarn, in bright pink and purple and green and blue and turquoise and it was all so PRETTY. And that’s how I ended up coming home from the yarn store like this.

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The yarn is March Hare, a worsted from Wonderland Yarns, in their new Luminous Collection. It’s super hard to photograph it well, especially since it’s pouring rain outside so I had to take the photo inside. But you can see their photos here, along with all the other gorgeous colors that I wish I had. It might be a cowl, or I might go a little mad and make a crazy colorful sweater with all of these.

Bright, right? I may be entirely Bonkers, but all the best people are!

Shawl Storage

Sep20

Someone commented on my post yesterday, asking how I store my shawls, and it reminded me that I wanted to ask for advice on that! My skinny scarf/shawls go on hooks on my closet door and that’s great, but it’s ~~getting~~ full.

When I started making full-sized shawls, I used some scarf hangers and hung them over the top and through the loops and it was okay. But I keep making shawls because I love to make them so much, and my situation is getting out of hand.

I’ve added at least three shawls since I took this photo. I just keep layering more shawls on top, and I can’t see them all, and the hangers are getting heavier. I love having them out where I can see them, but either I need to buy more hangers or I need a different solution! How do you store your shawls??

Estonian Lace Cowl

Sep16

I spent the last three days working on donation knitting, but today I need to share a cowl I finished over a week ago! I was just really slow taking pretty photos. This is my Estonian Medallion Lace Cowl.

This is some of my most recent vacation yarn from Colorado, from a local dyer called Herd of Cats. If I read the tag right, the base is Streets, and this might be the Champion Street colorway. Because it was only around 181 yards, I had to modify the pattern a little bit, just by casting on fewer stitches. Toward the end, I was afraid I was going to run out of yarn so I only did 2.5 repeats of the lace instead of three. (Probably could have done all three, though.)

Anyway, the important thing is that the yarn is delicious! It’s thick and squooshy and so soft that I really thought it had some cashmere or silk, but it’s all merino. I believe they sell under the name Road Trip Sock Yarn on Etsy, and this looks like what I had. But also, if you’re ever in Denver, stop by the LambShoppe and check out their yarns!

Here’s a sock

Sep11

Somehow I finished a sock yesterday. It’s one of my new yarns, the Mudpunch self-striping, and apparently I find the colors addictive.

I got carried away and made the foot just a tiny bit too long, but it’s comfy. The second sock is already begun and hopefully it goes as quickly as this one did!

Fixing Stitches

Sep10

Sometimes we knitters make mistakes in our projects. When that happens, we have to decide if we can live with it, or if we want to fix it. Many fixes seem rather scary at first, so newer knitters can be shy about diving right in to tinking or picking up dropped stitches. I have a knitter friend who is like that, and I get to feel smart and clever by helping her! Today she had a blanket where she’d purled two stitches that were supposed to be knit. Oops.

They were several rows back, so she was asking what her options were to fix it. I told her the easiest way would be to knit to the stitches and drop down to the errors, then pick the stitches back up with a crochet hook. That seemed scary to her, so I offered to do it. I made sure to text her a scary progress picture.

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Not only were the stitches wrong, but somehow an extra stitch had been added at that same point, so I pulled those unnecessary stitches out, and then pulled out the next row down to the other purl stitch.

Then I used my little hook to pull that stitch up to the top and bam, it was done! There was some extra play in the yarn because of those stitches I pulled out, but that should all even out with the first wash.

This was one of the easiest fixes, honestly. Bulky yarn that is just sticky enough that the stitches don’t come out too easily, and plain stockinette stitches. Next time I’ll make her do it herself, or else how will she learn??

Finished Faery Socks

Sep8

After casting on so many new things last weekend, this weekend I was good and finished one of my older WIPs. I had a second sock that was mid-foot, so I pulled it out during the women’s tennis final last night and sped through to the toe, then finished the toe this morning. I’m delighted to have a pair of new socks for the fall weather that is sure to be coming soon!

fullsizeoutput_2348 You might notice that they don’t match exactly. I made extra-long green cuffs (a full 2″) and when I got to the heel of the second sock, I was afraid I wouldn’t have enough of the green left for both the heel and toe. I wanted a green toe more than I wanted a green heel, so that’s what I did and since Perfectionist Bonny and Knitter Bonny apparently live in two different worlds, I don’t care a bit. I ended up with 2.5 grams of the green left over; I wonder if that would have been enough after all?

I don’t usually wash my socks before wearing them, but I think I should for these. If you look closely at the needles, especially that bottom one, you’ll see a slight dark green tinge. I’m wondering if I’ll end up with green feet if I don’t get some of that excess dye out!

Pattern: Vanilla Latte Socks (modified slightly)

Yarn: Apothefaery Fabrications Middle of the Road Sock, color

Darn that job

Sep7

Don’t you hate it when work gets in the way of your fun stuff? This week has been too busy, and I haven’t had the mental energy to put much toward knitting or blogging or cool things like that. But I’m going to change that today! It’s a cool, sunny morning, so I’m outside with a cup of tea and a couple of dogs and I’m going to clear my head of work.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I HAVE been knitting; I’ve just been working on projects that don’t make me think too much. My Mudpunch sock has gotten the most time, which is why I’m a good way into the foot.

This is the Twizzler socks pattern and I like it a lot, but I also like how this stripe pattern works up in plain stockinette. I almost wish I’d done a vanilla sock. (I also wish I’d taken the time to get a better photo, now that I see this one here. Oops.)

My other project this week has been my Estonian lace cowl. I worked on this while I was watching the US Open, but only during the less critical matches, i.e. not Rafa Nadal. My skein was smaller than the designer’s, so I cast on fewer stitches for a cozier cowl. I might not get the full three repeats of the lace pattern but I’m not bothered. I’ll just go until I can’t go anymore.

And today is Duncan’s Gotcha Day! We’ve had him for two years now and can’t imagine life without him. He’s the husband’s favorite as well as the boy’s favorite, and he’s such a sweet snuggler. I’m just really glad he stopped destroying things as he got older!

Happy weekend, friends!

Fall = Knit all the things

Sep2

I love summer and I don’t really want it to end, but I’m also kind of happy that it’s almost sweater weather! At the very least, it’s knit-a-sweater-weather. Yesterday I decided I needed to double my WIPs so I cast on three new projects, and yes, one of them is a sweater. And before you ask, yes, I am swatching before I cast on the sweater itself. I knit a proper swatch on circular needles so I can accurately measure my in-the-round gauge, since I know that it differs from my flat-knitting gauge enough to affect size.

I decided I’m going to use five skeins of purples to make a Faded Boxy sweater. I’m not exactly sure how I’ll decide when to fade the colors, but I might just take the length of the body and divide it by five. Wouldn’t that work? Or wait, should it be 10, since I’ll have 10 sections (Color A, Color A & B, Color B etc)? Yes, maybe that would work. I just want to make sure I have enough yarn to fade the sleeves too. I know there are other Faded Boxy projects on Ravelry, so I’ll have some reference points to help. It’ll be fine. The real question is how long it will take me to get bored of miles of stockinette in fingering weight yarn!

I’m starting my Fade with the gray/purple variegated on the far right in that photo, and the swatch has been washed and is currently drying. The middle purple/gray is from Herd of Cats, a Colorado dyer. It’s a worsted merino that is going to become an Estonian Lace Medallion cowl. The ~~non-purple~~ blue/white is a color called Rocky Mountain High from Andromeda Socks, and I’m trying the Chevron Socks pattern to see if it creates a subtle mountain look. Now I have a wide variety of knitting to carry me through the second week of the US Open!

For my U.S. friends: enjoy the Labor Day holiday today!

Adventures in Swatching

Aug25

With only three WIPs on my needles, I decided yesterday that it was time to cast on for something new. My WIPs are easy, mindless projects, so I wanted something a little more involved. I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

In my queue, I found the June Lake sleeveless top pattern, and I had two new skeins of pretty yarn that would work well. Since the body of the sweater is knit in the round, I knew I should swatch in the round. But I didn’t want to swatch on my 16″ circular needles, so I thought DPNs would be fine. My first swatch had too many stitches per inch. My second swatch, with the next size up needles, had too many stitches per inch. My third swatch, up one more size, was too loosey-goosey for any kind of top I’d want to wear.

I liked the fabric of the first swatch the best. Dang it, that meant it was time for math to determine which size I should knit with my gauge. Gauge math is the WORST for me. It took some time, and a lot of notes, and a lot of calculations, but I figured out I needed to go up two sizes. Before I cast on, though, for some reason I decided I wanted to double-check my gauge on the recommended needles, and without much thought, decided I needed to check it on circular needles.

Yes, apparently I do have some self-preservation instincts after all. Because this gauge swatch was different than the one with DPNs, and this gauge swatch indicated that my gauge matched the designer’s and I could pick the correct size after all! So all my swatching and calculating and teeth-gnashing could have been prevented, and if I had done my swatch correctly the first time around, I would have saved a lot of time.

Alas.

Still, the good news was that I was free to cast on, and I did and I’m enjoying my new little WIP.

fullsizeoutput_22ee It’s knit from the bottom up with an interesting band along the bottom, which is done in two pieces and then joined in the round for the body. I love this stitch pattern! And today is quiet and rainy and gray and I think I might spend the day with my knitting and my puppers. Happy Sunday, friends.

p.s. The pretty yarn is Pixie Sock from Supernatural Yarns in the Hogsmeade colorway!