I Made This!

silver knitting

I finished up two projects this week, and just realized that they are both silver.  I've been on such a blue streak, it kind of suprises me.

I finally FINALLY finished the baby blanket I started a year ago!  It was a great beginner project, but I got distracted with lace knitting and never came back to it, having grown bored with the yards and yards of stockinette stitch.  But it is done at last, my Bug's Baby Blanket.  (He's almost three, so maybe it should be called a toddler blanket?)

 
I used Homespun in Regency, and carried a second yarn in a silvery grey color with it so that it had a more shimmery, silvery appearance.  Because I didn't know any better, I used a smaller needle size than maybe I should have, but it made a nice dense fabric.  This sucker is sturdy, and should last just about forever.

My pride and joy, though, is my Silver Aeolian Shawl.  About 830 yards of silver alpaca lace, beaded along the edging, and light, soft, and warm.

 
I am ridiculously proud of myself for this one, and have taken a ton of pictures.  I can't wait to actually wear the thing, and have experimented in the mirror with different ways to wrap it.  It's quite versatile.  I'll probably get more pictures of me wearing it, and bore you all with those as well.  ;-)  I gave my first lace shawl away, and it was well-deserved and I was glad to send it off.  But I've wanted one for myself ever since and now I have one that I love just as much as the first one I made.

 
One more parting shot, a close up of the nupps (pronounced "noops") and beads.  Seriously, I'm stupid proud of this sucker.  If you belong to Ravelry, you can see my project page here.

A Year of Knitting

It's April!  I started knitting exactly one year ago this month, and I am still going strong!  I knit just about every day unless I'm pretty sick, which has only been a couple of days in the past year.  I even knit while hooked up to an IV in pre-op, waiting for surgery!  I had to make very clear notes on the project I was working on before I went in, because I knew I'd be a bit loopy for a few days and didn't want to foget where I was.

I'm on my fifth shawl for my 11 in 2011 challenge.  I already showed you #1, so here is my Shawl #2.  It started life as a ball of yarn that just wasn't quite as cute as I wanted it to be.  It looked like this:

 
I can see this yarn being adorable in the right project, but for this one, not so much.  Too much variation of color to let the leaf pattern show, and the pink just didn't say "leaves of lothlorien" to me.  So I overdyed the whole thing in brown, and came up with my Dying For Legolas shawl:

My little one stole the shawl and wouldn't give it back!  He still snatches it away from me when he sees it.

 

I also finished Shawl #3, my Delta Damask:

 
I got the yarn and the pattern in a swap organized in the Knit Picks Lovers group on Ravelry.  It came from a wonderful lady in Japan, just before the earthquake and tsunami hit over there.  She and her family are fine, but I was thinking of the people who were hurt during the disaster while I was knitting this.  In a way it's kind of like a Prayer Shawl, in that I knit and prayed.  It is for me, though, so instead of providing comfort to someone else, it will remind me to think of the people of Japan and hold them in prayer every time I wear it. 

 
The pattern is lovely, and the yarn has GREAT stitch definition.  I have never used it before (Palette from Knit Picks in Delta), but love it and see many more projects with it in my future.  At $1.99 a ball, it's a very economical new love!

There is a "missing" shawl in my completed projects list, too.  I am not proud of this one.  It was a very well-written pattern, and it did what I wanted it to do.  I had two balls of coordinating yarn that I got in a trade, neither of which was large enough for a full project.  I wanted them to blend together in a sort of gradient, and Daybreak did just that.  But it is a LOT of stockinette knitting, and I get bored easily.  So it was a great pattern, and I hated knitting it.  I got sloppy.  And I didn't go back to fix my mistakes, because I just wanted to get it done.  Here's a sample of my sloppiness:

 
But as they say, if you can't see it from the back of a galloping horse, don't worry about it!  And it looks just fine from a distance.  It's very soft and warm, and I wear it as a scarf mostly, so the mistakes are REALLY not noticeable at all.

 
But it's not all shawls around here!  Believe it or not, I've had time for a few other projects as well!  I made a hot-water bottle cover for my new hot-water bottle, which keept my toes toasty this past winter:

 
I started with some natural yarn from Stitch Nation by Debbie Stoller, Full O' Sheep, and dyed it using Wilton's icing dyes.  I had to heavily modify this pattern to make it the way I wanted to, but I like the way it turned out and might be writing it up as a new pattern on Ravelry.

I have a few works in progress on the needles, I like to keep several going at the same time.  I'm learning cables with a Celtic Knot Scarf for my sister, I'm working on a beaded shawl for myself, a second beaded stole with some yarn I hand dyed, and I'm still working on the baby blanket I started for my Bug when I first started knitting a full year ago!  That one is boring to me now too, just knit knit knit, purl purl purl, no interesting stitches to keep me engaged.  But I'm determined to finish it, so it has become my public knitting project.  

    

So that's about it for now.   Back to the needles!  I want to finish my Aeolian Shawl before the 15th so that I can enter a contest using yarn from ColourMart.  I also want to get that baby blanket done before the year anniversary of when I started it, on the 18th.

I'll post more as I get them done. =)

disaster

My first real knitting disaster:

See that?  Right there in the middle, on the right? 

 

I was working on Nancy Bush's Lily of the Valley Scarf from her book Knitted Lace of Estonia.  It has yarnovers and nupps - not difficult knitting, but involved.  I had some trouble with the yarn when I was winding it, and it was broken in several places.  I have two skeins of this yarn, but wanted to use only one as a matter of economy (what could I do with part of a skein of laceweight alpaca?).  So I used the broken yarn.  But loose ends bother me, and I went to weave them in and trim the excess.  Only, I snipped the wrong bit, or snipped it too close, or something, and it unravelled. 

I'm sure a highly experienced knitter, or a restoration expert, or even myself with a bit of time and fiddling and cursing and elevated blood pressure, could figure out how to fix this.  There's an amazing photo essay online about repairing damaged lace knitting.  But I was only 1/3 of the way done with the scarf, and I think it will be less frustrating and heart breaking if I just start over.  I do have that second skein, which means plenty of yarn to do it again and do it well.

I was devastated, though.  So I came home and cast on a different project:

 

This is the beginning of the Haruni Shawl, which has been in my queue for a while now.  I'm most of the way through the repeats on the first chart, and it's shaping up nicely. 

I also made these mitts this Thanksgiving, a quick knit that took me a day:

These are a lovely blue color in a very soft, very warm alpaca yarn.  I'm wearing them now!  And I specifically made them so that I can wear them while knitting, because the weather is getting colder and we don't like to run the heater all the time.

I'll eventually get back to the lace scarf.  For now, it feels good to get the mitts done and worn, and to be working on a shawl project that is a little sturdier. 

vernal equinox shawl

Here's my latest shawl, finished and blocked a few weeks ago:

 It's made of an alpaca/silk blend that makes it very soft and airy, but very warm.

 

It's a half-circle shawl, which  meant I had to  knit it back and forth on the needles instead of in the round, which means purl rows instead of knitting only.  But it was fun, and came together fairly quickly (for me), and I'm quite pleased with the results.  (Those are kiddie chairs above, not full-sized chairs, so the shawl isn't as huge as it looks.  It's about 6' across at the widest part.)

 
It's a gift for a dear woman who did something very nice for us, but I won't say who in case she reads this blog.  It's a surprise.  I can't wait to give it to her for Christmas! 

new hobby!

Just like me to get a blog up and running, then disappear for a month or so!  But I've been busy.  Because I don't have enough to do, I've decided to pick up a new hobby!  This past month I've been learning to knit, and it's been FUN!

My desire to knit stemmed from a need for a portable craft.  My toddler often falls asleep in the car as we're out and about, and I wanted something to do besides playing video games on my iPhone.  Not that playing video games is bad, I just wanted some variety.  I'm a sewist, but it's hard to take a sewing machine on the road.  I thought I'd learn to crochet or knit, but knitting just called to me.  And I love it!

I quicky grew tired of knitting with simple worsted cotton, making dishcloths.  Once I "mastered" [sic] knit and purl, I decided to tackle a hat for the local Chemo Caps collection.  I didn't get a photo of it before dropping it off.

Then started a blanket for my kid.  I got confused on the instructions though, so I decided to make a smaller version to make sure I had the stitches down.  Here's what I came up with:

I used two skeins of a bright turquoise variegated yarn, somewhat bulky, and size 15 needles.  It kind of ended up looking like water cammo.  It whipped together fast, and is only about 30" long by 18" wide.  Perfect for a stroller blanket, and for me to see the pattern.  It's a seed stitch around the outside border, with alternating stockinette and garter stitch squares in the center.  I modified a pattern from the Stitch 'N' Bitch book.

Then my mom requested a scarf, and we found yarn that she was in love with.  I combined it with a black fuzzy yarn to make it soft and comfy, and came up with this:

It's just a garter stitch, long enough to wrap around her neck or maybe tie in front.  I added the fringe in a different yarn, since the scarf itself took up the whole skein I had of the chenille-like black.  I think she's going to enjoy this!

I also enrolled in a knitting class to give me some Me Time on Saturday mornings.  I've got the nice lady there teaching me how to make socks:

So far I have the ribbed cuff and the ankle part of the sock done, I've reinforced the heel and turned the heel.  I'm not sure what to do next, but I've got class again soon and I'll get booking on this.  I ultimately want to know how to make two at once, because I have Crafter's ADD and get easily distracted.  Once I make one sock, I'm not going to want to sit down and make a second sock.  But if I can make two at once, I'll consider it one project and hopefully get it done!

I've been good about keeping the projects under control.  I have the socks going, and I'm redoing the blanket I started for my little boy.  Instead of frogging it completely and rewinding the yarn, I'm just knitting off what I already knit, unravelling it as I make the new blanket.  I'm making it a little smaller, and doing it right this time.  I could have just kept going with the other one, but I wasn't even a quarter of the way done and already frustrated.

So that's what's up in my crafting world!  I haven't sewn much lately. I finished the casserole carrier that I made to replace the one I donated to Craft Hope, only I got the snaps wrong and I need to find a way to reinforce where I took them out and replaced them.  But it's cute and I've already used it once at one of my momma groups. 

Also on my To Do list is a written and illustrated tutorial on how I made a Perpetual Calendar for my friend for Christmas.  I have all the step-by-step photos done, I just need to write it up.  Right now we're battling colds in my house, so it will have to wait for another entry.  Here's a photo of it, though, as a teaser!