I Couldn't Help Myself

New yarn, it makes me do crazy things!! Like start a new shawl project ... a big one.

I just couldn't stop petting and fondling my new yarn from Red Sock Blue Sock Yarns in the Gotham colourway, so I caked it up ...

Picked a pattern that makes my crafty heart flutter: Aurinko. And started:

To say I'm enjoying knitting it is an understatement. I think about it at work constantly and it's all I want to do once I get home:

Sadly I can't devote as much time as I'd like to it, but it's still getting a lot of love right now!

It's soft and squishy, and so lovely!

Gift of Thanks

I am almost finished my PhD in Education. I defend in August and I wanted to knit something special for my supervisor as a thank you gift. I started the Ardent shawl using Hazel Knits Entice (MCN) in Indigo on June 16th, figuring 2 months was enough time to get it done.

It grew like crazy at first, as most asymmetrical shawls do, but then it started to get slower and slower. I did the math, and if I knit 3 rows a day I'd be done in plenty of time to block it before the defense.

Of course, I reached the end of pattern before I reached the end of my yarn. I also used smaller needles than called for (US 3) so the shawl was way smaller than I'd hoped (more like a hankerchief at this point).

So another repeat was added:

I know it'll grow a lot by blocking it, but I still am afraid it's too small. I have another skein of yarn, so I think I'll do a 2nd extra pattern repeat. Fingers crossed I finish it in time.

I know I wasn't supposed to ...

At the beginning of the year, I had decided not to start anything new until I finished a few things. Well, that lasted about 30 seconds. There's just something fun and awesome, something energizing, about starting a new project.

In March, I caved and started a baby blanket for a hypothetical baby. No one is pregnant yet, but there is ... hope. (It's not me, so there will not be a bunch of baby pics on here; my brother and sister-in-law are trying.) Since I likely won't know about the pregnancy until they are at least 3 months along, and I figure a baby shower would happen around the 7-8 month mark, well, then that means I'd only have 3-5 months to get the blanket done. We all know I am not efficient at getting projects done, so I figured I should start now and work on it as I can.

So, my sister-in-law's favourite colour is orange. My least favourite colour is orange. This might be a bit of a struggle for me. However, I wound up some gorgeous Hazel Knits Lively DK in Carnelian.

I found a really pretty (and simple) lace baby blanket pattern called the Pine Forest Baby Blanket. and started on the border. Love me some garter stitch!

I struggled on the first lace repeat or two, but finally got the hang of it and it's starting to look good!

I still think it's going to take months to complete, but I'm aiming to knit two rows a day. It is growing!

Knitting Skills

I'm a novice knitter. I taught myself from YouTube videos last March, and have been horribly addicted ever since.

I started a lace shawl in September and have been struggling with (and ignoring) it for several months. I gave up, ripped it out, and tried another shawl. That one didn't wow me (it is pretty but it's just plain stockinette and reverse stockinette). I needed something with more ... pizzazz.

I finally decided on the Vortex Shawl. I love it, but it required me to develop a new skill: knitting on double-pointed needles (dpns). Add to that I needed to learn how to make i-cords and figure out the "belly button/umbiblical cord" cast-on.

A few tries very late at night (midnight - 3am), resulted in a decent umbiblical cord to start from:

After a few rounds of the pattern, I switched from 2 dpns to 4 dpns, and I started to really struggle. It was just too much for me to handle. Finally, it occurred to me that I could go back down to 3 dpns, and that was much more successful. More rounds have been done and progress is being made! The pattern is super easy but looks far more complicated when knit.

It is lace (kind of), so looks pretty terrible as it is being knit. It won't look amazing till after it is finished, washed, and blocked.

I love that I'm getting used to knitting with dpns. I'm going to need this skill when I start knitting socks (maybe Christmas Day?) and other little finicky projects.

However, I am very much looking forward to being able to transfer the Vortex Shawl to a circular needle -- progress will be MUCH faster.

I love knitting.

Restarting a restarted new start

I haven't had the time to block and take pics of my Hitchhiker yet, but it is finished. All 42 beautiful teeth of it!

Since then, I've started two new projects. (It's amazing that I kept it to only two new starts.) The first is a toque for my brother. I'm using a pattern by Tinksdarkerside called Ribbed for his pleasure… It's a free pattern, and while the name is funny and describes the pattern well, it's kinda weird to knit it for my brother. Anywho … it's a simple 2x2 ribbed hat in fingering weight yarn. I'm using Cascade Heritage Silk Paints (an 85% superwash merino, 15% silk blend) in green. I particularly like the crown design. It's so pretty! I've read that it makes a pointy tip right at the top, so I might try doing the decreases on 5 needles instead of 4. I'll let you know how that goes.

It's great travel knitting, though I find it very slow going. I'm not very proficient at purling and switching between knit and purl slows me down too. However, I think it looks great.

The other new start is another Hitchhiker. This time though, I'm doing it in a worsted weight yarn - Cascade 220 Superwash Paints in Iris Garden. It goes fast and is getting big quickly. I have 2 skeins, so I'll just keep going till I'm out of yarn.

Now the title of this post is a little cryptic. I started my first lace shawl (Haruni by Emily Ross) in mid-September at a mentoring session at my LYS. I brought it home and screwed it up almost immediately. Hence the restart. I made it much further this time, all the way to row 30, and I even put in a lifeline a few rows before that.

My lifeline didn't work (or I couldn't make it work might be more accurate), and so I had to rip out everything. All the way back to the beginning. I'm restarting my restart. At least I'm getting practice with doing garter tab cast ons:

Le sigh. I'll get the hang of lace someday.

On the Knitting Front

The last time I talked about my knitting, I was 12-14 points into my Hitchhiker Shawl. As a novice knitter, it was inevitable that I would screw uo somehow, and I had to put it down for a few days before I could take it in to my LYS for a little help. Dropping stitches at the end of a row = bad idea.

So what does a knitter do when a project is put on hold? Start another, of course!!  I started the Honey Cowl by Ann Maria at Madelinetosh. I used Misti Alpaca Chunky in gray and cast on the small version. It is SO soft and squishy!! Oh my gosh!

The colour is totally off in this pic - sorry!

It didn't look like much at first, but it got prettier as I went.

After my screw up with the Hitchhiker was fixed, I kept working on that and made great progress. I'm not quite done yet, but here it is at just over 39 teeth.

As motivation for working hard on my schoolwork, I bought some mentoring sessions at my LYS and today was my first one. I decided to start my very first lace shawl - Haruni by Emily Ross using Knitpicks Stroll Tonal sock yarn in Summer Blooms. Look!! You can see two leaves (kinda). Yay lace!

Once I got home, I felt a smidge guilty for having so many projects on the needles, so I hustled a little and finished my Honey Cowl.

Now I just need to wait for winter!

Start & Stash

A few weeks ago I got some new yarn stash (here). I resisted as long as I could, but I couldn't help starting something.

I started the infamous Hitchhiker by Martina Behm using Cascade Heritage Silk Paints in 9996.

I am making decent progress at the moment, though that will slow as the rows get longer and the scarf gets bigger. I am really enjoying this though. 

Only 1/4 of the way through it and already I'm planning several more of these using different colour ways, different yarn weights, different needle sizes! I'm so excited about the possibilities that sometimes I spend more time online looking and thinking about it then I do actually knitting!

Which of course means that more stash had to be acquired. My LYS has been having summer sale events every Wednesday … I am in deep trouble! During the last sale I only picked up 4 skeins …

A skein of Cascade Heritage Silk Paints in 9789 (potentially a Magine shawl one day):

A skein of Cascade Heritage Silk Paints in 9808 (potentially another Hitchhiker):

And 2 skeins of Cascade 220 Superwash Paints in 9879 (potentially a supersized Hitchhiker):

So many plans and not enough knitty time!!

More yarn = More starts

I started two new knitting projects - a double seed stitch blanket and a lacy shawl. I've never worked with lace weight yarn before and it is proving to be more challenging than I like at the moment. I've put that one on hold for now. The blanket is a joy to knit. I just wish I knew how I screwed up so badly only 2 rows in. I'm trying to get my nerve up to undo and restart the silly thing.

The obvious solution, of course, is to buy more yarn and start yet another project! I, as usual, can't just buy stash for one project, I have to buy for multiple projects. I'm only starting one project though.

I picked up some Cascade 220 Superwash Paints for a scarf for my dad. Several years ago he asked me for a red and black scarf. I crocheted him one last year, but he doesn't like it much. He says it curls up on him and turns into a rope around his neck. So I'm trying again with a Tweed Stitch Scarf.

I'm loving the tweed stitch! It's quick and easy and I can recognize the stitch pattern as I knit. I'm still learning how to recognize stitches (and mistakes) in my work.

However, I am a little pissed about the seed stitch border. I'm following the pattern, but it looks like a line of stockinette stitch. See:

The pattern reads as follows (it's a free pattern and I linked to the original above):

Row 1:  Slip 1, P1, K1 (these 3 stitches are the seed stitch border), K1, *yf, sl1, yb, k1*; repeat between *’s to last 3 stitches (Row 1 of Tweed Stitch), K1, P1, K1 (seed stitch border).

Row 2:  Slip 1, K1, P1, (seed stitch border) Purl to last 3 stitches (Row 2 of Tweed Stitch), P1, K1, P1 (seed stitch border).

Row 3.  Slip 1, P1, K1(seed stitch border), *yf, sl1, yb, k1*, repeat between *’s to last 3 stitches (Row 3 of Tweed Stitch), K1, P1, K1 (seed stitch border).

Row 4:  Slip 1, K1, P1, (seed stitch border) Purl to last 3 stitches (Row 4 of Tweed Stitch), P1, K1, P1 (seed stitch border).

I am not happy with the border at all. I tried knitting a swatch where I invert the Row 1 & Row 2 and Row 3 & Row 4 border order. It still doesn't work. Anyone have any idea why this isn't working for me?

I can't decide if I should continue knitting with the messed up border or if should I undo everything and restart it either with a fix for the seed stitch border or with a different border. Opinions?

I also picked up yarn for a tweed stitch scarf for me - Manos del Uruguay silk blend. So gorgeous!

I definitely need to figure out the border so I can get my hands busy with this stuff!

MMSC - Week 25

So, after last week's very successful basting binge, I wasn't sure what I'd get into this week. What I should have done was start stitching together my diamonds for the 6-point star. However, what I did was cut fabric for a new project. (I know, I'm ridiculous.)

These are a selection of prints from a collection called Indigo Patchwork by Connectingthreads.com. I'm working on an arrowtail quilt with 4" 45 degree diamonds. I managed to iron and cut the fabric for 315 diamonds, which is half the quilt.

Maybe next week I'll actually stitch something together. :)

Linking up with Jessica's Monday Morning Star Count at Life Under Quilts.

I love Alpaca?

I finished another dishcloth yesterday. This one was seed stitch with a garter border.

I struggled with this one. I wasn't used to switching between knits and purls, so my knitting speed slowed down considerably and I felt awkward and clumsy. It made me not want to knit. Finally I forced myself to do more than a row at a time, and I began to get into a rhythm. Next thing I knew, it was done! Yay!

I will say that I love the texture of seed stitch. It looks lovely. Almost too nice to use as a dishcloth!

Now to the alpaca situation. I didn't know this about myself, but apparently I love alpacas, or at least the yarn that comes from them. I decided to start two new projects for the summer (both are pretty big projects). The first is a double seed stitch blanket for a friend of mine using Misti Alpaca Chunky in natural. It is the softest thing I have ever touched -- 100% baby alpaca. It is heavenly! I also decided to start a lace shawl using Shimmer lace yarn by Knitpicks in Elderberry. It's 70% alpaca and 30% silk and beyond lovely!

Now … to knit!

MMSC - Week 22

Remember a few weeks ago, I laid out my hexies for my Batik Hexie Quilt (Grandmother's Flower Garden) and I hated it?

Yea ... I still hate it. It just is not working for me. I thought about it for weeks and every time I looked at the photo the hate rose up. I needed to do something about it, otherwise I had a few hundred hexies and several hundred 3" squares of fabric that would be shoved in the back of a closet.

The Mini Lotus quilt by Jaybird Quilts was recently added to my pinterest page, and I love it. I love the pattern, the colours … I knew this would be something I would try in the future. I started thinking about it more and more. Then it came to me. I can do a variation on it with some of the hexies from my Batik Hexie Quilt.

I knew that I still loved the blue fabric I was using as the background in that quilt. I also loved the purple vines fabric. It took a while to decide on the filler fabric colour, but I went simple and it is working for me.

What do you think?  Lots of blue flowers (88 in total) with a handful of purple flowers (13) with crisp, clean white filler pieces. The litte triangles are actually a white-on-white fabric (cute little stars) and the diamonds are just white kona cotton. This week I managed to baste 6 triangles, 5 diamonds, 5 blue hexies, and 5 purple hexies. Big progress for me! I also cut fabric for 26 more triangles and 85 diamonds. All the hexie fabric is already cut. (Hence my need to find a way to salvage this project. The other hexies have been stashed away for future projects.)

The quilt top will now be smaller than I originally planned, but if I add a 6" border I can make a decent sized throw. I've calculated how many I need of each shape (541 blue hexies, 166 purple hexies, 606 triangles, and 606 diamonds) and I have a lot of basting to do, but I am much happier with how everything goes together.

I've discovered I'm not really drawn to scrappy or multi-fabric quilts (at least not of my own making -- I have, however, seen some amazingly beautiful scrappy quilts out there). I'm not even overly drawn to patterned fabric. I'm a solids kind of girl. I think I need to rethink a lot of my future projects …

Linking up, as usual, with Jessica's Monday Morning Star Count at Life Under Quilts.

PS All of my shapes are 1.25" in size. The hexies are an almost perfect size, not too big and not too small. However, those diamonds and triangles are tiny!! The triangles in particular are a challenge to baste since a few Clover clips take up all the space and I can barely find a place to hold it as I'm basting. Challenging, but super cute!

Fixing my Mojo

I'm still trying to find a solution to my crafty mojo problem -- more specifically, my stitching mojo problem. A dear friend suggested that a new start might be just the kick in the butt my mojo needs. She also suggested that I start a project I've had kitted up and ready to go for over a year now.

So I did. :)

I finally started my first Chatelaine - Evening in the Park. I love, love, love this design, and it took a while but I found the perfect fabric for it from Under the Sea Fabrics. I ordered the painfully expensive, but achingly lovely threadpack of silks and beads from European Cross Stitch.

One day it should look like this:

For right now, my start looks like this:

It's stitched on Ice Princess 32 ct opalescent lugana. I'm not loving using all the metallics at the moment, but it's looking good so far.

For the first time I'm using a magnifier while I stitch, because the hand-dyed fabric has tiny holes and the opalescent nature of the fabric splits the threads and makes it doubly difficult to see the proper holes. The stitches look pretty big under the magnifier, but when I look at it without, I can't believe how tiny the stitches are!

This piece is going to take a very long time.

A great idea

I have lots of those -- great ideas -- maybe more than is good for me.

A few weeks ago I finally caved and decided to learn how to knit. A dear friend kept making me put on the brakes and just practice instead of diving head first into a major project (she's pretty smart).  After several hours lost on Pinterest and Ravelry, I'd picked out a kazillion knitting projects I'd like to do and also found a really simple, small project that would be perfect for the stage I'm at in the learning process.

I decided I would make a doggie blanket for my boy Toka. He's going to be boarded at a kennel for the first time ever in May, and needs a blanket that can smell like me but is washable too. I found a pattern for a diagonal garter stitch baby blanket that I plan to do in cotton. Nothing but knit stitches and yarn overs; a perfect practice piece.

I bought a big cone of Sugar 'n Cream cotton yarn in Country Side Ombre.

I also bought a few small skeins just cause I liked the colours!

I had a similar pattern for a dishcloth, so I figured I should try it out on straight needles as a practice practice piece. And I'm glad I did. I ended up casting on and knitting the first few rows 5 or 6 times before I got it quite right. After that, I was good to go.

I did discover that with the straight needles I tend to wedge the one in my left hand against my body and I use my left hand just to throw the yarn as I knit with the right hand needle. Try as I might I couldn't seem to keep both needles in my hands. I did some research about needle and hand positions, I tried English style (my tension is super tight when I try to hold the yarn in my right hand) and continental style. I tried out almost every combo I could think of, but kept coming back to wedging the one needle against my body. I finished the dishcloth and it looks pretty good (I need practice with binding off) and I feel confident about my knitting tension.

However, I was nervous about attempting the doggie blanket on a circular needle. I just hoped that things would work out once I got started -- and they did! Somehow I seemed to automatically choose hand and yarn positions that worked and I got going on the circular needles quickly and easily. I am actually really enjoying knitting this thing!

Here's hoping I can keep up the enthusiasm for another 300+ rows. :)

A start delayed

For the past few months I have not had my usual raging, all-consuming stitchy bug. It's been a struggle to motivate myself to stitch. Back in early February, I became insanely excited about a Facebook SAL I found that is being hosted by Northern Expression Needlework. It's a 24-part SAL with a part released at the beginning of each month. I joined 6 months into the SAL. It's called the Learning Sampler and is chock full of specialty stitches.

The designer recommended using The Silk Mill silks (which I'd never even heard of before) and I could not resist! I immediately picked out my colours and ordered the silks from Europe.

The orginial design suggests an ombre range of colours, but I decided to go bold with the bright blue for the letters and and the two greens for the alternating bands. The off-white/cream is for the borders.

The silks are gorgeous! The smoothest, sleekest, shiniest silk I've ever worked with (and I work with silk often). Thankfully someone on the FB page had warned me how slippery this stuff is, and it certainly is slippery. Craziness … but SO pretty!

I started this piece with gusto, but in my head it was nowhere near this huge. Even after buying the massive piece of fabric (stitched over 2 on 32 ct lugana) it didn't register with me. It wasn't until I started stitching that I realized that I'd signed up for a huge, huge project. That realization kind of killed my bug. And the piece got set aside for a while.

Finally, after the rejuvenation of last week's stitchy get together with some friends, my bug is partially back, and I tackled this piece again. I was determined to finish the letter A. (I still need to finish B, C, D, and E and the top border just to complete part 1.)

Now that I have the desire to work on this again, I don't have the time. Story of my life!

MMSC - Week 8 - Backwards Progress?

Last week I was painfully disappointed in my lacklustre EPP progress. I was determined to get more done this week. I managed to finish off the big diamond I was working on (i.e. added 4 little diamonds). I was quite pleased with that progress, but there were still 5 days before I checked in. I should have worked on my cross stitch or my hexies, but no, I stuck with the diamonds. I added 16 more little diamonds, which really is another whole big diamond!!

I actually finished adding all my little diamonds! WOOT! I still had some time, so I thought, maybe, just maybe, I could get 2 big diamonds stitched together … but that would mean that I had to choose which pattern I liked best.

I laid them all out in the original pattern I'd designed and left them there so I could see it every time I walked by.

The next morning, I switched to the brown star pattern and looked at that for half a day. I sent pics to several friends asking their opinion (which didn't help at all LOL).

I just could not decide! I really liked them both. I couldn't commit and I was wasting days of stitching time.

So I did the only thing a rationale, sane person could do … I cut the fabric for another EPP star.

Guess I'm making a bigger quilt than I thought. It's back to basting next week.

Linking up with Jessica's Monday Morning Star Count at Life Under Quilts and also with the Hexie Weekend at A Quilting Reader's Garden.


Side note: While writing this post and looking at the two patterns side-by-side, I decided I liked the brown star pattern best. But I've already cut the fabric for another star … maybe I should come up with yet another pattern … uh oh, I think I'm in trouble.