What's new, section two -- NEEDLEPOINT

I found these quilt top patterns at my LYS, and really loved the spring and fall ones, not only because they're very pretty, but also because spring and fall don't last very long out here, and I really miss those seasons.  Once I had finished those two, I decided to do a four-season display of my work, so I got the winter quilt top design.  I decided that summer would be well represented by a patriotic themed quilt design.

KNITTING, part deux

I recently joined a knitting forum, knittingparadise.com, which has a lot of projects posted by members, including the Kansas City Cowl, whose name (obviously) caught my interest.  I have knit two of these, and I still have no idea what the significance of Kansas City is!  However, the cowl is a great size for a shrug, a scarf, and a double-wrapped-and-over-your-head scarf, which is incredibly useful here in Wyoming!  This is a Caron website pattern, with Caron Country being the recommended yarn. This one is knit from BambooEwe yarn, which is one of my favorite mass market yarns, now that I've moved to a place where you bundle up all the time.  It is very soft, but warm.  This is an incredibly fast knit, and is great for car time.  The center cable is knit, then stitches picked up along the side.  Once the stitches are picked up, you do a yarnover after every 5 stitches, then knit plain stockinette.  When it's the appropriate length and is ready to finish, you drop a stitch after every 5 stitches, then finish the piece.  I join back to the cable inset by picking up statches and doing a 3-needle bindoff, because I hate sewing seams.  When you're through, you "runner" the dropped stitches, exactly like getting a run in your hose.  When you get to the end of a run, you encounter the yarnover stitch you added (if you counted correctly!)

I have several friends whose lives have been impacted by breast cancer, so I have begun making pink keyhole scarves shaped like a memory ribbon.  I also need to make one in gray for my college roommate, whose teenage daughter was taken from us by brain cancer in November 2010.  I found a great blog (frogiezplace.blogspot.com) with a pattern for a cancer ribbon bag, and a list for what colors go with what variety of cancer.  Many of them made sense once I thought about it.  Gray=gray matter=brain. pink=girls, blue=boys=prostate cancer.  Our son-in-law now wears an orange remembrance bracelet in honor of his brother who is suffering from leukemia.  I don't know the significance of that one. 

.....back to my knitting.  I have made several of these keyhole ribbon scarves, and they are great doctors office knitting, as they take up very little space in a purse, and are absolutely brainless knitting!

What's new, section one: KNITTING

In trying to decide what to post to show what I've been up to lately, I decided to post in 3 parts: knitting, spinning, needlepoint.  So the topic of the day is knitting.  Many friends and acquaintances have begun reproducing, so I'm going to be busy making baby gifts.  I did prototypes of a few pieces that will knit up quickly. The entire group was done from 2 balls of baby yarn.

The sweater is the 5-hour baby sweater, apparently world-famous on the web. (Little did I know!)  Although I consider myself a pretty fast knitter, it's more like a weekend sweater.  I knit it on size 5 needles with baby yarn, and it has come out 0-3 months size, I think.  I may need to take it to a store and compare with standard sizes.  The original pattern uses worsted weight and obviously knits up bigger.

The booties are a design that supposedly are nearly impossible for babies to get off, because they use the quaker rib stitch.  They were knit on size 4 needles, and I'm guessing they are toddler size.  They are made with an eyelet stitch at the ankle to thread ribbon through to tie them on without hurting the baby.

The baby blanket with the hole for the carseat strap (supposed to keep the baby from kicking off the blanket, good luck with that!) is a great pattern.  Pick your yarn and needles, so the fabric created can be as loose or as dense as you want, knit up a swatch and insert the gauge numbers into the pattern, and go to town.  It was my car knitting on the trip back to Missouri for Thanksgiving.