Baby blankets .. and more baby blankets

Our oldest daughter Hilary and her husband Kyle have announced that they will be adding a baby boy to our family in March.  This has me in the baby blanket mode, and I have done 3 patterns that are all different from each other and from the normal baby blanket.  None of these are blocked yet because the youngest daughter has not returned my steamer that she borrowed to steam out the wrinkles from her wedding dress.

The pinwheel blanket measures over a yard across, and was knit from 3 skeins of Caron Simply Soft.

The center-out blanket is done with a skein of Pound of Love.  It was the closest to a non-traditional baby color that I could find.  It measures 26" across. (I am not sure what the "best" size is for a baby blanket, so I'm making them how I like.)

The eyelet blanket was done in baby yarn from Big Lots, and $2.50 for 2 skeins, which I did not use all of to make this 24" blanket .  I am told that the yarn that is sold at Big Lots is name-brand manufacturer yarn that Big Lots buys from the manufacturer and re-labels, since they are not allowed to sell it under the manufacturer name.  Whatever the deal, this is the softest baby yarn I have used in a while.  It reminds me of Plymouth, which I used to make a baby sweater for my friend Kim's Madison when she arrived 4 years ago, and I loved the stuff.

Knits for (f)all seasons

I saw the pattern for these cute pumpkins and had to try it.  They were like Lay's potato chips:  I just couldn't stop at one.  The skein of Caron Simply Soft that I had in Mango made 8 of them, so I gave away several.  Then I realized I had some knitted and crocheted pine cones (thanks, Covered in Prayer crocheters) and some knitted leaves, so I put together a centerpiece with all my fall fiber, and added some cinnamon-scented pine cones.

Thanks for the encouragement, knitting group

Although I miss my every Wednesday knitting in Cheyenne, (Cindy, are you there?) I have enjoyed being back to my monthly group in Jeff City.  They have been very encouraging to me in the past few months, and the camaraderie is wonderful.  One of the projects I had started last month was my pink socks.  It is simply a twisted rib stitch, and I used the sock generator guidelines from Liat Gat, toe-up-2-at-a-time.  They are really leg-hugging, so I didn't worry about much of a cuff.   Since the yarn was Lion Brand Sock-Ease, where the label says "one ball makes a pair," I took them at their word and knitted until I ran out.  Less than a yard left from a 438-yard ball.  That's the beauty of toe-up, you just knit till you run out.  Many of the gals were interested in how the stitch worked, so here's pics:

Quick mindless knits

I have been doing some quick mindless knits while I await the word on whether the upcoming grandchild is a boy or girl so that I know what baby knits I am starting (maybe we will find out this week).  So I found this bag, adapted from a quilting pattern, adapted from origami box folding.  It is a stockinette (or garter, but I like stockinette) rectangle, 3:1 ratio.  It is then folded to form this shape.

My rectangle was 13" x 39" (the bottom is 17") and was knit from a couple of balls of Berroco Comfort that I had lying around.  Once it was folded, I didn't like the stockinette roll, so I picked up stitches and did an I-cord bind-off, and continued the bind-off into a standard I-cord for the strap.

The website for this bag is http://www.toltyarnandwool.com/blogs/blog/15166929-tolt-folded-bag-with-veronika  I seem to be doing fairly well, as it was posted to Knitting Paradise on August 31 and it is finished on September 2!

Gerry, when you go to the website for this, she has links to a quilter with a bag like this.  You quilters have all the best ideas!

Finally got up the nerve ....

to knit garments for myself.  I am never happy with the fit after I make them, and wish I had spent the time on something else.  But this time, I took advantage of some good hints: 1-Find a garment that fits you well, and use those measurements. 2-Get yarn that suits your pattern. 3-Get a pattern that is well-written.  Using those hints, these are what I came up with

Picked up the yarn at Hobby Lobby on clearance for $1.97/skein -- I love a deal on I Love This Cotton ;-)  So the sweater cost me $6 (the buttons may cost more than the yarn!).  The pattern is Sleeveless Pullover from the LeisureArtslibrary.com website.  I got the yarn because it matched the skirt I had bought in June, but had nothing but white tops to wear it with.

Linum Tee

Got the most wonderful Rowan Lenpur Linen DK weight yarn, and looked for just the right pattern.  Finally found it in the Knitscene Summer 2014 magazine.  Now I'm all set for Tiger games --MIZ-ZOU!

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming

The wedding is over, and now things can return to normal, if there is such a thing!  The weather was temperate for August 2 in Kansas City (mid 80s), the venue looked beautiful, the truffles were a big hit, and as for the bridal couple, judge for yourself:

 

John and the girls

Taking a break from setting up the reception

And now, I can return to knitting and spinning, which have taken a back seat to wedding preparations.

 

Still more doilies

I love these things!  I am mastering the crochet chain edging, too!  This doily is Egeblad, knit in DMC Baroque crochet cotton on 00 needles.

I have picked another doily pattern so that I always have one on needles, because I enjoy them so much.

A new love -- knit doilies

Just finished and blocked my first knit doily, the Swirl Leaf doily.  It's been knit for quite some time, but I never sat down with a teeny-tiny crochet hook to crochet the picot edging.  Finally bit the bullet, and other than being time consuming (88 loops of 7-stitch chains) it wasn't that bad.  I have all my grandmother's teeny-tiny crochet hooks, that I thought I would never use when I got them but just wanted them for the sentiment, but they came in handy.

Knit with Aunt Lydia's Crochet 10 thread, using a 00 needle.  The instructions called for DPN, but there was no way I was doing that, so I just used the Turkish cast-on and went to town.  It measures 13" across.  While I was knitting, I kept saying, "My fingertips hurt so bad from pushing stitches off those very pointy needles.  Never again."  But apparently not, because I have the Egeblad doily on needles, and am on my way.

Amazing what $6 in fiber will get you!

On my last trip to the Brown Sheep factory, I got almost a pound of 85% wool, 15% mohair roving to spin up.  My latest post was to show the fingering weight I spun up with most of the fiber.  Last night I spun up the rest of the pink.  The fiber was $6.50 per pound, so I guess I spent about $6, and here's what I turned my investment into:

 
The chunky turned out to be 116 yards of a chunky yarn.  Just right, I think, for a nice warm hat, maybe with cables..... hmmmm

I am searching Ravelry for "rose" or "pink" in shawl names, to pick out a pattern for the fingering weight.  So far the finalists are: Rose Fragrance (calls for laceweight), In the Pink (calls for fingering), Campanula in Pink (calls for DK) and Rose Garden Shawl (calls for DK).  Obviously there will be some swatching happening before a final decision is made.  The construction of In the Pink fascinates me, so it is the heavy favorite right now.

Spinning -- it's not just for health clubs anymore!

I have been bitten by the spinning bug in the last couple of weeks.  I obtained some roving (wool/mohair blend) from Brown Sheep factory, put on my lace flyer, and went to town.  About 8 or 9 ounces of fiber turned into about 640 yards of laceweight or light fingering yarn.  I can't wait to decide on a shawl for this fiber.  I still have about 5 or 6 ounces of this left, so I will probably spin that to a worsted weight for a cowl.

(When snow is all you have for an outdoors backdrop for your picture, that's what you use.  It snowed a foot in Cheyenne Sunday and Monday, and a foot at our house in Fairplay Colorado during the same time period.)

I also picked up at Cowgirl Yarns, my favorite Wyoming LYS, 3 ounces of llama fiber, locally produced in Laramie.  I sat down and spun it Thursday evening, then plied it Monday night while watching "24 - Live Another Day."  (Great show, BTW.  It was a stroke of genius to let it sit for a few years.)  Anyway, here's what became of the 3 ounces of fiber.  It took a while to spin, because I had to stop and remove vegetable matter quite often.

 I tried to spin and ply this a little more loosely than I tend to normally, because it is such a fuzzy fiber that I don't want to lose that property.

I haven't yet decided what it wants to be.  Since there are only 200 yards of it in fingering weight, it probably will become some sort of scarf or cowl.

  
Stay tuned for my next spinning adventure -- superwash yarn to spin to fingering weight for socks.  Wish me luck!

Do I ever stop knitting lace?

and the answer is NO!  I found this pattern, Greek Revival Shawl, and fell in love with it.  I knitted it in Louisa Harding Jasmine yarn, a cotton/bamboo/silk yarn with flecks of silver thread.  I was torn in the choice of fiber, since cotton doesn't block easily to show off the pattern, but I wanted something with some weight to it for cool evenings when a lightweight wool shawl is not enough.  I had 3 yards left from the 535 yards I started with.  I was not able to finish the complete shawl, but there was enough to the body to go around the shoulders, so I felt justified in finishing it off.  I think it might be too heavy if I had made it as deep as the pattern called for.  On the pattern model, it goes down to about the backs of her knees, and that was a bit too much for me in the cotton.  I enjoyed the knit enough that I might do it again in a lighter yarn and complete the entire pattern.

Trying new yarns

One of the best things about being a knitter is the opportunity to branch out to new techniques and new fibers.  I was gifted a kit when I went on the tour of Brown Sheep factory in Mitchell NE on MLK day.  I had no idea who would get this set after I finished it (and I still don't) but I really enjoyed knitting with the Lana Boucle yarn.  It is 100% wool, and has a spring you don't often find in boucles, which tend to just get caught on other bumps in the boucle, and I don't find it enjoyable to knit with them.  The kit included 5 skeins (180 yards each) and I have enough of the 3 different colors to knit a hat to go along with the scarf and gauntlets.  I am looking for a hat pattern with the same ruffly brim as the other pieces, and will add the hat to the collection for a complete set.

So thank you Linda for the kit, and I will find the right person to enjoy the finished products.

Sad day, happy day

Last week my favorite LYS closed their doors after 8 years in business.  Rhonda and Diane at Prairie Wind Fiber and Beads are moving on to other stages of their lives.  That is the sad part.  The happy part is that all their yarn was 40% off, needles and notions were 30% off, and beads and beading accessories were 25% off.  So I spent more than I should have, but came away with lots of good stuff.  I got enough bookmarks and cross charms to make bookmarks for all the women in my Bible study group.  I also got 3 hanks of neutral shade Ella Rae laceweight yarn to try some yarn-painting, along with 4 colors of jacquard dye to use for the project; 3 pairs of fixed circular needles; and 8 balls of a really soft pima cotton/alpaca blend yarn for some special project.  All in all, a pretty good haul.

Goodbye Rhonda and Diane.  Good luck with all that goes on with you in the future.

I love field trips!

Last year on MLK Day, I went on a field trip to Brown Sheep Yarn in Mitchell Nebraska.  This year Lori at Cowgirl Yarns put together another annual trip (Thanks Lori!)  I took my neighbor Karissa, and off we went to Mitchell.  We went on the tour and then on to my favorite part:  the factory store!  Karissa was a great help as I went box-diving for roving to spin.  Here's what I came up with:

The blue/lavender fiber in the back row is superwash; all the rest are the wool/mohair blend of Brown Sheep's Lamb's Pride.  I love all these colors, so spinning with them will be a joy.  Over 5 pounds of fiber for under $31.  WooHoo!

Karissa also helped me bag some roving to use to thrum slippers for all the daughters and their significant others for Christmas next year.  Then we went to the factory store to select Lamb's Pride bulky weight yarn for those slippers. Yellow, green, orange, blue, brown and grey tweed are the six colors for the six kids.  I also picked up some cream-colored wool to have some more fun with dyeing.  Dye pot, here I come!

The yarns in the front two piles (blue handpainted and grey/mulberry/heathered yarns) are Brown Sheep's new product, Lana Boucle.  I usually don't care for boucle yarns, mostly because the yarn catches on itself and doesn't have any life.  There's nothing that Brown Sheep can do about the stitches catching, that's the nature of the beast, but they have solved the problem of lifelessness by spinning a 100% wool boucle that is springy and fun to knit with.  I think the handpainted is calling out for a cowl for me (something around my neck, since these are my colors and enhance my eye color).  I am not sure who is destined to receive the ruffled scarf and wristers in the kit. The wristers are already knit in an afternoon, and the scarf is underway.  And thank you Linda for the kit!

I always feel like such a successful shopper when I go to the factory store.  $6.20/pound for roving, $12.50/pound for the yarn, except the handpainted yarns, which are $25/pound.  But this entire haul, plus a little I didn't show, came out to just over $100.  I promised John I would try to spend less than I did last year .... and DID! (by $2! But hey, a miss is as good as a mile!)

After the factory, Karissa and I went to lunch at a cute little bistro in Scottsbluff.  Then we fought the wind driving home.  But, all in all, a very satisfactory day!

More boot accessories

Since boot toppers and boot cuffs seem to be the rage this year (or so I'm told by some of those who follow trends) I decided to make some more toppers.  I did the brioche cuffs a week or so ago, so I chose a more commonly-seen pattern: cables and ribs.  I found the pattern on Ravelry and dug right in.  It took me a couple of evenings, and was a very simple pattern.  Cables are such a fun way to add depth to a fabric.  My only problem with cables is that I forget to count rows between cable rows, and then have to stop and backtrack.  Hopefully Hilary will like these.

Lace updates

A couple of days ago I showed a pic of a triangular shawl on the blocking board.  I took it off and finally got outside for natural light for a picture, so here it is.

I'm glad you can see the hearts.  Otherwise all that work was for naught.

I also got another lace shawl blocked.  This one is PurlBee Wedding Shawl by Purl Soho.  Not having access to 20/12 bamboo, and not really wanting to fork out the $ for it, I obtained 2 balls of Ella Rae Lace Merino at my LYS (on sale at her Super Bowl sale.)  When that was not enough, I went to Ravelry and begged 2 more balls from a wonderful person (who sold me her 2 balls for less than the LYS on sale.)  And the finished product measures 96" x 30" and looks like this:

I put this shawl on the blocking board Tuesday morning about 10:30 a.m., and got a call at 2:30 from a realtor who wanted to show the house at 6:00 p.m. (our house here in Cheyenne is for sale.)  I wavered about taking it up and re-blocking it again the next day, but decided that if someone would let a shawl on blocking squares in the guest bedroom be a deciding factor on the house, they really didn't want it anyway!  So I left it, and when we came home after the realtor and clients left, there was a note on the shawl reading, "Nicely done.  I am a knitter and spinner too."  I felt better, because I figured another knitter would understand why I had left it.

So I am planning to wear this shawl with a blush-colored mother-of-the-bride dress in August when our youngest daughter gets married in Kansas City, assuming the bride doesn't have other dress code ideas.

Odds and ends, bits and pieces

Another experiment in knitting for me : double knitting

I had wanted to try this for quite some time, and when I found the chart for the Tardis (a la Dr. Who) I decided to try it.  It is really fairly simple, except that my color changes kept getting twisted around each other, so my double-knitting was not a tube, it was just 2-sided.  But I will keep trying.  I was intending this to be a Kindle cover, as it is just about e-reader size, but it is a wall decoration for my friend Nancy (a Who newbie) to put in her office.

My youngest daughter caught me at Thanksgiving and showed me something on her Pinterest board and asked if I could knit if for her.  It was a big bulky infinity cowl, so I showed her the GAP-tastic cowl pattern on Ravelry.  She gave it the thumbs up, so I bought the yarn and got busy.  I had this cowl, plus a matching hat in a mock cable twist pattern, when I came back to Missouri at Christmas.  With the weather in KC this week, she could probably use a big bulky scarf.

Comfort knitting -- socks and lace

I don't know if anyone else is like this, but I find that there are types of knitting that have a rhythm or ease that make me feel good inside .... like comfort food, only comfort knitting.  I have two basic types of comfort knits: socks and lace.  3x1 rib socks that are stable and predictable.  Lace that emerges from the needles and forms patterns.

I always have socks on needles.  I shrunk the last pair of boot socks that I made for John, so these are a superwash wool/nylon blend to replace those.  (The shrunken socks are now my felted house socks, and boy do they keep my feet warm!)  I always love knitting the foot portion, and then it takes forever to do the leg and I think I will never get done with them.  These are full-calf legs, and I was ready to kill something before it was over!  So now, I need to get some nylon yarn to carry with some alpaca, and make myself some nice warm socks.

I love knitting shawls.  I have a dresser drawer full of them, and still can't stop myself from starting another, so I always have lace on my needles.  (BTW, multiple projects is why I will always have fixed circulars, as well as an interchangeable set.  If you only have one project at a time, just the interchangeables would be fine, but that will never happen in my lifetime!)

This shawl is Little Valentine, done with the additional rows after the shawlette size, and is knit in Brown Sheep hand-dyed sock yarn.  If I had stopped at the shawlette size, I could have done it with one hank.  It measures 6 feet in wingspan, and 3 feet in depth.  I love blocking lace and seeing the design!  I couldn't wait for it to come off needles to take a picture.

New year, new skills

I am feeling like such a lemming when I say this but  ...... I have started my New Years knitting resolutions.  I shouldn't call them resolutions, because I am not usually very resolved to do them! So let's say "good idea list."  However, I am resolved to learn some new fiber skills.  At the top of my list is brioche knitting, also called fisherman's rib.  "It's ribbing, how hard can it be," I thought to myself.  And actually, back-and-forth brioche is fantastically easy.  I mastered it in about 5 minutes.  It has taken a little bit longer to catch onto brioche in the round.  However, I think I just about have the knack of it.  The real trick for me is "reading" the stitches so that when I put it down, I can figure out what to do when I pick it back up again.

I decided I needed a project to see if I could actually do brioche, so I put together a pair of boot cuffs over the weekend.  They were done back-and-forth and sewn up, and took practically no time.  I think they look pretty cool.

Then I said, "Hey, if it was this easy, let's try another set of boot cuffs in the round.  Saves the sewing."  So I got out some remnant yarn, and have started a pair in variegated Red Heart.  The hardest part was finding small enough needles to do the project.  I don't think I am experienced enough in brioche yet to Magic Loop the round.  I was not sure how I would like the variegated, but I think it picks up the rib and sets it off, because the"V" stitch in the middle is slipped and the stitches on each side of it are purled or wrapped.  The slip stitch being in a different color actually helped the effect, I think.