All Done!!!!!

 

 

After all the posts, the hours spinning, the nights knitting, the couple of days worrying about buttons, it's done! Kaleidoscope is done! I now have a lovely alpaca sweater that is so warm and so soft. It has been a fun experience, but right now all I can do it just be happy that it's done and I can wear it!

Progress

See, I have been working on my cardigan. I've gotten through the body. It's sixteen inches of stockinette stitch with slight shaping.

Here is a better shot of the shaping. You can at least see how the shaping makes a bit of a lip on the hem.

It's a bottom up pattern, clearly, so now I need to spend some time reading the next few steps repeatedly to figure out how I am supposed to add on stitches for the sleeves. Really I get the adding new stitches part; what I'm a bit confused about is where the under arm stitches come from. I can't just add stitches into a straight line and then just start knitting them in the round when it comes time to work the sleeves, it'll leave a hole...

I'm sure many of you out there are rolling your eyes thinking that it is such a simple process, but this is the first time I've done anything like this. I did make a sweater for my daughter a year or so ago, but that was worked in flat pieces and then sewn together, so knitting in the round, bottom up is a new experience.

But that is what this whole thing is about, trying and learning new things, so I guess I will have to be a bit better about keeping you updated while I work on my yoke and finish the sweater. Until now it really has been just hours or stockinette stitch, much like so many of the patterns I have ahead of me but at least those will really be in the round, er well two of them, and there will be slightly less purling.

In the meantime, anyone know a good place to go for fifteen millimeter buttons?

By the way...Fair Isle

So back in July or so, I took a class at my Virginia LYS. We made the Taracea hat from Malabrigo Book 4. I used the Rios in Pearl Ten, Natural, and Bobby Blue. I made the hat, and all was good.

As is the way of Fair Isle, I found that once I had finished the hat, I wanted to see what the pattern would look like with a different arrangement of the colors, hence the bag.

I started the bag from the bottom, working from the center out, on dpns. I got to 144 stitches and started working in the pattern.

I got about half way through the pattern and realized that while the hat was a bit big for my head, it was not really big enough for a whole bag. So I headed to Google, or Pinterest, I can't remember which, and found a Fair Isle pattern that would work over a multiple of 12 stitches. This swirl that I found is actually over 24, but that just meant I have 6 of them instead of twelve like the other big repeats in the pattern.

It's really a great bag. I took one of the simpler pattern rows and added some yarn overs and k2tog's to create eyelets to thread a drawstring through. Then I needed a drawstring, so I took a length of each yarn and spun them together with my giant spindle and then let the new string ply back on itself making a 6 ply, er... 24 ply if you count the original 4 plies (Is that how you spell it? Many years of French and ballet make that look like a certain knee bending move to me...) of each yarn.

Well that is the story of my sort of improvised bag. You can compare colors with the hat pictures I have in previous posts, but I do like the addition of the swirl. I've been using it as a project bag for a few months, yes I did finish it in 2013, I just never wrote about it. I've been getting quite a few compliments on it.

I don't know if it's just the knitting/crafting community and the unspoken rule that you compliment any finished project to help congratulate the knitter on a finished project or just to admire the effort that went into it, but I get so many more compliments on my knitting and quilting than I have on many other achievements or abilities in my life.

I guess that just proves that crafters are the best!

Home Stretch

I'm almost there. I have knit my 16 inches of stockinette with various increases and decreases. I have been working from the bottom up on this cardigan, and I am ready to make add stitches for some sleeves. If I really wanted to, I'm sure I could figure out what the pattern says on my own, but since I have such a lovely group of knitters to talk to on Friday, I am waiting until then to take this next step.

In the mean time...well it's snowing again, and there is work, and children (if I haven't mentioned it already I am in a homeschooling co-op with my neighbor which means that after I get off of work at 11 or so, I get an hour with my daughter, and then her two girls-6 and 4- come over and we do the afternoon section of school until 3 or 4), and a house to clean. Normal life.



But also, my Brother-In-Law, who is in the Army, and also a big WWII reenacter (apparently that's not a word, or at least not on Google?) has asked for a vintage WWII style sweater vest. So now comes the lovely search for the right green. I have found a few things, but only online, and colors are always a bit if-y on a screen. Yesterday, I went to a LYS to look for some of the yarns we had found online since I knew they carried the yarn. Alas, they did not have the colors I was looking for. I did find another yarn that was a decent color, but I have yet to get that approved by the B-I-L.



In the process, my daughter found some lovely variegated pink and white Ella Rae. She decreed that this was to become a scarf. By the end of the day... She is letting me use size 10.5 needles. I think it's because they are blue.



I have been working on the birds' nests. I did finish a medium sized one, but that has been confiscated for the two baby birds that we are getting from somewhere, at some point (?). My daughter gets attached to things. I am almost two inches into another small nest. So that should be finished by tomorrow night, unless I actually do finish the scarf.



Sorry for the lack of pictures lately. My phone, computer, and camera are not getting along lately. Hopefully that will be fixed soon... Until then I will do my best to get a couple of pictures up of my cardi and the birds' nests, but it might take a few days and be a separate post.



It seems like this is a busy time of year. Hopefully things are going well for everyone out there! Until next time, I'll keep working, hope that you do the same, and please let me know if you are aware of any good army green worsted yarns!

Knitting for the Birds: Charity Project

My weekly knitting group is starting up a charity project that is just so cute and fast that everybody should hear about it. It's called "Knitting is for the (baby) Birds" and involves knitting very quick and easy little bird nests. It is hosted, I guess that is the term, by The Bird Rescue Center of Sonoma County, CA.

Here is a shot of one that was done last year.

Senor Birdnest

 This, I would imagine, is a large size. I haven't knit the pattern before, but apparently, they are super quick and very easy. The pattern only requires knitting, purling, knitting to together, and working on double pointed needles. It isn't a brand new beginning project, but it could be good for anyone who has a few projects under their belt and a desire to help some orphaned birds.

Here are two different patterns:

The original from the Bird Rescue Center, it's a pdf just so you know.

Another version with crochet patterns as well.

It's a good cause that I had to share with you. Hopefully, next week I'll have the time and energy to fill you all in on my Kaleidoscope sweater, my new skein of hand-spun (spoiler- it was chain plied!), and my new commission/request from my brother-in-law, and possibly a few more shots of the bird nests. I hope your projects are going just as well for you!

Black holes

I realize it's been a while since I put anything up. I have been working with fiber, I've just been working with other things too.

I effectively got two new jobs in the past two weeks, so it's been kind of busy.

But progress is being made. I'm 13 inches into the 16 inches needed for the body of my cardi, and I'm most of the way through my Merino, at least in singles. Hopefully, I will adjust to my new schedule soon and have more time for crafting and writing about it...