Ravenclaw

I finished it. Began February 21st and finished March 8th. Not the most difficult project, but I think it turned out well.

Hopefully my costumer will like it!

Uroboro

 

So this is what I did this weekend. I had ordered some white wool, dyed it, and then knit the Uroboro pattern from Malabrigo Book 4.

 

The colors didn't come out well in the photo. They're a nice mix of red violet, light teal, and light blue.

 

I used regular food coloring and Wilton's cake dye in Delphinium Blue and Christmas Red. Clearly I hand painted it, but I used mostly vertical sections of color. It made for very short random repeats, but I did like the overall effect.

 

The pattern was very easy. It only took about three hours or so. The trickiest part was doing the cabling. The cabling wasn't hard, but I did it without a needle.

 

Once I weave in ends, I'll try and get a better shot or two.

Catch-Up Shawl

 

At Christmas I knit a circular shawl for my, now, future Sister-In-Law. I didn't ever put any pictures up at the time, but there it is. It's Abalorio from Malabrigo Book 4.

 

Other than that, I've been busy working on my commissioned Ravenclaw scarf , my fair isle mittens, and some swatches and other prep for the WWII sweater for my Brother-In-Law and my Moscow Coat.

 

New Project- More Fair Isle

One of my goals for learning new knitting techniques is to work my way through the Malabrigo Book 4. I like the patterns and there are all sorts of little techniques that are new to me since I haven't done much pattern work, relatively speaking, in my knitting career so far.

I have completed the Abalorio shawl and the Taracea hat. Now it's time for the Tapia mittens. I like the color work pattern, and I thought it would be a nice small-ish project between bigger ones. Or at least, I could work each mitten between the bigger projects, hopefully that will help with the second sock syndrome, or in this case second mitten.

 

 

This is how far I got last night, well, I did most of the ribbing before that. I like the overall effect of the colors, but I'm not sure if I want to use the same colors on the second mitten. Of course that will be a while from now.

 

I am using Malabrigo Silky Merino in Redwood, Lettuce, Teal Feather, and Natural. The pattern calls for five colors, but I rearranged some things since I didn't like the red/yellow combo in the book.

 

On a different note, I found a "new" way to hold my yarn. I got these baskets to hold books when I was teaching elementary school, and now I have them laying around so I use them for holding yarn and homeschool books. My baskets have holes, and I figured I could string the yarn through them and keep them a bit more organized. It worked and it didn't.

 

You can see the yarn is nice and organized in the basket, but the tangle leading to mitten has proven quite difficult to untangle. I wasn't particularly careful about how I brought my yarn into the mitten, so maybe I could have prevented this issue.
So this is the current project until I get measurements from my brother-in-law to make his WWII vest. What are you working on? I'd love to hear your stories and see your pics! 

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!