New Hat!

Many years ago I took a colorwork class and found Malabrigo yarns. Talk about some amazing colorways! My favorite, for quite a while, has been Acro Iris, but I was always too intimidated to actually try knitting with it. There were just so many colors!

The other day, I went to my LYS "just to pick up some wool wash" and there was a skein of Acro Iris, just sitting there, and I hadn't bought any new yarn since the fall...Well it came home with me along with a skein of Malabrigo Worsted in Cypress.

Of course, I still had the Malabrigo Book 4 from the original class, so I thought the two yarns could make a good hat, and here's the result!

 

I still have a bit of each left, well quite a bit of the Cypress, so maybe these two will find their way into another hat in the future!

Merry Christmas...so many things done!

Merry Christmas to everyone out there! I know it has been a while since my last post, but wow so many things have been going on. Between the many jobs, child, husband, house, and life, there has even been a bit of crafting going on. Here is at least an update of what went out today.

 Here's a bit of the play by play in the Everything is Ducky Convertible Mitts. I knit them in a natural merino yarn, and then dyed them to look like ducks. I just had to add in some button eyes and it all went swimmingly!

Here's Alcazar all finished. It's been a process, but it's done now. The new owner is a lovely girl who really seemed to appreciate the effort that went into it. It's good to have that one off my to-do list!

Here's a nice hat that I threw together in literally 2 days. The Everything is Ducky Mitts and Alcazar were for the oldest and youngest daughter of some family friends, so of course the middle daughter had to get something as well. Here mom said she was into the slouchy hats, so I grabbed a bunch of yarns I had around, including that Triple Berry Jam Thick 'n Thin hand-spun from the 2014 Tour de Fleece and knocked it out.



Now I am in that great in between place, where I'm not sick of knitting, I have plenty of WIP's to work on, and the next "deadline" I have is the end of July for next year's fair and then my brother-in-law's wedding in September.

I ordered yarn for an afghan for the wedding, but it's on back order, so I still have a while to get some other things done before that starts. Any suggestions on what I should work on next, a scarf for the DH, the Red Riding Hood cape for the tiny one, a hat for myself? Let me know if you have any thoughts.

Alcazar

Oh I will miss you! This is such a beautiful sweater, but I felt it was a bit too trendy for me at this point in my life, so it's going to Tiny's 16 year-old summer babysitter.

I'm not sure how it is really going to turn out; I'm not sure this girl knows how/where to take measurements. She gave me hers, and they were very similar to mine... she's a size 2 and I'm an 8. But I am knitting according to the measurements she gave me. Worst Case Scenario: I have to keep this one and try a smaller size for her, oh darn.

The body is actually quite easy. It's top-down with saddle shoulders, and then knit-in-the-round. Appropriate decreases and increases, but pretty basic.

Then you get to the flounce. It's not HARD, but 8 row cable repeat on top of a 12 row, short row dart repeat with the short row darts between the 6th and 7th row that is being joined to the bind-off of the sweater body. Not something you can knit in your sleep.

I was reading the pattern with my knitting group last night, and while I got many supportive groans and eye rolls, one even suggested that I stop knitting the pattern...

Well it took a few minutes, some math, and a bit of paper, but I think I got it figured out. But still, not for knitting in your sleep.

Anyway, according to revelry, I think I've been working on this about 6 weeks, and I'm certainly making progress, but I keep finding little bits of time, and instead of knitting on this, I cast-on new projects, because that is really what I need right now.

We'll see how much longer it takes to finish this, since I start teaching science and math after school programs this week, so time is going to get even tighter... and I only have this and two other projects to get done by Christmas, though one is already started. But yeah, certainly don't have way too much on my plate these days.

Oh, also, I have plans to clean my Prelude, because.... it's 1! Yay, it's been about a year since I got my wheel, and oh my, the amount of yarn that has been made, but between yarn coming from animals, oil, and just life, it is time to give it a wipe down.

The DH helped me get some wood cleaner specifically for woods treated with tung oil, so we'll see how all that goes. In the meantime, thanks to the good folks at Paradise Fibers, my stash will be ever increasing, and I will try to do a better job of posting about the great new fibers I'm getting!

Catching Up

 

So here is what I have been working on. The purple is Ashland Bay 100% Merino in a color called Rose Quartz; it's a nice purple, but it's not rose quartz. The yellow is a cream Baby Alpaca that I dyed yellow. Both are about 4 ounces and two-ply.

 

I was traveling from the 11th-19th. I did a bit of drop swindling, but as I was getting a blister from wrapping the single onto the spindle, I didn't get much done.

 

There are only a few days left of the TDF, but time is getting tight for finishing projects for the Fair also. The TDF is done on Sunday, and items must be postmarked for the Fair on Monday... cutting it close.

 

Once I found out how close the Fair is, I decided to switch from spinning and keep working on the Tapia mitts. Only 17 rows and the thumb left. Hopefully I can get that done today.

 

I am also plying my Thick'nThin wool yarn with some cotton thread, but I'm not sure how I feel about it. I want to just stop, but I kind of feel that I should get it on the niddy noddy first.... so many decisions. Well right now the priority is finishing the mitts, and mowing the lawn, blah.

 

 

 

Tapiz Mitts

 

Well here's the first one. I actually finished it quite a while ago, but since I am now picking up the second one, now seems like as good a time as any to put up some pics.

 

I changed the pattern, as you can see. There was a goof on the needle sizes. It was designed for size 2 needles, but the day I started I grabbed size 1's and just stuck with them. They fit pretty well around, but they weren't going to end up long enough, so that led to some thinking. I could add in rows, and finish the pattern as mittens and possibly wear them for three months a year, or I could finish them as mitts and wear them whenever my hands get cold. You can see the results.

 

The first mitt was made with dons, the second one is being knit on my 60" circular needles. As I'm now working on the teal and white section, I'm noticing that the color work is much easier when I only have to work the two sides and not four, however, I'm noticing that my floats are rather tight... hope that doesn't bite me in the end.

 

The plan for the moment is to enter them into one (or more) of the local fairs in the area. The color work certainly looks nice, but there will be plenty of technique issues to be critiqued.

 

Overall, I really like them, and they are very soft, warm, and pretty. Certainly something I will enjoy wearing. Any ribbons, commendations, or words of praise will just be extra. 

Updates...

It's been a week. My Mom came to visit, and I didn't get much done, but here are some updates.

I have finished the Yellow/Black Hufflepuff scarf.
I have started Slytherin. I'm using much finer yarn (worsted instead of chunky), so it's going much slower...
I have started the Little Red cape. So far it's going pretty well. I have been unable to achieve different cables in specific sections. It was just too much to keep track of. I have been doing (I think) a nice job of increasing and putting in the cables. So far it is a nonagon (9 sides), with a flower in the center and cables coming out. Hopefully it will end up looking something like a flower growing out of twisting and interlocking vines, or at least I can pretend it does. At the moment I am working on 9 4-stitch cables that travel around the shawl. We'll see how it works, it's only about 30 rows so far, but I am really loving the Hometown USA, and the Tampa Spice is looking gorgeous.

I have run into a crucial road block with the Tapiz mittens. I am conflicted about whether or not I should finish them as mittens or just wrist warmers. As one of the ladies in my knitting group noted, it's not really the time of year for mittens anymore, and I could always use more items to help keep me warm while reading, knitting, or basically anytime in Spring or Fall. It seems like a no brainer right?  Just make them wrist warmers... But I am really liking the look of them and have been doing what I think is a very nice job with the color work, and I was thinking of entering them into a fiber festival in the summer/fall. I was going to enter them as a color work piece not specifically mittens, but I've never done something like that before, and I don't know if there will be an issue if I don't follow the pattern exactly (I hope not since they are already the wrong gauge as I used size 1 needles instead of size 2s...). If anyone out there has any thoughts or experience with festivals, I'd love your input on this one!

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!