WIP Wednesday

Here it is Wednesday again. I’ve completed 3 of the 4 items for my friend, and hope to finish the last one tonight when I get off of the computer.

The big WIP completed this week was not by me but for me. My friend Leslie completed the beautiful lace shawl she was making for me.

Here is the link: singlestitchknit.com/2015/11/16/percy-shawl-challenge-done

Leslie does fabulous lace work, you have to go to her site (above) to see all the details. I grabbed one of her pictures of my shawl to pique your interest.

The dinosaur hat fit my son’t godson perfectly, so I was very pleased. I am going to make Santa hats and snowmen for the NICU babies and plan to make Cooper one also since I know his size now.

I am going to make 2 ear warmers for one of the gals at work next. I hope to start the first one tonight.

Then I have 2 more Christmas gifts to complete in the next couple of weeks. Busy but fun times; the holidays are my favorite time of the year. But I could do without the snow 🙂

WIP Wednesday – Lots of progress this week :)

This week was very productive knit and crochet wise. I finished one bath pouf and am almost done with a second one. I am tired of those mesh ones from the store unraveling into a useless wad of nothing.  I used a pattern I found here: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/puffy-bath-pouf  Check out  The Stitching Mommy’s website. She posts all kinds of nifty patterns, hints and tips.

The purple one is made out of Ripples – a yarn by Willow (which is really Herrschner’s)  and I am not really that pleased with the yarn . It seems to be too stretchy for this project. There were also 2 separate joins in one of the balls of yarn. This is a pet peeve of mine. If I pay for a new skein or ball of yarn, I don’t want to find knots in the middle of a project. But that is just me.

Since I love this pattern so much, and it works up wonderfully, I am making another one out of the suggested yarn (what a concept LOL) Lily Sugar ,n Cream. I’ll report back after  finish it and use a few times. As a rule, I love this yarn, so I am hoping for good things.

AND I finished and blocked the Possum Yarn Shawl. I love it. SO I’ve included tons of pictures. It isn’t nearly as intricate or fancy as the one Leslie is making for me out of the mink yarn – but I like this plan Jane shawl too.

Last but not least, I started crocheting a cardigan for myself. It is the Cap Sleeve Open Cardigan by yarnspirations.com. I got the pattern from allfreecrochet.com. The only problem with the pattern is the is no yardage for any size except XS/S. Honestly, I love the pattern and hope that I have enough of the Serendipity Tweed I found in my stash to use. Oh yeah – shopping from my stash now that the closet is clean. Here is my progress – the bodice and sleeves are all worked in one piece. I have 2 rows left before starting the shaping for the sleeves so I am rolling right along.

No WIP next week – I’m off on an adventure. Keep your fingers crossed that the dogs will behave for my sons. 🙂

WIP Wednesday – Family Always Trumps WIP

This week I made a small bit of progress on my shawl. I only have 10 rows to go then it will be ready to block. I honestly could have used it at the movies last Saturday, it was freezing in there!

Instead of knitting this week in the evenings, I spent lots of time with family and friends. One of my cousins flew in to Illinois from Arizona to visit for a week. It has been so many years since I last saw her I can’t quite remember when it was. I believe it had to be sometime in the late 60’s or early 70’s. She is about 15 years older than me, so I remember much more about her younger brother because we were the same age. Her mom and my grandma were sisters.

Anyway, after losing touch over the years, my aunt (another one of Gram’s sisters) found her again. The internet is a beautiful thing 🙂

So we enjoyed several dinners with my family whom I love to bits. Good food and good times.

As you can see, we were digging deep into a box of pictures that used to be my Gram’s. Thanks to modern technology, my cousin was able to scan and email copies of whichever ones she wanted to her email.

Last week I knit memories with laughter and love with my family. This week I’ll go back to yarn. 🙂

WIP Wednesday – Time to Tidy Up

This week I finished the yellow and blue blanket, and tucked it into a Ziploc bag to keep it clean and dog hairless until someone needs a blanket for a baby boy.

My possum shawl is coming along. Starting last week I went on summer hours at work, so instead of an hour for lunch, I only have a 1/2 hour. That is fine with me because I get off earlier. But that cuts my work knitting time in 1/2, so I’ve been doing 2 rows a day. It will be done soon, but probably not this week. No pics, it really hasn’t changed much since last week.

Now on to the big project related to yarn this week. I clean out my ridiculously messy yarn/sewing closet. For the last six months, instead of putting the yarn away that I’ve ordered, I have just been chucking the boxes in the closet. It was making me crazy, but apparently not crazy enough to tidy up.

You can see it was out of control. I fully expected to open the door one day and have a yarn monster attack me with a shiny set of addi turbos. Since it was a rainy weekend, I decided it was time to find the floor in there again. I pulled everything out of it except the file cabinets and went to work. The cabinets have sewing and knitting patterns in them as well as my knitting magazines. Mea hung around until I loaded up the bed the rest of the way with bins of yarn.

After emptying all of the yarn bins, I organized them by fiber or type such as baby yarn and cotton. The special yarns I’ve ordered I keep in Ziploc bags hung by pants hangers, sometimes with the project pattern with it as well. That way they don’t get lost in the shuffle.

Now  I can see what I have and there is room for both dogs to follow me in to look for yarn for my next project. They think they should go wherever I go, so both were exceedingly happy that the floor was no longer cluttered with yarn. I am banning myself from yarn shops unless there is a specific color or type of yarn that I absolutely have to get that isn’t available in my stash.

The only job I have left is organizing the separate patterns I have downloaded or pulled from magazines. I purchased some plastic expandable folders and am sorting them by type. As soon as I am finished they will go into the files with the magazines. I also want to add all of my books and magazines to Ravelry, but that is a job that might not be done until fall.

As for this week’s projects, I am going to work in my shawl and maybe even finish it 🙂 and make a “no-sew” tutu for my cousin’s little girl.

WIP Wednesday – Finishing Up

This week I pulled out the blue and yellow baby blanket to finish. I decided it needed to be done before the weather gets warm since it is almost crib size and pretty warm when I am working on it. I only have one yellow row and four blue rows left, then the border. I might get it finished tonight during the hockey game (GO HAWKS!).

My shawl is coming along great. I’ve started the last section of lace, but of course each row takes quite a while to knit since every other row increases by four stitches. By the time I took the pictures tonight the sun was going down, so the first one of just the top few rows show more of the true colors than the other, but I like the look of the lace in the second pic so I added it. I am excited to finish it because it will be perfect to take with me to the movies and restaurants this summer when the AC is turned down to meat locker temperatures.

The last thing I did this week was repair a sweater for a woman I work with. It was kind of tricky.I couldn’t crochet it because only a small section of stitches unraveled when a piece of the yarn broke. By using a sharp needle, I was able to “crochet” with it by basically doing a chain stitch where the single crochet needed to go, and weaving the thread through the open stitched at the bottom of the shells. The hardest part was weaving the ends as the yarn is fragile and didn’t want to go easily into the backs of the stitches so they would not be seen. I think it turned out pretty good. Hopefully Barb will agree and she’ll be able to wear her sweater again.

You can see the edging off in this picture.

This is the same edge after the repair.

I am thinking about my next project, since I might finish the shawl this week and will finish the baby blanket. The blanket will go in my stash closet to wait for the next baby boy to be born.

Which brings me to my MIP (Mess In Progress) that I call my stash closet. I absolutely need to clean that mess up. Somehow it got way out of control and it is making me crazy. If it rains this weekend, I just might tackle it. If you don’t hear from me next Wednesday, send in the Mounties or at least a St. Bernard with a flask of a nice red wine to rescue me.

WIP Wednesday Shawls and Bears

Here’s the thing. I started to use the beautiful yarn I told you about last week. First of all I was wrong, it isn’t silk, it is mink yarn. Because the band was all in Chinese, I couldn’t read it and I’d had it so long I’d forgotten that it was mink! Second of all I wasn’t wrong about not liking to do lace. As a matter of fact I hate lace with lace weight yarn, but I do like lace with sport, fingering or worsted yarn. So I gave Leslie the yarn to make a beautiful shawl for me (her idea and I should have taken her up on the offer immediately instead of waffling around).

But call me stubborn, I still had the itch to make a shawl myself. So I looked through my ample stash and came upon some possum yarn that is fabulously soft and much easier to work with than the mink I handed off to Leslie. In case you are wondering, it is possum, not opossum yarn, made from marsupial possums in New Zealand. I did a post about it when I ordered it, if you want more info check it out here. https://writeknit.wordpress.com/2012/09/14/new-zealand-possum-yarn/

 

It is coming along nicely if I do say so myself 🙂

The other project I’ve worked on is NICU bear hats during my lunch hours at work. Because I need to count the increases and stitches on the shawl, I only work on it at home. Below is a work in progress pic of the hats and a completed pic.

           

This week projects will include the shawl at home, and NICU hats at work. I am not sure if I’ll make more bears. or work on another pattern. Hopefully I’ll have 4 or 5 complete to share next week.

WIP Wednesday – Yup, on time this week :)

Happy Wednesday everyone.

My only needlework this week has been the pink blanket, started last week to replace the blue and yellow blanket after the baby was a girl instead of a boy as planned. I’m about 2/3 of the way finished, hopefully it will be done by the weekend.

Then I’ll be working on the NICU hats for the Spring NICU challenge. They work up fast, so I hope to do several next week unless my plans are disrupted, which happens more often than not.

I’m getting an itch to start a shawl for myself out of one of the great fingering or lace yarns in my stash. I’ve been looking at a patterns, but nothing is really catching my eye. I don’t want on that is very complicated since I usually knit and talk to my friends at break and lunch.

Do any of you have a favorite shawl pattern you would suggest I use? Let me know!

Slow down, walking gets you there too!

I guess three times is the charm when it comes to knitting this Mystery Shawl. Whatever clicked in my brain, I am happy it happened. I am rolling happily along, half way through the first clue.

Never mind the fourth clue just arrived this weekend. Slow and steady is my pace and it seems to be working. And counting over and over again. I wasn’t as carefree this time. I put in that rescue row / life line in right before the pattern got more complicated. It just seemed much more prudent than tearing it out for a fourth time.

I also have giving up on working on it if I am really tired or distracted. Why chance it? I am not running a race. Which brings to mind this weekend’s activities besides my slow shawl progress.

A couple of months ago my daughter-in-law and I signed up to run a 5k to benefit the Chicago Zoological Society’s Conservation Fund. Last year we ran our first 5k and I haven’t really ran much since. There is always an excuse not to exercise. I should exercise more, but I don’t. I need a goal. Don’t ask me why, I just do.

I figured I could start really hitting the treadmill and streets to run about a month before the race. It was summer, really hot, no rain…whine, whine…sad but true. So I slid through the summer not doing much exercise wise. Then I fell down the stairs. Five short weeks before the race, I had a sprained foot and torn ligaments. Good grief.

Over the last week I could finally say my foot was feeling pretty normal. I can wear real shoes again! Which is a nice thing since it is getting pretty cold around here for flip flops.

On Thursday, my daughter in law asked me if her sister could use my number. Of course she could, because then she would have someone to run with. Then she told me she hadn’t been training either. And she had a cold. And she was just going to walk the 5k. Hummm. I told her that if her sister didn’t want to do it I would walk with her.

Hubby had a hissy. I get it. I was pretty laid up for almost a month, now I want to walk over 3 miles. I promised I’d stop if it hurt. He shook his head and gave up the fight.

So this morning bright and early, we went and we walked. It certainly wasn’t a crazy fast event for us. But we did a respectable time of 53.06. I certainly thought that was acceptable. Now that I started I don’t want to stop. So back to the treadmill tomorrow. It may cut down on my knitting time, but hopefully it will give me more years to knit in the long run 🙂

Losing Ground and Making Up Time

This has been a crazy week, but lots of progress on my projects. The project that I lost ground on was the mystery shawl knit a long because I was so far off on my count, I frogged the entire piece and started again. It was unfixable. There are four sections of the pattern in the first clue. I was supposed to have 17 stitched in each section, one stitch dividing each section and and two stitches on each end. In each of my sections, I had 19, 17, 18, 19 respectively.

Looking back, I figured out what I did wrong. I am not used to using lace weight yarn. because it is so fine, the last stitch was pulled over the needle, therefore I was making a stitch on the beginning of some of the rows. This was enough to skew the pattern and my stitch count. Live, learn and rip out to start again.

I also got some different stitch markers. I was using very small brass markers that had the tiniest opening that would not have mattered with heavier yarn and bigger needles. They were not good for this shawl. After fighting with them, I read on that some people were using the smaller, closed rings used for jewelry making. I got them at Hobby Lobby for less than $1.50 and they are working wonderfully! So twenty rows and counting.

The snowflake afghan is coming along 26 of 59 squares are completed and sewn into strips. This is for the Ravelry group I joined in January. The idea is to make any granny square pattern that you want, one square a week. By the end of the year you have a complete afghan. I am only 12 behind – actually 14 behind because this is a Christmas gift. I am not allowing myself to start another project to take to work until I am at least caught up. If I don’t have too many meetings, that should be in approximately 3 weeks.

Pr socks – I found a really cool pattern from watching Knitty Gritty on TV. I am going to make Simple Master Coriolis Pattern by Cat Bordhi I am really excited about these, they are different from other’s I’ve made.

My alpaca hat is still a ball of yarn, neatly wound.

Here’s a picture of the completed shawl and my friend. 🙂

Master’s program – I received the yarn and it is really nice. The winding hasn’t been done as anticipated, but will be hopefully before the weekend is over. I am going to put the Master’s on hold until at least the holiday knitting and crocheting is done. A woman can only do so much.

The last baby blanket will probably preempt my hat due to necessity. The baby is due in a couple of weeks.

Last but not least, the Bear’s scarf is complete! I washed and blocked it this morning, and it is ready for Christmas morning.

I only want to be green with envy – not dye

We are almost to the end of the shawl saga that began so long ago. I love the pattern I chose. I am ok with my choice of yarn. I had seven skeins of a Brown Sheep 80% cotton 20% wool blend in my stash (or as established yesterday  my sable). It is a greenish blue color called Sea Jade.

The first skein I used had several breaks in the yarn where it was tied at the factory. That frustrates me as I like to add new skeins at the edges to incorporate the ends in a less obvious way. I didn’t notice a couple of these until I was in the center of an intricate row, so I worked them in where they were, but wasn’t exactly happy.

The rest of the skeins didn’t have any breaks, so that was a plus. Then I started to notice my hands were turning a bit green. Oddly, it was concentrated on my left hand. Duh. The hand that was keeping tension was the one turning green. If I knit long enough, the edge of my fingernails also turned faintly green.

Obviously the dye was rubbing off a bit. I found that unusual because I’ve knit for a very long time and have never had this happen before. I’ve used hand dyed yarns, hand painted yarns and just plain old regular yarns. Hum.

I was discussing the dye issue with a knitting friend, expressing my concern that the shawl I have worked on for so long was quite possibly going to turn the girlfriend I am knitting it for green. And not with envy. Then we debated the wisest way to set the color so that would not happen. Vinegar was discussed and well as alum. The jury was still out.

Last night I was rolling the last ball and happened to read the band. I’ve read it before to see the content and suggested gauge, but missed the paragraph about washing it. Not the actual recommendation to hand wash and dry flat, but the “first washing” recommendation.

The instructions stated you should add vinegar to the wool soak, then add more vinegar to the final rinse water. What this said to me (and my aforementioned friend) is that they knew this dye was not set. This must not be the norm, or all yarns would have setting the color as part of the wash instructions.

I am still feeling uneasy about the whole thing. I can’t start over with a different yarn. My  friend’s birthday is in two weeks. The yarn wasn’t super expensive, but it wasn’t bargain basement either. The number of hours in this project just won’t allow me to scrap it even if it wasn’t the eleventh hour for the shawl.

It makes me worry about the other Brown Sheep yarn that I have in my stash. It is a lovely lavender that I was considering for a shawl for another one of my friends next spring. Now, I’m not so sure.

Have any of you had a similar experience when using a cotton/wool blend? Is this typical and I’ve just been lucky. I need to know.