My first contribution to the ABC-along 2008. The idea is that through out the year, you take pictures and post pictures related to the alphabet and to yourself. This one is sort of cheating as I first posted about it last week, before I knew about the ABC-along event.
I love yarn, and what could be more appropriate for a new year than alpaca at it is so soft. Not sure what I am going to knit with it yet. I never really know when I buy yarn. Ideas come to me in time.
My house needed some color soon Friday I got these gorgeous roses from the grocery store. I wanted tulips, but there were not any yet. These roses are almost tulip colored.
Earlier in the day I was at A Gardens of Yarn and bought this yarn:
Are you noticing a color theme here?Then later that evening regular commentator, Lisa, and occasional guest blogger, Hudaa, and I got together and had a make your own pizza party. It was great fun - we made the whole pizza from scratch:
Definitely a orange colored Friday.
The pizza recipe is from Rose Elliot’s The Complete Vegetarian (Amazon), which is the mainstay of my recipe book collection.
Mystery Stole 3 came off the blocking wires last Thursday and I wore it that evening. It turned out even better than I hoped. I am pleased with the color choice and know that I will use it more often than the recommended black or white. I know this as I have a black and a white shawl already and rarely wear them. This stole will go with many different outfits.
The surprise I was hinting at on Ravelry is that the final 15 rows (or so) were knitted using Knit Picks Shimmer:
The edge yarn really sets off the pink of the wing. I also think it brings the teal and the pink together.
The bedspread is bad as a background, but I don’t have anything better, yet.
This was my first time to seriously block anything and I am really excited about how blocking changed the stole. The points of the wing were stretched and stretched to an inch of their lives and this really helped with their final look:
I am now thinking of blocking my other shawls and seeing how they turn out. Finally I know that they will look better blocked.
This is not the only knitting project I have been working on. Another completed project is a baby blanket that I am knitting for my friends, M & R, who are expecting their first baby. I don’t think they read my blog, so don’t tell them as it is meant to be a surprise. If you do read my blog, R&M, skip over the next few pictures. R wanted something in green. Hopefully this is green enough:
There is green in every square. The pattern is a mixture of EZ’s mystery blanket and a mitered square. No sewing! Here is an edge detail:
I also “signed” one edge:
Life has not all been finishing projects. I started something new. This is a swatch for a top down skirt I made with Cherry Tree Hill Oceania Bright:
I actually finished it today, except for weaving in the ends, but you will have to wait until next week for pictures.
Finally, I have some very exciting news. My local yarn store (LYS), Stitches with Style, has asked me to hold a Freestyle Knitting Workshop/Class. Currently, in the store my Jester’s Jacket is on display as we hope it will persuade people to take the workshop. If you are interested leave a message in the comments and I’ll email you the information flyer.
Previous Mystery Stole Posts
I never wrote up Clue 1 - too busy knitting. Pictures of it and the other MS3 photos are in my MS3 set at Flickr.
©cdavies 2007
I decided to participate in the Mystery Stole 3 only using yarns of my choice. The recommendation was black or white, but I have both a black and a white shawl already.
So I looked though my stash knowing that I already had some lace weight yarns - which are the pink (Zephyr Wool Silk) and the variegated (Knit Picks Shimmer) and then I bought the jade (Zephyr Jaggerspun) to balance out the pink.
I am concerned that it is a repeat of the color scheme that I did a few years ago for the South West Shawl:
I am also wondering about how to use the three colors. I am still debating whether just to change yarns every other row so it looks part of the variegation or whether to blocks of color. Hopefully I will have a better idea when the first clue comes out. I could get more of Shimmer and use the plain yarns for the border, but I am trying not to give into that temptation.
More pictures of both the swatch and the south west shawl are at Flickr.
I haven’t written much lately. Fortunately, I have found time to take photos so that you can still get a daily picture. From these you may have gathered that I visited Halifax, NS. What a nice city; everyone lived up to the friendly Canadian stereotype and I had a great time, mostly hanging out on the harbor front admiring the tall ships and pretending I knew what was what. Amazing what one week of sailing can do!
Obviously, I did get a break and go to a yarn shop. It wasn’t hard to find being about three blocks from my hotel. I shopped at the Loop Craft Cafe where I purchased some of Lucy Neatby’s Celestial Merino and matched it with Needful’s Trillium. I have already started making a little scarf, it is such lovely yarn to knit:
I am using a four by four basket stitch with two rows of stockingette between each row of baskets. Every fourth stockingette is done with Needful’s Trillium. I like the fact that this is orange and stops the scarf being too brown. Oh I am using US#3 needles, but I am a really loose knitter. I cast on 26 stithes; there is a slip stitch and a two stitch garter at the end of each row.
As promised on my previous knitting post, here is a the red log cabin afghan.
For this I kept the sizes of the panel always the same. I think the Mother’s Day Afghan was more interesting as the panels were random sizes and there was more color variety. This one is going to be donated to Better Beginnings.
Breaking News
I just found out from Cathy-Cate at Hither and Yarn that the Red Scarf Project for 2008 for the Orphan Foundation of America has been announced. Visit both sites for more information.
I never should have got side tracked into looking at the Mason Dixon knitting blog because that lead me to January One and her post about using Adobe Photoshop to select colors. She got the idea from Knitting on Impulse. I decided to try this for my Mother’s Day Afghan.
Using a picture of Ruthy of the Mammals (it was already open in Photoshop as I was using it earlier for Ruth’s Wikipedia page):
I filtered it using the stained glass filter (under Textures in the Filter menu) with the cell size set to 10:
Then, using the the dropper tool, I sucked up some of the colors from the bottom left corner and, in a new document, I made a palette:
When I got home last night I chose wool based on the stained glass picture as the palette did not print out well. (If I intend to do this a lot, I need a better printer.)
This morning, I redid the palette from the picture. Then I added the yarn colors at the bottom:
Not a bad match?
So I started knitting. I am doing it log cabin style as that is very straight forward. I decided to chose the number of garter ridges randomly. As I could not find any dice, I used a spinning top and a wheel drawn on paper with numbers 1 - 8 in the spokes. For each patch, I spun the top twice and added up the numbers, so I could have everything from 2 - 16 ridges of garter stitch. This is how far I’ve got:
A friend from my local knitting guild sent me this link for a modular shawl which reminded me of my Diamond Cloak. Unfortunately, I only have a picture of the bottom:
(more…)
I had some time to spare so I went to “Knit a Bit”, Chapel Hill’s Yarn store. Conveniently placed, IMO, near a Whole Foods market and a Great Harvest is just up the street.
I can’t say that I bought more than I planned as I had not planned on buying anything. As they had soy silk and bamboo yarns I just had to get more colors in different yarn types to match.
I’m going to knit a modular - freestyle waistcoat. I can just see it in my mind’s eye.
I have not had a chance to knit any of the yarns yet and now I am going to dinner with these guys. Let the science blogging conference begin!
One advantage of being away is that I have had plenty of time for knitting. I knitted this hat from the top down*, making up the patterns as I went along.
I started by casting on 8 stitches**.
Using 5 double pointed needles I joined them in a circle, with 2 stitches per needles and the spare needle for the new stitches.
The first row is knitted.
Next row is an increase row: M1 (or yarn over), K1 (16 stitches; 4 stitches per needle).
Knit every other row.
Increase every other row, next time every second stitch, then every third, every 4th, 5th until there are enough stitches for the hat to fit around your head. This means the hat increase by 8 stitches each increase row.
You don’t even need to check your guage first as you can check it once you have got enough stitches to measure an inch or two.
Once the hat has the dimensions you want keep knitting until it is long enough to cover your ears.
Change to circular needles when you have enough stithces. It will feel tight for a row or two after changing but then it will get easier.
You can use any pattern you want, even lace. Just allow for guage differences between different yarns and knitting patterns.
I wanted to try Fair Isle and I was lucky that I needed 120 stitches as that is divisible by by the prime numbers 2,3,5 giving me lots of options for patterns.
For this hat, as I don’t like a rib finish I did a 3 stitch picot crotchet - single crotchet (US) 3 stitches, chain 3 stitches into next stitch all the way round.
I also put a tassel on the top of the hat to make it look more sporty.
I did forget to allow for the fact that Fair Isle knitting tightens up the guage and so it came out a little tight. Nothing that washing and blocking won’t resolve.
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*The pattern is from Barbara Walker’s Knitting from the Top Down.
I also make top down hats that increase every other stitch every other row or you can increase every other stitch every 1st, 2nd, 3rd row knitting inbetween. Depends on the style of hat you want.
**I used Knit Pick’s Palette and size 3 US needles.
Using the Decadent Fiber* I bought at Stitches last month, I knitted my choir friend JB a scarf:
The colors are lovely - all red wine colors, berries and browns.
The details don’t come out very well. I cast on 15 stitches and then worked a 1×1 rib:
S1, (k1, P1) repeat ( ) to last stitch, p1
repeat the row ad nauseum.
My intention had been to do the whole scarf in rib, but after about 8 rows I got bored of that and so I started cabling the stitches around each other. The scarf ended up with cable on both sides, so it is reversible. Once I got to what I decide was half way, I reversed the patterning so that both halves should look the same.
I could not the cabling details to show up well on my photos:
The yarn is heavily colored and the changes subtle:
I’m even sure if JB has realised that the pattern changes - you have to look pretty closely. The yarn was lovely to work, and I have some left so will probably make another scarf or headband. I definitely will be buying Decadent Fibers yarns again and again.
*This is also the yarn that Murphy fell in love with. Remember:
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