Thursday, September 28, 2006
FO2: Bliss Cardi Revisited
Hey all, this is just a quickie post to show that I did get a zipper for the Bliss cardi. Yay, it's all finished. Sorry for the sucky photos. I was sick and didn't want my face on it.
FO: Arrowhead Lace Shawl
Yay, a FO! Friends, I finished Arrowhead Lace Shawl this weekend and got it blocked and even have a modeled photo shot! I do love how it turned out and I think my mom will love it too.
Fresh off the needles:
and after being blocked:
Project Specs: Arrowhead Lace Shawl from Interweave Knits Summer 06, as a staff project, found here
Yarn used: Plymouth Yarns Sportweight 3-ply Alpaca in a taupe/camel brown color, 2 full skeins, not much of the 3rd skein, 186 yds each
Needle used: US 7, 4.5 mm
Mods: added 3 additional repeats of chart 1 to make it larger. This is not a big shawl. I originally planned to make 4 repeats, but I got tired of knitting it. The chart got a bit repetitive, so I stopped. I love how it turned out. It's very lacy and drapes nicely. I think my mom will be happy with it. I really do need to get some blocking wires though. I'm ready for more lace. Perhaps the Swallowtail Shawl is my next lace project. Lace has definitely become addictive. I'm very surprised by it, but loving to knit it!
Fresh off the needles:
and after being blocked:
Project Specs: Arrowhead Lace Shawl from Interweave Knits Summer 06, as a staff project, found here
Yarn used: Plymouth Yarns Sportweight 3-ply Alpaca in a taupe/camel brown color, 2 full skeins, not much of the 3rd skein, 186 yds each
Needle used: US 7, 4.5 mm
Mods: added 3 additional repeats of chart 1 to make it larger. This is not a big shawl. I originally planned to make 4 repeats, but I got tired of knitting it. The chart got a bit repetitive, so I stopped. I love how it turned out. It's very lacy and drapes nicely. I think my mom will be happy with it. I really do need to get some blocking wires though. I'm ready for more lace. Perhaps the Swallowtail Shawl is my next lace project. Lace has definitely become addictive. I'm very surprised by it, but loving to knit it!
Monday, September 25, 2006
R.I.P. UFOs
Recently, a couple of my girls and a new blog friend, Gina, have been listing all of their UFOs. I thought,"I've got all my UFOs under control, no worries." Except as I thought about them more and more, it began niggling my brain that I needed to do something with them.
I've been sick the past few days and on Sunday, I felt a bit better. It became cleaning day. As I cleaned house, I began thinking of yarn. I started pulling out my UFOs. Some of you may recall this UFO post in July. The picture below depicts the UFOs I last blogged about: Fair Isle Jazz scarf, Lorna's Laces sock yarn in Desert Flower colorway and the i-cord gloves, with a cursory nod to Spork.
The new pic shows Fair Isle Jazz, the i-cord gloves and Spork. The thing is most of these are getting ripped. I'm not lovin' 'em anymore.
Today or yesterday rather, I decided that of these projects, only 1 remains.
1st: The Lorna's Laces sock may be done, but it's been ripped out right now, so I'll determine later if I will make socks out of it. I have a feeling once I get started on my hourglass sweater which is using yarn in a cotton candy pink, I will probably start those socks. For now, they've been ripped out and resting.
2nd: the i-cord gloves, ripped. True I did waste yarn by not finishing this project, but I don't care. I couldn't seem to motivate myself to pick it up again and look at it. So I ripped it. I still have at least half a ball and a full one that I may make some fingerless gloves out of.
3rd: Fair Isle Jazz will get finished. I'm past the halfway mark. Once I get done with the ISE scarf, I will get started on this one again.
4th: Spork. Poor Spork. Sadly, I am no longer in love with the idea of making this bag. As much as I like the idea of felted bags, unless I can just knit it and felt it and be done, I don't like to do it. I don't sew and don't want to do excess construction, sewing things, putting in liners, buying extra things to make it like a messenger bag. Blech, just things to turn me off. That's what happened with my Rather Huge Felted Bag that you saw once and never saw it again. After I felted it, it became so big and unwieldy and you're supposed to line it. Dude, that's never gonnna happen. I gave it to Stacey. So the fate of Spork is that it's already knitted, but it will no longer be a felted messenger bag. I'm going to felt it once to see how much it shrinks and it will become a lapghan. It's got a nice amount of warmth, so I figure if I felt it a bit, it'll be nice and toasty. The reinforcing strips to go around the bag have been ripped and the yarn reclaimed.
Later on this year, I will probably rip out a couple of old projects and also reclaim the yarn. More on that later.
I've been sick the past few days and on Sunday, I felt a bit better. It became cleaning day. As I cleaned house, I began thinking of yarn. I started pulling out my UFOs. Some of you may recall this UFO post in July. The picture below depicts the UFOs I last blogged about: Fair Isle Jazz scarf, Lorna's Laces sock yarn in Desert Flower colorway and the i-cord gloves, with a cursory nod to Spork.
The new pic shows Fair Isle Jazz, the i-cord gloves and Spork. The thing is most of these are getting ripped. I'm not lovin' 'em anymore.
Today or yesterday rather, I decided that of these projects, only 1 remains.
1st: The Lorna's Laces sock may be done, but it's been ripped out right now, so I'll determine later if I will make socks out of it. I have a feeling once I get started on my hourglass sweater which is using yarn in a cotton candy pink, I will probably start those socks. For now, they've been ripped out and resting.
2nd: the i-cord gloves, ripped. True I did waste yarn by not finishing this project, but I don't care. I couldn't seem to motivate myself to pick it up again and look at it. So I ripped it. I still have at least half a ball and a full one that I may make some fingerless gloves out of.
3rd: Fair Isle Jazz will get finished. I'm past the halfway mark. Once I get done with the ISE scarf, I will get started on this one again.
4th: Spork. Poor Spork. Sadly, I am no longer in love with the idea of making this bag. As much as I like the idea of felted bags, unless I can just knit it and felt it and be done, I don't like to do it. I don't sew and don't want to do excess construction, sewing things, putting in liners, buying extra things to make it like a messenger bag. Blech, just things to turn me off. That's what happened with my Rather Huge Felted Bag that you saw once and never saw it again. After I felted it, it became so big and unwieldy and you're supposed to line it. Dude, that's never gonnna happen. I gave it to Stacey. So the fate of Spork is that it's already knitted, but it will no longer be a felted messenger bag. I'm going to felt it once to see how much it shrinks and it will become a lapghan. It's got a nice amount of warmth, so I figure if I felt it a bit, it'll be nice and toasty. The reinforcing strips to go around the bag have been ripped and the yarn reclaimed.
Later on this year, I will probably rip out a couple of old projects and also reclaim the yarn. More on that later.
Monday, September 18, 2006
Knitting Blahs
Not the doldrums by any means, but a bit blah about what I'm knitting. I think I should take Becky's advice and cast on for something new! Currently I've still been working on the arrowhead lace shawl and it's just getting bigger. This is the time that I'm less than thrilled with knitting it and ready to move on to other things. I've done 3 additional repeats and am ready to begin Chart 2. Rather than hastily stop knitting it, I suppose I should call my mother and verify how large she wants a shawl to be. That would be the good daughter thing to do, right?
Moving on, I was working on one sock that I'm using Regia Stretch and Wendy's cat's paw lace pattern inserted into the sock. The colors of the sock are very similar to her "Lucy" sock, but my browns are different. I put the sock down for the moment as I was working the lace shawl and a lace pattern in the sock. There was a bit too much lace going on, so I started a "footie" sock for M2. It has a very short cuff, 4 rounds k2p2 ribbing and 2 rows of stockinette before working the heel flap. I tried it on him and he loves. Down the foot we go. I also got a couple of new bags to carry yarn and projects around, one of which is displayed in the picture with the sock. M2's sock is out of some old Socka (before it became Fortissima) and it is just variegated shades of green.
I also started a sleeve to M's sweater. I tried doing both sleeves at once, but that was just madness. The skeins of yarn going everywhere. I got tired of it after one or two rows and just decided to do one sleeve at a time. I'm already bored with knitting on it, but I hope to get some knitting on it at work, so maybe that will make the knitting time go by a little faster. It's just stockinette, but many, many series of increases every 3rd row until infinity!
I just realized that the possible reason for my blahs is that all the knitting I'm doing right now is for others. While I don't mind it, I have nothing on my needles for me and that's probably why. Everything is assigned to someone else at this point and my next project is to be for my ISE scarf pal. I will obviously have to cast on for 2 projects once I finish my mom's shawl. Something for me and a scarf for my pal. We can't keep things at the status quo now can we? Otherwise I'll go crazy and just cast on lots of new things for me and never finishing any of the others and that would be very bad.
Oh well, it's time to get ready for work. Have a good week everyone. I'll try to post later in the week.
Moving on, I was working on one sock that I'm using Regia Stretch and Wendy's cat's paw lace pattern inserted into the sock. The colors of the sock are very similar to her "Lucy" sock, but my browns are different. I put the sock down for the moment as I was working the lace shawl and a lace pattern in the sock. There was a bit too much lace going on, so I started a "footie" sock for M2. It has a very short cuff, 4 rounds k2p2 ribbing and 2 rows of stockinette before working the heel flap. I tried it on him and he loves. Down the foot we go. I also got a couple of new bags to carry yarn and projects around, one of which is displayed in the picture with the sock. M2's sock is out of some old Socka (before it became Fortissima) and it is just variegated shades of green.
I also started a sleeve to M's sweater. I tried doing both sleeves at once, but that was just madness. The skeins of yarn going everywhere. I got tired of it after one or two rows and just decided to do one sleeve at a time. I'm already bored with knitting on it, but I hope to get some knitting on it at work, so maybe that will make the knitting time go by a little faster. It's just stockinette, but many, many series of increases every 3rd row until infinity!
I just realized that the possible reason for my blahs is that all the knitting I'm doing right now is for others. While I don't mind it, I have nothing on my needles for me and that's probably why. Everything is assigned to someone else at this point and my next project is to be for my ISE scarf pal. I will obviously have to cast on for 2 projects once I finish my mom's shawl. Something for me and a scarf for my pal. We can't keep things at the status quo now can we? Otherwise I'll go crazy and just cast on lots of new things for me and never finishing any of the others and that would be very bad.
Oh well, it's time to get ready for work. Have a good week everyone. I'll try to post later in the week.
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Lace Swap Pal revealed
Sadly, I've been a bad, bad blogger as of late. Not so much with posting, although that too, but I neglected to mention a certain lace swap that I signed up for earlier in the summer. I meant to post earlier and even took a bevy of photos with my cell phone as M was gone for 5 days last week with the digital camera, so I could not take any pictures. Then my cell phone decided not to play nice and wouldn't send the photos to email, so even though I had some nice pictures of the initial picture, they were inadvertently deleted.
I had the best pal, Christina, who kept me updated about my swap. About being burned in SP5 quite awhile ago, I'm always a bit leery when I sign up for another swap. Christina was a most excellent pal. The Lace Swap was to include a lace pattern, a minimum of 1200 yards of laceweight yarn and any additional items you wanted to send, but any more than that was not a necessity.
I received a box full of stuff. First of all, each individual piece was wrapped in a pretty purple paper that I had fun gleefully tearing off. Here's the case/box that everything was inside of.
Inside there was a box full of goodies. Yarn, stitchmarkers, etc.
The full package revealed a lovely postcard where Christina gives me her blog address and told me that the beach was near her home and she often sits and knits there. I'm so jealous! She sent me some pretty stitch markers in red, a bar of cool-looking soap with a lilac fragrance, a soft-smelling candle, a lace pattern by Two Old Bags called Concert in the Park, which while lovely, I don't think I'm ready for all of that yet! And some beautiful Zephyr yarn (which I've never knit with before, nor own any)wool/silk 50/50 blend in a pretty burnt sienna/cinnamon color. I'm so happy with everything! Thanks again Christina!! The lace swap was really quite fun and Christina put the icing on the cake.
Again I apologize for the horrid quality of the photos, but they were with a cell phone camera.
The pal I spoiled for the Lace Swap was Joan. This was truly a lot of fun!
I had the best pal, Christina, who kept me updated about my swap. About being burned in SP5 quite awhile ago, I'm always a bit leery when I sign up for another swap. Christina was a most excellent pal. The Lace Swap was to include a lace pattern, a minimum of 1200 yards of laceweight yarn and any additional items you wanted to send, but any more than that was not a necessity.
I received a box full of stuff. First of all, each individual piece was wrapped in a pretty purple paper that I had fun gleefully tearing off. Here's the case/box that everything was inside of.
Inside there was a box full of goodies. Yarn, stitchmarkers, etc.
The full package revealed a lovely postcard where Christina gives me her blog address and told me that the beach was near her home and she often sits and knits there. I'm so jealous! She sent me some pretty stitch markers in red, a bar of cool-looking soap with a lilac fragrance, a soft-smelling candle, a lace pattern by Two Old Bags called Concert in the Park, which while lovely, I don't think I'm ready for all of that yet! And some beautiful Zephyr yarn (which I've never knit with before, nor own any)wool/silk 50/50 blend in a pretty burnt sienna/cinnamon color. I'm so happy with everything! Thanks again Christina!! The lace swap was really quite fun and Christina put the icing on the cake.
Again I apologize for the horrid quality of the photos, but they were with a cell phone camera.
The pal I spoiled for the Lace Swap was Joan. This was truly a lot of fun!
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
She does knit!
I'm glad that I'm always able to keep my promises about posting, yea, right!;-) However I did spend most of the past Labor Day weekend, knitting, knitting and more knitting (and a bit of beading!, more later). I'm really ready to finish up some things that I'm working on. As the weather gets cooler lately, I'm ready to dig into some fall/winter knitting. One piece of a garment that was finished is the Lacy Tank(scroll down the page till you see patterns for Takhi Yarns). This is a sleeveless lacy tank and I've finished one piece and I'm using a yarn, Schachenmeyer Nomotta Rainbow, that's a blend of cotton, viscose and some other stuff.
It's red with a wraparound of some other stuff that gives it some slubby bits. It's a nice yarn that works very well in the pattern and imo looks better than just a complete solid Cotton Classic that the pattern calls for. Now I have to cast on for the second piece, but I'm really not that enthused to do so. I don't want it to become a piece that has to be finished next summer, but it could happen, we'll see.
For a lace project, I cast on a few weeks ago for the Little Arrowhead Shawl (caution: this opens up a pdf) from the Summer issue of Interweave, one of those staff projects, although my plan is to make it larger than the original using Plymouth Alpaca 3-ply sport yarn. It's working up pretty well and I love the color, which is a beige/taupe color, but I'm not enjoying the shedding of alpaca, which is something that I forget about. I may give this shawl away to my mother, we'll see. I'm past where I last photographed this shawl, as I'm now into the last repeat that the pattern calls for, but I'm doing 4 additional repeats. The pattern is a small shawl that is 40" in width and for each additional repeat, it adds 5 1/4" in width, so I figure I should attempt to get 60", but my mom is shorter than me, so I may only add 3 repeats for about 55" total. It depends on how quickly I'm ready to finish this shawl and right now, I'm pretty ready. I think I may be ready to cast on for the Diamond Fantasy Scarf with some Cherry Tree Hill yarn I have, so the Arrowhead Shawl may not be on the needles for much longer either.
Lastly, I've been working a lot of the Picovoli/Tivoli as of late. Mine is without the picot edges and I'm doing the waist increases now. I'm using
Elann Luna, which is a cotton/viscose blend. It's basically 2 yarns plied together, one matte, the other shiny, when knitted up, looks great. I bought some orange color, but it's not up on the site right now, but I absolutely adore it. It's a bit splitty, so you have to pay attention, but otherwise, pretty nice to knit with.
I hope to finish this by the week's end, however I will need to do a row or two of single crochet around the neck and sleeve edges to keep them from rolling, so I'll probably see if my friend's daughter will crochet it for me. Hopefully a FO will soon show up on this blog again.
It's red with a wraparound of some other stuff that gives it some slubby bits. It's a nice yarn that works very well in the pattern and imo looks better than just a complete solid Cotton Classic that the pattern calls for. Now I have to cast on for the second piece, but I'm really not that enthused to do so. I don't want it to become a piece that has to be finished next summer, but it could happen, we'll see.
For a lace project, I cast on a few weeks ago for the Little Arrowhead Shawl (caution: this opens up a pdf) from the Summer issue of Interweave, one of those staff projects, although my plan is to make it larger than the original using Plymouth Alpaca 3-ply sport yarn. It's working up pretty well and I love the color, which is a beige/taupe color, but I'm not enjoying the shedding of alpaca, which is something that I forget about. I may give this shawl away to my mother, we'll see. I'm past where I last photographed this shawl, as I'm now into the last repeat that the pattern calls for, but I'm doing 4 additional repeats. The pattern is a small shawl that is 40" in width and for each additional repeat, it adds 5 1/4" in width, so I figure I should attempt to get 60", but my mom is shorter than me, so I may only add 3 repeats for about 55" total. It depends on how quickly I'm ready to finish this shawl and right now, I'm pretty ready. I think I may be ready to cast on for the Diamond Fantasy Scarf with some Cherry Tree Hill yarn I have, so the Arrowhead Shawl may not be on the needles for much longer either.
Lastly, I've been working a lot of the Picovoli/Tivoli as of late. Mine is without the picot edges and I'm doing the waist increases now. I'm using
Elann Luna, which is a cotton/viscose blend. It's basically 2 yarns plied together, one matte, the other shiny, when knitted up, looks great. I bought some orange color, but it's not up on the site right now, but I absolutely adore it. It's a bit splitty, so you have to pay attention, but otherwise, pretty nice to knit with.
I hope to finish this by the week's end, however I will need to do a row or two of single crochet around the neck and sleeve edges to keep them from rolling, so I'll probably see if my friend's daughter will crochet it for me. Hopefully a FO will soon show up on this blog again.
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