Category: Knitting

The following things happened while I couldn't get pictures off my camera and onto my computer:

[Okay, a lot more than this happened, but frankly, you would be bored by most of it, and I'm not leaving out anything that involves yarn]

(1) I'm all done with the Faraway, So Close shawl, with the exception of the ruffle, which I hope to work on this week.

(2) I bought this great knitted pouf of a foot rest for my living room.  I liked it so much when it came that I immediately bought a second one — the kids like to perch on them, and it's almost like having two extra chairs in the room.

(3) I never knew how much I loved modern furniture until we started redoing parts of our house.  Our house is hopelessly traditional, and I mostly like it that way, but the cats did get a very cool modern bed from Hepper out of my new found love.  The cat pictured is at least five pounds overweight for this bed.  He does not care.  It is made from felt and beds don't really get any better than that.

(4) The cat who the bed, above, was intended for is forced to pose elegantly on my settee, since her evil brother won't let her near the bed.  Poor kitty.

(5) I fell seriously off the wagon and bought some yarn.  This isn't all bad as I (mostly) have purposes for it in mind.  It is bad because I really am trying to knit from stash, and I do love my stash yarn.  But,

        (a) I bought two skeins of Koigu KPPPM to add to the basket for my Barn Raising knitted quilt

        

        

        (b) I bought two skeins of Noro Silk Garden because I want to see if it will make up into a Noro Hat

        

        (c) And, I bought two skeins of Aslan Trends Bariloche because I had never seen it before and it         was purple.  I thought that was reason enough.

        

I'm hoping to find a little bit of time to finish up Far Away So Close this week, although I've suddenly realized that with 12 rows in the ruffle, at heavens knows how many hundreds of stitches in a row, it's going to be a while in the works.  I'm highly motivated though, because I want to get to work on the afghan for our living room and perhaps do a bit of holiday knitting in October.

Somehow, Far Away, So Close ended up in the back of my knitting closet in a bag, and wandered off my radar screen for a couple of months.  I picked it back up last week to take along on a trip and have made a good bit of progress.

I have repeats left in the garter and stockinette patterns, and then a long stretch of half linen stitch before I'll be ready to add the ruffle that runs all around it.  It's a fun pattern that weaves together a variety of different stitch patterns across a basic bat wing scarf. 

My favorite pattern repeats are the eyelet rows and the drop stitch ones.

Although I rarely look forward to blocking anything, with this one, I can't wait to get the stitches all firmed up and see how the colors look.  I have an old, quilted purple velvet coat from a long out of business British company, Ghost, and I'm hoping that this will look good tucked inside it on cold days.  The Blue Faced Leicester yarn is stunningly soft and non-itchy, making this the perfect scarf.

The last decision to make is about the ruffle.  Although the pattern pictures and virtually every knit up version of FASC that I've seen uses a contrasting color for the ruffle, I'm inclined to do it in the same yarn as the body of the scarf.  Let's face it — this colorway has enough going on as it is, and it doesn't need any competition.  Since I'm normally your basic black kind of girl when it comes to what I wear on a day to day basis, this scarf is going to be a huge stretch for me, but I am really looking forward to its wooly comfort while traveling up north this winter.

I am not sharing my knitting with you this week.  Not.  Stupid mistake.  Really stupid.  I won't bore you with the details, but let's just say that if you mistakenly add in an extra set of increases where they aren't supposed to be while knitting in the round, catch it about 20 increase rows down the road, drop the stitches back down to where you made the mistake and fix it, you will end up with a bunch of really lose stitches and a lot of extra yarn.  I've tried easing and stretching and I'm sad.  And this is an annoyingly difficult pattern to rip back.  And I have no other knitting along on this trip.  Sad.

But never fear.  After feeling distinctly annoyed at myself, I remembered I was only 10 minutes away from one of my favorite yarn stores, Connecticut Yarn and Wool Company, in East Haddam.  I'm really not supposed to be buying yarn — my yarn is all so nice and neat after I organized and destashed.  But this was desperate times….so I indulged.

This

is Plymouth Royal Llama Silk.  I've used it before, for Ellie's Victorian Gauntlets.  Its really nice stuff — 60% Llama and 40% Silk.  I thought it might make a nice scarf, with little accents in the leftover yarn from the Gauntlets.

And this.

The store is nearby Farmhouse Yarns and carries a lot of their beautiful yarns, many of which I have succumbed to over the years of visiting this area.  This is a 100% bamboo yarn in a soft varigated turquoise blue.  It's scrumptious.  I actually wanted the yarn in every colorway Bonnie had dyed it in, but decided I would get just this one.  I'm off to surf Ravelry and see what others have knit with this yarn.  It is absolutely beautiful!

 

 

Today, two items of knitting news.  First, swatching (an afghan for our new couch) and second, progress (the Barnraising Quilt).

First, swatching.  We're doing a little bit of updating around our house.  While looking at some new furniture, I began to notice that big, chunky, knitted throws were everywhere.  But they were (1) expensive and (2) Acrylic or blends.  While I get the washable appeal of acrylic, I'm a natural fiber girl.  So I load up with 15 skeins of Wool2dye4's Lux Superchunky.  I meant to knit just a quick swatch to see how it looked, but I couldn't stop.  A skein later, I had this:

 

I can't extol the virtues of this yarn enough.  It's a blend of Merino, Alpaca, and Silk.  It knits up nicely on size 15 needles, although it isn't quite as chunky as the yarn I was seeing in the stores blankets.  I simply couldn't stop playing with it.  I fooled around with some cables.

 

Then I played around with them some more.

 

And finally, just a simple rib.

 

I'm not sure how I'll knit the final piece, but I know it's going to be fabulous and particularly snuggle-y in this yarn.  Having not yet picked out a couch, I don't know if I'll keep the yarn undyed or if I'll dye it up to work with what we pick out.  But I'm already dreaming about it.

Second, Progress.  I've started another square for the Barn Raising quilt.  It's my favorite one yet.  (I've noticed that each new one seems to become my favorite, but I really mean it this time).

 

This is Koigu KPPM and I love the unusual colors that are included in this skein.  In keeping with my usual penchant for knitting two of these squares at a time, I've got some leftovers from the skein of Elliebelly's Rebecca's Kitchen that I used for my friend Amy's baby sweater that I'm ready to tee up for another square.

I'm still in awe of the knitters who seem to effortlessly knit up a quilt in the space of a week.  I'm going to be years putting this one together, but it's really fun to put all my leftover sock yarn to good use and watch it start to take shape.

How nice!

We are on a long family drive. I’ve been knitting in the front while the Judge drives-swatching for an afghan.

I turned around to check on the unusually quiet kids, and there was Miss Ellie, intently knitting away. It’s good to be raising another generation of knitters, particularly this charmingly precocious fiber snob, who had the good sense to pick up some Tilli Thomas sequined silk for her endeavor.

First off, for those of you (I was surprisingly inundated with email, had no idea so many of you cared) who aren't on Ravelry, here is a stash example picture of how my yarn is put up in the closet.

 

Isn't it cool?  It really is like having my own personal yarn store.  You can see the Be Sweet, Elliebelly, Ayany/Peace Fleece, Blue Sky Alpaca, Noro, and sock yarn sections here.  Now that it's all divided up, I will undoubtedly waste some time carefully displaying each brand within its own section.

I love seeing it all so organized in the Ravelry Stash input.  Here are a couple of favorite pictures.

 

That's Colinette's Point Five.  Still one of my favorites!

 

This is some handspun Baa Baa Black Sheep did for me using the Melted Crayon roving I dyed a few weeks ago.

 

And this is some Lux Superchunky from Wool2dye4 that I got to knit a throw for our TV couch.  I have a mess of it!

So, inside of the closet is happy.  Outside of the closet, our new-kitchen-floor-which-has-become-a- whole-house-renovation continues.  The sad news was that our 27 year old SubZero gave up the ghost unexpectedly.  We definitely had no plans to replace it as part of this little party.  We looked for a less expensive alternative, but learned that because it was a built in, replacing it with anything else was asking for trouble on multiple fronts, including new cabinetry.  Yuck!  So here we have it.  It's big.  Don't you think it has yarn storage potential?