It's all done and it's definitely a hit!
This may be the perfect little lacy shrug – – with minor variations and in different yarns I can imagine it filling a lot of different uses.
Tag: shrug
The Amazing Knit Cat Lovey
I'm stretching the truth here — just a bit. This is actually not a knit cat lovey, although Squirt really wishes it was. Instead, it's my Mom's new shrug, finished just in time for graduation and knit from this pattern.
I joked about it being too big for her while I was knitting it, and it actually fits just a bit large on me, but I'm hopeful it will work out for her. It feels amazing, and is just the perfect touch of added warmth.
I promise better pictures tomorrow when the sun is up if Squirt will relinquish his apparent attempts at ownership. I may need to knit up the leftover yarn into a little lovey for him, if I'm to get the shrug back.
Seaming the Shrug
This is definitely the fun part. Knitting done, finishing commenced.
I have sewn up the side seams and did a quick try on before picking up stitches around the opening so I can knit the body of the sweater.
Sadly, the sizing appears to be just perfect for my Mom. I had been secretly harboring hopes it would be too big for her and I would have to gracefully step in to spare her from the horror of it, but, sadly, no. It should be just right for her.
Next to pick up a bunch of stitches and knit some ribbing. I'm hoping to finish it in time for her to wear for her grandson's graduation.
Dreamy Knit Shrug
This is the Dream in Color Shrug I'm knitting for my Mom out of Jade Sapphire Cashmere, exactly halfway done.
I seem to spend a lot of time spreading it out and looking at it. I like the lacy pattern very much. I love how the Cashmere feels. Knitting this pattern in this yarn reinforces my belief that life is too short to knit with cheap yarn.
This is a surprisingly easy pattern — the repeats are short and quickly remembered. I've inserted markers to make it easy to keep up with where I am, so I can knit this in lectures or while talking with friends over coffee. It looks a bit long, or perhaps that's just wishful thinking on my part, as my Mom is smaller than I am, so if it's too large, well, um, we all know how that one goes.
Finished: Little Copernicus. Started: Dream in Color
Little Copernicus is finished. Down to the sweet little Mother of Pearl buttons. Very cute. All it needs now is a baby!
I have knitting work to do. I'm about three skeins away from finishing the endless black hole afghan. And, I should be knitting it over the weekend as it's so big it can only be worked on at home.
But no. Write it off to knitter's ADHD or spring fever, but I put the afghan down for the weekend. I also bypassed two charming projects I've purchased pattern and yarn for, Norie and Laar by Gudrun Johnston, but not yet started. And I even let the hat I'm knitting for my snowbound eldest child in some incredibly soft Eco Alpaca from Cascade Yarns sit swatched, but not started.
Instead I picked up the shrug I've been meaning to knit for my Mom for quite some time. I have four luscious skeins of Jade Sapphire 6-ply Cashmere in the Blackberry Fudge colorway and I had selected the Dream in Color Shrug Pattern. I selected that pattern after seeing this Shrug knit up last fall — one of the dancers at my daughter's ballet school was wearing it, and it was beyond-words-amazing. I always have lace anxiety (really, you keep count with kids chirping about homework, the Judge whining about "where's my dinner," and a Blackberry that goes off incessantly with work) but decided to tackle it and see what happened.
Things are always much more manageable after you start, right? The 30 rows of ribbing zipped by in the dentist's chair (the pattern is knit from cuff to cuff). The yarn is just fabulous. It's soft, the knitted fabric is squishy, it's everything I like best in Cashmere. And the lace is a simple 11 stitch 20 row repeat. With only five sets of 11 stitches and a few extra on each end to the row, this pattern is very do-able, even for someone tackling their first lace project. So much for the anxiety!
I'm midway through the second lace repeat and finding this to be lots of fun to knit. But, I'm going to set it aside to pick up the afghan for the next few evenings. It now has the benefit of being large enough to snuggle under while knitting. And it's so soft and inviting that the time has come for me to finish it off and make it available to the whole family.
Finished, With A Little Help From A Friend
After a lot of "I hate finishing sweaters" procrastination, I finally sat down to finish my Manos Silk Shrug before Christmas. And, I ran into a problem. No matter how carefully I thought I had blocked it, it really didn't look at all neat when I began seaming. The yarn was a pretty silk/merino base yarn I've knit with before, and I couldn't figure out what the problem was. I finally decided to take it to my favorite local yarn store to have them give it a good blocking and do the seaming for me, before I did the ribbed trim. It seemed like a decadent escape from work. In the pre-Christmas frenzy, I decided it was worth it to get it done just right, because I loved how the pieces had turned out.
I picked it up this week.
Not only had it been seamed, but they had done the ribbing — you can see it around the edges, you pick up the stitches and rib for several inches. It was all done. I put it on and haven't taken it off since.
The Manos yarn is really pretty and nice to work with, and the Debbie Bliss pattern is simple, with some interesting shaping, but other than the finishing quagmire I let myself get into on this one, it's an easy and rewarding knit.