Lots of blankets

Welcome back, I know it's been a while since I've posted anything, and I honestly don't remember what I was working on last time, so this will be a general update. I did finish the hot pink socks and give them to their recipient. I'm not sure of the reaction though, but I think they went over well. Along that same vein, I started a pair of socks for my boyfriend, G. He has size 13 feet, but since I'm working them from the toe up I tried them on him, and they were a little big. So I will know next time to make them less than half an inch shorter than what I made them this time. I'm making them out of Lang yarns Jawoll Color Aktion, in the color 132.0372 (what an inspiring name). So in hindsight, while this was an excellent color, I should have made the toes and heels in a complimentary color, because they are just above the ankle, and I have run out of yarn. So what happened, was I was knitting along, and realized I would run out of yarn, so I went back to the yarn store, and the yarn has been discontinued. So you know what they did? They looked up in the computer who else had bought that exact same yarn and contacted them to see if they would be willing to sell me the rest. They found someone, and she agreed. So she brought in her skein, and I'm going to pay for part of whatever yarn she chooses to replace it. How cool is that? So the day has been saved, and the socks will be finished by the next time I see G. I am making two at a time toe up, using the same lace pattern that was in the Gridelin, because I thought it looked masculine, and not really like lace. I think the same basic pattern was used in the froot loop socks from Knitty, but I'm not entirely sure.

Speaking of Curls by Hunter Hammersen, I am making another one. This one is Janthine, and I'm making it out of Cascade Heritage Silk Prints. I'm not sure of the color name off the top of my head. It's going along fine, but the lace pattern is not nearly as intuitive as the Gridelin, so I am still working from the chart and using a sticky post-it note to mark my progress so I can sit it down and pick it up whenever I feel like. I'm not entirely happy with this color, because in the skein and wound up it looked like there would be a lot more lilac, and now that it's knitting up it's turning out to be much more variegated. My plan is to finish knitting it, and then overdye it with purple to even out the colors and make them all get along better. Not that they don't get along right now, it's just not what I was expecting.

And then there is my 3-in-1 sweater that I have been working on off and on for about 5 months. I hit a snag, because I tried to do the yoke decreases, but it ended up too shallow. So now I redid the math and have it where I just need to look at the pattern and figure out how to do the multiple layer look on the top, so it is in timeout until I have enough brainspace to look at it. I just started school again this week, so that is taking up most of my brain power (I despise college algebra, just in case any one is wondering).

Since I have stalled out on this sweater, I have been brainstorming other sweaters, and I have decided that I want to make a sweater (or two) that will feature my handspun. I am thinking about Tenney Park by Elizabeth Morrison. I think that I could do the entrelac front panel in handspun, and then have the rest of the sweater in Cascade 220. I think that that would be a really cute sweater. So I got some different braids, and am experimenting to see what would make an awesome yarn. I am planning on putting a gradient, and then two handpainted braids together to make a significant quantity of three ply that I could use as the center panel. So here is the first ply. It's done spinning, and I wound it off onto a tube to await plying.

Then my cousin is pregnant, and I wanted to make her a special baby blanket. So I got ten skeins of Dreambaby DK by Plymouth yarns, and am making a Walt Painted Chevron blanket. It's a free pattern on Ravelry, and I think it's turning out nice. I put in like a million stitch markers so I can keep track of the chevron points and so I don't have to continuously count out every single row. It's going much faster since I put the stitch markers in.

In addition to that baby blanket I am also making two others for Project Linus. One is a Corner-to-Corner throw, and then the other is an improvised knit log cabin. I think that they are both turning out quite nicely.

Other than that I am focusing on school. I also started volunteering at the library genealogy center, typing in names from old obituaries. It's about as interesting as it sounds.

Wool Piggery, Portuguese Knitting, and A Container Garden

So last weekend was the All Missouri Spin-In in Chillicothe, it was a lot of fun. I was able to see other spinners! But, it was wet and rainy and I didn't get my spinning wheel out, so I just watched others spin. I also watched a fashion show, and did a lot of shopping. I also took a class on Portuguese knitting. I got a bunch of wool, four batts (one is already spun up, and I'm spinning the second one) and four braids, and I am going to spin three of them together into a three ply, so I'm hoping that the colors will play well with each other for that.

I am spinning the pink and purple batt as we speak, and here is a shot of the bobbin that I'm working on. I'm thinking that I'm going to ply it with a sparkly metallic thread and that will give it another dimension of interest rather than just a flat yarn. It's spinning up thick and thin, so it would be really irregular if I just plied it back on itself.

And then I took a class on Portuguese knitting. It's where you have the yarn tensioned either around your neck or through a pin that you clip on your shoulder. I liked working with the pin better than having it looped around my neck. I am working on making a Reike hat, or something close to it. I didn't look up the pattern and just cast on using my normal number of stitches, I think it was around 90, on size US8 needles. I am knitting up the first batt that I spun up. It was an art batt that had yellow, red and grey in it, and then had little bits of yarn dispersed throughout, so there will be texture to the finished product. I am liking how it is knitting up so far. It is hanging on a mixed media canvas that I made on a Girl's Night Out craft night through my church. It was pretty neat.

Up close, and far away, you can't tell any difference between Portuguese knitting and my regular knitting. I think that it is just an interesting skill to add to my repertoire.

And finally there is my container garden, that it fully established. Many of the plants have been replanted, and most of them have transferred well. I think that they are all happy, and that they are all going to be able to make it. I hope that they are happy outside. There were a few leaves that were turning brown and crinkly around the edges, so I'm hoping that they will be happier outside. I haven't worried about insects or disease a whole lot since they have been inside up until now.

I'm still working on socks using the small circular, and am on the toe of the first sock of a second pair. And then I am also working on the Curl that I was working on, and it is coming along. That and I've started a hat that I am hoping to wear during the summer, so I'm not doing any colorwork on it, and just letting the colors in the yarn sing out.

Shop Update!

First off I finished a project that has been on the needles for about three months now, I have been working on it, instead of my hats, but have finally finished! It's a cowl that was done in fingering weight yarn, a JaWoll Color ball and then Cascade Heritage Sock yarn in a chocolate brown color. The two colors played really well together, and I'm very happy with the end result. After I did all that knitting I sat in the LYS and kitchener stitched the two ends together to end up with a nearly seamless finished object. So now I have a cowl to keep my neck warm in the winter, and it will be nice and toasty by the time fall arrives in a few months. And now I can work on hats again!

And then I have a shop update of nearly all the hats that I had been working on and finishing at lightning speed at the beginning of the year. They are all up and posted and are ready to be snatched up by anyone that can give them a loving home!

I'm really proudest of the monogrammed "A" hat and the four color work hats to the left, I think they all turned out the best. So now it is just a question of what else I will create to get up in my shop, and what other ideas are floating around in my head thus far!

Mostly Finished.....

So this week I tried, I really, really tried to get done these hot pink socks that I am making because of an idea that I had to make the prize for the King's cake this year to be a knitted something. So really, it has just been a little over a month or so since that event, so that's not too bad of a turn around on a size 11 men's pair of socks. (!!!!!!). But it feels like I should have been done sooner, so here are the socks, and they are just not quite done. I need to do just a few more rows of ribbing at the top cuff and then bind off and weave in ends, and so that should be pretty smooth sailing. I used Knit Picks Stroll Brights, in their hot pink that was new and was on sale (?) (I may be lying about this, but I think it was on sale when I got it. It wasn't that pricey anyways, but yeah). And I am working them on my size 1 US needles that are the Addi Turbo Sock Rockets with the 42" cable. They are just a vanilla sock recipe that I use for just about everything, although I may be changing my recipe- more on that later. With 2x2 ribbing along the top of the sock the entire way and then the cuff after the heel is 2x2 ribbing all the way around for around 4" or so and then 10 rows of 1x1 ribbing. Hopefully that all made sense.

Then I finished two polar fleece blankets that I am going to donate to the Project Night Night here in Kansas City, which is a charity that puts together a tote bag with a blanket, a stuffed animal and a bedtime story and gives them to the children in KC that are homeless. My young adult group at church is donating 15 bags and asked me to get/make the blankets for them. So I decided to do the polar fleece kind, since they are quick to make and I can get 15 done by the end of May, so two down, thirteen to go.

And then I am still working on a Curl from the book Curls by Hunter Hammersen, and it is going great! I am trying to do about one repeat on it a night or so. And so it is slowly growing. I am thinking about overdying the finished product with purple, so that I will like the coloring better, because right now it is just not doing it for me. I liked the lilac color, and thought that there would be more of that, I guess it's really more of a pink than lilac per se, but close enough. Only when it is knit up there is a whole lot more blues and greens and browns to it than I was expecting when I looked at the skein, so I was going to fix the discrepancy and just overdye all of it to a color I would like more.

And finally I finished a pair of vanilla socks for myself! I got an 8" circular from Addi Turbo and they are US Size 2, so they are larger, and I can start from the cuff down and make a sock that is only 64-60 stitches around and it fits my feet amazingly! I didn't even use any 2x2 ribbing along the top or anything, it is all just negative ease from having fewer stitches around. I don't know why this should be such a huge revelation to me. It should be pretty obvious that if you knit something with negative ease then it won't need ribbing to stay on your foot, but I am apparently a slow learner. Also featured in this photo are my spinach plants which are growing wildly away, and if they will just get a little bit bigger than I will be able to pick them and make a delicious salad or omelette or whole host of other things.

I cast on another pair of socks using the same super small circular, and they will be done shortly-ish, hopefully. I also now have an instagram account, and am @spinningknitting1 on there. I am also on twitter and I am @spinknitting1 on there. So check it out!

Spring is Springing!

Sorry for such a long hiatus, but I have been knitting, just so you know. Where I am, spring is springing. I don't know if it has completely sprung yet, but it is definitely getting there. I have finished several projects, and have started a garden out on the solarium so that the baby plants can grow before it is totally warm/hot outside. I planted oregano and cilantro in a strawberry planter.

Then I planted some broccoli and Asian peas in a disassembled three tier planter, and they are sitting on the ground.

And finally, from top left, there is asparagus, onions, and green beans. Then on the bottom left, or front left there is zucchini, sweet peppers, and spinach.

I'm so excited to have fresh veggies to eat this summer. I know that my garden is small, but I am really only feeding me, so I didn't want to have just a ton of food for it to go bad. So that's my garden. Anticipate garden updates as well as knitting updates in the future! 

I finished a preemie blanket for the Children's Mercy Hospital, where the preemie babies are generally taken care of here in Kansas City. So making blankets for sick babies will definitely be a thing for me in the future. I like them, since they are small enough to knit and not get bored or frustrated with, and I can try out different stitch patterns on them. I have plans for others in my head. This one is the kind of basket weave pattern with the slipped stitches that they do on washcloths a lot. I'm not sure who "they" are, but I think you know what I mean. The yarn was worsted weight Caron Simply Soft in lavender, and a Red Heart Super Saver Multi-Color. I knit it on US Size 7 needles, and it knit up in about 4 days of working off and on. I took it up to the LYS, which is the drop-off point, and they said that it needed to be blocked just a bit, so I will be blocking it and then turning it back in. 

Then I made a blanket for the Make-A-Blanket Day Project Linus competition. At the last Make-A-Blanket Day six months ago they gave the knitters and crocheters a skein of Red Heart Super Saver in Cherry Red and told us to make a blanket with it, so this is just from stash donations that I have, and it is based on the quilt block of Dutchman's Puzzle. It is all ready to go and be entered into the competition this Saturday. I'm really excited to go and see everybody and make another blanket!

And then I have three shawl/scarf type items done. These are all going to my mom, well, at least the first two are. I think that the last one may go into the shop, which I need to do another update, but I have been thinking, that most of my items are for fall/winter, so I might wait until it is closer to that season until I post other things. The first one is a Nairi by Amanda Muscha. It was made from Malabrigo Rios, but I am unsure of the colorway, since it was from stash. The pattern calls for fingering weight, but I did it with the worsted weight on a US Size 9 needle. The ladies at the LYS thought that I am a tight knitter and I should have used an even larger needle, but I like how it turned out. I liked the pattern and I thought that it knit up well. 

And then I finished a Curl from the book Curls by Hunter Hammersen. This one is the Gridelin. And I made it out of fingering weight yarn, named Army Girl by Pagewood Farms. I've shown this one as it was in progress, but it was a blast to work on, and I've started another pattern from the same book. 

And finally I used the picot edge from the Nairi and just improvised a triangle scarf, with a skein of worsted weight wool that I dyed myself. I really like how it turned out. I'm not sure if I'm going to give this one to my mom, or if I'm going to post it to the shop. 

In final news, I have an Instagram account! I'm spinningknitting1 on there too! So follow me, and I'll try to do mostly daily updates of my knitting on there. 

Chevrons and Curls

So yesterday was a pretty exciting day, I got a new book in the mail. I heard about this book from a podcast, I think it was Just One More Row. Anyways, it is a book called Curls by Hunter Hammersen. I am making one for my mother, and I just started it last night, and I am making pretty good progress. The one I am making is called Gridelin. I am making it out of Pagewood Farm yarn in the Yukon base, which is Merino Superwash, Bamboo, Nylon (70/20/10), in the colorway Army Girl. I got it from Sue's Soft Stuff in Northern Missouri, I don't remember exactly which town. (My mom and I went on a mini yarn/fabric crawl for my birthday). She had a lot of locally produced fiber, and I got a lot of alpaca and llama. I'm working the curl on a US Size 4 needles.

I'm making this one for my mother, since she wears scarf type things in the office that she works at much more than I wear them. The next one that I will make I'll make for my grandmother. It took me about an hour or so of knitting right off the chart before I got it memorized, but now it is making sense and I am just flying through. I am really liking working on this and can't wait to finish this one and make some more. The colors are truer in this photo, and you can see a bit of the stitch detail.

In other news I ran out of light pink yarn for a ripple blanket I was working on, so I finished it up yesterday. I think that it turned out really cute. This is of course for Project Linus, and the pattern is from the 100 Colorful Ripple Stitches to Crochet by Leonie Morgan. I cannot speak highly enough of this book, I have made three or four blankets from the patterns from this book and have really loved working on every single one of them.

I also decided to go ahead and post the pictures that I have done and if they don't get any views than I will redo them and try again, this time making a proper photo box, but I think that the ones I have now will work and look nice. So if you want to check out my store, now with some hats for sale as well as all the bags it's right here. Thanks!

Sparkles and Glitz

I finished the glitter hat with sequins that I was working on last time I updated this blog. I had a knit and purl pattern on it that I think shows up better in this photo than the one before. I haven't worn it yet, still waiting for a special occasion to pull it out. I wear hats all the time, that I've made and I think that they make it better for me while I'm growing my hair out. I cut off 12 inches and it was really short for about the past six months, like shaved at the neck and not much longer going up, like how middle aged women wear there hair. And now I'm growing it out, but it has a nasty habit of standing straight up on end, and I don't think that that's very attractive, so I'm wearing hats pretty much non-stop.

I also finished a ten stitch Tunisian crochet blanket that I started just a couple of days ago. I really liked working on this blanket, it was addicting to just make short rows, back and forth. And with Tunisian crochet you don't have to turn your work every row, or learn how to knit backwards. I think that I'm going to make another one with two colors spiraling around at the same time, because I like how that looks. This one I started with one variegated, and then did a round of tan, and then another variegated skein and then another round of the tan. I really like how it turned out. I used a size 10 Tunisian crochet hook. And all the variegated yarn was Red Heart Super Saver, and the tan was a Caron Simply One Pound. This blanket will go to Project Linus.

The next one that I am going to make is going to be a bright green with a steel blue spiraling around each other, I think that it will look interesting.

I also took pictures for my etsy shop of my knitted items, but am waffling as to whether they are nice enough to put up. I think that they look alright, but all the advice on sites from Pinterest and other blogs says to make a light box and have a white background, but I don't see why you couldn't have a nice setting for your background as well. I will decide in the next couple of days, at the very worst I could post them, see if they get any hits, and then if they don't take them down and re-do the pictures. I think I might have to do that with my bags that I put up anyways. I'm not sure. I'm just trying to wing it as I go.