A friend of mine lost her mom last month so I thought I would knit her a comfort shawl. Her mom loved blue so I thought I would make it in blue that has some green to give it depth. I used Homespun by Lion brand, which is a bulky yarn, in the color Lagoon. I am not a big fan of the Lion brand Homespun yarn because it’s splitty, but it makes a nice soft thicker blanket type of fabric. I cast on 68 stitches and knit it in a garter stitch with a size 10 needle. It will take 3 skeins to finish the length. If you need it wider just add extra stitches when you cast on and grab another skein :P.
A thunder storm will be blowing in about 9pm tonight and then more rain mid week next week. Spring weather!! Sure wish they would quit doing the spring forward with the time thing, it sure messes up my sleep for a month or so.
I show the sleeves pulled on the top so you could see the cables. When I straighten it out, the yoke sets properly. I used Yarn Bee Warm & Cozy, color Spa. It’s a nice soft yarn but I don’t think it held the cable texture very well. I will probably go back to the “I love This Yarn” for the baby sweaters. I used my Knit Picks 16 inch fixed circular needles size 7 for the body, what was called for in the pattern. I usually use a size down because I knit a little loosely, but since I needed it to be a 6 months instead of a 3 months size (you know how fast they grow!!), the size up needle worked well. I used my Knitter’s Pride Dreamz, 9″ size 7 for the sleeves and a size 6 for the cuffs. I think next time I’ll go down to a 5 on the cuffs and bottom of the sweater.
I started the baby sweater (in the 1st picture in the light blue, Spa color way) in Yarn Bee Warm & Cozy yarn a few weeks ago, but had to frog it and start again. Been a while since I’ve done the Tin Can Knits Flax sweater pattern. Plus I decided to do a cable on the sleeves instead of the garter stitch. I have the neck done and the stitch markers in to mark off the front, back and sleeves. Just started the increases for the raglan part. I will be working on it soon, it needs to be done in February.
The hats are something I work on during the year for the local homeless shelter and as a bonus they give me a mindless knit when I need to knit but don’t have the brain power to think about complicated patterns. I don’t normally have more than one on my needles at a time, because having too many things going at one time gives me anxiety. But, for some reason, I started 3, sigh. The one in the 1st picture, that is finished, was done with I Love This Yarn, Print in the Mahogany Singe color way, it’s a very nice color. The 2nd one in blue in the 2nd picture is the I Love This Yarn, print color way Blueberry Buckle, which is also a very nice color knit up. The 3rd one I went with Yarn Bee Yarn ID in the color way Thistle (a light lavender). All these yarns I buy at Hobby Lobby on the weeks that they are 30% off (which is every other week) and they are all worsted weight. Hobby Lobby has a nice selection and you can also order them online if you don’t like to go to a store to shop. I’m a tactile person and like to see and handle the yarn before I buy :P. Anyway these should keep me busy for a few weeks. Hopefully in the next few weeks I will start spinning again too.
Hope everyone has a wonderful and blessed New Year!!!
This was the Halloween celebration at the farm this past Saturday :). The first two pictures are some of his decorations, then there are several pictures of the alpacas wearing costumes, lol, some of them had trouble leaving them on! You can see the male behind the fence with a bow tie and little Apollo also has a tie on, some of the females were wearing hats. Libby the llama said, nope! They will be decked out at Christmas too :).
The next to the last picture is some sport weight hand spun I turned into a hat for my friend that gave me the smaller wheel that I use at the farm during alpaca days to show spinning to the people who come out to enjoy the alpacas as a thank you. It’s a paid for pattern, Husband Request Hat on Ravelry. I changed it a little so I made it a little longer and knit 4 purl 2 so it’s a little more stretchy, but I wasn’t sure of his head measurements and I am not a fan of the hats that fit skin tight so I thought this was the best way to go. Hope it fits him :P.
The last picture is the new hat I’m working on with the Hats for Warmth project I work on for our local homeless shelter. This will be hat number 5 this year, one more after this and I will send them off to the shelter. I am using a #6 16″ circular needle and I Love This Yarn in the print color #red tweed. It’s not really a tweed, it’s a darker red with black speckles on it, LOL, but it is pretty. I am enjoying knitting it.
I am almost ready to start the border, I decided I didn’t need more pattern rows as I think it is long enough :). Sorry for the lighting, we had drizzling rain off and on most of the day and no sunshine so nice pictures are a bit of a hit and miss. When I’m done I’ll wash and block it and take a better picture. :). I have also been working on the Hats for Warmth Project that I do to send hats to the local homeless shelter. Maybe next week I can start on those stranded knitting Christmas tree balls that I bought last year from Arne and Carlos’ website. I can watch their YouTube video for instructions on how to do it. Their Christmas Stockings and sock patterns are on sale at the moment. Closer to Christmas they might have their Christmas tree balls patterns on sale as well, they are really pretty :).
Ok, I hemmed and hawed and decided to buy a set of wool combs from Bam Fiber Works . I got the double row, fine wool combs with a magnetic comb cover. LOL so glad I got those covers, these things look like weapons!!! It came with a bottom that you can clamp to a table and had a nice set up to hold the comb still while you use the other comb to comb through the fiber and align it and and clean it from short cuts and left over vm. I will be washing some of the 2nd cuts from the cria (baby alpaca) fiber I got so I can try it out. Gotta be careful using those, they can do some damage!! These combs are very nice, I will enjoy learning to use them (carefully!!)
On my Look for Happiness Blanket I have the bottom border and 20 patterns done (4 rows to a pattern). This is the medium size and I need to do about 49 total patterns before doing the top border. So almost halfway done. If it doesn’t look like yarn chicken, I might add an extra pattern or so before the doing the top border. I am almost done with the 2nd skein and I have 4 more, so I might be able to make it a little longer, I’ll see where it is when I finish the 3rd skein. I’m hoping to be further along before Tour de Fleece starts on July 5th when the Tour de France begins. We spin on our spinning wheels on the days that the bicyclists ride and have two rest days when they do. We don’t normally spin all day, just however much time we have decided to spin, I’ll probably spin 20 to 30 min a day, it ends on July 27th. Will need to buy a new Tour de Fleece tee shirt this year :).
Time for a knitting update. Picture one – (if you click on the picture it will enlarge) I have been working on my Hats for Warmth project so I will have hats for the homeless shelter this fall, gotta get a head start on it :P. The finished one is from I Love This Yarn from Hobby Lobby, color Deep Sea Diving/842. The one next to it is still from Hobby Lobby but it’s their Yarn ID, color Indigo, it looks like a denim. Really pretty. I am also using that same yarn and color for a new Look for Happiness Blanket. I really like the softness of this yarn. I love this pattern and find it extremely comforting and peaceful to knit. It is for a Christmas gift and since it’s the medium size instead of the baby size, it will take about 6 skeins, I decided I needed to start early, but to be honest, I don’t mind knitting on it all year long at all.
The 2nd picture is an Agaparthus plant. My son gave it to me about 5 or 6 years ago for Mother’s Day and it did well outside the first year and had so many blooms. It did not like it inside my house tho’ when winter came and I needed to bring it in, I do not have the full sun it needs inside my apt. I struggled to barely kept it alive and because it was so weak I was afraid to leave it outside in our sometimes windy and very hot summers , and then all of a sudden it’s come back to life and has a stalk that might actually bloom. When I know the warm is here to stay I will try to put it outside again and hope it will grow!! Time will tell.
I finished the Look for Happiness baby blanket for an expectant mother in my church. :). Hope she likes it. It was a very enjoyable knit, not complicated, but enough “need to pay attention to one of the rows” to keep your interest. I found it a relaxing knit. 🙂
On March 19th we had a little hail storm. I thought it was just a really heavy rain, until I saw these (2nd picture) on my balcony!!
I had the hat finished that I was working on with this skein of yarn I (that I had finished spinning for the 2023 Tour de Fleece) but was not satisfied with the hat at all!! The yarn was too thick and the needles I had gone down a couple of sizes, trying to compensate for the yarn weight, were a size or two to small and made it too dense and it was still to big and the cables didn’t show well. So I frogged it, sorry I never did get a picture of it. The yarn is a light bulky (because it’s a tweed) and the pattern called for a dk weight. I have chosen another pattern but will probably still have to adjust it, or maybe just keep looking for a better pattern.
Hope everyone is safe with all the crazy weather, take care, be safe!
The first picture is the Look for Happiness blanket (baby size). I am about 3/4’s finished. Getting excited to get this finished, even tho I am enjoying it, I have other things to get busy on!! The lightbulb markers you see running up the left side are counting 10 center patterns (four rows per pattern) because I need 39 and it is easier to keep track of how many I’ve knitted :). Nine center patterns left then the top border :). I will make this again!
The 2nd picture is our weather from yesterday afternoon to 3am this morning. We were almost as cold today, but starting tomorrow we will be a few degrees warmer and by Friday we will actually hit the lower to middle teens (without wind chill). I have stayed in my house yesterday and today, not my favorite thing getting out in way below 0 degrees weather. They are promising us lower 40’s on Sunday and Monday, impatiently waiting! Spring is getting closer even if it doesn’t feel like it :P.
I wish they would quit changing things on WordPress, this took an hour to get the pictures almost where I wanted them because creating the one choice I usually use, made them way to big and very long with no way to make them smaller. Ugh!
Anyway, my mind is un-fogged and I can think straight again and knitting on the blanket again, I’ll put a picture up of my progress in a few days or a week. I was very sick for 3 weeks in Jan, with some ugly respiratory virus’, RSV and influenza A, not at the same time (thank goodness!) but as I was almost over one I got sick with the other, very nasty critters.
The first picture is from some extra cold air that came down from Canada in Jan. Yes that is frost on the inside of the metal plate on my sliding glass door inside my apt. If I’d get some heavy thermal drapes that might not happen or if it did, I wouldn’t see it :P. I’m not a cold weather girl, but here I am anyway. sigh.
The second picture is the yarn I ordered before Christmas but didn’t get to start the Christmas gifts I wanted to do, partly because I was sick with a cold (this has been an ugly winter for getting sick for everyone I know!!) and wasn’t up to it. But now I can tell you what I got them for. I bought some patterns from Arne & Carlos and the Christmas tree decorations with the knitting Christmas ball color work ornaments was one of them. I will need to buy more of this yarn as I go. There are 24 ornaments in this pattern for $7, but just before Christmas they are 1/2 off. I’m really not into color work, but these aren’t very big and maybe I’ll decide I like it better than I did years ago. I haven’t started working on any yet, they will still be gifts, but I have a blanket and a couple of hats and a pair of fingerless mitts to finish first. All this sick stuff reset my brain and now that I feel human again, my knitting mojo is back. But this year I will have a little less time to knit because the new calling I now have in my church is much busier than the calling I had before. Especially while I figure out what I’m doing and get use to it!!! Having a little anxiety over the change and that is normal for me with change :P, but the knitting should help with that!
LDSVenus-knits 