yarn

FO (Finished Object for My Non Knitting Friends)

/ LDSVenus / 2 Comments

This is the pattern for the Messy Bun Hat I chose. I probably got it on Etsy, but I’m sure you can find it on Ravelry as well, I will probably choose a different one next time. It was easy to knit but not quite what I wanted, tho what I wanted would not have shown up well with the very dark chocolate brown (almost black) color. If I knit this again I would chose a 2X2 rib, so it would pull in a little more to be a little bit more snug around the head, (this is a 2X1 rib) and maybe go down a needle size on the head. the red kinda looks like fireflies, except instead of yellow their lights are red :P. Maybe re-dye this with a yellow tied off under the black or dark brown and call the color Fireflies. Sorry, you can’t see where the bun would come out because my mannequin’s head has no hair :P.

Special Order Yarn

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I special ordered this yarn from Awenydd Yarn and Fiber who also has a YouTube channel. I got it in the mail today and she sent with it a very cute little strawberry progress keeper :). She does some awesome yarn dying and I love her Wild Card Wednesday on her YouTube channel, where she has a random picker program that picks 3 colors at random and she will dye a skein of yarn using those 3 colors. It’s so fun to watch her decide how to use them together. :). I wanted black with the red random dots but her new black dye had issues and it ended up as a deep chocolate brown. She offered to redye a new skein, but I told her to send it anyway because honestly this is beautiful so I told her I wanted to keep it, 🙂 and if my daughter insisted on black yarn I would reorder another skein. She is very easy to work with, I told her she should put that color in her shop!

The hat I am making with it (I will put a picture in when I start the hat) is for my daughter who really wanted just a plain black yarn but I know she loves red so I wanted to have those random red dots in there for a pop of color (you know as a knitter plain black yarn is not as fun to knit :P). If she insists on the black instead of the brown, I will reorder it for her, then I’m keeping the brown for me :). I would just make it for her and say oops, but she wants a messy bun hat for a pony tail for her long hair and I want just a regular closed crown on a hat so I will ask her before knitting the hat for her. Crossing my fingers :).

Storm headed our way this week end, it’s gonna a be a bad one for those above us at first then for those below us and as it heads east. Everyone in it’s path please keep an eye on your local weather, it is covering a wide path with lots of snow above us and some snow for us (about 4 inches they said) and tornados for those east of us, be safe.

Baby Sweater FO

/ LDSVenus / 2 Comments

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.

Last day of the Year 2025 – an FO Hat and Just Started Hats and a Baby Sweater.

/ LDSVenus / 5 Comments

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!!!

New Yarn, Gifts and a Cool Picture :)

/ LDSVenus / 10 Comments

Ok, the first picture is a beautiful tonal blue yarn, colorway is I’m the Resistance. I had her do a special request to dye the tonal blue, as a full skein, that was in the American Woman color way I bought from her a couple of months ago. I wanted to use both in (I think I’ve settled on this but it might change so many things to knit :P) a cowl and fingerless mitts or hat to match for my grand daughter. The business is Awenydd Yarn & Fiber (click on catalog under the label at the top of the page to see all her beautiful pre-dyed color ways, you can also do a special order request like I did.) You can find her on YouTube where she does a Monday podcast reworking some of her older color ways while you watch her dye, a Wednesday podcast while you watch her dye from a random selection of colors of dyes from a random generator, it’s fun, and on Fridays she talks about her finished projects and works in progress etc. This request came out perfect! This is her Triple Goddess base, 100% super wash merino and a whopping 490 yards! It’s a light fingering weight. Would be perfect for a shawl, and to be honest I still haven’t ruled that out, lol. I have time to make my final choice :P. She also threw in a sample of her color way Reverie and 2 beautiful stitch markers and a progress keeper!

My son and his husband own an alpaca farm (I help out on Saturdays because they are open to the public on Saturdays.) I’m exhausted just thinking about how much work a farm takes as a business.) They took a well deserved week’s vacation a couple of weeks ago and went to FL to Disney World and Universal Studios to get away and rest, while Ev’s parents took care of the farm for them. They brought me back a Mandalorian Hoodie, a Harry Potter Gryffindor tee and 2 new pins (a Gryffindor and a Mandalorian) for my knitting project bag. You can probably tell I’m obsessed with Harry Potter and the Mandalorian :). So cool that they brought me something, it made me smile. The pin on the bottom is a zipper needle felted sheep I bought at a fiber festival a couple of years ago. In the next two pictures they are enjoying some of their Disney World adventures, they like Star Wars too.

The bottom right is just a cool picture, it’s called “a one in a million shot”.

Yarn Acquired!

/ LDSVenus / 10 Comments

Well I might have accidentally ordered a skein of yarn from an Indy (spelling?) dyer on YouTube that I follow, Awenydd Yarn and Fiber, I linked her shop, you can look for her on YouTube under that name. She does a Monday podcast reworking some of her older color ways while you watch her dye, a Wednesday podcast while you watch her dye from a random selection of colors of dyes from a random generator, it’s fun, and on Fridays she talks about her works in progress etc. This was one of her reworks of an older color way, she did last week, to jazz it up a bit. I fell in love with it, I had enough extra money and ordered it. She got it right out to me and she sent me that beautiful crystal in a heart cage progress keeper as a thank you, so pretty. I’m thinking about asking her to dye up a skein of just the blue color as a tonal next month. I thought it would make a nice shawl knitting 6 rows of the blue and 3 or of the American Woman rows throughout the shawl. What do you think? I think the blue would give it some balance and depth as a shawl, beginning and ending with the blue, and the brighter colors would make it pop a bit adding excitement and the blue in the brighter colors would pull the two together :). If I was a sock knitter I would just knit socks for July, but I’m not, so there’s that :P. She has knit samples with the skeins so you can see what the yarn works up as.

Hoping everyone is fine and not suffering with the heat. We are having thunderstorms today and tomorrow, and will be in the mid 90’s on Saturday, Sunday and next Monday, with sweltering humidity, which they said would make it feel like the low 100’s, :(. This is our late July and August weather, way too soon!!! Thank goodness for air conditioning!!!

Yarn I Got for a Christmas Project

/ LDSVenus / 8 Comments

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!

Fiber and Yarn and Projects

/ LDSVenus / 8 Comments

Well, I might have accidentally bought another 8 oz of spinning fiber, my picture didn’t really capture the sparkles. Let’s face it I have AD-OS (attention deficit – Oh Shiny!). I now have the same fiber, that I bought in yellow, now in cranberry. Thought it might make a nice batt with yellow, gradually blending the yellow and cranberry together toward the middle for an orange gradually blending back out to the, cranberry for a fade, well it works in my head anyway. Just a thought. As usual I got this from Camaj Fiber Arts.

I saw that KnitPicks is having their annual yarn sale (until 11/27 at 11:59pm so hurry!!!) and I got the Chroma worsted weight, 70% super wash wool, 30% nylon, on sale 60% off for $4 a skein so I bought 3. Then I decided I wanted to try to make this Brioche cowl, Purple Mountain Majesties from KnitPicks, I think it was a free pattern. I have never tried brioche before and it’s small (lets see if I’m biting off more than I can chew) so I bought 2 skeins in the colors of the cowl in the Chroma fingering weight, not 60% off, but it was 50% off so it was $6 per skein, still not bad. I got them all in and they are gorgeous, not merino soft but soft enough. But they are single ply, ugh, no where on the skein did it say it was single ply. Not my favorite to knit with, but I have them and they are pretty, I will see what I can do with the 3 that are not in a project yet, hats maybe, is 198 yards is enough for a non cabled hat? I’ll do some digging.

Haven’t gotten notice yet on the yarn being shipped for my special project, hope it comes in soon, I think it’s been the 2 weeks they said it took them to get it in. I need to go buy more color ink for my printer with my next paycheck so I can print out the color work Christmas stocking that Arnie and Carlos are doing as a free knit along. I’ve never really liked knitting color work and here I am jumping head long into deep water with a huge color work sock with an after thought heel (never done before, I can barely do the regular heel), and it’s charted (maybe I can read colors better than I can read symbols) oh my, life is so interesting! But if you are following along with Arne and Carlos on YouTube, it is really pretty.

Was warm today in the low 50’s, but tomorrow is 39F and it gets colder and colder from there. The next Monday will be around 22F, and after tonight most nights, will be in the 20’s (F) to lower teens. Winter is on its way!

New Project and New Needles

/ LDSVenus / 6 Comments

I should have started these fingerless mitts earlier, but in my defense I was trying to discretely get her hand size before starting and finally decided I just needed to take my best guess and get it started, it’s for Christmas :P. These are the Na Ceithir Duil by Liz Corke on Ravelry, they are a paid for pattern. Sorry it wouldn’t let me make a link, hmmm. The last two years I’ve been working on a set with the dandelion pattern. 1st year was a turban style head band to cover the ears for walking in the fall and spring, 2nd year (last year) was a cowl, and this year are fingerless mitts. I won’t be doing the colors just white (I just needed the pattern so I didn’t have to do all the math for the pattern with how many stitches, math isn’t my thing), as the other items I knitted were all white, so it will match. I’m using a different weight and kind of yarn because this pattern is for a fingering weight yarn and so to keep her hands warmer I chose a Stroll wool blend from Knit Picks. I’m using 9″ ChiaoGoo red lace circular needles.

I have a special project planned for family Christmas gifts this year. Some kinds of knitting I don’t do because I’m not a fan, love looking at it but not knitting it, however these are smaller objects and so darn cute that I bought the pattern and bit the bullet and ordered some double pointed needles (my favorite needles are the Knitter’s Pride Karbonz because they are light weight carbon with metal tips) and I’m not a fan of the double pointed needles either (this pattern gets too small for the 9″ circulars and it’s too clumsy for my favorite Flexi Flips, I must be crazy!) I had to order the yarn (expensive) and I’ll post about the project when the yarn comes in, so until then it’s a secret :). I will be making these every year for a while as the pattern has 24 versions and everyone will get the same one in order each year, so I didn’t mind spending the money on the Karbonz (also expensive) because I didn’t have any double pointed needles in the right size (because I don’t like using them :P). Crossing my fingers this won’t be more of a chore than an enjoyment. You’ll see what I mean :P. The yarn probably won’t be in for a couple of weeks, the yarn shop had to order it.

Cooler weather is finally here, tho they are saying we will get back in to the 50’s this week into the beginning of next week, and maybe little snow next Wed and Thursday with lower 40’s and upper 30’s. Fall’s finally here in time for winter, sigh.

Knitting FO’s, a WIP and Mending

/ LDSVenus / 9 Comments

Time to update my knitting projects. In the top picture are two new for my Hats for Warmth Project I work on. I have 6 hats and the children will get 4, the other 2 will go in my bag to be sent to the shelter when I have 5 or 6 done. The hats I worked on during General Conference as I listened :). I use “I Love This Yarn” from Hobby Lobby, it’s a worsted weight yarn, and I use a size 5 (I knit a little loosely so I go down a size needle) 16″ circular needle (my favorite is the Knitters Pride Karbonz) in a two by two ribbing. For adults I like to make it 9 1/2 to 9 3/4 inches long so they can fold up the cuff (it’s too cold for a beanie here) and I don’t have to measure their heads for length that way :). ZeusHide on Etsy.

Next is the baby blanket I have been working on. This is a paid for pattern so I’ve linked to the Ravelry page so you can see more about it. I think I bought it from Webs patterns tho, I think that is where I first saw it. It is turning out to be a nice cosy easy knit. Turned out the lady I was knitting it for wasn’t pregnant (one reason I don’t ask because who wants to be embarrassed! LOL someone else asked). So I will continue to work on it at my leisure and enjoy the knit. Maybe it could be a lap blanket for someone at Christmas :). You can see the yarn I am using. It’s from Hobby Lobby, it’s soft, came in a large skein and was 30% off (which Hobby Lobby does every other week for its yarn). It will take the whole skein, but with the discount it was only a little over 8 dollars for the skien! It is a worsted weight 16oz skein, acrylic for easier washing. Without the discount it is $12.

The last small picture is 4 pairs of alpaca socks from my son’s store, a little critter snuck into his store and chewed them up. He had to go through all his merchandise to make sure everything else was ok and he put out traps to catch the little bugger. He’s not had the problem before so he’s looking to see where it came in at. He told me if I could fix them I could have them, so I said sure and I ordered what’s in the 4th picture, a nice darning set. The little flower looking thing is a needle threader, how cool!!! I was watching Knitting Expat from YouTube on her Finishing Fridays podcast and thought I could do that, no telling what they will look like but they will be wearable and since it’s on the toes or heels, no one will see it. They are different sizes so I think I can fix two of them one for my son and one for his spouse and the other two I can wear one and give the other one so someone else who wears an XL (it’s one of the colorful ones) tho with the toes involved, maybe it won’t be XL after I mend it lol. They are very thick and soft!

Gonna go make spaghetti for supper. 😉