What I've Been Up To This Week

First of all, another lap robe for the Veterans' Hospital. This one has shades of rust & orange at one end & the rest in various creams. We have a lot of creams & whites that have been donated, so I'm trying to use some of them up while keeping the color scheme interesting. You'll notice that one of my favorite models, Max, is almost coordinated with this one.


I had a request from someone at the Senior Center for a baby hat in yellow for a new grand-daughter. So I went back to the hat pattern I used a couple years ago that looks darling on babies.


Sorry about the lousy photo, (I snapped it at the last minute before heading to the center on Thursday) but the point of the hat continues up and looks like this one from a couple years ago:



I think I should probably knit a few more of them as there have been a number of new grandparents & great-grandparents at the center recently.

And finally, a decent shot of the sweater for Tom that I'm going to be frogging. The re-do is going to be straight stockinette.


I also have another lap-robe on the needles, probably a little over half done.

Finish-itis

I had a serious case of Finish-itis on Monday!


First up - Grandson's sweater. What a difference needles can make. I mentioned last Saturday that I'd purchased a set of Brittany Birch size 10.5 DPs. With those in hand, I whipped through knitting the sleeves and finished running in the yarn ends shortly after I returned home from teaching knitting.

Fair Isle yoked seamless sweater worked in Bernat worsted weight acrylic on size 9 & 10.5 needles. Knit in the round up to the armholes and then split for back & front yokes. Three needle bind-off for the shoulders, then the sleeve stitches were picked up around the armhole & knit down to the cuff. The snowflake pattern is from Alice Starmore's Book of Fair Isle Knitting and is worked over 25 stitches for 25 rows. Lessons learned: A boat neck needs to be larger than I made this one, even though I decreased the percentage of stitches for the shoulders from what Elizabeth Zimmerman's ESP calculations suggested. I wound up having to pick out the neck bind-off and removed the 3 needle shoulder bind-off for about 3 stitches on each side. I then worked a K1 red, P1 white ribbing for six rows and, switching to plain red worked six more rows of ribbing that was folded to the inside and tacked. I'm just hoping that this doesn't make the front neck too high for comfort.

Secondly, the Marine Blue Heather Palette socks with the lace up the instep and then all around the cuff.


See, there really are two of them!


And a close up of the heel & the cuff lace. Worked in Palette fingering weight yarn from KnitPicks on size 2 Harmony DPs. Started in March, finished originally on Monday, but then I frogged the bind-off of the second sock and reworked it with a size 4 needle to get the needed amount of stretch.


Also on Monday, I brought home two crocheted scarves, a light blue and a speckled navy that Frances had crocheted and made hats to go with them. It helped that I had a full night of TV with Bones, House and then PBS's Carrier. The teal hat with the variegated slip stitch pattern was completed last night and goes with a plain teal garter stitch scarf that I knit last week.


We went to an ALYS (Almost Local Yarn Store) over in Rochester today while we were there on other business this afternoon and I found these needles on the $3 table. A 35" size 1 circular and a 16" size 15, both Crystal Palace bamboo. My Boye NeedleMaster set doesn't go down to size 1 so this circular is long enough to let me cast on over the two points and make the little rectangle I use for the toe when I'm making socks.


And here, hiding behind the fan we needed last week when we broke a record high with 80° and don't need this week when we're challenging record lows set back in the 1870s, is Callie who is probably wondering why Mommy is spreading knitting out of the floor and hoping that it gets left there for a kitty bed.

Yesterday was a great day. My friend Coralynn is in town from AZ to visit her daughter and we got together to talk, laugh & have lunch. We've been emailing and working on genealogy together since 1999 and this is the first we've met in person. She's just as neat a lady face to face as she is via the web and I had a wonderful time.

Insert Snazzy Title Here....

Because I can't think of a good title this afternoon. This post is sort of a hodge-podge.

First of all, Grandson's sweater is coming along. I had the first sleeve almost finished when I realized that I had been working to the wrong measurement and had to rip back. I'm decreasing at a slower rate now which let me leave the sleeve on the 16" Inox circular longer which helped as I'm faster on a circular than I am on DPs. The shoulder seams have been finished off with a 3-needle bind-off, but I think I'm going to have to do something more with the boat neckline as I don't like the way it currently rolls outward. I'm thinking of a short stand-up neck-band in the red & white alternating stitches, perhaps in seed stitch.


I'm continuing to work on hat & scarf sets for our K4 group. Here are two that I finished this week and another set is on the needles.


Garage sales have started and I was able to pick up these three skeins of yarn for $1 total. One is Bernat black worsted and the other two are Baby Soft in a pale blue. I'll take the latter to K4 next Thursday for my friend Pat who is always looking for baby yarn and then probably make a hat & scarf set out of the black. Our local Meijer's store where our group usually stocks up on yarn appears to be discontinuing the department, so this summer I'll be searching garage sales to stock the cupboard at the Sr. Center with worsted weight sayelle.


On the way home from shopping this morning, we stopped by the LYS Heritage Spinning & Weaving and I brought home a sack of goodies. In the center, a second 16" size 10.5 Inox circular so I can work on a hat at the same time as I'm using that size to work on a sweater *and* a set of Brittany 10.5 DPs. I love my Harmony DPs in the small sizes, but find that working with the 10.5s make my fingers hurt because the points are sharp. The store had Bryspun DPs in that size for the first time since I've been trying to find a set that's shorter than the 10" ones you can see on the sweater sleeve, but after pressing my finger against the points of those, they were as sharp as the Harmony ones. I'm hoping that I won't have that problem with the birch needles - I have a set of them in size 13 that I like.


Then on either side of the needles, a couple real finds. 100 gram skeins of On-Line super-wash sock yarn at 75% off. Instead of the usual $16 a skein, I got these for $4 each (plus tax). I'm almost finished with the second Marine Blue Heather sock and had planned to work up the KnitPicks natural flecked superwash next, but now I'm wondering if I shouldn't satisfy my curiosity on how these On-Line yarns in the Nepal colorways will knit up. That's color #785 on the left & #781 on the right.

A Contest At Knitnana

My very good friend, Sallee, has a new contest over on her blog Knitnana. This last weekend, she added a new goodie to her line of Nana Sadie Rose bags & needle holders. Gladys is designed to hold interchangeable needle sets like KnitPicks Options or the Boye NeedleMaster sets. What's the contest, you ask? It's voting on which type of closing you think the needle case should have - a ribbon tie, a button tab, or an elastic loop and button. A little over a month ago (see the Feb 7th post) I received my Grand Mera & Posy bags, and an Oressa double pointed needle holder. I love them!! And I can testify to the meticulous workmanship of Sallee's masterpieces. So click on the link up there and voice your opinion. The contest's prize is a Gladys all your own. Be sure to look at all the other bags she sells while you're there.

In other news, we are in the middle of the move to the new house. It's going slowly as there's no rush, but cats, computers, cookware, yarn, needles & books are over here now and as we discover that we're missing something, we drive the two blocks to the old house and grab it. I'm in the middle of deciding how to use all my new cupboard & pantry space. The spices were moved yesterday - yes, I have lots of spices as we like Thai, Indian, Mexican, & Lebanese dishes - and are now "filed" in the bottom pull out shelves next to the stove. They're even in vaguely alphabetical order with labels on the top so I can see what I have at a glance. This is going to be so much nicer than having to rummage through a cabinet shelf in search of the Five Spice powder for stir-fry. {g}..

As you might imagine, with all this going on, I haven't had much time for knitting. Sock #2 is about where I left it a couple weeks ago. I did whip up four plain hats last week between Monday & Thursday to go with scarves one of our K4 members, Frances, had crocheted and knit a black garter stitch scarf over the weekend. My biggest project at the moment is the sweater that I'm designing for my grandson. These photos are from a week ago, but I now have the fair isle pattern on the yoke complete and am just about ready to start the back yoke.




The yarn is Bernat's Super Saver worsted weight on 10½ needles. The body is knit in the round up to the armholes and then back & forth for the yokes. The Norwegian Star pattern is from Alice Starmore's Fair Isle Knitting Book. It's another "design as I go" original so things may change as I go along, but right now I'm planning on a boat neck with 3-needle bind-offs for the shoulders, then picking up the sleeves on 16" circulars and using a small fair isle pattern at the top while I work down to the cuffs in the round. Grand-daughter's sweater arrived in California last week and she tells me that she's already worn it to school, kung-fu class & Girl Scouts. I think it made a hit!

A New Translation

A member of our K4 knitting group (Hi, Marian!!) asked me earlier this fall if I could figure out a way of making this sweater without having to seam the front & back halves together. I've been working on it for a week or so and this is how far I've progressed.




I knit the front & back of the body in the round and when I reached the underarm I used a provisional cast-on from a crocheted chain (that's Knit-Cro-Sheen which has the advantage of not splitting when picking up stitches). When I reach the front shoulder in a few more rows, I'll bind off for the neck and then leave the shoulder stitches on holders while I go back and release the sleeve stitches from the chain. At that point, I can knit up the back yoke & sleeves and when I reach the shoulders do a 3-needle bind-off. If everything works the way I'm hoping, it will be finished except for running in yarn ends.


I did have one small problem that I didn't go back to fix. I'm working the sweater on size 6 & 8 needles rather than the 5 & 7s that the pattern calls for because that's what I had handy. However, I'm so used to working on size 10½s that when it came time to switch to straight needles and pick up the sleeve stitches from the crocheted chains, I grabbed a 10½. If you look closely at the circled area of the following photo you can see a row of larger stitches.


In other news, DH's new pair of Fuzzy Feet are finished and felted. The addition of the strand of sport-weight orlon didn't affect the felting process at all. On the blue sock, I had started working a lace cuff and then after about 4" had switched to a rib. After looking at it for a while, I decided that I didn't like the rib with the lace so last night I frogged back to the lace section and will continue with that without ribbing. I'll post photos soon.

Tremendous Thursday

Can you tell that I've been having a pretty good week since I got over the Monday Moaning? K4 gang met this afternoon and although only two of us showed up, Virginia and I had a good time. The booties elicited a lot of "awwww"s and I finished the green pair and started a pair in the variegated which I finished up this evening. Still have to sew them up to be completely finished, but will try to get to that tomorrow. Continued working on the Baby Rag-Tag #8 - this one is purple & lilac. I have enough yarn to make a second one that's just the same - I wonder how much teenagers like purple? Virginia called Lighthouse in Pontiac about the new shelter they're opening for homeless mothers of newborns and they seemed quite excited at the idea that we've been making baby blankets for the littlest residents when the shelter opens. The baby booties will go there too and hopefully help to wrap these new babies in blessings & love.

I forgot to take photos of the three baby afghans I took in today - there's a picture of the first one half done in an earlier posting and the other two were green and white with touches of green & yellow variegated. Lacking any real photo content until I get the new booties sewn up and the afghan finished, I'll leave you with photos of a sweater I made for my DGS (Darling GrandSon) a year or so ago. The original pattern was in Knitters Magazine, but I changed it around to have raglan sleeves instead of drop shoulders and really improvised on the button on pattern panels. The sweater itself is completely plain except for the buttons on the front that match with the buttonholes in each of the pattern panels. By changing the panel, the whole look of the sweater can be changed.