The knitting is done on Baby Surprise #1. Today is blocking day.
After a good soak, I’ll get this pinned out later today. It should be dry in a day or two at most. Once it has been delivered, I can finally share photos of the finished project!
And they are finished. Same old generic white bread pattern that I always make. I knit these on 2.00 mm double points, starting with 72 stitches. These are my current favorite knitting needles. The brand is Lykke, and I may have bought a bunch of the straight single point needles as well.
The yarn is West Yorkshire Spinners sock yarn, color name Brightside. I love this yarn, it is nicely spun, comes in lots of fun colors, and is also nicely priced. I got mine here, this is a great shop with many tempting yarns, good service and fast shipping.
Stay tuned for the next sock on the hit parade.
Yes, there is a bona fide finished project right there!
Pattern: Longest Night Shawl, by Lori Law
Yarn: Fyberspates Gleem Lace, 2 skeins, 1748 yards total. I used all but 14 grams. This was a gift several years ago from Jennifer AKA Major Knitter.
Needles: 2.75 mm
Started/Finished: 3/16/17-2/16/20
For: Me
Modifications: None
What I Learned: Patience. This is a huge shawl. None of it is difficult in the sense of technically challenging. There are several rows that have cables, but once I got it out of my head that cables in laceweight yarn aren’t any different than cables in heavy yarn, it was all good. I learned to fix some mistakes without tinking back multiple rows.
Pattern/Yarn rating: ***** for the pattern. It was formatted nicely, and no errors. **** for the yarn. It is gorgeous, but there is just enough variation in the color from one skein to the next to annoy me a tiny bit. In the finished shawl it almost looks a bit like a gradient. In over 1700 yards of yarn, there wasn’t a single knot or whacky bit that had to be spliced out.
I predict that I will wear this one a lot. I love the color, and I really like that it is such a generously sized shawl.
And now I get to pick one of the other four lace shawls I have in progress to focus on! I already have one chosen, since it will be a gift that has a “needs to be done” date.
Stay tuned!
I finally finished the Winter Solstice shawl today. It’s still drying on the blocking mats, but I couldn’t wait to show photos.
Well, actually, I did have to wait. I wasn’t able to log into the dashboard for my blog to get going with a post. It took me much of the afternoon, but I finally was able to fix the damned thing, which involved going into the actual wordpress file manager and renaming and deleting some things. NOT what I really planned to do with my afternoon.
Anyway.
This is pre-blocking. It got a good soak in the sink, and then blocked.
And I needn’t have worried about running out of yarn. 14 grams left.
Full post with details once it is dry.
And sort of a blog fail. I finally finished all the Euroflax linen gift somethings yesterday. I had this grand idea to knit a bunch of them, finished four.
Now that they’re (mostly) gifted, I can tell what they are. Don’t be too excited, I spent all of December knitting garter stitch linen face cloths.
I know, right? Those shouldn’t be too hard. They are just big garter stitch squares. And I forgot to take photos of the first three (the green, pink, and lavender ones) before I mailed them off. These are for my sisters, I packaged them with some nice bath soap. Linda just got one, the yellow one was finished yesterday so I’ll get it in the mail when we figure that the crush at the post office is over.
I’m not doing a whole finished project thing for those. It’s Euroflax linen, sport weight. I used this pattern. It starts with 3 stitches, increases every row until it’s wide enough, then decreases back to 3 stitches. “Wide enough” for me was 89 stitches.
You would think that with as few things that I finish around here, that I’d remember to take pictures. Oh well.
I organized all my knitting projects today and got them out of the jumble that they’d turned into.
That is 4 lace shawls, 2 pairs of socks, 2 sweaters, a Hitchhiker, and another linen washcloth. And Ripley. My plan is to finish one of the sock pairs, one of the sweaters, and one of the lace shawls next. We’ll see how that goes. Ripley said she’d help.
That right there is a Finished Project. I finished this one on the plane ride home from Poland, I just haven’t gotten around to posting about it officially.
Project Notes:
Yarn: Wollmeise Pure, 100% fingering weight merino. Delightful to work with and to wear.
Needles: 3.25mm. I started on straights, but transferred it to a circular for travel.
Pattern: Hitchhiker, by Martina Behm. As of today, there are 31.7K projects on Ravelry using this pattern. It is the most commonly knit pattern! This is the second one of these I’ve made.
Modifications: None
What I learned/love about this: This is such a versatile “little neck thing”. It’s an easy pattern, perfect for meetings or TV watching. I have no doubt that I’ll make more of these.
Pattern/yarn rating: ***** on both. The pattern is clear, and the yarn has the most vibrant colors. I have a bunch more of this in the stash, I just might start another one for those times that I need to pay attention to something but still want to knit.
I was a bit tempted by that Wollmeise link up there. I checked my stash, though. I have another eight hanks of this in some mighty lovely colors. I think I’ll go dig one of those out the boxes and cast on!
I finished a hat today for yet another friend going through chemo. I enjoy knitting for friends, but I hate the reason behind this. Cancer sucks. But the hat is cute.
Project Details:
Pattern: Tebe Slouch hat
Yarn: Cascade Ultra Pima cotton in Cobalt
Needles: 3.25 mm
Modifications: The body of the hat has a k2tog/yo row every 12th row. I substituted a plain knit row for that, since you don’t want a hat full of holes if you are losing your hair.
Project rating: Love it. The yarn is a little splitty, but the color is rich, and the yarn is very soft. The pattern is very well written and easy to follow. John and I both might need one of these in a wooly winter yarn.
There is a finished shawl at Chez Knitting Doctor!
Project Details:
Pattern: Balvraid Hap
Yarn: Blacker Swan 4-ply. The color is Tussac. This is just the most divinely soft merino. I’m not sure how well it would wear in a sweater, but it is lovely wrapped around my neck. The shawl took 6 balls, a little over 1100 yards. The yarn comes from a small farm in the Falkland Islands, and they get one shipment a year. I have my credit card at the ready for the next shearing.
Needles: 4 mm for the main section and the border, 4.5 for the lace edging.
For: Me
Started/Finished: 6/3/18–6/9/19
Modifications: None
What I learned: Technically, I learned a new bind off, the suspended bind off. It looks very tidy, and is nice and stretchy without being sloppy.
The construction of this was fun. You start with a few stitches, then knit a big garter stitch triangle. About the time you are about to stab yourself to death with the needles out of boredom, you cast off the top edge, pick up stitches along the sides of the triangle, and knit the lace border. The edging is knit on sideways (applied edging).
Pattern Rating: ***** This is well written, the charts for the lace are very clear, and no errors that I could find. And it’s free. Of course that free pattern likely will lead you to Blacker’s shop online, which is a dangerous place.
I love knitting and wearing shawls. Even in the summer around here it is often cool enough to have something snuggly and pretty around my shoulders. This will keep me warm during cocktail hour on cool evenings.
Or,
Go Green Bay Packers Socks for Sissie!
I finally finished these last night.
These are knit using the same white bread sock pattern that I always use. The needles are Brittany double points, size 2.00 mm.
The yarn is Artistic Yarn by Abi, in the colors of, you guessed it, the Green Bay Packers. Although while I was knitting this mostly in the Pacific NW, I had a lot of people that assumed that it was for the Oregon Ducks. That works too. I dare you to go through all of her self-striping sock yarn without buying some.
This is lovely yarn, I’ve knit one other pair of socks in her yarn, The yarn is on the lighter side of sock weight, but seems to be wearing well.
These are for my sister, Linda, who is a delusional Packers fan. Abi also makes this yarn, though it’s sold out at the moment (not my fault).
Finished just this morning.
The yarn is Regia, the Kaffe Fasset Design Line. Needles were 2.25 mm silver needles. Picot top, otherwise my generic sock pattern.
Project Details:
Yarn: Lion Brand Heartland
Pattern: very loosely based on Aesderina. I followed the pattern until after I got past the horizontal ribbing (knit 4 rows, purl 3 rows). The decreases start after that and I didn’t like how they looked so ripped it back and just winged it.
Needles: size 7
The hat is for a friend undergoing chemo for esophageal cancer. I don’t mind knitting hats, but my friends really just need to stop getting cancer.
I started this with a nice wooly wool but decided I needed something softer for a newly bald head. This actually is quite nice for an inexpensive acrylic yarn.
Those of you who follow me on FB know that we’re in Italy at the moment. Today is our last day in Rome, we head to Florence tomorrow. We’re having a wonderful trip, I’ll report back on that later. Ciao!
This one has been finished and gifted, so it’s time for a blog post.
And here’s a better shot of the sweater. It’s hard to take pictures of babies if they don’t want their picture taken.
Project Details:
Pattern: Buttoned up Cardi
Yarn: Cotton Ease, in Cherry Red
Needles: 5.00 mm
Started and Finished within the past two weeks
For: a coworker’s grandson
What I learned: I still love Cotton Ease for baby things. The bonus is that it’s machine washable.
Pattern Rating: This is a really easy pattern, all garter stitch. I made a few modifications. The pattern calls for picking up stitches and knitting the sleeves, I just cast on the right amount of stitches and then sewed them in. I remembered to put in the buttonholes on this one. And I made it just a bit longer than the pattern called for.
Project Details
Pattern: Rogue, by Jenna Wilson
Yarn: Peace Fleece worsted, color Amaranth
Needles: 4.0 mm
For: Me
Started/Finished: Started 10/4/15, Finished 9/8/18
Modifications: None
What I Learned: I still adore Peace Fleece wool. I knit this same pattern many years ago in a heavier Aran weight, it was too baggy, though I’ve worn it a million times. This one fits much better. I also love the cables on this.
Pattern Rating: ***** Well written, cable charts clear. No major errors. This is perhaps not a “first sweater” kind of pattern, but her directions make it easy to follow.
Here are a few more photos, since it’s not every day that there is a finished sweater around Chez Knitting Doctor!
Another finished project!
Project Details
Pattern: My own jerry-rigged pattern. 72 stitches, flap heel and gusset
Yarn: Trailing Clouds Nimbus sock yarn, color Mind the Gap. It has all the colors on the London Tube map. You can also get this in the Etsy shop.
Needles: 2.00 mm
For: Me
Started/Finished: Started 1/17/18, finished 7/18/18
Modifications: none
What I Learned: This isn’t really new, I guess, but I still love knitting socks, and I love self striping yarn. “Oh look! Another red stripe!”
And I have already started the next pair.
I’m not doing a whole “finished project” post here. This is a big rectangle with ribbing on either end, then the sides are sewn. I used Cotton Ease in Bubble Gum pink, and 4.5 mm needles. I started this two days ago, and finished today.
It will be a good chemo hat, the yarn doesn’t have a lot of springiness, but it is soft. I think I’m going to do another one a little smaller.
And that’s that.
