I finished these earlier today. The yarn is Three Irish Girls McClellan fingering, which is a wool/bamboo blend. It’s my usual basic sock recipe, knit on 2 mm needles.
Next up is more WYS (West Yorkshire Spinners) socks. I have a bunch of this yarn already stashed away, but saw this recently and couldn’t say no.
Aren’t those pretty fall colors? The yarn name is what got me, though. It’s Hope, as in, I Hope the pandemic settles down soon. And, I Hope (HOPE!) that next week’s election results in a landslide win for the Biden/Harris team.
Pattern: Hitchhiker, by Martina Behm. This is the third of these that I’ve knit, and not the last. It’s a perfect pattern for those sock yarns that wouldn’t necessarily knit up into good socks. This color would have been fine for socks, but it is 100% merino. I will knit plain merino socks, but it doesn’t wear as well as sock yarn that has some nylon in it. I have plenty of that in the stash, so I try to use the plain wool stuff for other things.
Yarn: Wollmeise Pure, 100% merino. The color is Flower Power. I love this yarn, her colors are bright, and the yardage is very generous (575 yards).
Needles: 3.25 mm. I used plastic straight needles from my precious plastic needle stash.
Started: November 4, 2019
Finished: August 12, 2020
Modifications: None.
Pattern/Yarn rating: ***** for both. I love this pattern. It is fun, great for wildly colored yarn, and doesn’t take much brain power. The Wollmeise is just perfect. I have a bunch more of this in the stash for those “little neck things” that I’m growing to love.
575 yards out of stash. I started keeping track of this about 18 months ago. In that time, I’ve gotten a total of 15,625 yards out of stash. Some of that was stuff that went to Goodwill or my knitting group, but the bulk of it has been knitted up. It sometimes seems like I don’t ever finish anything, but I guess I actually do.
I finally finished these this morning. I should get hazard pay for these. I had an eye doctor’s appointment this morning, so finished these with dilated eyes. John did casually ask if this was a good idea or not, but I ignored him. And there they are.
The yarn is Mountain Colors Weaver’s Wool Quarters. This makes nice winter weight socks. It is listed as worsted weight, but this knits up on size 2.75 mm sock needles at 7.5 stitches/inch. This particular wool is not superwash, so if you are thinking about buying, be aware of that. The company does have specific sock yarn that won’t felt in the washer as well.
These were started with 60 stitches, I used my usual generic white bread sock pattern.
Modifications: I did the lace edging with a stockinette background instead of garter. This was a mistake that I didn’t notice until I had several edging repeats done, and I wasn’t about to rip that back. This is the large size, it took a little over 5 skeins of the yarn, just about spot on to the pattern yardage.
This is the second one of these I’ve knit. The pattern is well written, very simple to follow, and would be suitable for a novice knitter. Nicely formatted, it uses knit, purl, basic increases and decreases, picking up stitches along the edge, and doing a knitted on edging. It’s perfect for a baby blanket, but works as a shawl as well. I might make one of these for me someday to wear as a shawl.
This yarn is divine. It is from Acme Fibres, they primarily sell undyed fiber and yarn. This is their Select 17 merino, which is a very fine, lightweight fingering yarn. It is superwash but very soft and lovely.
Project Rating: ***** for both the pattern and the yarn.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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!
