Finished Projects – Page 6 – The Knitting Doctor

Douglas Fir

Or,

A Hap* For Lorette

Project Details:

Pattern: A Hap For Harriet, by Kate Davies

Yarn: Elemental Effects Shetland Rustic Lace, 1100 yards

Needles: 2.75 mm

Started: 4/11/15

Finished: 12/7/16

For: Me

Modifications: none, except for miscalculating the amount of yarn I would need for the second half, and having to decrease that end at a faster rate.

What I Learned: Despite all my careful weighing and calculating, I can still screw up and run out of yarn.

This is a well written pattern, knit end to end so the miles of garter stitch aren't so boring. You get to do a bit of simple lace every other row.

*For you non-knitters, a hap is a shawl or wrap to keep you warm. It is a Shetland Islands term, and usually refers to a square shawl with a lace border, but they come in all shapes and sizes.

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Blockhead

We had our big Solstice dinner last night. I had 10 people around my dining room table for a 5 course dinner, capped off with a huge roast prime rib and trifle for dessert.

We were about to take the extra leaves out of the table while cleaning up this morning. Instead, I had the bright idea to soak my Douglas Fir shawl and use the table to block it. I've always blocked stuff on mats on the floor in the past, and the pets mostly left things alone.*

Zany Zoe the lunatic cat is a different story. I suspect the shawl would be shredded if I tried that. So I put the mats on the table and blocked it there. It's a lot easier that way as well, much less bending and contorting to get things pinned down.

And a close up of the lace:

Lace is just magic. It looks like a pile of crap** while you are knitting it. Then you soak it and pin it out, and it turns into something lovely.

More photos when it's dry!

*Except for that time when Curtis, the visiting dumb-as-a-post yellow lab was staying here. I had blocked a lace shawl upstairs on the floor. I went up some time later to find that he had taken a big dump on the shawl. I guess he didn't think much of my knitting.

**It looks like I need to straighten that lace point up there.

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Fritz’s Baby Blanket

As promised, I’m finally getting around to posting a “Finished Project” update. I finished this right before we left on vacation in September, and then just forgot about posting.

Project Details:

Pattern: Quill, by Jared Flood

Yarn: Frolicking Feet sock yarn, Sapphire Blue

Needles: 3.75mm

Started: 4/29/16

Finished: 9/6/16

For: my grandnephew Fritz

Modifications: none

What I Learned: Babies sometimes get born early. Starting knitting now.

This was a well done pattern, instructions clear and straightforward. This would be pretty in a lace weight yarn as well.

And more photos.

In other news, for some reason I’ve started to get blog comments emailed to me, at least sometimes. We’ll see.

How Can You Forget A Whole Finished Project?

That’s me, right there, someone who forgets a whole knitting project. You’d think that with as few things as I finish, I’d remember to put them up here.

This is the Hawk Affection Shawl.

Sorry about the no-makeup-photo-in-the-mirror thing. It’s all I’ve got today.

Project Details:

Pattern: Color Affection, my second one.

Yarn: Hazel Knits Divine, this is 75% merino, 15% cashmere, and 10% silk. It really is divinely soft and squishy. The colors are Nekkid, Hawkeye, and Collegiate, chosen to represent my favorite football team.

Needles: 3.5 mm

Started: September 3, 2015

Finished: February 10, 2016

For: Me

Modifications: None, really. I once again knit the three color stripe section until I had used all the stitches up with the short row section.

What I Learned: I love simple knits. And I am really starting to love simple knit things that wind around my neck for a touch of color and warmth. And I learned that I probably should take a moment to put on makeup and do something with that mess of hair before I do a photo shoot. I got off the bike, took a shower, and my hair just did that thing up there. Oh well.

Finished Stuff, Forgot To Post

It figures. I actually finish a couple of knitting projects and then forget all about blogging it.

First up is John’s Crazy Hat of Many Colors:

Project Details:

Pattern: Toboggan Hat, modified for the current Peace Fleece worsted weight

Yarn: Peace Fleece mini skeins

Needles: US 6/4.0 mm

Started: October 16, 2015

Finished: Noivember 21, 2015

For: John

Modifications: The pattern is written for wider two-color stripes. I went all out and did four row stripes in many colors (33!). I bought all the mini skeins that Peace Fleece sells, and didn’t repeat any of the colors. I also did ribbing instead of a rolled cuff at the beginning.

What I Learned:: Hats go quick in heavy worsted weight yarn. I also learned a new trick to do a color join right where I want the color to change at the beginning of the round. It was fidgety, but not as fidgety as weaving in all those ends would have been.

Next up is socks. Tiptoe Through the Tulips Socks

Project Details:

Pattern: Same old same old. Plain vanilla pattern, let the yarn do the talking. 72 stitches around. Picot tops.

Yarn: Zitron Trekking XXL

Needles: US 1/2.25 mm

Started: April 19, 2015

Finished: January 22, 2016

For: Me

Modifications: None

What I Learned:: Socks shouldn’t take this long. And I’m still not tired of white bread socks.

Zoe is settling in just fine. She came home for good on Monday. There is a bit of hissing and caterwauling going on, mostly by Will, but things are getting calmer.

I have discovered that it is NOT ok to leave anything knitting related laying around with her here. Yesterday she knocked my knitting gadget bag on the floor, then tried to get in my big knitting bag. And I was merrily knitting away on a shawl and looked down to find her chewing her way through the working yarn. The adventures of having a kitten!

Baby Helen, and Baby Zoe

It’s a real finished project! One of my coworkers had her baby very early a couple of weeks ago, at 25 weeks. (Baby Helen and mama are both doing OK.) I didn’t have anything hand knit ready for her, but fortunately preemie baby sweaters don’t take long to knit.

Project Details:

Pattern: Design D Cardigan; that’s a really catchy name

Yarn:Dale Baby Ull in hot pink

Needles: 3.25 mm (2.75 for the edging)

Started: 12/23/15

Finished: 12/27/15

For: Baby Helen

Modifications: The neckband as written in the pattern is just plain fidgety. It calls for casting on a few extra stitches along the front bands, knitting a long strip to reach the center back, repeat on the other side, then sew it down and graft together. For a freaking baby sweater that might get worn a handful of times before she grows out of it, that seems like major overkill. I just finished the neck decreases, changed to the smaller needles, did a few rows of garter stitch to match the bottom edge, then did a yarn over /knit 2 together eyelet row, knit another row, then bound off.

What I Learned:: Baby sweaters don’t take long, especially in preemie sizes. This pattern was a mess. It worked, but the instructions for the raglan decreases were written out in a fashion that made them nearly incomprehensible.

I just realized while doing this that I never did a finished project post for John’s Toboggan hat. I will remedy that soon.

In other news, I finally splurged and bought myself a late Christmas present of a really nice wooden swift and ball winder. The rickety plastic ones that I have are just not a lot of fun to use, especially for finer yarns. I’ve had to rewind more balls of yarn by hand to fix total screwups than I can count. Here they are.

I bought them both on Amazon. The winder is the Heavy Duty Ball Winder by Nancy’s Knitknacks, the swift is a large size Swedish Glimakra. They are lovely. And it inspired me to clear off this wooden shelf to make room for them.

Last but certainly not least, we are 99.9% certain of bringing home a new family member. Those of you who follow me on Facebook have already heard this story. Last Saturday evening we had a knock on our door. Our neighbors had a black kitty show up at their door, they thought it was Willie and brought him down to our house. It wasn’t Will, but a little lost girl kitty. Nobody in our neighborhood has a black cat (except us), so we kept her over the weekend. Monday we took her in to our vet clinic where they checked her over and found she was microchipped. They contacted the owners, who apparently live a few miles from here. They didn’t sound very enthusiastic, but promised to pick her up and take her home on Monday.

Of course by this time we’d fallen totally in love with her. She is adorable, very silky fur, about 8 months old, and as sweet as she can be.

Five days later, today, and three phone calls from our vet to the so-called owners, and they still haven’t come to get her, and are not answering calls. The vet has to keep her and give them ten days to claim her, though it’s almost certain at this point that they have no interest. We strongly suspect that she was dumped in our driveway. It was a very cold night, and she hadn’t been outside for very long when she came to us. I just wish they would step up and say they don’t want her so we can bring her home. Though everybody at our vet clinic has fallen in love with her as well, she is getting a lot of love there too.

Here are a few more photos from today, we went to the vet to see her.

Her new name is Zoe! In 5 more days we will be her people!

Evenstar

Project Details:

Pattern: Evenstar, by Susan Pandorf

Yarn: Colourmart Cashmere/Silk 2/28 NM lace weight, 1500 yards

Needles: 2.75 mm

Started: February 12, 2010

Finished: September 18, 2015

For: Me!

Modifications: None

What I Learned: Oh boy. I learned that slow and steady gets you there eventually. This is easily the most complex thing I’ve ever knitted. The pattern itself isn’t that difficult. The yarn I chose is just a hair heavier than thread, and has absolutely no memory, and it’s a bit on the slippery side. So this wasn’t mindless knitting by any means. And the border is endless. You knit the whole thing in big concentric rings, then knit the edging on perpendicularly to the shawl. The edging is a mindless 20 row repeat, but in thread and with beads so it took forever. There were a couple of complex stitches in there but mostly it’s just following a series of charts.

The pattern is well written, this is the first of hers that I’ve done, but it was clear and mostly without errors (there is a link to errata on the Ravelry page). The lace is charted and written, though why anybody would want to knit lace from written text is beyond me. I started this before I was using Knit Companion, but used it for the last couple sections after I pulled this out of the UFO pile to finish.

Lora asked in the comments on a previous post about the blocking process. I soaked the shawl in slightly soapy water (Kookaburra wool wash), then rinsed in cool water. Silk and cashmere aren’t as durable as wool when wet, so you really need to support the wet lace when pulling it out of the bath. Then I blotted most of the water out with a bath towel, and pinned it out on my blocking mats, which are foam play mats that you can get in carpet shops or places like Costco. I have a ton of them so I can block almost anything.

Before I tossed it in the water, I ran a cotton thread through all the points, then pinned the thread and not the actual shawl. I forgot to take a photo before I had all the pins out this morning, but here’s a mini-recreation to illustrate.

Lora, I start by stretching it out gently by hand into as close to a circle as I can get it, then start pinning the running thread between the points to stretch. It takes a few times around, pulling a little more each time, and smoothing out from the center to get it as even as possible. I probably could have blocked this a bit larger, but I wanted to retain just a bit of the texture of some of those stitch patterns. I use a yard stick to measure in places to see if I have it even, but mostly I just eyeball it.

I love this one! It’s by no means a practical warm shawl, but I can see wearing it for special occasions. In fact, we have symphony tickets tonight, so I’ll wear it there. I’ll probably leave the tiara at home though.

Edited with one more photo. John wanted me to add a photo of just the edging. Here you go.

Omg Omg OMG!

It is DONE DONE DONE. I can't wait for blocking to show you a photo. I won't be able to finish this officially until I get home and have a few hours to block it properly, but I know you are all waiting on the edge of your seats to see it.

Sweetpea for scale. And one without the bear.

This is easily the most complicated thing I've ever made. Project Details will follow when the blocking is done.

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Coreopsis!

It’s finally off the blocking board, after a little mayhem. I tried to expedite things and just pinned the bottom edges instead of running blocking wires through it, which resulted in a nice scalloped border. I looked at it for a day before I did the right thing and put in the blocking wires, then steam blocked the edge to straighten it out.

Project Details

Pattern: Boneyard Shawl, by Stephen West

Yarn: My own handspan, spun from Bluefaced Leicester wool on my Watson Wheel. I then dyed the yarn using Coreopsis flowers from our deck plants. I blogged about the dyeing here. The fiber came from Paradise Fibers, the brand is Ashland Bay. It was nicely prepared and very easy to spin. It also takes dye beautifully, which is a good thing, since I bought 4 pounds of it originally. This was 366 grams worth of yarn, about 790 yards.

Needles: 4.5 mm

Started: July 16, 2015

Finished: September 3, 2015

For: Me

Modifications: None

What I Learned: Oh my. It is really a lot of fun to see a project through from fiber to a finished wearable item. This is one of those patterns that could be adapted to a wide variety of yarn types, or even color stripes. He has a second version here that uses extra increases to make it wider and shallower. A nice bonus is that it’s a free pattern. I predict that this will get a lot of wear. It’s just the right size for a little warmth around the shoulders, and nice and squishy soft.

I’m calling this one a success!

Coreopsis

It is finally done. I can’t wait for the blocking to show it off.

It’s getting a bath and then will be blocked.

I was able to use almost all of the yarn, there were 17 grams left, which MIGHT have been enough for another row, but I hate ripping out a bind off if I’m wrong. The garter rows use more yarn, and the stretchy bind off I use really eats up yarn.

There will be a Project Details post when it’s blocked and dry.

So what’s next? I suppose I should just finish something already on the needles, but where’s the fun in that?

Here’s some new yarn. It’s obviously Hazel Knits, this is her Divine fingering, which is merino, cashmere and silk.

What might this become? I know I said I would never make another Color Affection, but that turns out to be one of the most versatile shawls I have.

And what might have inspired that color choice, which is rather on the gaudy side?

It is football season, after all. I’m off to wind up yarn.

Pink & Sparkly

I finally got around to getting photos of this today.

Project Details:

Pattern: Heaven and Space, by Martina Behm

Yarn: Bouton d’Or Songe, in PINK. 3 skeins. I bought this in a yarn shop in Nice, France when we took a cruise that left from there in 2006. Deep stash. 570 meters out.

Needles: 3.75 mm

Started: December 6, 2014

Finished: June 7, 2015

For: Me!

Modifications: None. This is one of those patterns that you can adapt for pretty much any yarn. I knit until I had just enough left over to do the bind off.

What I Learned: Note to self. Please remember to check the lot numbers on ball bands in the future. This was knit with 3 balls of yarn, after I blocked it, I noticed that the center ball of yarn is just a shade off. Not enough to notice when it’s around your neck, but still.

Here’s another photo.

That one shows the shape better. It starts from one point (the one at the top in this photo, then increases at both sides, then binds off at the long straight side. If you look carefully you can see the very slight shift in color in the center section.

Last but not least.

Lewey says “Happy Fathers’ Day!” He adores his human dad.

Monday Is A Good Day

For new socks!

Project Details:

Well, it's the same old pattern, my generic top down, ribbed cuff, heel flap sock. Knit on 72 stitches with 2.25 mm Ivore double point needles. The yarn is Opal, one of the Dreamcatcher colors.

I started these back in September, finished yesterday. And no, they don't match. That's intentional. I actually knitted one sock from the outside of the yarn ball and the second one from the inside, so the stripes are mirror images. I am endlessly amused by self striping sock yarn.

These are for me. Though John looked at them and said “I'd wear a pair like that!”.

I haven't started the next new pair of socks yet, but as you all know, I plenty of sock yarns in the stash to choose from. Stay tuned for what comes next.

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John’s Old Friend Sweater

And it’s DONE! It is about time, is all I have to say.

Project Details:

Pattern: Old Friend Pullover, Peace Fleece pattern by Peg Richard

Yarn: Peace Fleece worsted, color Violet Vyehchyeerom, 6 skeins. Close enough to BLUE.

Needles: Swallow Ivore straights, 5.00 mm (4.5 mm for ribbing)

Started: August 1, 2013

Finished: February 7, 2015

For: John

Modifications: the pattern as written has ribbing on the bottom, but a rolled hem on sleeves and cuffs. I did ribbing to match for all, and did a tubular cast on and bind off. I also brought the neck up a bit, the pattern as written has a bit wider and lower crew neck.

What I Learned: Well, it’s a pretty simple sweater pattern. I don’t think I like the dropped shoulder construction so much in this heavier yarn, but John loves it. I finished the neck last night and tossed it his way, I’m not sure he’s had it off since. And I adore Peace Fleece, but I already knew that. I suspect this will be a well-loved and well-worn sweater.

Here are a couple more photos.

Crazy Woman Socks

And another pair done!

Project Details:

Pattern: my own jerry rigged sock pattern, tweaked over the years. Plain vanilla socks. I cast on 60 stitches at the cuff. Top down, flap and gusset heel, nothing fancy.

Yarn: Mountain Colors Weaver's Wool quarters, color is Crazy Woman. This is not superwash wool, so these will have to be handled a little more carefully, but it is lovely, squishy stuff. It's about sport weight.

Needles: 2.75 mm sterling silver double points from Celtic Swan.

Started: January 9, 2014

Finished: November 28, 2014

For: Me!

What I Learned: I've learned that I really should be knitting socks faster. I've got an aging sock stash that are starting to wear pretty thin. These will be very appreciated given the cold weather we've been having.

I was snooping around online at shops that sell this yarn. I opened up the handy dandy yarn database that catalogues the yarn I already have. I have this same yarn in eight more colors, to make eight more pairs of smooshy warm socks. Maybe I'll go cast on another pair right now.

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Color Affection

And here it is!

Project Details:

Pattern: Color Affection, by Veera Välimäki
Yarn: Swan's Island Natural Colors Merino Fingering; colors are Garnet, Natural, and Oatmeal
Needles: 3.5 mm circulars (ChiaoGoo)
Started: February 27, 2014
Finished: November 16, 2014
For: Me!

What I Learned: Garter stitch is boring, but it certainly does make a nice squishy fabric. I really love this and will wear it a lot. Those last few thousand stitches made me want to poke my eyes out with sharp knitting needles, but it is very pretty done. I might even be convinced to make another one.

And just because I can:

Now I need to finish this:

This is John's Old Friend Peace Fleece sweater. I have it done “except” for the second sleeve, which you see started right there. This is terrific television knitting: nice boring stocking stitch, just like I like it.

And for the record, that is another 1440 meters of yarn out of the stash. I have a little of each of the colors left, perhaps enough for a pair of mitts at some point, but I'm calling it gone.

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