Snow Day and Knitting

Hi all -

We've been getting snow, in March, since sometime after midnight today.  It's a wet, soggy, kind of snow.  Melts as soon as it hits your car or the street or the sidewalk.  Enough of a pain to close the public schools and government.  Home schools and Kevin's work are still open and work being done.

As we wrapped up school awhile ago, shoveled, consumed some hot chocolate, thought I should showcase another project completed.

Today's posting is a revamped wristlet, again.  Here is the post to the original pair I made.  I have remade mine one time to take out the thumb gusset portion, which made them a bit more snug.  They turned out well, but still a bit big.

 Around Christmas, a friend asked me to make a pair for her.  Her hands are a little smaller than mine, so I took out 4 stitches, from the revamped set, as the ribbing is a four stitch pattern (knit 2, purl 2).  Hope they work well for her.  Also, I plan to use the left over skein to make a scarf to go along with these.

I may do mine once again!  :)  Only after two other projects and possibly a third as I just received a bunch of Homespun!  GOT to make something with that!

Anyway, here is what these look like:

 I started with the one on the right, the then one on the left.

This is one thing I like about Homespun is how the colors change.  Always

makes for a beautiful knit project.  By far my favorite yarn to work.

Now if someone wanted to give me a large selection of other yarn,

I would gladly make things to see if I could be won over by something else.

Not sure who is will to donate some yarn though!  :(

Long over due

I finished another baby blanket and passed it along, I think on January 6th.  And let me just say this will be the worst "how to" type post ever written.

     Why you ask?  Here's a few reasons:

1. Late in posting ~ check
2. Forgot to measure overall project before giving gift ~ check
3. Can not find the sleeves from the skeins, so no color or brand of yarn (a new one to me!) ~ check
4. Forgot what size needle I used (but can figure it out, I think) ~ check

If you'll let that slide, here is what I can go over:

1. I knit with both ends so it's twice as thick..  Not really to difficult to manage the skein of yarn.  Just as easy as if you were using just one end.
2. I cast on 110 stitches of "Blueberry" ~ the darker blue.
3. From there, I knit one side and purled the other to create a stocking stitch
4. Once the skein got close to the end, I unraveled what was left, found the "center" of what was left, and cut the ends to be very uneven.  Did this because I wanted  mixture of first color and second color before moving totally to the second color.  Not sure if I first joined the inside tail of the skein or outside tail.  In the long run, doesn't matter to much because you'll end up using both.
5. Kept knitting a row and purling a row with the second color (the tan shade) until just about finished and repeated the above steps of straightening out and joining the third color (the light blue).
6. Knit and purled the rows until I had just enough to cast off.  At some point, I figure out how much yard I need to complete a row and figured out how many more rows I could do.  Think I finished the blanket with 6 inches of yarn left!

Here are various pictures for you:

Alone the center, you can see where the Blueberry and tan are joined together.

It was a very pretty effect.  If I were to repeat something like this, I'd go for more of the two colors.

For the first go around, this turned out well though.

Love the overall look!  So pretty!

Kind of close up!

I'll see what I can do to figure out the size needles, brand of yarn and colors for the tan and light blue soon.  Now I'll move onto other projects!

Wristles ~ Again

Just ripped out the ones I made last winter/early spring for me.  The thumb increase area is just TO BIG for me.  Here's a link with photo attached.  Plan on modifying the directions again and hope it works better for me.  Haven't seen any other design that I like.

Hope I can get these done quickly.  More baby blankets in the works!  This next one will be another panel blanket with stitches I want to learn how to do.  More to come on that.

Happy repeat knitting!

What else?

Another baby blanket.  Nothing fancy, all knit, back and forth, 85 stitches across till it looked done!   How is that for a "how to"?

Here's the finished project:

Yes, there is some subtle changes in coloring where I switched the skein.  Once again the dye lot got me.  Worse yet, the color was on clearance and was GONE!!!!!

So, moral of this story.  Buy at least two skeins as you can make a nice sized "receiving" type blanket with just two!

Should have paid more attention when I bought because the color difference, although same named color, was quite noticeable.  Hope I've learned my lesson.

Neglect!

I'll be the first to admit ~ I'm in a dry spell for knitting.  It just isn't as enjoyable as it use to be.  It's become a chore.  The natural result is that a knitting blog gets ignored!

Since middle of July ~ approximately ~ I've been working on a real basic baby blanket.  It took me three tries to get the width correct.  First shot, it would have been about 4 to 5 feet wide, then closer to just 4 feet.  On both, I was wondering how many skein's I would need to finish this!  Finally found a number that was close to what I wanted!  FWIW, I did practice the 4 inch by 4 inch square and did the math to figure out the bigger peace.  For whatever reason, I had a hard time visualizing it in my head!  Weird, as this is just a knit stitch, row after row after row.  REALLY basic blanket!  That's probably why I'm getting bored.

Well, another lesson learned with this one on buying enough yarn.  I never would have dreamed that a dye lot could be SO different on Lion Brand's Home Spun.  The same colors are in each skein, however in the first one I used, the accent colors were in longer strands so the stripping is more pronounced.  In the second, the main color (white for both) seemed to be thicker and the accent colors much thinner and shorter length.  Not a whole lot I can do as this color was on clearance when I bought it and could not be found!  Argh!  It's not to bad of a change, but not what I would have wanted.

Maybe this time I'll learn my lesson!  :)

Accessories anyone?

Who doesn't like accessories?  Okay, I don't like accessories for everything, but for knitting ~ I thoroughly enjoy it.  Probably because I like to knit so much!

Anyhoot, I made this from a small tin, about the same size as an "Altoids" tin.

Below is the inside of the tin.  On the top, I glued a thin magnet to hold needles.  The body of the tin is just big enough to hold a tape and a small canister of stitch markers.  I am hoping to fin a small set of scissors to include in this.

Happy Knitting Readers

Mother's Day Gift?

Here's a link to a knit kitchen scrubbie.  These are small, should be quick to make, and great for presents!

Will revisit this pattern once classes are figured out for next year.