Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Craylola Scarf

 Hi all -

I thought I should get this out before the storm starts. If the forecast bears out, we are in for a couple of feet of snow in the next couple of days. Up here, that means that we'll also lose power which means no water or internet either. And there's very little cell service up here, so it will be some time to relax and concentrate on hand work. To get ready, I'll be filling a couple of buckets with water for the toilet and bringing my battery charger in from the car (I have one that can be used to jump the car battery) and topping it off since I keep my knitting patterns and my books on my iPad and iPhone. The more I do to prepare, the more likely we are to keep our power....  😉

The first project I want to share with you is my Craylola Scarf designed by Laura Nelkin. I made this scarf for my neighbor. For some reason, my dogs like to escape my yard and go to her house. Lance did that all of the time until he got too old to slither between the bars in the gate. And now Grace is doing the same. I've been working to shore up the gate to keep her in, but it's been a process. I started by covering the gate with plastic chicken wire, but Grace broke through that within a couple of days. So then I covered the bottom of the gate with craft chicken wire (a thinner chicken wire that is covered in green plastic). With that, I saw evidence that she got through the upper part of the gate. So now I've covered the top of the gate as well. That seems to be keeping her in. (I didn't originally cover the entire gate because I was scraping my hands on the zip ties that I used to attached the plastic chicken wire when that went to the top. But I switched to heavy-duty zip ties for the wire version and I don't seem to scrape my hands on that as much.) Anyway, the last time Grace got out before I covered the tops of the gates, I saw her at my neighbor's house (as usual) and when I went up to get her my neighbor wasn't home and Grace had obviously knocked over a painted Mexican flower pot and it broke. I let my neighbor know what had happened and offered to replace the flower pot, but she was really nice about it and told me not to worry about it -- she would glue the pot back together in the summer. So I decided to knit something for her to apologize since it felt incredibly intrusive to me. So I looked through my Laura Nelkin kits and decided to my Craylola for her:

Craylola

I've been wanting to make this scarf for a while. I love the zig-zag construction and all of the beads (just under 600 beads in total)! And I like that it's a thinner, lighter scarf that I think can be more useful. Here is a close-up of one of the ends while it was blocking:

Craylola - close-up

I'm thinking that the weight of the beads will also help to keep the scarf in place around your neck. I hope to make one of these for myself sometime!

I also started another Stephen West shawl -- the Fiber Fest Shawl. Stephen said that he designed this shawl to highlight one of those wonderful single skeins of yarn that you pick up at a fiber festival because it is so beautiful, but you don't know how you are going to use it. I haven't been to a fiber festival, but I have a lot of beautiful skeins that I've bought online just because I couldn't resist! So I looked through my yarn stash and picked out some skeins for this lovely shawl:

Fiber Fest Shawl

One of the reasons I wanted to make this shawl was because it has these mini baubles that I wanted to try:

Fiber Fest Shawl -- mini baubles

I think these are so cute!! This is where most of my knitting efforts are going right now.

Before I go, I'll share a couple of Grace pictures. I think I've mentioned that she loves sticks! Of all sizes!


Her favorite stick lately has been this VERY HEAVY stump!


I know how heavy this is because she keeps setting it on the path in front of me so I'll throw it for her, and I can only get it to go a couple of yards. And just another fun picture of the bobcat tracks I found on my driveway when we got back from our walk a couple of days ago:


I took a picture with my hand so I could gauge the size and check online to make sure they are actually bobcat tracks -- and they are! I love all of the interesting wildlife we have around here!!

Well, the first game of the Big 12 tournament is on now so I'll watch the rest of that and then start my storm preparations before the second game starts. I hope everyone is doing well!!

Nancy


Tuesday, February 27, 2024

Starflake Shawl Finished

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well! Things are good here. I'm continuing to knit away. I was able to finish my Starflake shawl designed by Stephen West:

Starflake

The knitting is done and the ends are woven in, but I still need to block it. The blocking will open up the decorative holes in the design. As usual with Stephen West designs, this shawl has a bunch of interesting techniques, but was still easy to make because the instructions are so clear. One of my favorite parts is the striped I-cord edging. I think it really highlights the stripes in the rest of the design. I'm really enjoying knitting Stephen West designs and am looking forward to starting another one!

I was also able to finish the knitting on my Bandola designed by Laura Nelkin:

Bandola

This project also still needs to be blocked. It will really blossom with blocking! I'll post pictures of my blocked projects when I get that done, hopefully before my next blog post. 

My final project this time is my Jimmy Beans Wool crochet blanket club project, the Wildflower Crochet Blanket designed by Lena Skvagerson. I received my February installment and was able to finish the blocks last night. Here are February's blocks:

Wildflower Crochet Blanket - block 4

Wildflower Crochet Blanket - block 5

Wildflower Crochet Blanket - block 6

Wildflower Crochet Blanket - center block

I'm really enjoying the variety in this blanket. Block 4 had a stitch I'd never done before - the Backward Single Crochet. The pattern comes with detailed YouTube tutorials for everything so it's easy to figure out what to do. I'm looking forward to receiving the March installment!!

Finally, I thought I'd leave with more pictures of Grace. I've started carrying my new camera with us on every walk. Funny, as expected, I figured out where I'd left my old little camera right after publishing my last post! But I like the new camera with a better zoom and the ability to take action shots more easily, so I don't regret the purchase. Here is Grace on the Ceran St. Vrain trail, near our house:

Grace at Ceran St Vrain

I was happy to be able to get a picture of her when she was still for a short moment! I'm trying to go to this trail more often because we drive to get there even though it's less than a mile away, so hopefully these short drives with fun destinations will help ease her fear of the car. Unfortunately, this trail is difficult in the winter because of the icy spots so we won't be going there often until things start to thaw. But our neighborhood trail, just a short walk from the house, is beautiful, too! Here is a picture of one of our daily views:


I zoomed in on one of the mountain peak because it's so beautiful:


Isn't that incredible (and don't you love the camera zoom)? But on to Grace pictures.... She loves wood, no matter the size. She will bring smaller sticks to me to throw and will pull larger pieces around. I call it "logging." Here's one she was pulling around the other day:


At home I now have logs strewn all around the front porch! I also got an action shot of her running through the snow:


And a cute shot of her snow covered face:


She will miss winter when it's over, but I'm really looking forward to summer and a little relief from trudging through the snow and slipping on the ice! But it sure is beautiful right now!!

I hope everyone is enjoying their winter!

Nancy



Sunday, February 11, 2024

Super Bowl Sunday

 Hi all -

It's Super Bowl Sunday and I'm looking forward to cheering for the Chiefs this evening! It should be a great game!

I've been continuing to work on my Starflake shawl designed by Stephen West:

Starflake

I'm really enjoying this knit! I was drawn to this pattern originally because it starts with a traditional quilt block. A great fusion of my hobbies! It's also fun to have the non-traditional shawl shape, although I won't be able to get any good pictures of the points on the shawl until I get it off the needles. It also has interesting techniques. The section I'm currently working on uses a technique called "brioche":

Starflake close-up

It's hard to see in the picture, but brioche kind of weaves the two colors together in the rows and results in a really smooshy, wonderful fabric. But it also takes longer to knit so this section is taking me a while to finish. Again, the instructions for this shawl are very clear and easy to follow with video instructions for the different techniques included. I have several more Stephen West patterns on my future projects list!

I also finally worked on the January blocks for the 2024 Jimmy Beans Wool crochet blanket club project. I had been enjoying my Stephen West shawls and was feeling intimidated about the blanket pattern for some reason, so I left it sitting for a couple of weeks after receiving it. This year's pattern is the Wildflower Crochet Blanket designed by Lena Skvagerson. This pattern has you crochet a bunch of squares and then connect the squares at the end. Here are the squares for January:

Wildflower Crochet Blanket - January squares

Here are close-ups of each block:


Wildflower Crochet Blanket - January block #1

Wildflower Crochet Blanket - January block #2

Wildflower Crochet Blanket - January block #3

Wildflower Crochet Blanket - January center block

The center block, which was just started this month, will be larger than the other squares and will be multi-colored. These blocks ended up being easier than I had expected and I'm looking forward to the February installment.

Finally, I gave up on finding my little camera and I bought a new one (so I'm sure I'll find the camera in a couple of days....). I really like this little camera so I don't think I'll regret the purchase. It has a "burst" mode where it will continue to take pictures in quick succession when the button is pressed. This will make it a lot easier to get a good picture of Grace when she's running around! We took it on our walk this morning and got some pictures of Grace in action:




It was a beautiful, but cold, morning with about 3 inches of fresh snow on top of the foot of snow left over from last week. Grace loves running through the snow! Here are a couple of pictures of the trail that we go to every morning:




It's a beautiful little trail that is only accessible through our neighborhood so it is only used by myself and my neighbors. We haven't seen the moose for a couple of days now, but I'm sure they'll be back! I'll post some pictures of them if I get any good ones.

I hope everyone is enjoying their winter! Grace is enjoying walking through the snow a bit more than I am, but I'm definitely enjoying the beauty!

Nancy


Thursday, February 1, 2024

Finished Glittering Snowscape Shawl

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well and enjoying their winter! The weather sure is a roller coaster ride! I'm really enjoying the days getting longer again! Grace is doing really well. Sorry I don't have any new photos. I don't usually carry my phone or camera when I'm outside and that's where I would get any interesting pictures. One of these days I'll figure it out!

I'm really excited to have finished my Glittering Snowscape Shawl designed by Stephen West:

Glittering Snowscape Shawl

This picture is before blocking and trimming the ends. I have it on the blocking mats right now, waiting for it to dry. This was so much fun to make! The instructions were really clear and the stitches were interesting. Here are some close-up pictures of the different sections:





This is a really big shawl, which I love, and I think it's beautiful!

I had so much fun with the Glittering Snowscape Shawl that I decided to start another Stephen West shawl that I had sitting in my stash. I bought this kit several years ago as a Valentine's Day present to myself. It's the Starflake shawl:

Starflake kit

I really wanted to make the shawl when I bought it, but I was a little intimidated by how complicated it looks. But now that I have one Stephen West shawl under my belt, I'm ready to make many more! This shawl starts off with 6 diamonds creating a star in the middle of the shawl. I'm just ready to bind off after the second diamond:

Starflake progress

I already feel like I've done some complicated stuff (the I-cord where the diamonds are attached seems complicated to me) and Stephen has really made it easy. I think I'm really going to enjoy this one, too!

I also needed a smaller project, so I started my Bandola knit bandana designed by Laura Nelkin. I have the center finished so far:

Bandola

Next I just have to pick up the stitches along the perimeter and knit a beaded lace border. This should be interesting and I look forward to getting back to this!

That's all I've been working on. I hope everyone is doing well!

Nancy


Monday, January 15, 2024

Edison and Glittering Snowscape Shawls

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well and keeping warm! The arctic air mass hit us today, although we aren't getting it as bad as other places. When we got up this morning, the temperature was around 0F, then it kept dropping until we reached -7. As the day went on, we got back up to 0, but we're going down again now that the day is ending. It started out as a cloudy, snowy day, but in the afternoon we got beautiful blue skies. Lovely, but it means that it's going to get really cold tonight without the insulation from the clouds. It's supposed to be a lot warmer tomorrow (highs in the 20s), but really windy so I might end up skipping the morning walk again. Oh, well! Spring will come soon enough. At least it's perfect knitting weather!

I started the month by knitting an Edison shawl designed by Lynn Di Christina. I made the shawl for my sister, using some lovely, soft baby alpaca yarn that she gave me for Christmas. I figured that she would like the colors since she picked them out and she will appreciate the softness and warmth on her early morning dog walks! I knit this as quickly as possible so that I could get it into the mail and have it hopefully get to her before the colder weather hits. I just finished it on Friday and got it in the mail on Saturday, so hopefully she'll get it tomorrow. In my haste, I forgot to get a picture of the finished shawl, but here's a progress photo I took a while ago:

Edison Shawl

The final shawl has three colors: the beige and red above along with a blue. The next section after what is shown in the picture alternates skinny stripes of all three colors, then the shawl is finished with a section of solid blue. The shawl is long and skinny so she can wear it like a scarf. This should work well for her since she's not really a shawl person. The pattern actually has you knit everything but the final solid section in stockinette, while the final section is knit in garter stitch. One of the pictures on the pattern page shows the shawl knit in all garter stitch, although that's not mentioned in the pattern. It's a free pattern so I can't complain. I decided to also knit the shawl in all garter stitch because garter stitch is squishier and that's what I wanted for this project. I hope she likes it!!

The other project I've been working on a Glittering Snowscape Shawl designed by Stephen West:

Glittering Snowscape Shawl

This is the 2023 pattern for Stephen's annual after Christmas knit-along (KAL). The start of the project was in my last blog post. Now, I've finished the body of the shawl and am ready to start the border. The shawl is designed with strips of lace separated by strips of ridges. Here's a close-up of the final sections:

Glittering Snowscape Shawl - close-up

This is just with the shawl spread out. The lace will open up even more when the finished shawl is blocked. This is going to be a big shawl -- the last body row has 471 stitches in it! The fancy bottom border will take a little while to finish, but it's going to be gorgeous when done!

That's all for now. As I said above, I hope everyone stays warm!!

Nancy


Monday, January 1, 2024

Happy New Year!!

 Hi all -

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season and best wishes for a wonderful New Year!! I got to visit my family for Christmas, which is always a lot of fun! This was Grace's first trip and she did great! She and Ladybug, my sister's younger crazy dog, got along great and had a great time. Winnie, her older dog, let Grace know to leave her alone and Grace respected her. The other family dogs were over periodically and everything went well. Unfortunately, on one of our morning outings to the dog park Grace ended up getting injured so she had to go to the emergency vet and couldn't play for the second half of our trip. It wasn't a big deal (one of her dog friends must have caught its tooth in her side), but it was a bummer! The emergency vet opted to not put in staples because it was small enough that it could heal on its own and the sides of the wound had dried a bit so they would have needed to be cut back before stitching. It was healing well, but it wasn't closing so my regular vet decided to staple it. It looks really good now, but we're on limited activity for another week. It's frustrating for both of us, but it's for the best! Is it almost Saturday yet????

I didn't do any knitting during my family visit because the morning before we left Grace saw a squirrel just as I was letting her in the gate after our morning walk and she took off while still on leash. She dragged my hand against the fence post with the wire fence wrapped around it and I had scrapes and bruises all over my hand. But I did get the final installment for my Jimmy Beans Wool blanket club and finished that up before I left. The pattern is the Juni Throw designed by Katy Petersen:

Juni Throw

Juni Throw - December section close-up

This blanket turned out great! The yarn is really heavy and warm! And it's the perfect size for keeping me warm on the couch. I've signed up for the 2024 blanket club, which is a completely different style of blanket, so I look forward to starting on that this year!

Before I left I also started working on a new shawl. It's the Glittering Snowscape Shawl designed by Stephen West:

Glittering Snowscape Shawl

This is such a fun pattern to knit! I love all of the different stitches -- it keeps the interest level up. And Stephen West patterns are formatted so that they are really easy to follow along. They are easy to put into knitCompanion, the software I use while knitting, and they have clear instructions with supporting videos for anything that might be confusing. And they are always interesting and colorful. Unfortunately, I cut it too close with my yarn so I've run out of the lightest color and had to order more. So I've put this project aside until the new yarn arrives.

Finally, my hand is now healed so I'm looking at other projects. Laura Nelkin, one of my favorite designers, always has a knit-along from January through March. During this time we can share progress on any of her designs and be eligible for a weekly prize drawing. To start with, I've pulled out a very old project -- the Navigatrix scarf:

Navigatrix

This was a mystery project from 2017. Because this is a scarf so size isn't as important and because I'm lazy, I skipped the gauge swatch and used the needles suggested in the pattern. Since I'm a tighter knitter than Laura (I now always go up 1 or 2 needle sizes when making her patterns), my squares are smaller than hers and my scarf is longer and thinner. Not a big deal, but it means I'm using less yarn and have to decide how many squares I want to make for the scarf. The scarf is made by knitting mitered squares and then joining them. There are five different square patterns and four different join patterns:

Navigatrix close-up

So I guess I'll just keep knitting and adding squares until it feels right to me. I've also thought about joining the ends to make a cowl instead.

Well, that's it for now. I hope everyone is doing well!

Nancy


Friday, December 15, 2023

More WIP Work

 Hi all -

It's hard to believe Christmas is just a little over a week away! We got a foot of snow last weekend, so it's a white Christmas for us! It really is so beautiful! I've got all of my Christmas knitting done, so I've been finishing up some old WIPs (Works In Progress) before starting some new things. I'm never short on projects!

The first old project I finished is my Prismatic Poncho designed by Rachel Raden:

Prismatic Poncho - front

Prismatic Poncho - back

This was an old Jimmy Beans Wool Knitting Club project from 2019. It was a lot of knitting so I would work on it for a while, then put it aside to work on other projects. It is simply made as two large rectangles that are connected along the back half of one long side. My corners on the rectangles aren't square because I didn't use a loose enough tension on the edge stitches, but it still all works. I think this will be wonderful on cold winter evenings when I'm using a blanket but I still want to do some kind of handwork. I can cover my shoulders with the poncho for added warmth without hindering my arms at all.

The other WIP I finished are my Kickshaws designed by Shanel Wu:

Kickshaws

Kickshaws in use

These were another Jimmy Beans Wool Knit Club project from 2019. I put these aside at the time because I didn't understand the directions after knitting the soles. The second part of the pattern was called "right insole" and you started by picking up 3 stitches from one of the short ends of the sole. Since I couldn't picture where on the slipper we were working, I couldn't figure out the proper 3 stitches to pick up. So I put them away for another time. Well, I picked them back up and tried a few things until I figured out that these instructions were for the "right side" of the slipper and we were starting at the toe and only working half of the toe stitches because of the stitches going along the center top. Once I figured this out, it was easy to finish the slippers! They fit my feet perfectly so I think they'll be a welcome addition to my winter home footwear.

Finally, I took the yarn left over from my Arabica Cowl and made a Robusta Hat designed by yellowcosmo:

Robusta Hat

Robusta Hat - pattern close-up

This yarn was from a kit that I bought from Jimmy Beans Wool several years ago. The kit was for either the Arabica Cowl (crochet) or the Robusta Hat and Cowl combination (knit). I decided to make the Arabica Cowl to practice my crochet, but ended up with a lot of yarn left over so decided to make the Robusta Hat with that. The Robusta Hat has a really cool slip stitch pattern on the body. I really like how it turned out -- the picture doesn't do it justice! I wasn't sure if the quantity I had of each yarn would be enough, but I figured that I would make it work. As I got into the knitting, I also decided to do an extra repeat of the pattern using the red/tan color combination because the hat was going to be a little short for my taste. I had to use some of the shorter scraps, but I was able to get almost all of the hat finished with the colors as specified in the pattern. I just ran out of the tan yarn as I neared the top of the hat, so I switched back to the red yarn at the very top. I thought that made the color change look intentional since it matched the brim color. I ended up using absolutely all of the red and tan yarns and have about 25 yards of the gray yarn leftover. Pretty good use of the yarn! I really like this hat and will be keeping it for myself. And I'll probably add a faux-fur pom-pom since I think it's screaming for one.

That's it for now. I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season!!

Nancy