Atween Finished

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well! We continue to have unusually warm, dry weather. I made an appointment to get my winter tires swapped off, so now our NWS forecast has snow in the forecast for my house every day starting tomorrow. Isn't that always the case? 😆 I guess I'll keep my appointment in place for a couple of days to encourage the snow to really arrive, then reassess whether I should reschedule. If I knew a good snow dance, I'd definitely be out dancing in the yard!!

This week I was able to finish my Atween shawl designed by Laura Nelkin. 

Atween

This ended up being a long shawl! The bottom border (on top in the picture) started at 424 stitches and increased to 638 stitches. I was happy to get through each row!

Atween - Close-up

Atween - Close-up

Atween - Close-up

During the blocking, I found a hole where I had somehow dropped a couple of stitches. This is where the two pieces are grafted. The graft was an interesting one where we knit stitches from each side together along the edge, then ran a length of yarn through those stitches to hold everything in place. I must have somehow knit two stitches together from one side while dropping two stitches from the other since two stitches on one side were dropped.

Atween - Hole From Dropped Stitches

After the shawl dried, I cut a length of the blue yarn and used that to repair the hole.

Atween - Hole Fixed

I rarely have to repair anything so it took me a while to figure out how the stitches went together. It definitely isn't perfect, but I think it looks fine. I ended up liking this shawl more than I thought I would and look forward to using it as a scarf next winter!

I also made progress on Angela Walters' Arcs, Curves & Points With Rulers quilt along (QAL) project. This week I was able to finish the outer border quilting, added some inner border quilting and applied the binding.

Arcs, Curves & Points With Rulers

Arcs, Curves & Points With Rulers - Border Quilting

I don't know how well you can see the quilting in the red border in the picture. I quilted a swirl fill, leaving random triangles unquilted. Since I was working on my swirls, I didn't use the ruler foot so I would have better visibility. This meant I had to freehand quilt the straight lines around the random triangles. There was some wiggling in the lines, but I don't think any of it is noticeable. For the white part of the border, I did use rulers. I also used an air-soluable pen to mark little lines at the places where I had to change direction to make it easier to keep my lines an even distance from the edge of the border. I really like how this part of the border turned out! I might still add background fills to the shapes, but I really like how clean it looks without the fill so that's a decision for later on. Now, I'll go back to finishing up the middle of the quilt.

Since I finished my Atween shawl, I needed to find another project to take to my knitting group. I decided to start a Pluma Morada shawl designed by Joji Locatelli. 

Pluma Morada

I don't know if you can see the stitches in the picture because of the dark color of the yarn, but this is a simple shawl with strips of 2x2 ribbing surrounding strips with a twisting pattern. It can be knit with any weight of yarn, but I'm using a lace weight yarn, like Joji did, to create what will be a light and airy shawl. This should be a good project for knitting group since it is a simple pattern that doesn't require much attention.

While looking for my next knitting group project, I ran across an old work in progress (WIP) from several years ago. This is the Spirits of the Season shawl designed by Amy Gunderson. This was the 2019 Craftvent project from Jimmy Beans Wool. Craftvent were Christmas advent projects where you had a little package to open each day in December until Christmas Eve. The package would either have a part of the pattern and the needed yarn, or a little knitting notion like stitch markers, stickers, needles, etc. It really was fun! I had kept up with this project until the last day, when I put it aside because I needed to pick up a bunch of stitches and I hate picking up stitches. The project ended up in my WIP pile until I found it again this week. I went ahead and picked up the stitches and started knitting the little border.

Spirits of the Season

The right side is where I picked up the stitches and started knitting. This project won't work for knit group because the stitch pattern for the border is complicated and it uses a fuzzy yarn that is harder to knit with. But I can work on it at home and I should have another completed project soon. And the fuzzy yarn is really soft and wonderful!!

Nancy