Got Inclusivity Basted

Hi all -

Well, I did it! I got my niece's graduation quilt, Inclusivity, basted. I've been dreading this for a long time because I really hate basting large quilts. My house has gotten too cluttered to find enough floor space for a queen-sized quilt, and my back and knees can't handle it anymore anyway. So I had to come up with another way to get these quilts basted. A while ago I saw a hand-quilting frame on sale so I bought it specifically for this purpose. This was the first large quilt I've needed to baste since buying it, so this was the big test. First, I had to prepare the quilting frame. That took a while, but I got it together. Then I had to load the quilt. Of course, as with everything, my quilt top barely fit on the frame and the backing was too wide, but I was able to fold the backing and batting over on the sides leaving the area on the top free to be basted. Here you can see what one of the sides looked like in the middle of the basting:

Since I had the quilt on the frame, I decided to baste it using needle and thread instead of my usual safety pins. I used leftover bobbins of my regular sewing thread for the basting and made lines of stitches across the quilt. I hope you can see the thread in the picture:

The basting itself went relatively quickly once I got the frame together and the quilt loaded. My back was a bit sore when I was done, but nothing like what it would have been like if I had pin-basted it on the floor. And my knees feel great! Now I'll just have to start the quilting to see if the thread basting is strong enough to hold everything together and if the layers are smooth enough to avoid tucks on the back. But at this point I think this is going to be my go-to way to baste large quilts.

Otherwise, I've been working on my regular stuff. I made a couple more gift bags:

And have several more gifts ready for more bags to be made.

I ripped out the old version of my nephew's hat and reknitted it. For the new version, I switched to smaller needles to get a denser fabric, added an extra pattern repeat to make up for the smaller needles and switched the colors of the yarn in the colorwork since I hadn't noticed that I had gotten those backwards. I like the new version a lot better!

In the picture you can see the Bluetooth headphones that go with the hat. I hope he likes it! This is the Stronger pattern by Athena Forbes.

I also finished knitting the Odyssey Shawl by Joji Locatelli for one of my nieces.

I still need to block this shawl, which will open up all of the holes and make this shawl look really cool!

I also knit the February Hat by Kate Gagnon Osborn.

This hat will probably go to either my niece's fiancee or to my brother-in-law. I haven't decided yet.

I also started knitting A Little Lonely Cable hat by Joji Locatelli:

Originally, this was going to be for my niece's fiancee, but I decided that it was looking feminine to me so I've decided to give it to one of my other nieces instead. It'll look great on her!

Finally, I got my September installment for the Sunshower Shawl by Ambah O'brien and I spent an evening getting that part done:

You can't really see it in the picture, but the last couple of installments have added some interesting flair to the shawl that will really be cool after blocking.

Well, that's it for this time. Hopefully I'll have made some good progress on quilting Inclusivity by next time. But I also have to start collecting my supplies for my classes at Houston so we'll see how everything goes. I hope everybody is enjoying the shift into fall. The aspens are at their peak color at my house right now, so it's really incredible outside. It makes dealing with the shorter days a little bit easier!

Nancy

Summer of Knitting

Hi all -

Wow! Has it really been 3 months since I last posted??? Sorry to have been gone so long!

As has been the case lately, I've mostly been knitting. My big push this summer was knitting sweaters for myself. It's been really nice to work on some big projects that have interesting sections, but also have sections that don't require much attention. And, selfish as it might be, it's been really nice to make some stuff for myself! I shared my first sweater of the year in a previous post. My second sweater was the Jane Morris by Carol Sunday.

I chose this pattern because I could buy a knitCompanion project already set up for me. knitCompanion is the software that I use to store my pattern and keep track of my place. I figured that would help me to learn how to use the different features of knitCompanion and I'm very happy that I did it! And I love the final result! The weather is cooling off now so I should be able to wear it soon.

My first new sweater for this post is The Weekender by Andrea Mowry. I first saw this sweater pattern on the Grocery Girls podcast and decided to jump in when Jimmy Beans Wool had a knit-a-long for the pattern.

I knit this sweater using a cotton/cashmere blend yarn (Rowan Cotton Cashmere) that is really drapy and wonderful! I've been wearing it over a tank top in the cool evenings for the last month, and all day since the weather has cooled down a bit lately. It's been perfect!

My next sweater is the Foxtrot Cardigan by Marie Greene.

I made this sweater using some Cascade 220 100% wool yarn that I got on sale. I love how this one turned out, too! It's really soft and warm! I haven't blocked it yet. The patterning will flatten out and open up with blocking, so it'll look better then. The only thing I don't like about this pattern is that it is designed without buttons and the placket has a curved design that would look like you were bursting your buttons if you added them. So this will just be a cardigan that is always worn open. But I think it's still going to get a lot of wear! I got several other sweater quantities of yarn on sale this summer so I look forward to knitting some more sweaters after the Christmas present rush is over.

This summer Laura Nelkin had her annual kit-a-long, where you can win prizes for working on kits that have bought from her. This includes Lola's Choice and M/N Club kits that you have gotten but haven't finished yet. So, I pulled out some of my Laura Nelkin projects and made some progress on those. My first is Kairos, the July 2019 Lola's Choice project.

This is a really quick knit, but is really cute, too. I love the clasp, which was designed by Laura and her husband and made by a local leather artisan, so I ordered a couple more kits in other colors to make some time in the future.

I also made this Aquicowl from a kit that I had purchased from Craftsy/Bluprint on sale several years ago. I do love a good sale!

I haven't decided yet whether I'm going to keep this one or give it away.

Since I made the Aquicowl, I decided that I should also work on my Aquifer scarf, which was one of the projects from the 2017 M Club.

This is a cool knit, but I kept losing interest in this project for some reason, so it's hibernating until next year when I might get interested in it again.

I also made some more progress on my Hring Scarf, which was a Lola's Choice project from a year or two ago, before I started keeping track of which project arrived when.

This is a fairly difficult beaded lace project, made even more difficult by the nubby cotton yarn. I had a lot of trouble following the lace pattern last year when I started this scarf so put it away fairly early on. This year I'm experienced enough now that the pattern was going pretty well, but the yarn really is tough to knit with because cotton yarns like to stick to themselves making it more difficult to get a good tension and the big nubs in this yarn make that worse and make it very difficult to "read" your stitches and almost impossible to unknit stitches when you make a mistake. So I could only work on this a little while at a time, but I do want to finish this at some point because the knitted part of the scarf is so beautiful and drapy!

My final Laura Nelkin project is the Proto-Lola hat, which was the September 2019 Lola's Choice project. This one came after the end of the kit-a-long, but I had to make it when the project arrived.

I wanted to work on this project because I don't have a lot of stranded colorwork experience, but I'm planning on making a couple of them as Christmas presents so this would be good experience. This hat knit up quickly and I really like how it turned out. The yarn is interesting because the green is a "chainette" yarn that is thinner yarns that are braided together in some way. This is a really soft wool yarn. But the white yarn is a really "toothy" Icelandic wool yarn that is supposed to be really warm.  Laura combined these yarns so that the soft yarn would feel comfortable on your ears, while the Icelandic wool yarn keeps your head toasty warm. I'm definitely keeping this one!

The last Laura Nelkin project I'm going to mention in this post is the last N Club kit for this year. I received my kit last week.

Laura sends out these projects without showing us what we're making until the big reveal, which was today. This project is the Afresh shawl, which I think is more like a long scarf. It's a really cool design that I think I'll make for myself, but I expect I'll want to make more for the nieces next year.

I've also done some work on my Jimmy Beans Wool club projects. The first one of those clubs is the year-long shawl club that you've seen before. The pattern is the Sunshower Shawl by Ambah O'Brien.

I'm finished through the August installment and should receive the September installment in the mail next week.

The second club is the Knit Club, which has a new project every 3 months received in monthly installments. The June-July-August project is the Prismatic Poncho by Rachel Roden (no link because it's not yet available on Ravelry). This poncho is made in two halves, which are then seamed together to make a poncho. I have the first half completed.

It's not blocked yet, but should flatten out with blocking. The second half will be the same, but with different colors, and the seam will be about halfway along the long side. This is not a style that I would choose for myself, but I do love the colors. The yarn is interesting. It's a thick cotton yarn with little polyester strings of color mixed into it so the colors kind of glow. You can kind of see it in this early progress photo:

The yarn is really soft and comfortable to knit with. I think this will be nice to have in the winter to wrap in while watching TV.

To finish up my knitting projects, I've also been working on Christmas knitting. I made a little more progress on the Paris Mittens by Andrea Arbour that I'm making for my sister.

I keep putting these aside because I'm not sure how I feel about them. I think the colors are beautiful and are looking good together, but my hand just barely fits inside the cuff and you can see the contrast yarn in the middle of the background areas where I was locking my floats, so I might end up pulling these apart and starting over again. This was the main reason that I wanted to make the Proto-Lola hat when it arrived to make sure that I was doing colorwork okay. That worked out, so I think for these mittens I might just need to go up a needle size to make them slightly bigger and move the float locks around so that they don't line up. I have some time to make that decision.

I also started a colorwork hat for my nephew -- the Stronger hat by Athena Forbes.

This hat has a round of trees and then a round of mountains, so I thought it would be a good reminder of his visits to Estes Park. I'm making the hat with holes in the ribbing for some Bluetooth headphone speakers that I also go him for Christmas. You can see the speakers in another hat below. Anyway, I'm not sure I'm liking how this hat is turning out so far. The pattern is designed so that you can put the colorwork on in several ways. She says that the pattern is for a bunch of sizes, from newborn to adult, but she has you use the same pattern and yarn and just change the needle size for the different hat sizes. Well, that is resulting in the fabric that the knitting creates for the adult hat is really thin and I'm not liking that. So, I'm planning on unraveling the hat and starting over again. In the new version, I'll use the same yarn but will go down a couple of needle sizes and add a repeat of the trees and mountains. I think that'll make a much nicer hat. This is pretty quick to knit up so I shouldn't be wasting too much time. I just have to recalculate where to put the ear holes for the headphones.

The other hat that I made for the headphones that I'm giving to my nephew is the Chunky Ribbed Stripes Hat by Kait Duncan.

This was my test knit for seeing if my calculations for the headphones holes was right. The headphones holes worked perfectly, but this hat also turned out a bit thin, as you can see when looking at the brim in the picture, so I wasn't thrilled with it. I figured that my nephew could use this hat on warmer days, but I wanted to make a nicer hat to go with the headphones, too. So that will be the Stronger hat above.

Last Christmas, I knit a bunch of dishcloths for my other sister. After using them, she said she loved them and would love to have some dish towels out of the same yarn. The yarn went on sale, so I bought a bunch and made a dish towel for her.

If I have time, I'll make a couple more for her and for others in the family (and myself) since I think these are wonderful. The yarn is Dishie by KnitPicks.

My final knitting project is the Odyssey Shawl by Joji Locatelli. I just started this on Friday because I needed a straight-forward Christmas knitting project as a relief from the colorwork problems I was having.

It's been really nice working on this shawl and I'm almost done with it now. Each color section has a garter stitch section and then a lace section with these big holes:

These holes will really look cool once they are opened up with blocking. I just have to finish the holes in the third section and then do the picot bind-off, which I think will also be really cool, and the knitting will be finished!

So you see, I wasn't lying about this being a summer of knitting!

I've also done a little bit of sewing this summer. I finally finished the backing for my niece's graduation quilt, so I'm ready to baste it and start the quilting. As a reminder, here is the front of the quilt:

(There's a purple line of hexagons that you can't see under the sun glare.) I designed this backing for it:

I think they'll go together well! Now if I can just make myself do the dreaded basting of a queen-sized quilt.....

Finally, I did sew a couple more gift bags for the gifts that I've finished:

Hopefully, I'll need to make some more gift bags soon! There's never enough time to make all of the Christmas gifts, especially when your family keeps growing!

I hope everyone had a wonderful summer! I'm now enjoying the very beginnings of the aspens turning yellow at my house!

Nancy

Inclusivity Backing Started

Hi all -

I hope everyone is having a wonderful summer! Yep, believe it or not, summer is here. It's hard to tell at my house since we had a pretty good snow this morning, although it all melted as soon as it hit the ground. But I think we have some warmer weather in our future!

Since my last post, I visited my family in Kansas City again. My sister wanted to go to the Kansas City Regional Quilt Festival so I decided to drive out. My nephew's girlfriend joined us and we had a wonderful day together looking at the quilts and leaving a lot of money with the vendors! I decided to enjoy the quilt show as a family day so the only pictures I took were of a friend's quilts so she could see them hanging in the show, so I don't have anything to share here. But, trust me, it was a very nice show!

I haven't had much time for quilting since I was away from home, but I was able to get started on the backing for my niece's graduation quilt. I got the top half of it pieced and should be able to finish it up by next week. Here is what I have so far:

Sorry for the bad picture, but the wind did not want to cooperate with me (although, of course, it's pretty calm now.....). I have the rainbow band for the bottom half of the quilt pieced, so now I just need to cut and piece the backing pieces and then put everything together.

While I was in KC, my niece's boyfriend proposed to her, so now she is officially engaged. I had already seen a quilt kit on Bluprint that I really liked and was on sale, so I had already purchased it. Here is the quilt I'm going to make for them:

I might make the border a little wider since it looks a little small in the picture, but everything else will be the same. I think this will be a stunning quilt and it will be easy to piece (it's just a couple of sizes of pineapple blocks), but it still has the flavor of a double wedding ring quilt with the circle illusions the blocks make. I'm really looking forward to starting on the piecing! I haven't heard anything about a date yet, but you traditionally don't have to have the wedding quilt done until the first anniversary so I should have plenty of time (depending on how many other weddings decide to pop up!). My step-nephew also announced his engagement to his girlfriend just before my trip, but I don't really know him well so am not sure if I will make anything for them.

I've also been doing some knitting. Before I left for KC, I finally got out my step-niece's baby sweater and finished it up. I really like how it turned out!

I wrapped it up and gave it to my sister to give to them whenever it's convenient for her. The baby is due in early July so the timing was perfect! The pattern is Baby Novus by Laura Nelkin, if anyone is interested in making one.

I had so much fun with my cardigan and love it so much, that I also started another one. This one is Jane Morris by Carol Sunday. I chose this one because I really like it and because I bought the pre-made knitCompanion set-up for this pattern. (knitCompanion is the software that I use for following the pattern while I knit.) I'm hoping to learn a lot of the knitCompanion features that I haven't figured out yet by using a set-up created by the experts. I must say, it's really nice to have someone else do that part for me! I did a lot of knitting on this sweater while I was in KC so was able to get the front finished:

This sweater is being knit with some hand-dyed yarn.  You can get a lot of inconsistency in the yarn color with hand-dyed yarn that can cause it to be obvious when you start a new skein in your knitting. This is what happened with the Maple Leaf shawl I made for a friend last year using this same brand of yarn. As you can see, the tips of the leaf are lighter than the bases:

It's subtle, but it's noticeable and it wasn't noticeable while I was doing the knitting. So, for the sweater, which used two skeins for the front, I added the second skein early and alternated the skeins until the first skein ran out. You can see some striping on the front of the sweater that comes from doing this, but it's only noticeable if you are actually looking for it. I'm hoping to keep this sweater as a background project since I have a bunch of other stuff to make, but I'm really enjoying it and can't wait to wear it so you might be seeing it more often than I've planned!

While I was gone, the third installment for my Jimmy Beans Wool knitting club arrived:

It's always so much fun to get these in the mail! This time they gave us a bunch of extras, including a key chain with some sheep on it. I don't have a use for a keychain, but I'm planning on taking the sheep off of it and using them for zipper pulls on project bags. I think they'll make great zipper pulls! This was the final installment for the Lakeside Summer Shawl so I went ahead and finished that project.

And I made Lance model it, just for fun:

Doesn't he look happy???

Finally, I decided to start on the Paris Mittens by Andrea Arbour that I'm making for my sister for Christmas. I just started these this morning, so I haven't gotten very far:

But I'm enjoying using the project bag I made a while back for this project:

These are colorwork mittens and I haven't done much colorwork so I'll be learning a lot as I go along. The biggest thing I'll have to pay attention to for these is the length of the yarn strands on the inside of the mittens where I'm carrying the unused color behind the knitting. If these "floats" are too short, the mittens won't stretch properly, but if they're too long then the stitches will become messy. Wish me luck!

Nancy

Arda Sweater

Hi all -

While I had expected to be showing you the backing for Lindsey's graduation quilt in this post, that didn't happen. Instead, my crafting took an unexpected detour and I actually knit an entire sweater since my last post. Yep, an entire sweater from start to finish. I had only planned on making a start on the sweater, but I loved the feel of the yarn so much that I just had to get it finished so I could wear it! The sweater I knit was the Arda sweater by Amy Christoffers:

I used the suggested yarn, Berroco Vibe, which is a really soft mix of organic cotton, organic wool and nylon.

This sweater was a wonderful learning experience for my. It's only my second sweater and the first was a side-to-side construction, the instructions were very detailed and I knit it as part of a knit-along where there was a lot of support online. This sweater was knit from the bottom to the top, had brief instructions and I did it all on my own except for one clarification of the instructions that I got from the designer. (I also found a mistake in the pattern that I need to send to the designer.)

As I mentioned, you start the sweater at the bottom and knit up:

Once you get to the armpits, you put the main sweater aside and knit the arms up to that point. I took this opportunity to try a new-to-me technique of magic loop two-at-a-time knitting. In this method, you know both of the sleeves at the same time on long circular needles. It's a bit finicky to get started because things can flip around:

But once you get further up the arms, it gets pretty easy:

The biggest thing you have to watch is to make sure that you are knitting with the correct ball of yarn on each arm and to keep the two balls from getting too tangled. Then you put the pieces together and continue knitting up to the neck:

The final step is to pick up stitches along the front edge and knit the button band. I haven't picked up stitches much and it always stresses me out trying to get the right number of stitches evenly spaced. But this time I figure out a trick to help with that. The pattern gives the number of stitches to pick up in different areas around the front and neck. First, I put a locking stitch marker at the ends of each section where I would be picking up stitches. The, as I worked each section, I used more locking stitch markers to evenly divide the sections into subsections that would need around 10 stitches each. I could then evenly space those 10 or so stitches in each subsection and know that the stitches all around the edge would be evenly spaced. Sorry I didn't get any pictures, but it worked like a charm and I know I'll be using that trick whenever I need to pick up a bunch of stitches!

I really love how this sweater turned out and I can see myself making another one. If I do that, I might make the next smaller size. I couldn't decide which size to make. The model was wearing the size with 4" of ease. For my measurements, I had to choose between 2" of ease and 6" of ease. Being conservative, I went for the 6" of ease and it fits fine and I'll be able to wear it over anything. But I think the size with 2" of ease would be nice, too, so that's what I would try next. time.

The only other knitting I did this time was my May installment of the Jimmy Beans Wool shawl club. This is the club that lasts the entire year. This month's installment was "only" 8 rows, but we're up to more than 400 stitches in each row so it did take the entire evening! Here is what we got for this month's installment:

And the project so far:

Finally, I didn't completely neglect Lindsey's graduation quilt. I did design what I want to make for the back:

Now I just have to do the piecing.....

Nancy