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