Pacificus DK Sweater Progress

Hi all -

Although we've continued to get snow up here, it is starting to feel a bit more like spring. I'm really ready for it! We got over 3 feet of snow last week: 1 foot early in the week and another 2+ feet on Thursday. It was really heavy snow, but I got it shoveled. Here is what it looked like in the middle of the second storm:

I try to keep the little deck at the front door shoveled since Lance likes to sit out there, but it's not easy in these big spring storms. And, yes, he does sit out there in the snow and then come into the house completely covered! It's too funny for me to be bothered by it! We've had warm weather this week with just light snow showers every once in a while so about 80-90% of the snow has melted. Hopefully, this is the last big storm! My hammock is just begging to get some use!!

I've also been doing some knitting. My main project is the Pacificus DK sweater designed by Laura Nelkin. Laura is having a knit-along for this sweater right now so that's keeping me on track. For her knit-alongs, Laura defines goals with deadlines and everyone who meets the goal by the deadline gets put into a hat for a nice prize. I haven't won any prizes, but I've kept up and should have a completed summer sweater by the end of May. Before knitting a sweater, you always want to knit a swatch with the yarn and needles you plan to use. You then measure the swatch and compare it with what the designer got. If your swatch isn't the right size, you change needles until you get close to what the designer got. If you don't do this, your sweater won't be the right size. Here is my swatch being protected by Buttercup:

Since I grew up with a thrifty German mother and I don't have any use for a bunch of squares of knitted fabric of different sizes, I leave my swatch attached to the ball of yarn and unravel the swatch to use in the project once I get gauge. For this sweater, I knit 4 different swatches before getting the right size so I would have wasted a lot of yarn if I hadn't done that!

The Pacificus DK sweater has an interesting side-to-side construction. You start knitting at the edge of the right sleeve and continue across the sweater until finishing at the edge of the left sleeve. Then you knit a narrow panel from the bottom edge of the sweater up to the underarm edge of the sleeve to attach the front of the sweater to the back. You can see that in this picture which shows my current progress:

The right sleeve is at the bottom of the picture, the neck opening is in the middle, and the bottom edges of the sweater are on the left and right in the picture. Here is a picture of it folded to what it will look like when finished:

In this picture, the right sleeve is pointing to the lower-left corner of the picture, the bottom edge of the sweater is on the right side of the picture, and the neck opening is pointing to the upper-left corner of the picture. I've just gotten to the left edge of the neck opening, so the next section will be the left side of the sweater and the left sleeve. When that's done, I'll just need to knit the side panels and then fold up the hem on the bottom. Those parts shouldn't take too long. Here is a close-up of the lace section at the top of the sweater:

I really love how this lace looks! And here is a picture of one of the cute kitty stitch markers I'm using:

Isn't that adorable??? For my non-knitter friends, the stitch markers sit on the cable between my knitting needles to show me where the plain knitting ends and the lace knitting begins so I don't have to keep counting stitches. The cable connects my two knitting needles and holds the stitches that I am currently knitting, effectively giving me one long, double-ended knitting needle.

I've also made some progress on my other big project -- my Creek sweater designed by the Berroco (a yarn company) Design team. This sweater is knit from the bottom up, so it's easier to see how it goes together:

I've got the bottom of this sweater done and have split for the sleeve and started up the front. This is a slow stitch to do, but will hopefully feel like it's going faster now since I'll be working on narrower sections of the sweater. I really love how this sweater feels and can't wait to wear it!

Those of you that have been reading my blog for a while know that I hate blocking my knitting, but you really have to block lace items in order to see the lace. I finally made myself block the two lace shawls that I finished earlier this year. The first is the Fraser's Ridge shawl designed by Rachel Roden:

The shawl really looks so beautiful and feels so ethereal after blocking that it's really worth the effort! And here is my gratuitous Lance picture for my good friend who is always nice enough to ask for pictures of him:

The other shawl I blocked was my Easy Goes It shawl designed by Finicky Creations:

And, of course, Lance had to model this one, too!

Lance actually loves to model my stuff because he knows that he's going to get a treat when we're done. And he's incredible about being patient while I take the picture. What a sweetie!!

The only sewing I've done is to make a couple of accessories for my masks. First, I made a band that I can hook my elastic to if my ears start to hurt from the elastic:

This will be nice if I have to wear my mask for a long period of time for some reason. The other thing I made were some filters to put inside my masks:

These filters are made out of Oly-Fun and will slide inside of the mask. I tried to show you how they fit in the mask, but it's a little hard to see. I made 4 filters since I have 4 masks so I can easily wash the masks between wearings. Oly-Fun is a 100% polypropylene fabric that a lot of people are using for mask filters. I haven't done the research myself, but feel good about the group of people that I've seen using this fabric so I'm going to use it, too. According to the Joann's web site:

As a non-woven it is similar to the material used in surgical masks, however, OLY-Fun has not been tested or approved for medical use or filtration capabilities.  A one-ply sheet of OLY-Fun is a non-woven 65GSM, whereas commercially manufactured surgical masks are typically made of 3-ply 25GSM non-woven with additional filtration added.  Please note, homemade masks are not a substitute or replacement for N95 medical equipment.

It's the same fabric that is used for a lot of reusable shopping bags. It's easy to sew, but I'm not sure if it can be washed. The care instructions on the package say to "wipe clean" and that you can use an iron on low heat with a pressing cloth, but doesn't say anything about washing. I'll probably try blasting the filters with steam from my iron to disinfect them between use. We'll see what that does....

Well, that's all the crafting for now. The stay at home order for the state of Colorado is lifting tomorrow, although they're still asking people to stay home as much as possible (calling it "safe at home"). Boulder County has extended the stay at home order until May 8 so people around here should still be hunkered down. I hope all of you are doing well!!

Nancy

Corona Crafting

Hi all -

I hope everyone is staying safe and healthy during these incredible times! I'm one of the lucky few who has been impacted to a much smaller degree than most of the world. I live alone in a remote area and already worked at home, so the social distancing hasn't been as big of an impact on me. I also have a job that is continuing while so many are losing theirs. And, so far, nobody in my family has come down with the disease. I am so blessed and my heart just aches for what so many people are going through!

In my spare time I've been continuing to make things. I can tell that I'm a bit stressed out about what's going on in the world because I'm finding myself leaning towards smaller or simpler projects. But that's okay. I've started working on some smaller Christmas presents for the family. I started with this shaving bag for my nephew:

The outside is waxed canvas and the lining is canvas. It also has some leather details. I hope he likes it. I find it so difficult to come up with crafted gift ideas that might appeal to a guy!

I also tried some other patterns that might make good presents for multiple family members. The first is this tortilla warmer for heating tortillas in the microwave:

I used a free pattern from Bernina (available here) to make this warmer. I made this one for myself because I've been wanting to try one of these for a while now. I normally wrap tortillas in a wet paper towel when heating them in the microwave, but that seems so wasteful. The next time I have tortillas, I'll give this a try and if it works well then I'll make more of these for the family. If you make one of these, be careful about what materials you use. Anything that isn't cotton could cause problems in the microwave. This includes the thread and the batting. Most cotton battings have a plastic (or some other non-cotton material) scrim that holds the cotton in place, so you have to get special batting for microwave projects.

The other project I made is a reusable shopping bag:

The bag has a magnetic closure to keep things inside if you don't buy much; and, when not in use, the bag itself can be folded up inside of the pocket:

I found this pattern in one of my books and think I'll probably be making several of these for Christmas!

I've also been doing some knitting. Knitting is really nice for making my TV time a little more productive! I found myself need to work on an easy knitting pattern, so I pulled a pretty skein of yarn out of my stash and made this Easy Goes It shawl by Finicky Creations:

I also got the March installment of my Jimmy Beans Wool shawl club project, Coral Coast Wrap by
Ambah O'Brien:

This is a fun knit and I'm glad that I'm keeping up so far!

I also decided to start a sweater. Although a sweater is a lot of knitting, it's mostly easy knitting that doesn't take a lot of thought. I decided to make the Creek sweater by the Berroco Design Team. I really liked the sample sweater so I even got the exact same yarn to make mine. This sweater is knit from the bottom hem up. Here is what I have so far:

The body of the sweater is done in a "Broken Ribbing" stitch. This is a 1x1 ribbing round (knit one, purl one, knit one, purl one) alternated with a knit round. Not much thinking involved, but the ribbing round takes a lot more time since you have to keep moving your yarn from the back to the front to the back of the work between each stitch. The yarn I'm using is a cotton/wool blend that I think is going to be spectacular to wear on cooler summer evenings (and really throughout the year for me). I really want to get this done so I can wear it!

I'm also getting ready to start on another sweater. This one is the Pacificus DK sweater by Laura Nelkin. It's a short-sleeved summer sweater with a lace yoke knit in a Pima cotton yarn. Laura is having a knit-along for this pattern so I can knit it together with a group, with prize incentives to help me keep on track. I got my yarn selected and wound into balls ready for knitting:

I've also knit my gauge swatch and need to block it to see if I have the right size needles for this project. The size of your needles and the size of your yarn affect the size of your knitting stitches, so you have to knit a square of fabric with your needles and yarn and then measure it to see if your stitches are the right size for your pattern. This isn't so important for things like hats and cowls, but is really important for things like sweaters. It would suck to do all of the knitting and then end up with a sweater that is either too big or too small for you to wear it!

Finally, following the CDC's suggestion and our governor's request, I made myself some masks to wear when I do have to go out in public for things like groceries:

I had already made 25 of these masks for organizations that are in need of these, but was in a hurry when I mailed them off so forgot to get pictures. I used the same pattern for my masks and those are the ones above. These masks are nice because they're fitted and don't need the piece of metal over the nose, and they also have an opening between the outside fabric and the lining that can accommodate a filter, if you have one.

That's all I have for now. Sorry there are no pictures of the pets! They are doing well and I was even able to get them in for their semi-annual visits right before our vet stopped taking appointments for routine visits. They are all seniors at this point so it's really nice to get them checked out regularly! And I really love my vet. They had several weeks ago instituted a policy where the owner stays in the car and the vet tech, in gloves and mask, comes out and collect the pet(s). They do the examination and the vet calls the owner on the phone to discuss everything. They then bring the pet(s) back out to you and collect payment. So, they are working hard to keep everyone safe! Since I have so many animals (2 cats and a big dog), the vet helped the vet tech bring them back out to the car and chatted with me for a little while, from a safe distance and fully masked, which I thought was really nice. It just feels so much better to be able to talk about the animals in person! (But it doesn't feel enough better to outweigh the risk of infecting anyone if done in an unsafe manner!)

As I said before, I hope everyone is staying safe and healthy through these tough times! The pandemic can't last forever. And if we all do our parts, we can minimize this disaster. Don't get me wrong, the best we can hope for is really, really bad. But it can be so, so much worse if we don't do everything we can! Off my soapbox now.....

Nancy