Creek Sweater Finished

Hi all -

I've really been making progress on my sweaters! This time, I finished my Creek sweater designed by the Berroco Design Team:

I really love this sweater! It's simple, but still has nice texture and is very comfortable! I'll probably make another one someday, but it'll be a little while since the stitch pattern is slow to knit and a bit hard on my hands. But well worth the effort!

After powering through two sweaters, I decided it was time to make a quick and simple project. So I pulled out a kit I had purchased for a simple, sparkly hat:

The pattern is the Magpie Darling Hat designed by Amanda Kaffka. It is knit with a sparkly yarn held together with a regular yarn:

The sparkly yarn is like a thinner version of the old silver tinsel we used to put on the Christmas tree with little sequins attached. The kit came with enough of this sparkly yarn to make another hat and I also bought another kit so I should be able to make 4 of these hats. I think my nieces will enjoy these.

After finishing the hat, I decided to pull out one of my older shawl WIPs (works in progress) and finish it up. I had my Sunshower Shawl designed by Ambah O'Brien sitting around. This was my Jimmy Beans Wool shawl club project from last year. In that club, you get a small ball of yarn and a bit of the pattern every month for the year, and at the end of the year you have a new shawl. I kept up with the knitting all year long, until we got to the December installment where we had to pick up stitches around the perimeter of the shawl and then knit an I-cord bind-off. I don't feel confident picking up stitches, so I just procrastinated instead. I decided to push past the dread and just get the shawl finished:

I like how it turned out, except that the bind off is a little tight so I can't stretch the shawl out to be as big as I would like, but I'm definitely not redoing it!

I got those little projects done, so it was time to start another new sweater! I bought the book and the yarn for this sweater a while ago, and it was just sitting around waiting for me to be ready to make it. It's the Hurricane Ridge Pullover designed by Allison Griffith. This sweater is knit from the bottom, up. The sleeves are also knit from the bottom, up, and then attached to the sweater. I've knit a bottom-up sweater before, but haven't done bottom-up sleeves so that will be a new construction for me. So far, I've knit the bottom ribbing and have started on the body, which is just knit so it's a nice TV project:

The yarn is Knit Picks Provincial Tweed and it is really soft! I think it's going to feel really good against my skin!

I've also gotten back to working on the backing for my niece's wedding quilt. I really hope they can still have the ceremony on Aug 28 and that I can attend! But we'll see how that goes. Anyway, I had started the backing by adding borders to a panel (see here). I was just going to throw together other pieces of fabric to finish the backing, but during the quarantine Alex Anderson from The Quilt Show has been doing live videos several times a week for people to make a wallhanging with her. I decided to copy the blocks that they were making for the wallhanging, but make them bigger and use them for my backing instead. So, I gathered all of the fabric that I used on the front of the quilt and the other fabrics that were possibilities for the front but didn't make the cut, I drafted the blocks by looking at a picture of the wallhanging and I started making blocks:

These are all of the blocks from the wallhanging. I got tired of making the blocks and was starting to add blocks of fabric so I could fill out the quilt backing (the quilt is about 100"x100", so there's a lot of space to fill....) when I realized that I should add a heart to the house block to symbolize the love in their new home (they bought a house last fall):

Love it! And then, of course, I realized that since it's a wedding quilt it really should have more hearts so I made more heart blocks (and another Churn Dash block since I really love those blocks):

Now I'm definitely done with blocks and will start putting it all together. I really wish I had a design wall or some place where I could lay the blocks all out together so that I can see how everything looks and move things around, but I don't have that space anywhere so I'm just going to have to wing it. However it turns out, it's just the backing so it's going to be okay.

That's all of the crafting that I've done. For my fellow crafters, we also got some back news this week. Bluprint, which used to be called Craftsy, is an online crafting class service. Craftsy started about 10 years ago and had a bunch of really wonderful online classes for quilting, knitting, crochet, cooking, painting, etc, etc, etc. You could buy individual classes and own them "forever" to watch as many times as you wanted. Included with the classes were instructors who would answer any questions that you had. It was a wonderful platform. About 2 years ago, NBC bought out Craftsy and renamed it Bluprint. All of the original content was still there and you could still buy new classes, but they also had a subscription membership where you could watch any class that you wanted while you were a member. They continued to make new content, but their classes weren't as in-depth and generally weren't as interesting to me, but it was still a wonderful platform. Anyway, last Friday NBC announced that they were doing away with Bluprint and it only has a couple of months left. It was pretty shocking for those of us who have been using the service for a long time, and there were a lot of people who were upset with the announcement coming out on a Friday before a holiday weekend with no customer service during that weekend. I guess all of the people employed there were also shocked by the news. I feel very sorry for all of them! Anyway, if you are a member of Bluprint, you should download any patterns that you may own on the site because they won't be around for long. NBC posted a letter to the Bluprint home page saying that they are looking into finding a way for owners of "lifetime" classes to download the classes, so we might actually be able to keep the classes. If you own any classes, you should keep an eye on the Bluprint home page in case they come through with this so you can download your classes before they go away. It's sad because this was a really useful site, but these things happen. And I assume it's always possible that someone will end up buying the content from NBC and continuing the site. You never know!

Hope everyone is doing well!

Nancy

Pacificus DK Sweater Finished

Hi all -

I hope you are all doing well! We continue to do well here. Besides working, I've mostly been knitting and TV binging. I watched Season 2 of "Dead to Me" on Netflix last weekend. I had originally just meant to watch an episode or two while I ate lunch, but I got sucked in and had to watch the entire season. I hope they make more seasons of this show!!

I'm excited to have finished my Pacificus DK sweater designed by Laura Nelkin:

I love how this sweater feels when wearing it! And the bright color! It's interesting because this sweater is made with the same yarn and in the same construction as my Novel-T sweater (also designed by Laura Nelkin) that I describe here, but it's knit at a looser gauge (larger needles so more space between the stitches) and you can really feel the difference in the weight of the fabrics. The Novel-T sweater feels kind of heavy when I wear it, but this sweater feels a lot lighter! This sweater is knit side-to-side, from the edge of the right sleeve, across the body, finishing on the edge of the left sleeve. The sides are then knit together with a narrow panel:

The side panel adds another pretty detail to the sweater.

I've also made good progress on my Creek sweater:

The stitch pattern for this sweater makes it slower to knit (and my large size doesn't help), but I'm getting there. As you can see, the body and right sleeve are finished and I just have the left sleeve and neckline to go. This one should be finished by my next blog post! I'm knitting this sweater with a yarn that is a cotton and wool mix. I'm really liking how it feels when I try it on!

I also received the April installment of my shawl club project, the Coral Coast Wrap designed by Ambah O'Brien.

This month's section of the pattern was really easy so I was able to knit it up in just a couple of hours. Now it's put away, waiting for the end of this month.....

My sewing machine was also calling to me and I just had to take a break and make a new project bag with some fun knitting fabric that I have:

I used the Finch Bucket pattern to make this bag, but I increased the size of the bag so it has plenty of room to hold a large sweater project with all of the needed supplies. I made another bag of this size a while ago that I'm using for my Creek sweater project and it's perfect for that, but the pattern has you make a single handle on one side of the bag. With a weighty project, if you pick the bag up by the handle then the weight of the project can cause the draw string to open up a bit. It dawned on me that I could change the design to have two handles at the top of the bag, like a tote bag and I really wanted to see how that would work. Here's what I came up with:

I think I'm going to really like this design, but will have to wait for another big sweater project to see how it works out in practice. Inside the bag, the pattern has you put in a bunch of pockets, which I love. I also added a length of ruler twill tape, which is handy when knitting, and a lobster hook so I can attach a little bag of notions for easy access if I want.

I think I'm going to love using this bag!

That's all I've been working on lately, but I thought you'd also enjoy a picture of a pet using poor judgement:

Yep, that's Buttercup curled up with the iron on my pressing table. Luckily, the iron was not plugged in at the time! (I do always chase the cats off of the pressing table whenever I'm sewing, even if I'm not using the iron, so they are less likely to jump up there when the iron is plugged in....)

Nancy