Plugging Along

 Hi all -

It tried to snow this morning, but spring has taken over and the snow melted before we got more than a dusting. It ended up being a beautiful day! I'm definitely enjoying the warmer temperatures! I continue to enjoy retirement and plug along on my projects. As usual, I'm skipping from project to project. I'm very much an ADD crafter!

First, I have a couple of finishes. I seamed up the back of my Candy Cane Cowl and added single crochet on the top and bottom:

Candy Cane Cowl

Candy Cane Cowl back

I think the seam turned out pretty good. It was a little difficult to get the stripes lined up because I feel like the maroon triangles in the corners were a little bit big. But that's what the pattern called for so that's what I did. The single crochet was also difficult because the cowl was knit on the diagonal. That made it harder to decide where to put each stitch and keep the stitches even. And I had to do the single crochet differently on the top versus the bottom. I found that one edge came out pretty clean but the other edge was really wavy when I spaced the stitches the same so I had to pull those out and redo them further apart so they would hold the edge more firmly. The edging looks better in person than in the pictures and I think it looks better than leaving the yarn carries uncovered.

Another finish was my Peaky Beanie, which I had just barely started last post:

Peaky Beanie

Peaky Beanie close-up

I really like how this one turned out, although it was a hassle getting there. The first problem was with the white yarn. I came across a spot where the yarn was in two pieces, knotted together. I decided to go ahead and knit the yarn as it was since the knot wouldn't show in the knitting. I'm pretty sure I tested the strength of the knot by pulling on it, but after a few rounds of knitting the knot came out and the knitting disintegrated. I had to pull it back, recover the stitches and reknit that portion of the hat. Luckily it happened after just 4 or 5 rounds rather than waiting until the hat was done! The next problem was in the beaded section (the section in the close-up). First, I didn't read the pattern carefully and I didn't do the top row right. I spent a bunch of time looking at the pattern and comparing it with the picture (which was just a funny angle of the hat being worn by someone) until I figured out what I did wrong. But that ended up being a lucky error because in scrutinizing the picture and comparing it to the pattern, I realized that the pattern was written wrong and had only half of the repeats needed in this section and in the beaded section further up. So I was able to fix this and more on without having to unknit much of the hat. The final problem was with the light tan yarn. It wouldn't come out of the ball cleanly and ended up being a tangle mess that I had to spend a couple of hours untangling. This hat was definitely a pain, but, in the end, I really like how it turned out!

Finally, I finished my Carnelian Strip Scarf designed by Lena Skvagerson:

Carnelian Stripe Scarf

Carnelian Strip Scarf detail

I had been waiting for the Grocery Girls' Grandma Square Craft-along to finish this project. I think this craft-along was starting at the beginning of this month, but I haven't seen an announcement about it so it might be starting later. But it might also be that they haven't gotten around to starting the craft-along thread yet. Either way, I felt compelled to finish this and if the craft-along started this month then I'll submit it (since I finished it on May 2). Otherwise, I'll just have the satisfaction of having finished this and gotten more crochet experience. It's a win either way.

Of course, I keep starting new projects, too! First, I stared the Coles River Kerchief designed by Toni Lipsey:

Coles River Kerchief

This project appealed to me because it's another crochet project and it uses much thinner yarn than my other crochet projects. It's also good practice at following a pattern written by another designer. I'm really enjoying this project! The crochet stitches have a really clean look and the lace sections are simple but pretty. This has been a good project for me to work on my stitch tension. My stitches are getting more even as I move along and I'm figuring out how tight they should be. In the earlier part of the shawl, many of my stitches were too tight and, even though they looked good, it was really hard to get the hook into the stitches when working on the next row. It's very time-consuming to work so hard to get your hook through the stitch! Now I'm getting tight stitches periodically but most of my stitches are loose enough to get my hook through fairly easily, but still look clean.

While I was organizing things, I ran across a huge ball of yarn that I bought for myself a couple of years ago when I happened to be in Kansas City visiting my family on my birthday. As a treat to myself, I went to the local Joann's and Michaels stores and splurged. In Joann's, I found this huge ball of super bulky yarn that is made out of a kind of fuzzy polar fleece. It's so soft and luscious! I looked at a bunch of different afghan patterns and ended up deciding to just make the Rumour Afghan, which is the pattern that was on the inside of the ball band:

Rumour Afghan

Rumour Afghan close-up

This yarn is a bit hard on my hands to knit with. The yarn sticks to itself so I'm finding it hard to get the stitches as close together as I would like, but they also end up being tight on the needles because I'm a tight knitter and I'm trying to compensate for the extra space between the stitches so it's a bit of work getting the stitches onto the needle when I get to them. But the resulting afghan is so soft and warm and wonderful that it's well worth the effort. I'm not sure if the one ball of yarn will be enough to finish my blanket. It's supposed to be, but I didn't do a gauge swatch since I knew that I wasn't going to mess with unknitting and reknitting the yarn if the gauge wasn't right. I weighed the ball of yarn on my kitchen scale after knitting about a foot of the afghan and my quick calculations say that I might have enough, but the ball just always looks too small to me. I checked the Joann's Web site and they have more of the color that I'm using so I can get more if I need it. But I'm waiting until I finish this ball of yarn before ordering more. Even with my other projects, I expect I'll figure that out in a couple of weeks.

Last but not least, today I started the Sonatine cowl designed by Dee O'Keefe:

Sonatine

I wanted to have a simple knitting project that I could work on when my hands are sore from knitting the heavy afghan and crocheting the shawl. I also wanted to play with the other yarn I picked up recently called "Unwind DK" by Madelinetosh. If you look at the picture, you can see that the yarn comes already knit up in a tube that's rolled in a ball. As you knit, you unravel the yarn from the end of the tube. It's like a "sock blank," where the undyed yarn is knit into a simple rectangle, then the dyer dies the yarn and you unravel the yarn to knit with it. You can get some really cool sock blanks where the dyer paints a cool picture on the knitted yarn and then you just get the colors on the yarn as you unravel and knit with it. I also ran across some different knitting needles while I was organizing so I'm trying them out with this project. These needles are pretty cool because they are square shaped instead of being round like regular knitting needles and they have texture on the sides. I'm really enjoying these needles so far. They are really slick and feel extra light. I might end up getting more of these in the future! If they make them in a really large size then they might be good for the afghan yarn since they are so slick. Hmmmmm.

That's all of the stuff that I'm actively working on right now. But I've also started preparing for another possible project. I saw an idea on an episode of "Fresh Quilting" that intrigued me. The woman on the show likes to keep lists and made some quilts to represent how many items on her lists she completed. For example, her first quilt represented her New Year's list of what she hoped to accomplish during the year. For example, maybe she wanted to make 10 quilts and knit 4 sweaters and so on. For this quilt, she picked a different quilt block to represent each task (make a quilt, knit a sweater, etc). She made a block for each project and colored the blocks based on whether she completed the project. So, she might have 6 green Ohio star block and 4 red Ohio star blocks if she made 6 quilts during the year. She said that she didn't use these quilts as shame for not completing things, but instead just as an interesting record of what was done. So I'm thinking about making a "Creativity Tracker" quilt. Each day I'm keeping track of whether I've done any knitting, any crochet, any sewing or any needlework. I'm also keeping track of whether I did any cleaning or exercise on each day since I'm trying to do both more regularly. I'm planning a block that has a strip across the top for each of the crafting categories. The strip will be the background color if I didn't do that craft on that day or a bright color if I did do it. When I piece these together, you should see colorful strips representing what projects I'm concentrating on at the time and background, with some interspersed color when I pick up something different to do, for things that I'm not doing currently. The cleaning and exercise activities will be represented by side-by-side squares below the crafting strips to break up the strips a bit. I think this will make an interesting quilt, much like the temperature quilts that are popular now. I just have to decide the time period I want to represent so I can pick a good size for my quilt blocks before I can start piecing this. For now, I'm just keeping track of everything in a spreadsheet so I'll be ready to go.

Well, that's it for now. I hope everyone is doing well!

Nancy