And the stash keeps growing!

I should know better! I went to 2 yarn stores this weekend. Saturday I went to All About Yarns to spend my bonus points. I stumbled across the Prosperous Plum Tank pattern on a blog by Joanna Cohen. She creates fabulous designs! I purchased some King Tut Egyptian cotton in a muted terra cotta color for that. I am dying to make this. She has another design called the Periwinkle top I hope she posts a pattern for that one! I already have the yarn picked out!

The blue yarn in the photo is Berroco Touche which is a dreamy 50/50 cotton/ microfiber blend. I like this yarn because it looks like wool. It has a twist instead of being braided like most cotton blends are. This skein was purchased to make Asminah's Hat from Kody May Knits blog site. She designs great hats.

I went to Celtic Knot for some needles they didn't have at the first shop and bought 2 skeins of Frog Tree worsted weight merino. That's the third skein in the photo. I was hoping for a muted pink but I ended up with this beigy color which has a slight tweed in it. This yarn is for another pair of Fetching mitts for Maddy. I think the color will go nicely with her brown suede jacket.

Another new stash item is the Berroco Cotton twist yarn that I purchased to make KMay's Eyelet Lace Elegance Hat , another of Kody May's hat designs.

I hope the pattern shows up in the variegated yarn. This pattern is flat knit so I have modified it to knit it in the round. I'll post a photo when it's done.

Other new stash items came from Ebay.

The variegated yarn is Great Adirondack Yarn's Nassau, a beautiful handpainted 50/50 cotton/ silk light weight worsted with a lovely twist and shine. This is for the Argosy scarf pattern in the winter issue of Knitty. The other skein is Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk which feels like a dream! I bought 3 skeins of this yarn to make the Dayflower Scarf . This pattern is shown knit in Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece but I think the alpaca silk will be gorgeous! I had to stop myself from buying some Artyarn Silk Rhapsody yarn at Celtic Knot. It is by far one of the most beautiful yarns I have ever seen! It is a double strand of 100% silk and 70% kid mohair/ 30% silk. It is a lace weight type of yarn and the colos are just stunning.

I finished my first chemo cap. It turned out nice, but I don't love the yarn.

The yarn is Sirdar Simply Silky which is an acrylic/ polyester blend. It is pretty, but it has a bumpy texture that I'm not sure that I like. The pattern is the Lace-Edged Women's Hat pattern from Head Huggers .

I'm doing my snow dance big time tomorrow. I figure that I can use a day off to do Jeremy's hat and Maddy's mitts!

Cast Ons

I've been experimenting with a few different cast ons lately. I used to do a long tail cast on pretty exclusively but I'm finding that different cast ons work for different applications. I started using the knit cast on, but I'm not sure that I like that one. I used a crochet cast on for my oversized sweater that I'm making. That leaves a nice edge. It is done like the crocheted provisional cast only using the live yarn instead of waste yarn. My favorite cast on is the cable cast on. I've been making a lot of hats with ribbing and the cable cast on leaves a smooth edge that works with both knit and pearl so it does particularly well with ribbing. I used it on David's hat that I made him for Christmas which is knit in Patons Classic Merino.

This hat is the London Beanie which is one of my favorite all purpose patterns.

Here is a closeup of my cable cast on edge. I love this pattern. I made Jeremy a plain black hat using this pattern which I duplicate stitched his fraternity letters on. I found it a pain to do the duplicate stitch on the black as it was difficult for my old eyes to see the stitches. I'm getting ready to make him another one. He wanted one in the colors of his fraternity which is royal blue and gold. I have some royal blue Cascade 220 and some gold Patons Classic merino. I will use fair isle to do the letters this time. I love this knitting graph paper that you can customize to the gauge you are knitting. I printed out a piece and graphed the Greek letters and they turned out great! I'll be sure to post a photo of the new hat when it's done. I want to complete it for Valentine's Day since he and Maddy will be coming home on Friday.

Animal Personality Test

WoW! Who knew?

Your Animal Personality

Your Power Animal: Shark Animal You Were in a Past Life: Polar Bear You have a strong character - you are an aggressive, ambitious, go-getter. You were born to lead.

The Animal Personality Test

Latest projects

So I finally finished the Fetching mitts from the Knitty website. This is my second pair. I found that the picot bind off was really loose on the first pair so I used needles two sizes smaller to bind these off. They are knit in Queensland Uruguay dk which is a blend of merino, alpaca and silk. I love them!

I started the Lucy Neatby Sea Lettuce Scarf two nights ago. This one will take awhile since it is fingering weight yarn knit on a size 4 needle. It's an interesting pattern made up of short rows which give it a flounce effect on both sides once it gets longer. It is started with a provisional cast on then knit in wedges. The provisional cast on is pulled out and the resulting live stitches are placed on the needle and it is knit across, alternating short row wedges on each side. I love the picot edges which are done every other row. The yarn is a Claudia Handpaint fingering weight merino. I love the colors.

Lastly I finished one chemo cap which I will post later.

SuperBowl Sale

I knew I shouldn't have gone to All About Yarns today, but the lure of 25% off on SuperBowl weekend was too much! I got some lovely shades of Cascade 220 for felting projects,

some Claudia Handpaints fingering weight merino for the Fiber Trends Leaf Lace socks pattern,

2 skeins of Rowan Calmer for chemo caps

and the biggest splurge was a half pound skein of Blue Herron Rayon with metallic variegated yarn.

I have oogled over that one everytime I've gone in there! Notice how both sides of the skein show different colors. The metallic threads don't show up so well, but it is still beautiful in the photo!Oh yeah--I got 3 pairs of double pointed needles and two pairs of Addi's. I need to make a list of my needles. It's getting ridiculous how I have to go through the stash to see if I have what I need!

Sammy found my sweaters in the closet and hid on them! She looked so cute that I just didn't have the heart to make her move! She stayed in there all night!

I'll post some photos of my latest projects tomorrow!

Calorimetry

My friend Dorothy knit this pattern called Calorimetry from the Knitty website and I loved it so I thought I'd try it. There has been a lot of blogging about this pattern. It's definitely not sized right as it calls for casting on 120 stitches with a gauge of 5 stitches per inch. That would measure 24 inches! Upon reading the various blog postings about this project, I decided to swatch the yarn to check the gauge. The gauge on the pattern indicates 5 stitches per inch in 2 x 2 rib slightly stretched. I used Noro Kureyon and size 7 needles which gauged to 4.5 stitches per inch. I only knit 20 stitches in 2 x 2 rib for about 5 rows to get the gauge. I've found a great new gadget which measures gauge.
You place the gauge on the knitting and use the slider to measure off 10 stitches. The slider points to a number indicating the number of stitches per inch.

I decided to cast on 88 stitches for my calorimetry which I figured would measure 19 - 20 inches when finished. I followed the rest of the instructions on the pattern, knitting the number of rows indicated and it turned out perfectly!


I purchased a skein of Taos yarn to knit another one. This is an earth toned wool with twists of other colors which should be a different effect than the self striping colors of the Noro.

This project would be a great gift! It knits quickly and everyone seems to love it!

Old Projects

It seems that my projects fall into 2 categories: those that I haven't finished knitting and those in which the knitting is completed but must be blocked or stitched together. I finially finished one of those this week. I knit this shrug from the Interweave Knits website collection of staff shrugs in the summer of 2005. For whatever reason I just never got around to stitching the 2 arm seams. This one is called the Minimalist Ribbon Shrug and it is knit on Size 10.5 and 11 needles in Colinette Giotto. I believe the colourway is called Windfall.

I love Giotto. It just has a lovely sheen and gorgeous texture.

There are a couple more shrugs in that collection on my to do list!