Category Archives: finished object

In the mail

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I sent the finished seamless slippers to my sister-in-law.

With any luck, she will have them on her feet tomorrow…

or Wednesday.

Several people have asked me about the soles.  I found some “replacement carpet” for cars and trucks at Wal-Mart several years ago (2003 perhaps) when we put some new carpet in Mr. Aitch’s truck.  It was easy to cut and hand sew so I tried it on the bottom of the slippers.  The texture is similar to a thick felt though this is polyester.  It’s good but does wear out.  I bought a roll for under $10 (can’t remember the brand name) just for this purpose but I haven’t seen it at our local store for a few years.  Layers of denim/old jeans, canvas or wool quilted together or even leather will also work as soles.

Which way now?

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Mr. Aitch gifted me this beautiful yarn for Christmas.

The Which Way shawl pattern was written for this Wonderland Yarns Mad Hatter kit of five gradients plus one.  This is the Little Busy Bee and Lime to Turquoise kit.  I LOVE all the colors!

The shawl is finished.

I ran out of the main color and used the rest of the first color in the gradient to finish though I still ran out of yarn.  Others on Ravelry had the same issue with the quantity of yarn vs pattern.

Most of the ends are woven in but haven’t blocked the shawl.  I’m just not sure I like it.

 

The tale of two wraps and a cowl

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A second Spindrift wrap is off the needles, blocked and on its way to a new home.I just used pins for this one as I didn’t have my blocking wires at the time and I was in a hurry to get this blocked.

Lacy type knitting evidently isn’t my forte but I’m going to keep trying.  A double yarn over here or a missed stitch?  I don’t know but it won’t unravel so I’m calling it good.

Besides who will notice it when worn?

I did reblock the first Spindrift that had several challenges and it looks so much better.  I used the new blocking wires for this and was really impressed with how easy it was to shape the wrap.

I picked up the dropped stitch and used a crochet hook to “knit” it down to the eyelet and tacked it down.

I probably should have just tacked the stitch where it was dropped as the result of trying to take it to the edge or in this case a change in pattern caused a line of tight stitches.

But blocking helped relax those to some extent.  My cast-on needs some practice, too.

Lesson learned.  I hope I can remember it again!

This cowl is for my grandson, brother of the twins.  I can’t send them something and ignore him!

The pattern is the Neon Jungle Cowl but I made some modifications that can be found on my Ravelry page here.  I liked the thermal-type texture of the Broken Rib Stitch and it looks good on both the right side and wrong side.

The color is a multi-hunter green but looks more bluish here.

It should keep him warm.

 

 

 

Blocking wires

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I’ve got another Spindrift Shawl completed.  Well, except for the blocking.

Why so knit another one so soon?  Well, I wasn’t all that pleased with the colors of first one.  One of the visiting twin granddaughters loves the rainbows and unicorns so I offered it to her at Thanksgiving.  Well, I can’t give one twin something without giving the other one so I had knit another Spindrift Shawl for her.  Only we’re calling them neck wraps instead of shawls.  Nine-year-olds don’t wear shawls.

I blocked the other Spindrift with pins.  Fun? Not.

I don’t have blocking wires to help with that process but understand how useful they are.  Blocking wires are thin wires threaded through an edge stitch and making it easier to keep the edges straight during blocking, and allowing for fewer pins to shape the item.  Here is an excellent article explaining how and why this is done.

I have another shawl in my queue that I’ll talk about another time.  I’m not sure if I’ll knit any others later but I decided that want a set of flexible wires as they would be easier to store.  And blocking wires can be used on other knitted items, too.

So, when you block your knitted or crocheted items do you use pins, straight blocking wires or flexible wires?