Category Archives: finished object

The magic and the horror

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10

Spindrift shawl is off the needles. 

This is my first lace-type project and this pattern is a great choice for my first lacy-shawl experience.  Kudos to Helen Stewart!

The scrunched up piece of woolly goodness takes a deep breath and expands into loveliness just like magic.

Blocking makes the magic happen when a finished piece is soaked in water, rolled into a towel to absorb as much water as possible, then stretched and pinned into place.

Ahhh, the magic of blocking.

Then the horror of blocking appears while stretching and pinning.

Oops, a dropped stitch.  Right in the middle of the back.  Probably happened when I had to rip back to a life line and missed picking up that stitch.

I was hoping that this is just a BIG stitch.  Looks like a slipped stitch to me.  What do you think?  Some fiddly work is needed to correct this.

And what’s this?  A missed stitch?  Now how do I fix this horror?!

Seriously.  How do I correct this?

Super tight knitting here.  What’s up with that?

I knew things wouldn’t be perfect as I was a few stitches off towards the end even though the pattern has the stitch count listed after each row.  I was good up until the last few lace rows.  I used life lines throughout and I still made some mistakes that I wasn’t aware of until now.

I used less than one 100 g ball of Zauberball sock yarn in the colorway Bunte Gasse (color number 2310).  The color description wasn’t real telling and from what I could see in the sample I thought it would be blues, green, and yellows.  The red was a big surprise.  Now I love red but I’m not a huge rainbow-colored accessories kind of person so I don’t LOVE this colorway for me.

All in all I am pretty happy with the result and will gladly say “I made this myself” should anyone ask.  Or I’ll rip out the entire thing and make another pair of socks.

What would you do?  Fix or frog (rip-it, rip-it)?

 

 

 

Six and seven

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5

I was wrong.  I’ve knit seven pairs of Dorothy’s Slip Stitch Spiral Knit Socks.

Pair #6

Pair #6 using a solid Knit Picks Stroll fingering weight yarn in Peapod plus the Easter Egg dyed yarn and the rest of the red/white/black self-striping yarn.  

I tried to alternate the red/white/black and the peapod yarn to the tip of the toe.  You can see on one of the socks that I ran out before the end of the toe and just used the peapod to finish it.

Love these socks.

SSSK Socks #7 use a new purple self-striping yarn, the rest of the blue self patterning yarn from here and here and here along with the rest of the Easter Egg dyed yarn.  

In fact I ran out of the blue and finished the second sock with some of the Trekking XXL yarn from these socks.

It’s not crucial for the striping to match with this particular pattern but it almost happened.  Unintentionally, of course.

I love these socks, too.

Chairs

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13

Both chairs are finished.  The colors aren’t that true and I can’t seem to get the right adjustments to make them more realistic.  The yellowish-green is more of a chartreuse green and the blues have more depth.

Rita’s chair: Done!  This is now my knitting chair as it sits in the corner.

And here it is in front of the window.  iPad Aunt’s chair resides there now.

iPad Aunt’s chair: Done but not happy with the cushion.  I didn’t wrap the new foam in Dacron before stuffing it into the cover.  It looks too boxy and I need to fix that.  Plus the seat cushion looks too big for the chair but it’s not that way in real life.

Both chairs side-by-side.  You can see that they are very similar but different.  Rita’s chair has a lower part on the bottom front, straight-arm stump, and is a smaller chair.  iPad Aunt’s chair is straight across the bottom front, has a curved arm stump, and is a wider chair.

I tried very hard to get the patterns to match up on both chairs but it was very difficult.  The pattern was 24 inch vertical repeat so I tried not to waste fabric.

I am in the process of redoing the ottoman that matches Rita’s chair but that is on hold for now.  Too many irons in the fire.

Warm feet

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I had not gotten enough use out of Dorothy’s Slipped-Stitch Spiral Knit Sock pattern so I offered to knit a very good friend a pair of socks at no charge if I could use part of my stash.  She just moved from South Carolina to a more northern climate and might need some warm socks this winter.  She really liked the slipped-stitch spiral socks that I knit (#1, #2, #3, and #4) so I sent her a picture of some of my yarn stash  She picked one variegated color and I chose something that would complement it.  Red would have been awesome (and very bright) as would purple but she is partial to blue so blue was it.  Plus I knew I had enough of it in my stash…

These two colors were very tame and refreshing to use after the flurry of patterns and stripes in the other four pairs of socks. The Knit Picks Stroll solid heather blue (Dusk) really accentuates the striping down the leg while also toning down the brightness of the Sockotta yarn.

Look at the heel to get a better idea of the intensity of the red, blue, green and purple colors.  Those would be some very wild socks!

I included two yards of each yarn for when a repair is needed down the road.

There are a lot of stitches in a pair of socks…