Category Archives: knitting pattern

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?

Challenge

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Ravelry: “Ravelry is a place for knitters, crocheters, designers, spinners, weavers and dyers to keep track of their yarn, tools, project and pattern information, and look to others for ideas and inspiration.”

So I decided to set up my Ravelry Challenge by completing 12 projects this year but I don’t really have any specific things in mind.  Except to finish my Bacardi Cardi begun in 2014.   (You can find me here.)

Using as much of my own yarn stash to complete those projects is also part of my challenge.  Maybe if I added all the stashed yarn to my Ravelry account, I’d be able to see what I have and what it can become.  But that time consuming detail will be left for another day.

At least “most” of it is corralled in five super-large bins.

I need to dig out that Bacardi Cardi…