Which way now?

Posted on February 19, 2018 by Patti_is_knittinginflashes

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!

Source

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.

Why did I buy this?

Posted on February 9, 2018 by Patti_is_knittinginflashes

Five words: because it was on sale.

Those five words can get me to part with my money faster than a hot knife through butter. Or a duck on a June bug. Or a, well, you get the idea. I didn’t really like the colors when I bought this BUT it was a great deal. Or was it?

If I’m not using it and it’s just taking up space in my yarn bins, it’s not really a great deal at all. I wasted money on something I didn’t really love or need.

This “mistake” happened 10 or so years ago and I’m not sucked in by that word that four-letter word “sale” like I used to be. If I don’t love it or need it, I don’t buy it. I do shop sales but it’s not the criteria to buy something.

18 balls of this yarn equals 2,854 yards of 95% cotton. The other 5% is a shiny polyamide thread running around the cotton.

It knits up great and I would use it if it were another color. The colors are pretty, just not right for me. It’s listed as trade or sell in my Ravelry yarn stash until I figure out what to do with it.

Has the word SALE ever caused you to buy something you didn’t need or love?

The tale of two wraps and a cowl

Posted on February 7, 2018 by Patti_is_knittinginflashes

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.