Fringed prayer shawl

I used a pattern available for free on Ravelry. http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/rocking-chair-wrap

I used Size 19 needles and 1 1/2 large  balls of Bernat Baby Blanket: one for the body of the shawl and 1/2 for the fringe.  It will go the prayer shawl ministry at church.

Floppy Brimmed Sun Hat

I liked that this pattern is written for worsted cotton, which will be cooler in the summertime.

The pattern: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/floppy-brimmed-sunhat

The details: I used #8 needles and  147 yards, or 83 grams of Lily Sugar and Cream in this hat.

I am not a friend of the sun, and I wanted a wider brim. I added one more increase after Row 9, and then knitted three extra rows before putting on the garter stitch border.. I went a little nutso with the ribbing, and it is about 2" wide, instead of the recommended 1 1/2".

I'll probably end up making some more for myself and any friends who might ask. I definitely intend to make some for Sunflower Headhuggers to give to chemo patients.

Getting a start on my Royal(s) blue wardrobe for this year

I had been drooling over, and possibly on, some mulberry silk yarn at Angelika's Yarn Store in Independence for some time. I bought a ball of it, and I have made it into a cowl called "I had a bad day, I deserve luxury yarn" from the pattern on Ravelry.

http://winelips.blogspot.com/2009/03/some-things.html

There is enough left over to make a traditional flat scarf from this pattern.
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/tire-tracks  I haven't started it yet.

So I won't be accused of posting only the successes

This is how a mobius cowl made from Plymouth Yarns Eros turned out. I had several false starts, got some new plastic needles, finished it, and then realized I'd dropped a stitch somewhere. When the holes are this big, I am not capable of finding and repairing disasters such as this, so I frogged it and put it down to begin anew some other time.

Charity Knitting 2016 through May

I belong to several different groups that do charity knitting and crochet.

First off, is the prayer shawl group at my church, Living Water Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Parkville, MO.

I don't have any recent pictures. I finished a prayer shawl made from Lion Brand Homespun in brown, similar to the one I made for Blanche in gray.

The Sunflower Knitters Guild does several things throughout the year. For the first half of 2016, we're doing red scarves for the Muriel Kauffman Women's Heart Center at St Luke's Hospital. Every patient is going to receive a care package that includes a hand-knitted or crocheted scarf. I have done two so far. The prettiest is this one: It's based on a Lion Brand pattern called the Diva Scarf. I made it with fewer stitches to make it more narrow, and the pattern is for multiple colors where I just used the bright red soft acrylic from Universal Yarn's Deborah Norville Everyday Worsted.

I also made another one with Jo-Ann Fabrics Big Twist Bulky, but I didn't take a picture. It's the Yarn Harlot One Row Scarf pattern from Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, who was the featured speaker at the Guild's Knitting in the Heartland conference a few weeks ago. This picture is one I had in progress that I made for Kasia from some lovely alpaca.

The American Heart Association had a Little Hats, Big Hearts project that also used red yarn. During the month of February, they gave a red hand-knit hat to every baby born in participating hospitals during the month of February. Here are my contributions.

I also knit chemo hats for cancer patients for Sunflower Headhuggers, but I don't have any new ones to show.

Sock It To Kent

Another Very Pink Knits Staci Perry tutorial and pattern. http://verypink.com/2014/10/29/bulky-sleep-socks-tutorial/


My first attempt at socks, toe up, on DPNs. I had an awful time with the short rows and picking up of wraps. I ended up following Staci’s German Short Rows socks, and it was much easier. I also made liberal use of stitch markers to be sure when I was supposed to be working more than one stitch. All in all, a good experience. I ended up using most of a ball of the gray, and about 1 1/2 balls of the multi. The First Love yarn was very pleasant to touch. but it broke and split easily. They are very comfortable, according to my husband.

The yarn is from Hobby Lobby, called Yarn Bee First Love. I don't like HL as a company, but they have some unique yarns that I want to use, so I grit my teeth and buy. This is a bulky, 100% polyester that comes in several different, mostly feminine, stripes, and also in solid gray and solid black.

Dice, Dice, Baby!

My sons own and operate a store in Joplin, Missouri, called Hurley's Heroes Comics and Games.

I have wanted to create logo hats or other items for the kids. They don't want hats or scarves, so I decided a good test would be a dice bag. Nathan told me a dice bag should be of a dimension that would enable a player to put a few magic cards in with the dice without bending them when the bag is cinched shut.

I downloaded a copy of the store logo and inserted it into an Excel spreadsheet. I got a template for making a spreadsheet with cells slightly wider than they are tall, just like knitting stitches are, but I can't find the source right now. It's not terribly important.

I made the picture of the logo mostly transparent and colored the cells beneath to match. I was only interested in the large Superman-shield portion, and I got that directly from one of the kids.

In order to get enough detail to make the logo fairly clear in a small space, I had to use tiny stitches. I settled on size 2 needles and DK weight yarn.

The picture below shows the intarsia knitting of the logo, along with the chart and the selected yarn. What a chore! Every time the color changed, I needed a new bobbin of yarn. The rows with the crossbars of the Hs took nine. If I do it again, I will probably carry some colors over and let them float. The logo covers 28 stitches and 28 rows.

So I had my sample test logo. I put little eyelets along the top so a cord could be inserted later. Intarsia has to be knit flat, and if I was going to complete a bag with this one, I would have knitted a back to attach to this front.

There wasn't enough room to dedicate stitches to the black borders around the logo elements, so I embroidered them in using only half of the plies in some leftover yarn from Jason's afghan.

I think the black is a little bit jagged. I consulted with Jason, and he thought the black was a good addition.

I thought it might be easier to just knit the bag as a whole in the round, like  a sock or a hat and duplicate stitch the red and yellow on top of it instead of doing the intarsia. I cast on 64 stitches, leaving the front 32 stitches wide. This allows two stitches on either side of the 28-stitch logo.

The top four rows are garter stitch. Then there is a row of eyelets created by yarning over and knitting two stitches together, followed by another four rows of garter. Then it's all stockinette to the bottom. I put all 64 stitches onto scrap yarn so I could graft them together with kitchener stitch after I got the logo added.

I learned I can't duplicate stitch on such a small area. The messy intarsia was actually much easier. If I were going to duplicate stitch on something larger someday, I would have to remember to add lifeline guides as I knit along, instead of trying to sew them in later.

I wanted to get the bag finished, so I took my intarsia patch, frogged it back to remove the stockinette section above the garter stitch at the top of the logo, and bound it off. Then I sewed it onto the front of the bag and grafted the "toe" shut.

Here is my first finished prototype bag. I made the cord by just crochet chaining a length of the blue using a size F hook and knotting the ends. It is threaded through the eyelets and has enough length for a bow when cinched. It isn't really crooked. I just have it laid out askew in this picture.

It is too long. I don't really need any of the stockinette that is below the garter stitch at the bottom of the patch. This is more like a large-screen cell phone sack. I do like the way all the ugly ends of the intarsia knitting are hidden between the patch and the bag. Maybe the patch could be a pocket for the gamer to stick a key in, or something, if the top is left open.

I think I need a little more height above the eyelet rows, so it will have a nice bit sticking above the cord when it is cinched closed.

If I make a bag with a patch attached to it, I could use larger needles for the bag. It just needs to be tight enough to have some density and cover the contents. That would go much faster. I can make logo patches to attach to anything: Hats, scarves, socks, taablet computer sleeves, whatever. Now that I know what I'm doing, I can make better patches and make them faster.

The Two-year Log Cabin Blanket Project

When I started knitting, one of Jason's friends told him he'd probably wind up with an afghan someday. I took it as a challenge. I'm bookending this post with the finished item, because I don't know how to control which picture will be featured when I link it in a facebook post.

I asked Jason what sort of afghan he might like, and he said it should have bright colors and geometric shapes. Well all right, then! I had been wanting to use the Very Pink Knits tutorial and pattern for a log cabin blanket. http://verypink.com/2012/02/15/log-cabin-scrap-blanket/

Staci Perry walks you through the construction of this easy project. The only reason it took two years was because I would get the blocks to a certain point, tire of it, and work on something else for a while.

I wanted to match an Ikea rug that Jason has in his living room. In the photo below, you can see there are seven colors: Bright red, sort of an antique red, orange, gold, green, dark and light gray.

Because the rug has seven colors and I wanted nine for each block, I added two more green shades. Jason has a teal and an orange parsons table in the room, so I wanted to include the teal. I bought Caron Simply Soft, an acrylic yarn that is pretty soft and comes in a wide variety of colors.

The colors are pretty well represented in the picture below. This was taken after completing the first step in each block, making a garter stitch square of 20 stitches by 40 rows. The very last stitch is not bound off, but has a safety pin stuck through it. Each time you begin a new color, you create a strip by picking up and knitting along the next side of whatever part of the block has been completed. So the first strip goes like this: stick the needle through the remaining stitch of the old color. Rotate the piece clockwise a quarter turn. Pick up and knit 20 stitches along the side, one stitch for every two rows. Knit the 20 stitches back, and on the last one, knit it together with the extra leftover stitch from the prior color. Continue knitting the 20 stitches of the new color for 20 rows and bind off all but the last stitch.

Here I have added the first strip as described above. I have also done the second strip, which requires 30 stitches: 10 picked up in the 20 rows of strip one, plus 20 picked up along the cast on edge of the initial square.

The picture below is of a completed block. It was built like this: Green square, light gray strip one, teal strip two, orange strip three, blue-green strip four, dark gray strip five, bright red strip six, gold strip seven, and antique red strip eight. (The rotation described would be counter-clockwise, but the block is upside-down.) It is pinned down to be steamed into a nice even square before adding borders and assembling.

Strip eight has 60 stitches in it. Each strip is 20 rows wide, and when you are picking up along the rows, you pick up one stitch for each two rows. So the 60 stitches in strip eight are picked up in this order: 10 along the rows of gold strip seven, 40 along the bound-off edge of blue-green strip four, 10 along the rows of dark gray strip five.

Notice on the back side how each color change causes a dashed line inside the prior color. Each block and strip creates two yarn ends that require hiding and securing. At the color changes, they are knotted together, and then the ends are buried. At first I was just going over and over the seam, but later I watched another Staci Perry video and learned how to weave them into the purl bumps on the back side in a barely-noticeable way.

I laid all the completed blocks out to form a blanket three blocks wide by four blocks long. When I picked the colors for each block, I just assigned them by "promoting" them in the same order, rotating through nine of the blocks. For the last three, I just winged it, making sure none of the blocks had the same arrangement as the first one I made with the same center color. The repeated center colors are bright red, gold, and orange.

So, if I assembled them in the order I made them, there would be a clear pattern in the first nine blocks that would show the rotation. I mixed them up with no square repeated in a row or column, and no color adjoining itself in a neighboring block. There are a few places where I have some colors too close, either butting up or catty-corner, but overall, it's OK. Anything that is too close ended up separated by the black border. 

Knowing the arrangement before adding the borders is important. The edge of a block that is on the outside will have a 20-row black border. Inside edges have 10-row black borders. Border pieces are strips made exactly like all of the others, except after adding the first border strip, you no longer have to deal with color changes.

The completed, bordered blocks are assembled by sewing them together using mattress stitch. There are ways to crochet blocks together, but that would require being sure to have all of the crochet stitches pointing in consistent directions and putting them in the knitting stitch-for-stitch. I didn't want to mess with that. My sewn seams aren't as nice as I would like, but the black yarn makes them less noticeable. Jason likes it.

Ballerina Sweater and Leg Warmers

I bought this beautiful Manos Del Uruguay yarn on sale at Stitch Space, LLC in Webb City.  Blue is Elsa's very favorite color, and her leotard and tutu are pastel blue. Because it is cropped, she can probably wear it for a few years. For now, Elsa has taken a break from dance classes, because she wants her mom to stay with her through the entire class. She may or may not take it up again. No matter. She can wear it with clothes, too.

Before committing this soft merino wool to the project, I made a couple of little loop bracelets for Kasia and Elsa to wear, to make sure the wool wouldn't irritate anybody's skin, and it doesn't! This opens up a whole new world of yarns for things I will make for them.

The pattern was purchased on Ravelry. It's the Madeleine. Here is the link: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/one-button-cropped-sweater-the-madeleine

It was really, really easy. You start at the neckline, do a series of increases to create the raglan sleeves at armpit width, and knit down to the bottom and work some decreases to create the open front. Then you pick up stitches and create the short sleeves. Then you finally pick up stitches beginning at the center bottom, up through the front, around the neckline, and back down to the other front to your starting space at the center back. You join it in the round and knit a certain number of rows of garter stitch to create the wide, stabilizing border.

I had enough left for leg warmers. There was a pattern available on Ravelry for super-bulky leg warmers, but they were knit flat and seamed. I just knit some tubes with ribbing at the top and bottom and used an apple to stand in for Elsa's leg circumference.

I still have some left over to make a hat or something. I also have two different shades of pastel blue eyelash yarn I'd like to incorporate.