Prayer Shawls, Pocket Cloths, and Experiments

When I took up knitting last year, I started looking for a way to do it socially and charitably. The Lion Brand website maintains a list, and it turned out that there is a prayer shawl group that meets the second Saturday of each month at Living Water Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Parkville. I joined the group in December 2014. The pastor, Laura Guy, is a member of the group, and I really like her, so I started attending the church. That was another thing that had been missing from my life.

Lion's website address is www.lionbrand.com
Here is the church's website address www.livingwaterchristian.org

Lion has a lot of free prayer shawl patterns on their site, and I've used the basic pattern twice. Buy three skeins of Homespun, cast on 63 stitches, and in every row knit 3, purl 3, to the end, until you run out of yarn. You end up with something like seed stitch, only with fewer changes between knitting and purling. The threes are to give a nod to the holy trinity. This is the first one I made. You may have to create a free Lion Brand account to view the actual pattern. http://www.lionbrand.com/patterns/81040AD.html?noImages=0

I have also made one using the Cashews pattern from Alice's Embrace, an organization that donates to Alzheimer's patients. http://www.alicesembrace.com/patterns/#/cashews/

This summer, one of the group's members attended the big meeting of the Disciples church and came back with the suggestion we make pocket cloths or shawls in addition to the larger ones. They're portable, they're a ton faster to make, and they can use up small amounts of yarn that are left over from other things. We've been making them with nice soft blanket yarn and jokingly referring to them as "woobies" because they exist for comfort and are fun to feel.

I used patterns from a combination of the following sources:
http://www.oslclaurel.org/ministry/prayer_shawl/prayer_cloths_cross.pdf and
http://holston.org/media/about/resource/2015-pocketprayershawlinfo.pdf

Here are pictures of ones I made using these patterns.

Cross

 

Fish Cloth per the patterns

The next three pictures should be rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise. Until I get that fixed, please tilt your head to the right when viewing them.

 

 Descending Dove

 

Angel

 

Awareness Ribbon (in this case, Leukemia color.)

 

 

Customized two-color cross in University of Missouri colors for a friend to give to her son.

 

This is a washcloth pattern from Ravelry. I tried making it smaller by knitting it with finer yarn and smaller needles, but it's still a little too large for a pocket cloth in my opinion. I'd feel funny washing dishes with it, too. http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/3-crosses-cloth

This is another washcloth pattern available on Ravelry. I used an ombre yarn with blues and greens to make it, since we are Living Water. http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/wave-pool-cloth

The fish pattern above looks more like a shield to me. Instead, I experimented with the traditional Christian fish symbol and made up my own chart. Here's mine. I doubled the yarn when I did the duplicate stitch of the cross, and next time I will just use a single strand. I shared it on Ravelry as a free pattern. http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/christian-fish-prayer-cloth

My Christian Fish

Same story with the dove. It looked more like an arrow to me, so I am experimenting with one modeled after the Dove Soap logo. This is scrap yarn and a too-large leaf I had lying around. My hope is that smaller needles and thinner yarn will make it a reasonable size. I'll make an update post once I have it finalized, a decent picture taken, and a published pattern address to share.

Basic Bulky Beanies and Cowls

On my post-Thanksgiving, Small Business Saturday visit to Stitch Space in Webb City, MO, I went in with the intention of buying something to help support Sasha's lovely yarn shop. I bought several things, but this is the first completed project from the haul.

I previously made scarves for both the daughter-in-law and the granddaughter with a total of three skeins of Plymouth Baby Alpaca Grande Hand Painted yarn. The pattern was Stephanie Pearl McPhee's One Row Scarf.

While I was at the yarn store, I called my sweet d-i-l and asked if they'd like hats to go with their scarves. I was given permission to knit some up, so I bought another three skeins of what I thought was the same colorway of the yarn. Here is a scarf.

Now, let's look at the hat:

Yeah. Way off. I wanted them to have sets, so I used the leftovers to make each of them a cowl.


Fortunately, I purchased too much of this new yarn, so I made a simple, snug cowl for each of them from the remainder. I just cast on the same number of stitches I had used in each hat, did a 2x2 rib for 8 rounds and a body of stockinette, followed by another 8 rounds of 2x2.

I made each of the hats starting with a fresh skein, and each had leftovers. I was able to make a toddler cowl using the above recipe with them, and then I used the entire extra (3rd) skein for the adult cowl.

Trust me. I really, really did use the same yarn for both the hat and the cowl shown here. The hat is in my crazy bright bathroom, and the cowl is on the bed, with Nelea supervising.

The Egg Salad Blanket

I saw some super-cute Bernat Baby Blanket yarn at Jo-Ann around Easter. The colorway I was interested in is Chicks and Bunnies. It's basically white with yellow (chicks) and gray (bunnies) scattered around. I have never seen this colorway anywhere else, and I only saw it at Jo-Ann that one time.

When I was working on it at a knitting group, I mentioned that I thought the seed stitch sections looked like chopped hard-boiled eggs that had been overcooked and had that little gray ring around the yolk. They christened it the Egg Salad Blanket.

This is an easy blanket, knit using only garter and seed stitches. I made mine with three 300 gram balls of the yarn. I used US 13, 9mm needles. My blanket has holes, so if I was starting it over again today, I would use size 11 or even 10.5 needles for a tighter fabric. I sewed a tag made of satin blanket binding into the blanket, because my granddaughter loves to feel the tags while she sucks her thumb.

Please forgive the green-tinged spot. My camera does that under fluorescents.

I have made the pattern available on Ravelry, named Egg Salad Blanket, if anyone is interested in having it.  Free Ravelry Download Egg Salad Blanket Pattern

This is what the .pdf file says, if you don't want to download the .pdf from there.

THE PATTERN:


1. Weigh your first ball of yarn, which should be close to 300 grams, and make a note of the actual weight.

2. Cast on 75 stitches on a circular needle that can accommodate a piece of this width. You will not be joining in the round.

3. Knit each row for 10 rows. (Garter stitch).

4. After completing the 10th row, weigh your ball of yarn again and subtract the result from the beginning weight. This will tell you how much yarn you will need when you are ready to finish the piece, with another 10 rows of garter stitch.

5. Set up row: k5, place marker, k1, p1, continuing for 65 stitches (to the last 5), place marker, k5. This will set you up to create a garter stitch border along the sides with the center being seed stitch over an odd number of stitches, enabling you to begin and end each row of the center section with a knit stitch.

6. Continue in pattern, the same for every row: k5, slip marker, k1, p1 for 65 stitches, slip marker, k5.

7. Attach the second and third balls of yarn when required.

8. As you near the end of your project, weigh the remainder of the last ball of yarn, reserving at least the same amount you used to cast on and knit your first 10 rows of garter stitch.

9. When you have used all but the amount you have reserved, knit 10 rows of garter stitch and bind off loosely. An easy loose bind-off is Grandma’s Favorite, which can be found on YouTube. Weave in the ends.

10. You can wash the blanket in cool or warm water and machine dry it on low heat.

How I propelled the Royals to the World Series through knitting and crochet AND HELPED THEM WIN

#ForeverRoyal #TakeTheCrown

I wear a lot of black and white clothing to work, since it's easy to mix and match. I have been wanting to add some jewel-toned scarves to the wardrobe to keep things interesting.

One of my favorite colors is blue. My husband is a Royals fanatic, and when baseball season began, I wanted to wear blue on game days to be supportive.

I went shopping at Jo-Ann for suitable yarn. I don't like acrylic because it makes me itch and gives me dry eyes and throat. The only non-acrylic royal blue yarn they had there were Deborah Norville Serenity Active and Patons Classic Wool Bulky. The Deborah Norville yarn is 70% polyester and 30% acrylic, so I settled for it and bought a couple of balls because it was cheap and machine washable. It's supposed to have wicking properties making it suitable for athletic wear.

.

The first one I made was a single strand of this knit on US 50 35mm needles. This item did not survive. I started out by joining it into an infinity scarf, then decided I wanted it to be flat. In the process of unseaming, it began to unravel, so I ended up trashing it. The huge needles made a nice, airy fabric, and I intend to use this technique again.

I wanted something to wear right away so I grabbed a huge crochet hook and made this one in the round. I think it is a foundation chain of singles, a couple of rows of doubles, and it ends with either singles or slip stitches. I really don't remember. I didn't make it an even cylinder. After the first row of double crochets I stair-stepped it so that the back would stay short. It is really longer than in this picture, but the last time I wore it, I wanted it to be shorter, so it has a couple of little alligator hair clips folding the back on itself.

With the yarn I had left, I decided to make a keyhole scarf. I believe this is 24 stitches on size US 13 needles. I knitted it in linen stitch until it was the desired length. Then I wanted to try a keyhole technique I've seen in some patterns that involves knitting a stitch, placing the next on a holder, knitting the next, holding the next, until you're knitting half of the stitches and leaving the others on the holder.

I did 10 rows of garter stitch with the stitches that were on the needles. I should have stuck with linen stitch, but I didn't know how to get it going correctly when I was only knitting every other stitch to begin with. I cut the yarn and swapped the stitches on the needle for the ones on the holder.

I likewise knit 10 rows of garter stitch and returned the first tab piece to the needles. Then I knit in linen stitch until the part past the keyhole was the length I wanted. I didn't know how this would turn out when I started. You end up with an upper and lower layer, each shifted from the center. When you stick the scarf through the hole, the shift isn't outstanding.

My system worked so well that the Royals became the Central Division American League champions. I needed more blue stuff.

I have admired patterns like the one below for some time, and I wanted to make something with cables, since I hadn't done that before. I bought two balls of the Patons Classic Wool Chunky in Royal(s) Blue. The twists are nice and tight, perfect for patterns that require good stitch definition. This is also the first time I have knitted with wool, and I loved it. It's nice and springy.

This pattern is called Sulka Scarflette, free on Ravelry. http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/sulka-scarflette
I used their search filters to find one that uses bulky yarn and small yardage. This pattern has 16 cables on it. The first ball lasted through the 15th one. This is how it looked after knitting, before blocking. It only took a few hours.

After it was nice and dry and rectangular, I bought buttons for it. The pattern calls for 1" buttons and has buttonholes knit in. I couldn't find 1", only 1-1/8" buttons. They didn't really want to go through the keyholes without forcing, and I didn't want to hurt the scarf. I just sewed the buttons in place as if they had been buttoned already. When I wash it the first time, I will probably have to remove the buttons and block it flat again before reattaching them. It will always require hand washing and gentle treatment, to prevent felting.

I had most of the second ball left, and there was another pattern on Ravelry that looked like fun. It's the Angela Twist.
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/angela-twist
You cast 7 stitches of super bulky yarn onto a US 15 double-pointed needle and knit a big fat i-cord. I used 13s, since my yarn was plain bulky. I don't have large DPNs, but all of my needles are circular, so you can just treat them like DPNs in this instance.

You knit to the desired length, about 42" in this case, form a circle in your hands with half of the length, and loop the remainder through the circle many times. then you sew the ends together and arrange your loops.

When completed, it was fat and fluffy and not quite as long as I wanted. I blocked it to transfer some of the thickness into length, and this is how it turned out. I made a little stockinette tab to wrap around the seam and hide it.

So now I am well equipped to make it through the Series! I've always knitted while Kent was watching the games, but now I am actually able to follow the action and have become a fan myself.

GO ROYALS! #TakeTheCrown

Crocheting with plarn

My first project crocheted from plarn. Because there isn't enough yarn in this house. This shade of plarn is Hy-Vee. I keep my unscented hand soap, sanitizer, and lotion in it for a quick grab when heading to the restroom. My hands break out from the scented stuff provided by the building.

In case you haven't guessed, plarn stands for plastic yarn. It is made by cutting the handles and bottoms off grocery store bags, cutting the remaining tube part into loops, and chaining the loops together. Most patterns I've seen recommend holding two strands of plarn together, because it's pretty weak in singles.

I used crochet because it seemed the quickest way to go. There's no pattern, just made a rectangular bottom, and then crocheted around it until I had the height I needed. The handles were made by skipping about 15 crochets in the middle of each side and instead chaining those stitches before resuming after the end. I went around one more time to give the handles a little thickness.

I have a lot of bags saved up, but I haven't plarned again yet. When I do, I'll have some nice Target ones that are purely white and red and some Hy-Vee ones that are black, blue, and gold for the Royals baseball season. Also some gray Wal-Mart ones.

The sweater of many months

I cast this puppy on November 27, 2014. It's for my granddaughter, Elsa, and it's my first ever sweater.

Free pattern from Michael's meant for Bernat Softee Baby yarn.

At one point, I was wearing golf gloves to knit it. I was stabbing myself with the US 6 needles a lot, and I hadn't yet learned how to stop pushing the tips. This was also to show my heroic efforts at knitting with a lighter-than-worsted yarn, Rowan Modern Cotton. It turns out that gloves rub the yarn and fuzz it, so I got over that pretty quickly.

December 14, 2014. I finished the first of the two sweater fronts. By this time, Elsa and I were engaged in a race to see if I would be able to finish it before she outgrew it. This incredibly simple pattern had shaping through increases, decreases, and casting on and binding off stitches. After the first front, the second was just like it, and then the back was basically a square.

First front.

December 17, 2014. An early morning disaster occurred wherein I knocked over a cup of coffee and spilled it on both of the sweater fronts. A quick trip to the sink, capping off the cable, and a good drying session saved the day. Got the cord on my stitch counter, too. I vowed to drink only water in a closed container while knitting from that moment forward. That didn't stick, but this disaster had a happy ending.

Disaster recovery.

In December, we started remodeling one of our bathrooms. I had to spend large amounts of time away from home to avoid smelling the glue solvents in the plumbing and breathing sheetrock dust. On one day, I went to the restaurant in the grocery store, took possession of a table, and knitted for at least four hours straight.

That was a huge mistake. Dr. Internet told me I had irritated my ulnar nerve, and I had to take a break from knitting for about a week. I did some exercises to "thread" the nerve, and it eventually got better.

I hoped to finish it by Christmas 2014. That came and went.

On Monday, January 12, 2015, I had endovascular surgery to insert a pipeline embolization device in my left internal carotid artery to starve a brain aneurysm located there. Since it was, by definition, brain surgery, our two boys came to hang with their dad during the procedure. I thought I might be able to finish it in time to send it home with Elsa's daddy.

By this point, I had finished the two fronts and the back and most of one sleeve. Sunday night, I finished the first sleeve and also made the second. I basically stayed up all night (because who's going to sleep before something like that, anyway?). I'd nod off once in a while, put the work down, sleep a little and then get back to it when I woke up. I didn't manage to actually sew the parts together before heading to the hospital, darn it. My iPhone gives pictures a green spot under fluorescent lighting, meaning our whole house. Ignore it. I swear it's not coffee stains.


Ready to assemble.

The procedure went well, I spent a night in the neuro ICU, and I was sent home around lunch the day after. The team had performed two of these procedures on Monday, both of us were doing very well, and they needed our beds. Fine by me. The sons went around town visiting friends, I rested up, and we all went to dinner at Cinzetti's Italian buffet that evening. Then the boys headed home a day earlier than they intended to.

We almost never take pictures together, so despite my dirty hair and lack of grooming, we had a person at a neighboring table get this. See? Upright, conscious, none the worse for the wear. Elsa's daddy Nathan is on your left, my hubby Kent is in the center, and Elsa's uncle Jason is on your right.

At dinner the night after surgery.

Since I had the rest of the week off work, I was able to dedicate much of it to finishing the sweater. Judging by my Facebook posts, I got it done the next day. I assembled the parts and knit four ties. The pattern had me make them by casting on a row of stitches and then immediately binding them off. Simple, right? I have decided to blame the lingering effects of anesthetic for my attaching the two ties that belong on the inside incorrectly to the outside and having to remove and re-attach them.

Simple cast on, bind off ties.

Here it hangs, in all its dubious glory. Kind of plain, isn't it?

Tada!

I crocheted a couple of flowers, one from the sweater yarn, and one from some purple leftovers. I'm not much at crochet, but you can sort of tell what was intended. There are safety pins sewn into the backs so Elsa's mom can switch them out as she likes.
     

Crocheted flower pins.

I boxed it up and mailed it to her, and this picture appeared on her daddy's Facebook page a couple of days later. She's wearing the purple shirt and pants from Target that I sent with it.

Note the sleeve and body length. I swear I only made it an extra inch long overall and matched her shoulder to wrist measurements. I didn't account for the weight of the cotton yarn lengthening everything. It's OK. She can still wear it this winter, ten months later.

Day of Fun and Fiber Part II Knitting With Nelea - Literally

This afternoon, while hubby and I watched the Royals win Game 2 of the American League Championship Series against the Toronto Blue Jays, I had my sweet old lady Nelea cat on my lap for much of the time.

Everything I knit ends up with her fur in it. I have toyed with the idea of making some yarn out of it and creating a keepsake for when I no longer have her. She's 17. While she was on my lap, I gave her a good furminating and saved all of the undercoat hair that was removed.

I sort of carded it, but I'm too cheap to spend any money on carders, since I don't know if I'll ever be able to spin anything. I went shopping for those dog brushes that are studded with little wire pins, but dang, those are priced in the teens, and I'd need two. The real thing costs about $70 for a pair. I ended up getting a couple of boar bristle brushes at the dollar store.

 

Carders

Dog brush

Here is tonight's harvest:

 The little caterpillars lying in the pink bucket are what I pulled from the furminator and stuck on the brushes. After I straightened them as best I could, I combed them off with the wire-toothed comb.

This is the fur donor lying beside my first drop spindle and the little chunks of yarn that I previously tried to spin with it. The spindle is on the heavy side, the cat fur fibers are short, and the yarn kept breaking. I decided I'd need to call in a sheep.

Nelea is sniffing a wad of wool fiber I bought from Yarn Barn of Kansas a couple of weeks ago, along with the smaller spindle I purchased there. I asked what would be the least expensive and easiest fiber to work with, and the lady recommended this wool from a Corriedale sheep. The minimum purchase is eight ounces, so that's what I got. The store has big tubs containing fat ropes like this in coils. It reminds me of the cotton they wrap around your hairline when you get a perm.

I didn't want to sacrifice the nice fresh fur in an experiment, so I tore apart the little worms of yarn shown above. I didn't take any intervening pictures showing the process of making the new yarn because my hands were busy. Suffice it to say it was challenging. I have never practiced spinning using just the wool, and the ex-yarn had become felted into chunks and didn't mix in very well.

In theory, twisting the heck out of fibers instantly creates yarn. Beats me how spinners prevent it from untwisting, which is what it really, really wants to do. I gave it my best shot. I have had no prior experience with drafting the fiber from the wad to be caught up in the twisting of the spindle. I ended up with thick and thin yarn with chunks of cat fur poking out of it. Then I twisted two strands together. They didn't want to stay twisted, either.

I ended up wetting it to see if it would help. Then I blotted it with paper towels and ultimately blew a hair dryer on it. It seemed to gain some stability.

I thought about trying to knit something small, but it was just too hard to work with. I ended up dividing it into thirds and braiding it. Then I sewed both ends very tightly with standard thread and hooked the two ends together. I made a little wrap piece using cotton yarn and small needles in linen stitch to hide the joint. Tada! Nelea bracelet. It's already starting to shed individual hairs.

Before I try this again, I am going to practice with just the wool. If I never try the fur again, I have accomplished my objective. I have my keepsake, and I have my Nelea.

Day of Fun and Fiber Part I The Scarf

Hi, blog. It's been forever. Plenty of projects have come and gone since my last post, and someday I might update it to include them.

For now, I would like to tell you about working on a project with my friends in the Knit and Crochet in the Northland Facebook group. The monthly Saturday meeting was held at Luna Coffee House in North Kansas City. Barbara, Elizabeth, Courtney, and I had a good couple of hours doing our needlework and chatting. I worked on this project. There are some white life lines stuck through it. You know how I am about those.

This is a very simple pattern that is available on Ravelry. http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/mobius-inside-out-cowl

I'm making it for my lovely daughter-in-law, who isn't much into scarves, but consented to trying this one out. It's basically this: Grab a ball of Plymouth brand Eros yarn. Cast 30 stitches on to a size 15 or 17 needle, and knit until it's all gone. Then join the ends. I might not join the ends, it just depends on what she prefers.

I purchased several balls of this cool novelty yarn at $1 each from The Studio. It's a lightweight nylon that consists of little square patches and spaces inside sort of a railroad track or ladder. It comes in 165-yard balls, and I have two each of five colors. Plymouth has discontinued this particular yarn and replaced it with Eros II. I don't know what the differences are, but I'll probably find out someday.

I have started this several times on bus rides, and I kept either having my needle fall completely out of the stitches or fighting the joint in my circular needles going from skinny cable to fat, heavy, slippery, wood needle tips. I finally decided that my beloved Knitter's Pride Dreamz wooden tips just wouldn't do, so I ordered a set of three jumbo plastic Trendz tips.

This made all the difference. They're just grabby enough to keep the slippery Eros from sliding off. They're lighter than the wood, so they're less likely to just drop out of the work. Surprisingly, they solved my problem of getting stitches to slide onto the tips from the cable, too. It doesn't make sense, but I'm not going to knock it. I may actually finish this someday.

Then I went home and watched the playoff game with my hubby.