i made a new cowl for meg and i love how this one came out. it was kind of a pain to knit, linen stitch on 1.5mm needles (i was using the wrong length for most of it too) but in the end it was worth it. i like this one so much i want to order more yarn and size it up for me!
i’m not sure she was super impressed with me for not clearing the snow off the stump before i had her sit down though
got up this morning and finished the pom pom for the last hat. since this one was so bright, meg let me go just a little smaller, so it didn’t overwhelm the hat.
and a side view
i hat a little bit of yarn left over from my lost and wandering socks. i figured there was just enough to make a couple of hats for the girls. turns out i had enough to make 4 with less than 30cm of yarn left over when i was done! they made cute beanies but meg insisted she want BIG pompoms on them. we went through the stash and she chose 4 colors to coordinate with the hats. while watching tv i managed to make and trim down the first three, and she happily modeled the hats for me as i finished. it was actually the perfect activity to do while huge flakes of snow fell steadily outside.
she picked gold to go with the first of the purplier ones
navy with the other
and purple with the first pinker one
i still have one more pom to make. but i ran out of time.
i think she did a great job of picking colors, but i’m not so sure about the size of the pompoms. i think they look a bit big (in spite of my trimming) but she assures me that they are right on trend, and just what she wanted! she’s going to wear one tomorrow when we go out and wrap the others as gifts for nandi, ember and shaelyn… as soon as i get that last pompom done…
so here is the scenario
i am knitting merrily along, when the tiny jump ring i am using as a stitch markers goes flying. it hits the floor and disappears into the netherworld, never to be seen again. growling i declare there has to be a better way….
a week or so later i am happily wandering around michaels trying to remember what i came in for when i spy jump rings on sale. ooh, i need those, i’m always losing mine. then i spy a string of tiny beads already on little loops, no idea what other people would use them for, but i immediately think they could be added to the jump rings to make stitch markers that are easier to find when i drop them, so into my basket both items go. i arrive home and deposit them on my sewing desk to finish…later.
weeks go by, i wander into my craft room, spy these strange beads on my desk, have no clue what they are for and prepare to put them in my give away pile. suddenly i see the jump rings beside them, and say “oh yeah, the are for stitch markers”, put both back on my desk and wander out….
weeks go by, i wander into my craft room, spy these strange beads on my desk, have no clue what they are for and prepare to put them in my give away pile. suddenly i see the jump rings beside them, nd say “oh yeah, the are for stitch markers”, put both back on my desk and wander out….
weeks go by, i wander into my craft room, spy these strange beads on my desk, have no clue what they are for and prepare to put them in my give away pile. suddenly i see the jump rings beside them, nd say “oh yeah, the are for stitch markers”, put both back on my desk and wander out…
weeks go by, i’m cleaning out my craft room for real this time, spy these strange beads on my desk, have no clue what they are for and prepare to put them in my give away pile. suddenly i see the jump rings beside them, and say “oh yeah, the are for stitch markers”, grab my needle-nose pliers, whip up a couple of dozen stitch-markers, but them in a neatly labelled box and stick them with my knitting supplies. (then give the spare beads away 😉 )
case closed 🙂 🙂 🙂
it’s been a long time since i’ve had time to write here on the blog. life, and particularly my kids, seem constantly conspiring to keep me away. i’m hoping to have more time to blog and work with my dolls this fall, but we will see how it all plays out.
in the meantime i realized i never posted a picture of my finished blanket
it actually is square, the picture is just cockeyed…
the red and black one has all the squares done, but i haven’t quite decided what to do with the border, so it is on hold for now.
every year i say i’m not going to do it, and every year i do anyway….. join in the eatsleepknit yarnathon that is. erin and her team of knitting kitties keep coming up with such fun new challenges that i can’t resist. though true to my quest to keep as much as my crafting as possible bjd related, i try to adapt the challenges to doll sized whenever possible.
this years year long challenge (or kal if you prefer) is to knit a hue shift blanket. my girls really don’t need any more blankets, but i couldn’t resist this pattern – with all its possibilities. done in laceweight on 1.5mm
i played with the color picker and came up with two different blankets to try. one is a 3 color shift, and each block of 9 squares will rotate to give it a more abstract feel.
i’ve done about 2/3rds of the squares but because i am doing all of the same squares at once, only one block is completely finished
the second is more like the original and reminds me of a tropical sunset with the bright pink/orange/yellow hues fading into the green/blue/purples of the water
the pink row isn’t attached since i am adding an orange row in between the yellow and pink to make it flow better. it was really hard to find the right orange as the laceweight yarns weren’t quite the right hue and the one that was perfect only came in heavier weight. unfortunately it turned out to be a yarn that was impossible to separate into single plies, without the yarn calling apart :sigh so i am doing it with an orange yarn that is just ok (especially since i’m not a fan of orange to begin with) but i think it works well enough, and the progression really needed an orange to smooth out the gradation between yellow and the peachy pink
it’s a very addicting knit, since the squares go fairly quickly and it’s it keeps changing so there is always something new to see.
i started my christmas projects early this year with a cozy hat for the lovely lady who looks after my middle son. my camera colors are a bit off today. this is more of a true red with a black haze, rather than the plum it looks like. i wanted to use the whole skeing up, so when i got to the end and still had a bunch left i ripped it back to before the increases and added another set. this time i was left with a mere couple of yards left over. success!
the yarn is wonderfully soft and thick. i’m going to make a coordinating cowl in rios ravelry red later.
i finally got round to uploading the pictures of my 5th shawl. this one was very loosely inspired by melanie bergs shawl drachenfels. i like the color combination and the juxtaposition of dots and lines
while writing up my tale of two cities scarf, i realized that some minor changes in the number of rows between the stripes would make them work out better. meg picked two colors for the new scarf and i knit it up again. it came out a smidge bigger, but we both liked it that way – and it was easier to knit. you’d only notice the size change if you lay them out side by side anyway.
i like her choice of colors. it makes me think of summer, even though the ground is covered with snow.
both the shawl and it’s name are inspired by a melanie berg shawl called 5190 miles. her name celebrates the distance between the two cities of the collaborators on her shawl. mine of course is named after the dickens novel.
melanie’s shawl was lovely, but both the size and stitch used were out of scale for my doll, so i rewrote it completely with a different stitch that made a similar look, but in the correct scale.
