Scrunchies

The Goldy twins received scrunchies for Christmas that have been knitted.  They are very cute and I thought I might make a few.  They came from American Eagle....so it might be just as easy to purchase.  They are knitted as a tube with a hair rubber band inside and then seamed.  Actually I am thinking that the hair band needs to be inside from the very beginning....The gauge is 6 stitches to the inch knit loosely.  

You can see the seam if you look carefully at the white scrunchie.  The length is  and the tube is approximately 3 inches in diameter.  But that measurement would not be crucial.  Here is a photo that shows the seam better:

The tube measures 18 inches in length.  I had Kya stretch the scrunchie out as far as it would go and it measured 9 inches so the entire tube would be double that.

 

Knitting for Katie 1981

 While going through old albums looking for Christmas photos for the 2020 zoom Christmas parties, I found a couple of photos of Katie in her handknitted (by me) bunting.

And another with Katie in Jack's arms:

When Katie began walking I cut off the bottom and added ribbing so it was a sweater.  I still have the sweater in the playroom over the garage.

Jason and Mary's sweaters Dec 1976

I am working on photos for a slideshow for our zoom parties this Christmas.  And found this photo of Jason and Mar4y in the Matching sweaters that I made for them.  In December 1976 Jason would have been four and Mary would have been 2 and a half.  We were living on the farm in lavalette.  This property is now a part of Creekside golf course.  

Multiplicity by BarbAnn Pappas

So I gave up for now on the Allie Shawl....just too hard to get started for a Christmas knit.  Not only that I am not sure I don't want more contrast on my mosaic part...like black and white. So today I started Multiplicity by BarbAnn Pappas.  Inspire of the fact that the instructions look a bit hard, BarbAnn has gone to a lot of trouble to make everything very clear!  So I watched the Purl SoHo knitting version of how to do the double stitch and I am moving right along.

I am using the needle called for in the pattern:  size 8.  And the yarn is:

Three Irish Girls Binge Knit bought at Stevenbe in color Paddy's Pub which is an olive Green.  And uneek fingering by Urth in a variegated purple/blue/yellow hue. They look very good together and the green mohair makes the variegated yarn pop or the other way round?  So far I like it a lot!

The big needles make it go very fast.  

Allie Shawl by Jennifer Wood

 I am still working on my oink cowl, but it always makes me kind of nervous to not have any other project in the works.  What if I finish?  What if I get to a place where there is a mistake and I have to think?  The oink is fairly mindless this stage....but you just never know how long it will take to get something else started.  And indeed this project has been a bit slow to get going.  I have ripped out and restarted all week and still have only about 4 rows done.  I have also changed colors....and changed needles.  The yarn is a bit splitty and I changed to some sharper points. 

The pattern begins with a mosaic section and I decided that the white variegated yarn I had chosen to be color A was not a clear enough contrast to the other color in the mosaic...so I am doing the mosaic in the blue and the purple.  I am not sure how that will affect the rest of the pattern.

The yarn is Hedgehog fibers sock yarn in colors Bali, Deja Vu and Spell

And I am knitting on size 3 needles.  It is moving slow at the beginning.  Hopefully I'll report that it moves better when I finish the mosaic section.

Ok I give up ....I have started over too many times.  I need to start this sometime that is NOT December!  I first used the blue and white for the mosaic.  Then I switched because the white has flecks in it that match the purple and the blue too well.  So the Mosaic was not crisp enough to suit me.  Then I switched to the purple and blue for the mosaic, but I believe that I would prefer something a bit more crisp suchas the below:

  And I am having a terrible time with finding that when I pick the knitting back up, I can't make the next row work.  Perhaps I'll change colors?  Here is another color way that I like:

Scrap projects

 At the November Vogue Knitting live, one of the vendors showed a very pretty scarf/cowl that she made out of small amounts of colors.  I can not remember which vendor nor can I remember if I took a photo.  I'll try to update this blog post later.  But I didn't want to loose the thought.  

The Vendor actually sells bags of yarn that are random and many colored.  And she suggests that one purchase a neutral color of yarn that goes well with the bag of yarns.  Her version used grey as the neutral color.  

One knits with a color and counts the rows....then one knits with the grey the same number of rows.  It was very pretty.  I think perhaps she did a tube?

Halloween Cowl in Oink

I had bought yarn at Rebelle in Lexington on my way back from a genealogy conference in Frankfort....not sure when I bought it.  But it was serendipity that the woman who dyes Oink yarns was having a trunk show when I arrived at the shop.  And I chose this particular yarn and asked her if she had ideas for it.  She not only had ideas, but she had made a cowl from exactly this yarn and I had admired the cowl on my way in.  So it was meant to be....of course, I had to buy the yarn!

The pattern I am using is Citroen by Helena Bristow.  It is a fun knit and I like the way that it is turning out....however, it is not surprising that Halloween has come and gone and I have not yet finished it!  I have filed the pattern in the kitchen file in cowls and scarfs.

I finished the project winter 2021.  

Superwash Wool

I just finished my fourth Vogue Knitting Live.  It is interesting to me how much better some of the Vendors have become as they have honed their skills on camera on Zoom.  I have learned a lot.  But I have one huge burning question that has emerged from my shopping:  How do I feel about superwash wool.  The consensus of opinion seems to be that the process that gets the wool to this place is NOT ecologically friendly.  But at the same time the superwash wool takes dye in a much more vibrant way.  Thus many of the independent dyers use it to produce the wool that has such spectacular color.
 
I took a class in either June or July in which this question came up.  And one of the students asked if she was trying to avoid superwash where might she get colors that were as vibrant.  And the teacher suggested Sweet Georgia.  I will look at their yarn.

So here is a URL for a post about the superwash system:

http://consciouslycrochet.com/truth-superwash-wool/

The Sharon Show by Casapinka

So Dar and I have chatted many times about how we are not interested in taking part in a Mystery Knit Along!  She was very disappointed one time in what she made and I love the dreaming of the project almost more than I like knitting it....Why would I succumb to missing the dreaming and just executing the project?

There has been a lot of publicity about Casapinka's newest project and I do tend to like Casapinka's designs!  And then Stevenbe sent an e-mail showing kits that he and his shop had put together for this project and one of the color ways grabbed me.  So here I am starting The Sharon Show today with the first clue.

The colors are

The Blue is Stevenbe Blackwattle in color Lone Light:

The Purple is Madeline Tosh Light color Moxie




The background color which is very light is:

I'll have to look to see if I kept the labels or if the colors are on my order history at StephenB.  I finished the shawl last week and blocked it....and I LOVE IT!  I had the perfect sweater to wear it with among my winter clothes:

Panda Pearl Yarn

Yesterday was one of those funny days when I ran out of mindless knitting.  So this morning I am trying to start a few projects while I finish these projects that take some thought.  I finished my your slip is showing shawl and plan to block it when it gets too hot to sit on the porch this afternoon.  I picked up a very pretty blue shawl that I am knitting Wendy's Fern Shawl with....but I am in a spot in which there seems to be a glitch in the pattern.....So I need to pull up the original pattern and see what happens in the chart....And I made a mistake in my Nyphalidea shawl and need to spend some time on it....but the biggest thing that happened is that I ran out of black yarn on my Panda Pearl wrap.  So I spent an hour looking for another skein of Panda Pearl Black yarn with no success.  The few people who have this yarn in their stash on Ravelry say it is not for sale or trade and Ravelry gives no way to contact them to double check.  So I put the wrap on in front of the mirror and OH MY!  I absolute LOVE IT!  Ok, I see what to do.  I will finish it by binding off where I am now and adding a solid band of the rust color to the other end.  It will be just fine.

Ok, it is August and I am editing this post.  First, I failed to put the labels for this yarn into the original post.  So here is one of them:





But in the process of making this decision, I looked all over the place for Panda Pearl yarn and actually found a few sites.  I can't get the yarn out of my head this morning, so I am going to put the ideas in this blog so that I don't loose them, but also don't jump in and buy "stuff" I don't need.

I ended up buying one skein of the below while working on what I was going to do.




9002 Nutmeg


and the below project on Ravelry mixed Panda Pearl with a Knit Picks Gloss DK ....I might choose a more vibrant color such as black or one of the bright colors in the Zimbabwe as the background color.  But the Zimbabwe has VERY pretty colors in it.  And perhaps the rust would work as the solid.



The spice market would blend very well with the light color that I have left.  And the nutmeg color that is left is probably my favorite.  However it has to be mixed with a solid....knitted alone it is too splotchy for me from looking at projects on Ravelry.

Also as I edit in August, I will explain that Sally and Dar helped me figure out how to go to people who say they do not want to sell their yarn and message them to ask if they might....and it turned out that several of them were happy to sell me their black Panda Pearl.

So I did indeed find the black Panda Pearl yarn.  And I was very happy because when I looked in the full length mirror in the closet, I decided that the original pattern did not make a scarf long enough for my taste....so I have added more rows.  And finally in November here is the finished scarf!

Montana Yarn

I listened to the podcast on the Interweave site

https://www.interweave.com/fiber-nation/black-sheep-wyoming-wool/

this morning.  I will put more information about the two people who make these podcasts when I listen to the next podcast in the series.  Although I am not really doing these podcasts in any kind of order.

Join host Allison Korleski as she talks with people from all corners of the yarniverse: designers and dyers, shepherds and spinners, publishers and pathfinders.

However, because Sally and Roger are roaming around out west this summer looking for the perfect 70 degree weather, I decided to work on my geography this morning to see where Wyoming wool is milled.  Wow!  Is my geographyof the north west TERRIBLE!  The red marker marks the spot that is Buffalo Wyoming where Mountain Meadow Wool Mill is located.  Be sure to read the article about Peter John Camino and watch the video that shows the mill as well as listen to the podcast at the site!

Nymphalidea

I suddenly found myself in a place where I had to think a bit on both of the projects I was working on.  I had finished the face mask.  I decided that I needed to start a new project so that there was no chance that I could find myself in the terrible predicament of having nothing to knit!  The pattern and yarn that were yelling to me are:

Nymphalidea by Melinda VerMeer

The Yarn is Ellyn Cooper's Yarn Sonnets  Jenny in colors Chasing Autumn and  I'll have to look....
I have 225 yards in each color.  It is fingering Weight.  I am using size 6 needles.  Oh, Phooey.  I just pulled the work out to double check the needle sizes and I have been knitting it with the brighter color in the lace and the duller color the welts which is not what I meant to do at all.  I guess I am going to rip out and start again.  It was not hard to start.  And I had not done that much knitting.








I finished the project in October 2020.  I really do love this scarf/shawl!

Vogue Live 2020 in the time of quarantine

The Vogue Live 2020 that was supposed to happen this spring was to be in Seattle.  But as with everything it was cancelled.  However, they decided to host a virtual presentation.  Tickets were $3.99.  Which lets you see everything that is public.  Classes cost extra.  However by the time I registered, the classes were pretty much full.  There was a class still open Thursday afternoon of interest to me.  But it is supposed to be 80 degrees and pretty on Thursday....think I'll play golf.  But I still thought it fun to register for the Big Event.

So tonight I showed up for a session from 6-7 PM.  It was a virtual presentation from a yarn shop in Williamsburg, Virginia called the Flying Needles.  The lady who owns the shop wears two hats.  She sells the yarn made by others in her shop and at the same time she sells the yarn that she dyes. The yarn that she dyes is sold under the trademark Robin's Promise.  So tonight was a presentation of both faucets of what she sells.  Although the Robin's Promise yarn received the most "show time".  Susan, the lady who owns the shop and dyes the yarn, has a keen interest in birds and the colors of birds.  All of her hand dyed yarns have names suggesting a bird on our planet.

Probably the biggest part of the show was a shawl that one of her buddies made from Stephen West's pattern, Painting Bricks.  The shawl was very pretty.  But the kits that Susan was showing were sensational.  Susan had braided two assortments of small skeins of her hand dyed colors.  One is a rainbow assortment and the other she calls Designer.  Both are in her Songbird base which is fingering yarn.  And each small skein is 93 yards.  One needs to order two of the main color in Songbird and the big skein is 463 yards each.  The price for the entire kit is $109.  The shipping is free if you spend more than $100.  And the discount code is VKLLIVERP.  The phone number for the shop is 757-345-3655

Here is the rainbow:




And here is the designer kit.  I have made the note that I would like this kit with Tarred and Feathered

Neither of my photos show it very well.  Here is another try:  It is the color to the far right.

 I would go on her website to see these photos better!  They do not show so well in these photos.

However, I wanted to talk about the three  colors above.  These were the colors used in the Pappilon pattern that one of the helpers used to make for her mother.  They showed a very brief photo and it was wonderful.  These colors are from left to right:  Fawlkes,



Pheasant Feather

and CowBird Feather

Another wonderful color that I found while looking for these two was:
Pheasant Feathers in the sun (below)

But the trio of colors shown just above were colors that one of the other women in the shop used for the shawl papillon that she made for her mother.  Oh, WOW, the shawl was exceptional!  The colors are Cow Bird feather (the brown), pheasant feathers (deep burgundy) and Fowkes (variegated on the left end).  

One other thought that I don't want to loose is a color that she calls Perched in Tip Top of the Big Top.  It was amazing paired with Flamingo Feathers or a green that she pulled out that was a bit of a neon chartreuse.



One other color that I want to mention is Luv your LYS.  It is the variegated below.

This morning I went on Ravelry to look at some of the combinations for the Painting Bricks shawl.  I found one in another yarn that absolutely blew me away.



This version is made with Hedgehog's Alpaca Boucle and the knitter used West Wool Bicycle for the black background color.  She made some modifications in the pattern ....so be sure to read her notes.



And this version was interesting as it is much more muted and uses blues, but is still very pretty.



And here is another version with a light background:





Oh, wow, I just can't get enough of looking at the many color possibilities







A few days later I am deleting e-mail in my inbox to try to get them to below 6000.  I found an old e-mail from Jimmy Beans that has a yarn that reminds me of the above and the below.  If is from a dyer who calls her yarn Fully Spun.  It is being sold on Jimmy Beans website for $35 for 440 yards and come in about 5 or 6 colors.  It is fingering and the base yarn is from Argentina.





I am still playing with the possibility of this purchase.  Here are some of the things that I have liked:

The first is Rikaart Cowl bu Mega Burcl.  I would buy the rainbow set with a funky yellow.  This version is by

qltnbe

Next is MamaHare's Smooth Move knitted from pattern Garter Breeze by Steven West



Next is On the Spice Market by Melanie Berg.  Oh, wow....so many great color ways that I couldn't choose:











Next is Lamina Wrap by Ambah O'Brienn



Next is Casapinka's Perfect Blend MKAL






Next is the Joker and the Thief by Melanie Berg