Color Infusion Cowl

I've finally finished a project that's been on my needles for 2 months.  It's been a hard thing to keep knitting, as all colorwork things are for me.  Why is it that I love looking at colorwork projects, planning them, and starting them...but it's so hard to finish them???  That's rhetorical.  I don't know.

With a daily self-imposed knitting requirement, I was able to finish this lovely cowl:

It is knit using stranded (or Fair Isle) technique, with 3 colors of fingering weight yarn.

This pattern is  Color Infusion by Meridith Shepherd, knit in The Fibre Company Canopy Fingering yarn (alpaca, wool and bamboo combination), in colorways Jacaranda (purple) and Guava (pink), as well as Madelinetosh Twist Light (wool and nylon blend) in colorway Kilim (multicolor).

It's a gloriously simple and ingenious design, you knit one side, then do a few purl rows to make a "fold" line, then continue knitting the other side.  Then you seam the bind off stitches to the cast on edge, and you've got a fully reversible, double thickness cowl.  The two yarns are luxurious together, and feel so soft on the neck!

Below, I double wrapped it, that would be so warm!

And it can easily be looped to show both colorways.

See the purl rows?  Neat, huh?

So although it took a lot of time, I love love love it.  This is staying with me!  It'll come in handy this winter, with the projected El Nino precipitation we're supposed to have!

Topiary Wrap

I bought 7 skeins of Knit Picks Andean Silk a few years ago to make a sweater.  Sometime after I bought it, I decided I didn't care much for making sweaters, so I looked for a new use for the yarn.

Andean Silk is a great yarn: 55% alpaca, 23% silk and 22% merino wool.  It has since been discontinued by Knit Picks, but I do like it.  It's soft, warm, and cushy.  The color I used was "truffle", a deep brown color.

I decided to make Michelle Wang's Topiary with it, and set in. 

This pattern on the left, right, and middle, has a cable that needs to be crossed on every right side row.  I wasn't anticipating how much I would dislike that, but it really was a deflater for me.  I had to force myself to do 14 rows a day, and while I enjoyed the cable pattern panels, I hated those cabled borders. 

 Nevertheless, I finally finished it and it turned out great.

My photographer Elijah helped me with these photos.  Excuse my no-makeupness.  :)

And while I really like the result, I don't see myself using this wrap.  Do you?  If you like it, comment below or on my FB page and I'll send it to you!

A Super Hero

After 9 months and many hours, I've finally finished my newest design: Super Hero Blanket.  I designed this one for Noah.  If you recall, I made a Spiderman Blanket for Elijah, and wanted to do something similar for Noah.  When I asked him which super hero was his favorite, he couldn't name just one.  In my mind, I thought, well...why not use multiple??

So I began looking for patterns.  Not only were there no patterns for multiple super heroes in one blanket, but there were no patterns for blankets with any super hero logos on them.  I soon found out why.  It is copyright infringement to sell patterns with those logos on them, as they are owned by their respective parent companies, Marvel and so forth.  But not to be deterred, I found the logos I wanted to use, pixelated the images, at times by hand, and created point graphs (spreadsheets) with each image in the dimensions I wanted.

I drew a schematic,

and pretty well stuck to it!  I designed it in a block fashion, intending to make each area separately, then seam it together.  I chose Knit Picks Shine Worsted yarn, mostly for economy, but also for ease of care.  I've worked with it a lot before, and it's a good yarn.

So back to the beginning, where I only had a pile of yarn.  I knew that the logo areas would be challenging, because they involved multiple colors, often covering small areas.  The only feasible way to do this in knitting is intarsia.  All the blocks were completed using 97% intarsia techniques.  The remaining 3% was fair isle knitting, which was used when there were only a few stitches of color needed in an area.

As you can see above, I quickly became overwhelmed with bobbins.  For each area of color, a new bobbin is needed.  For example, on the Batman panel, which seems fairly easy (especially since it only has 2 colors), I needed to manage 9 different bobbins plus my skeins of yarn, so 11 yarns working at the same time.  Things quickly became a twisted mess.  But as I worked, I developed methods for keeping things organized.  I've shown my work after some experience below.  I improved!  I won't go into the tedium of the tips I discovered, but if you're making this blanket and need some tips, please contact me.

Skip ahead, quite a ways ahead.  The next challenge was the large middle star panel.  I placed this design on a spreadsheet as well, but to manage it, it had to be placed on 4 pages to accommodate the number of stitches and still make it readable.  With 210 stitches, it took a long time and involved a lot of counting.  But I'm so happy with how it turned out.

Once finished with all the design pieces, I laid them out together and measured the areas remaining for the solid color dividing panels.  I picked a stitch pattern, and made those.  Here are all the pieces completed and ready for blocking and seaming.  See all the ends to weave in???  WHEW!

At this point, I was very nervous about how the pieces were going to fit together.  I actually completed the first seam, between the corner piece and the Captain America panel, and sat it on the table in my craft room and looked at it for about 2 months.  I just wasn't sure the pieces were going to look right once I seamed it, and I didn't want to go to all the work of seaming, if it wasn't going to turn out.

Finally, I got up the courage to just try it.  I was confident in my math, and decided to risk it.

Here I am seaming:

I worked across the super hero panels on the top, seaming them to the dividing color blocks.  Then I repeated the process with the bottom panels.  I gained confidence as I went, realizing I was worried for nothing!

Once the top and bottom panel rows were completed, I pinned them onto the large middle star panel, and seamed.  I used the tails of the blocks whenever possible, and joined new yarn when it wasn't.  Here I am, seaming along.

AND IT'S FINISHED!  I'm so happy with it.  And I'm even more proud of myself for being diligent in my work, planning well, and following through on a tough assignment!

Noah has watched me along the way, screeching out "Hey!  That's BATMAN!" here and there, but when I finished it, he immediately laid down on it and rubbed his face and arms across it and said, "so beautiful, Mama."  All worth it.  Right there.

Here are the boys enjoying the blanket after I finished taking a picture.

Now, if you see this and want to make your own super hero blanket, I want you to email me.  I am unable to put the instructions up due to those aforementioned copyright laws (not here and not on my Ravelry design page), but I may or may not have an official pattern written up.  Email me: morehoursperday@yahoo.com.

A wool blanket for me

Lately, I've made a lot of stuff for other people, for sale, or for experimentation, so I decided to get a little greedy.

I am the sort that is always cold.  And I have 3 boys in my family that are hot blooded.  They always want the fan on, so in cooler months (AKA every month except July and August), I love afghans.  My mom has made me a few that have had serious usage.  They're great - made with acrylic yarn and washable, but I was longing for a warmer wool blanket.

A while back, I bought wool for a sweater.  At some point after that purchase, I decided sweaters aren't my favorite thing to knit.  So, I looked for a new idea for this yarn.

Let's start with the finished product photos:  (Yes, it took forever to knit!)

 

I think it's fantastic.  I used Anne Hanson's Hourglass Throw pattern, and Valley Yarns Northampton yarn in colorway Twilight Heather.  It's a 100% wool, worsted weight.  I had 5 skeins in my stash, which was a total of 1,200 yards worth.  I started in on the lovely lace and cable design.  As I knit, it was so nice to cover up with the blanket as I worked.  I knew even after only having finished 1/3 of it that it was going to be warm!

As I came to the end of my stash of yarn, I realized that the blanket was too short to cover from my neck to my toes, an absolute necessity in Kristi's book of afghan rules.  So I ordered 2 more skeins of yarn.  As you can see in the second picture, near the far end of the blanket, there was quite a difference in the colors from the two dye lots I ended up with.  I WAS SO FRUSTRATED.  Still am, to tell you the truth.  But.  I can't FEEL the difference, and for an item made for myself, I guess I can live with it.  I just don't understand how a major yarn company can mass produce yarn and have such color variances in their yarn.  I guess you get what you pay for in that department...

Ok - off my soapbox now.

The finished blanket measures 60 x 40" and covers me nicely.  It's soft and pretty.  I love it.  I'm currently trying to figure out where I can put it so it is handy to reach from my recliner but also have it be a place where the boys don't use it for a fort, sled, or other reckless boy activity!

Evening on the Prairie Scarf

I'm so excited to share with you my latest design creation: my Evening on the Prairie Scarf.  This idea began with my closet transformation I'm working on.  I'll give it to you straight - I'm 33 years old and still have high school clothing in my closet.  That I wear.  All the time.  I prefer comfort, warmth, and softness.  AKA sweats.  However, I have been making a conscious effort to become more adult-like with my clothing choices lately.  Recently, Mom and I were walking through Kohls, and I had made some nice business-casual choices (yay me), and I commented that a scarf would look nice with this particular blouse.  (Hear that?  Blouse.  Not in my vocabulary, or closet, until recently.)  I went over to look at their fashion scarves, and mom said "Why not just make one yourself?".  Well duh.  Why didn't I think of that?

I started off with a stitch pattern.  I thumbed through one of my knitting stitch dictionaries, and was really drawn to the Wild Oats design.

With this stitch in mind, I drove down to my LYS, and as always, I'm drawn to variegated yarns.  Then I realized variegated would look quite nice in the Wild Oats, so I picked an earthy blue/gray/brown color.  Malabrigo Rios in colorway Playa.  Rios is 100% superwash wool - read: throw it in the washing machine.  Love that.  From the back of the yarn label: "Rio means 'river' in Spanish.  Malabrigo Rios is named after the four major rivers in Uruguay; Rio Cuareim, Rio Uruguay, Rio de la Plata, and Rio Negro.  Each river is represented by one ply.  These plies twist together like winding rivers.  Rios also signifies the yarn's washability; for millennia, rivers have provided water for washing garments."  --Isn't that fabulous?  Nature inspires me so, and I'm not the only one.

Getting back to the scarf, I knitted for a while in this pattern, loving it, but then decided I wanted to use more stitch patterns in this scarf.  And here comes the complications.  I'm somewhat new to this whole designing bit, and I guess I'm from the school of Hard Knocks, because I have to try something and look/feel it before I decide if I like it or not.  The above pattern uses cables, which nearly always draws the material inward, necessitating more stitches per inch.  When I decided to transition into the basket weave pattern (below), I had to find the right number of stitches to use in order to maintain a consistent width within the scarf. 

I am a big fan of life-lines in knitting.  Yes, they take time to place, and it's mildly annoying to do so, but if you find yourself needing to go back and undo a section, a life line will save so much time and aggravation.  Here I am placing a life-line while trying to decide how many stitches to decrease between sections.

As I pictured this scarf in my mind before starting it, I knew I wanted it knit in the round. However, with worsted yarn, a scarf would be a thick tube without anchoring one side to the other in some way. I decided on anchoring the sides together halfway through each design element - by grabbing a loop from the back side and knitting it together with the front side work. This worked great. It flattened the tube out, improving how it would lay around your neck, all while giving you a completely reversible scarf. It was a challenge, however, to describe in words how to perform the anchoring. Hopefully I eloquently and clearly described it in the pattern!

So after I figured out the right amounts of stitches to have in each pattern, it was simply a matter of finishing it out.  To finish out the ends, I wanted to add a fringe. I think it added a nice detail - visual interest. And it was so easy to do.

Technical help:  Executing the fringe

Once you've finished the scarf and woven in the ends, turn your attention to the garter borders at each end of the scarf. Decide how many fringe tassels to add on (I chose 6 per side), and also decide how long to make your fringe. I went with 12" pieces of yarn, which after folding in half, tying and trimming, it ended up 3.5-4". 

To make cutting the lengths easier, I used a template - fancy, the lid to my notions box (aka recycled lunchmeat box). 

I wrapped the yarn around 6 times, then cut along the bottom only. I then had 6 lengths of 12". 

After visually dividing up the stitches at the cast-on edge, I inserted a crochet hook into the pre-determined area, going through both sides of the scarf. 

 

Next, I folded those 6 lengths of yarn in half, and using my crochet hook, pulled the yarn by the loops through both sides of the work, stopping before they pull all the way through. 

Then, I inserted my fingers through the loops, grabbed the tail, and pulled them through the loop, making a slip-knot.  Pull tight. 

Repeat across the cast-on edge. You will notice that you are effectively closing the tube up, further securing its flattened shape. Once you have your evenly-spaced fringe tassels placed, repeat on the other side of the scarf: the bind-off edge. 

Then lay out your scarf on a flat, hard surface, and comb through the fringe to straighten it. 

Using a straight edge, rotary cutter, and mat, trim the ends to make a nice, even edge. 

You've done it!  Feel free to message me with questions on any of the techniques!

A special thanks to my FABULOUS sister-in-law Mandi for test knitting it for me.  She picked the lovely colorway Solis for her scarf, and opted for no fringe.

The pattern is now available to download in PDF format:

Click here for Ravelry

I so hope you enjoy the pattern!  Make sure you share your finished project photos with me! 

Barrage of Felted Slippers

A friend of mine asked for some slippers to give as gifts, and picked this pattern.  These slippers, called French Press Felted Slippers, are my favorite sort - felted.  I made a pair of felted slippers for Chris years ago (here is a picture of them), and they are so warm.  He wears them all the time.  There are several benefits of felting.  First of all - felting is always done with natural animal fibers, and that is because (in this case) wool will shrink and mat (felt) into a dense fabric when exposed to hot water and agitation.  Generally in knitting, you avoid those conditions and wash your handknitted item in cool water with little or no agitation.  But in this case it was desired.

For these slippers, you knit the bottoms while holding 3 yarns at a time.  This makes a nice, thick sole for the slippers - able to take abuse and wear.  Then you make the sides of the slipper in two pieces.  The second nice thing about making felted items is how fast they work up.  This pattern uses size 15 needles - huge.  I knitted the pieces for each slipper in one sitting.  Here is a picture of all 6 completed pieces for a set of slippers.

Then, you seam up the slippers in a way much like that of shoe construction.  Below, I have a slipper all seamed.  You'll notice how large the slipper is - that is to allow for the shrinkage during the felting process.

A button band is knitted separately, then all pieces go into the wash.  For felting, I  place the two slippers and the two button bands into a garment bag, and toss them into the washing machine with a small amount of delicate wash soap.  I've kept a pair of the boys' old tennis shoes, which I use only in felting so they are clean ;).  They are great agitators - beating the slippers with each tumble.  So they go in too.  I turn the machine to a "sanitize" cycle, which uses the hottest water and longest wash tumble cycle.  I have a high-efficiency front loader, so I have to check the felting process frequently, as you never quite know how long it will take.  Every 5-10 minutes, I will stop the washer, take the slippers out, put my foot into them, rub them around the contours of my foot, and throw them back in.  When the pieces are the size I want, I rinse them in cool water, gravity spin them, and lay them out to dry.  A thick felted wool like this will take 2-3 days to completely dry.

After felting, my slippers and button bands looked like this:

Then came the fun part - picking out buttons.  I sat down with the boys and my huge box of buttons, and looked for matching pairs and fun colors.  I, of course, got all veto rights - because the boys wanted to pick buttons like stars, soccer balls, and gaudy 1970's pearl buttons.  After button selections were made, it's simply a matter of sewing on the button band and button.

Here's the result:  I ended up with 5 pairs, 3 in a natural marl color and 2 in "mercury".  I used a total of 7 balls of yarn to make these 5 slippers. It was a fun, satisfying and quick project!

I hope their recipients will enjoy them!  They should be warm, and cute to boot! 

Delicious Cowl

OMGoodness.  Check this out. 

I think I've found my new favorite accessory.

It's so faaabulous that I finished it in two evenings.  I stayed up till 3 am finishing it up last night.

Ok.  Enough gazing.  The details.

This lovely yarn is Manos Del Uruguay Maxima, in colorway Agua.  It's a lovely singly ply 100% merino wool that's beautifully hand-dyed.  I had one skein leftover after making a baby blanket for a friend.  I just knew it would be great in this pattern: A Very Braidy Cowl by Maryse Roudier. 

It's a simple design, just a set of two humongous cables, which I knit flat and then seamed together. 

Love it!

Nina's Matching Neon Hat

My good friend Nina asked me to make some fingerless mitts for her, and they turned out great.  I was so happy she texted me again and asked if I would make her a hat.  Nina looks great in bright, bold colors.  She has fabulous dark skin and the colors really pop.  So after I made her the mitts, she went looking for a hat to match at clothing stores, and said she didn't see anything that spoke to her.  Her wise husband suggested she ask me about it.  I was thrilled that Jennifer Beaumont, the designer of the mitts I made for her, also had a coordinating hat pattern.

I set off making the hat with the same yarn: I Love This Yarn in colors Yellow Neon and Fuchsia Neon.

The above picture turned out the most true color-wise.

 Nina requested a big 'ole pom pom, and while I was hesitant at first, it really turned out great. 

Now her ears will keep warm!  She reported to me that she's already machine washed her mitts and they look good as new - always a good thing to hear.  Hopefully she gets some good use out of these and wears them till they have holes.  Of course, if that happens, I'll gladly make more for you, Nina!


I'll take the opportunity to update you on my works-in-progress:
1. The super hero blanket: I'm nearing completion on the middle panel, and have all 6 hero logo panels done.

The star is still on the needles - you can see them if you look closely, and I think the middle panel will be a little taller than the space I've allowed in this layout, but it give you an idea of what my vision is.  I'm very happy with how it's turning out.  Between the logos will be solid color knitting with textured patterns.  There are about a zillion ends to weave in too...

2. I'm designing a scarf - I'm calling it "Evening on the Prairie".  Here's a little sneak peek at what it's gonna look like: