A Shawl that Wasn't

I'd been planning this shawl for a decade. I had the perfect yarn picked out, and the pattern, and gorgeous dreams of how it was going to turn out...

That didn't quite happen. A couple of months ago I realized that I could use my seven skeins of Knitpicks Shine instead and I cast on and formed new gorgeous visions of the shawl I was knitting... and four skeins in something went badly wrong. Best guess is that I knit the same row of lace twice, but despite hours of picking back and re-starting that row I could not make it work.

What do you do at that point, when you're probably thirty hours in and can't move forward another stitch? I know knitters who would unravel the entire thing and immediately cast on again. I'm not one of those. I have ripped back shawls, but I draw the line at knitting the same pattern on my second (or third) attempt. Not when I'm this far in and I've done that much lace.

I could have unravelled the yarn and put it back into my stash, but I think that would have made me feel worse than just binding off everything I'd knit before things took a wrong turn. I love the drape and the way that the lace looks. I just wish I'd been able to keep going until I'd used all seven skeins.

At some point, I'll knit the full shawl as planned. Just not right now.

The Last Pair for 2018

This colorway didn't have a catchy name.  I think it's "blue and turquoise mix" or something like that, but it made a very pretty pair of socks. 

This project was just a little bit jinxed. I had the stitches fall off of a needle in my purse. A week or so later I snapped a needle in half. Last night, I completely lost a different needle. I'd been working on them since late November, which is a lot longer than a pair of socks that I'm actively knitting should take. 

After all of that, I'm definitely glad to have these done. I'll be happy to wear them, but they weren't a lot of fun to knit. 

Neutral Hug Shawl

Remember the Hobby Lobby Incident? I've used up four more skeins of yarn from that pile. 

Yarn: Yarn Bee, Alpine Authentic (Neutral)  

I used the cast on and increases from the Gramma's Hug pattern, but left out the lace bits and ended it with a wide border of k2p2 ribbing. Ribbing at the bottom of shawls may be my new favorite thing.

Krampus is Coming!

This is my favorite (and so far my only) new Christmas decoration of the year. I just need to dig out a little hoop to put him in.

Pattern from PyroDog Pins on etsy 

There are a lot of colors in this little project, and a lot more tiny little half-stitches, but the finished effect was definitely worth the little bit of extra effort. 

Salt and Pepper Socks

Look -- another pair of socks! Now that the weather has started getting colder, I'm really appreciating the fact that I've knit myself more warm wool socks than any reasonable human being needs. 

Yarn: Drops Fabel, Salt and Pepper 

I really like this yarn. They're the same shades of black white and grey as another pair I knit at the beginning of the year, but the pattern is a lot more random. 

The First Frankensocks

I don't understand how this pair can possibly have taken as long as it did (I was definitely in a knitting black hole for days and days) but here they are -- 

These are made from the leftovers from three other pairs. They're a little more coordinated than I thought I was going for, but they're a respectable pair of socks.

Black Cat Alphabet

Except my cat is white because I had this pretty grey fabric buried in my stash that seemed like the perfect option for this project. I don't know what it is and it's got an oddly rubbery texture that I've never run into with aida...but once it's finished I won't be touching it anyway. 

The pattern is Black Cat Alphabet by Judy Whitman of JBW Designs, from the 2012 Just Cross Stitch Halloween issue. There's more than enough fun stuff in here to keep me happily stitching until the end of October.

Violas Socks

Why didn't I knit this yarn up into socks sooner?! 

Yarn: Deborah Norville Serenity Sock Weight, Violas 

It's Deborah Norville Serenity Sock Weight, which I bought dirt cheap at a Joann's sale years ago and thought I'd knit up on road trip. If I'd known how gorgeous it was going to be when it was knit up, I wouldn't have waited.

Too bad the local stores don't have this in more colors -- Ravelry lists more than thirty options.

A Blue and White Quilt for the Church Group

Back in January I fell in love with this fabric that looks like it's trying to be a Baltimore album quilt. Just look at the willows and the pineapple!

I didn't want anyone else cutting it up, so I planned a quilt that would make use of the entire piece. Because I'm slightly crazy that way....but if you read the block you already knew  that.

Now it's quilted and bound and ready to drop off at the October meeting, assuming I've got functional tires on the van by then.

Come Play With Us...

More Halloween stitching! 

Someone in one of the cross stitch groups I belong to on Facebook posted a picture of the Grady twins and I knew I wanted to stitch them.

They're supposed to have the elevator doors behind them, but I decided to stitch just the girls. My plan is to find a fancy little frame for them and if I ever get that gallery wall I daydream about I'm going to tuck them in between the samplers and cross stitched houses and landscapes.

I don't see a current listing for the pattern on etsy, but here's a link to the seller's shop in case she puts it back up. I changed the color of their faces and arms because the designer had it charted in yellow beige and dark yellow beige, which didn't look right to me. Gotta have the blood-stained little girls look healthy!

I Was Looking for Skull Quilts

I was looking on Pinterest for skull quilts and found a gorgeous one, which it turned out was adapted from a free cross stitch pattern. I can just barely wrap my head around how the quilter made that work...but wow it looks hard!

So I cross-stitched a skull instead, which also looked kind of hard but wasn't.

I haven't decided yet if I'll put it in a hoop or combine it with some Halloween fabric for a project bag or what. Stitching it was a fun way to spend a couple of afternoons and I'm happy with it.

I did find a couple of quilts --

The Pixelated Skull Quilt Pattern from Daydreams of Quilts is probably what I'm looking for.
This flowered sugar skull uses a fun applique technique that I'd like to try.

Home is Where the Horror Is

Late one night in April, thewitchystitcher posted a snippet of a cross stitch pattern on Instagram and asked which iconic horror house it was. I saw her post just as I was getting ready to head to bed for the night and made a wild guess .... and I won the pattern!

I meant to start stitching it immediately, but other projects happened and time got away from me. This has been so much fun to stitch. I didn't grid my fabric because, even though I should've learned from my mistakes with Whoo's There?, I wanted to get started right away. The borders meet up perfectly. The house is a row too short because I goofed on the window placement...but you wouldn't know that without comparing it to the chart.

The frame is only temporary. I put the finished piece over Ironwork Gate so I can display it until Halloween. I like the way it looks, but you don't give up a thrifted frame that perfectly fits a full coverage piece. Not for one that doesn't require such specific measurements.

You can find the pattern on Meg's Etsy shop, along with a bunch of other horror inspired designs. I've already purchased Welcome to Camp Crystal Lake and plan on getting Your Future is in Your Hands. 

Halfway Home Shawl

Can we all just agree that taking flattering pictures of large shawls, especially asymmetrical ones, is difficult? This one has fantastic texture and looks much better in real life. 

The pattern is Halfway Home and it's free on the Universal Yarns website. There's a simple lace panel that you can knit from memory once you're past the increases that form the shawl's point and the rest is garter stitch. 

I could happily knit a lot more of these mostly garter stitch shawls. They're perfect for working on in the evening while the family watches television. (Anyone got a Hulu or Netflix recommendation for us once we're done with the original Lost in Space?) 

This is definitely a stash-dived project. I had three skeins of Red Heart Designer Sport that I bought at a Michael's clearance sale back in 2008. There must've been a plan for it at the time, but whatever that might've been was long forgotten....along with the yarn itself. That was tucked into one of the darkest corners of my stash. 

But it made the best shawl! I'd planned on donating this one, but now I'm having second thoughts and feeling guilty about that...even though I know there will be lots more shawls to donate and to keep. 

Apple for the Teacher

Here's another project I made from Knitted Baskets by Nola Heibreder and Linda Pietz. 

Pattern: Apple for the Teacher, in the book Knitted Baskets

Yarn: Red Heart Super Saver 

The book says the finished size is  four inches wide and four inches high, so my gauge must have been way off on this one, although I can't imagine how I could have knitted it much tighter. I don't do gauge swatches on little projects like this and I'd just made another basket with two strands of worsted weight, so I used the same set of needles.

Whoo's There?

I can't tell you how much I love these little Prairie Schooler Halloween patterns! They're so fun and symmetrical and sometimes knitting with three colors is just what I want to do. 

I thought I could stitch this one without gridding my fabric if I counted and recounted and was really careful. I couldn't and once I realized that one skeleton was a stitch higher than his buddy, I started stitching faster so that I could find out if it was going to work out okay. There's a slight jog in the border to make it meet up, but we all know that I wasn't going to pick out an entire skeleton and I wasn't going to start over from scratch.

I've got another of these patterns in my stash, the one that I thought I was going to stitch when I picked up this one instead. And there's a third that I was eyeing at Starlight Stitchery last month and now really wish I'd picked up.

The last time we were at Shepherd's Bush I absolutely know I bought two Halloween patterns. This was one, but the other isn't with it and I haven't the slightest memory of which pattern it was. (Cute as these are, they all do look very similar!)

Bamboo and Ewe Socks

This is one of those rare occasions that I didn't lose the ball band before I was done knitting and I actually know exactly what yarn I used. It's Sensations Bamboo & Ewe Pattern, one of those skeins I picked up when the boys were toddlers and I thought I was going to knit socks for them.

Now it's a finished pair for....some adult in my life. Maybe one of the boys if they ever start to be more responsible with their footwear. It all depends on who wears them first.

Campside Shawl

As soon as I stumbled across the pattern for Campside, I could picture which stash yarn would be the absolutely perfect color. I bought this subtly variegated orange yarn years ago and at the time it was a huge splurge so I was afraid to actually cast on with it. 

Pattern: Campside (free download)

Yarn: Bon Prix Ornaghifilati 

The yarn itself was a huge disappointment. Expensive acrylic from the yarn shop should not be harder on my hands than a particularly bad skein of Red Heart Super Saver, especially not when it claims to be blended with wool and alpaca.

The pattern, on the other hand, is fantastic. The eyelets get denser as you knit your way towards the border and there's a really neat ribbed edging along the bottom. Aside from the name, that edging is what drew me to the shawl in the first place. I made mine wider than the inch and a half that the pattern calls for because I like the look of it so much.

Can I start making all of my shawls with ribbed edging now?

Gramma's Hug

Some knitting projects are just a dream from beginning to end. My Gramma's Hug shawl almost fell into that category. I spent a happy evening casting on and getting through the first few rows...then I hit that little patch of simple lace and everything went straight to hell. 

On my second try, I used stitch markers every seven stitches and managed to keep myself on track. There's no reason I shouldn't have been able to do that lace without so much extra help, but sometimes things happen. It was like my Cathedral Window Shawl. I cast that one on while my middle son was in  the NICU and I was sleep deprived and heavily medicated and the first half came out just fine. It was after he was a bit older and I didn't have any excuses that I couldn't manage to knit the same lace pattern for the second half.

Pattern: Gramma's Hug (a free Ravelry download)

Yarn: Hobby Lobby I Love This Chunky, Sand Dunes, 3 skeins 

Even with the false start, it only took me five evenings from start to finish. My own shawl is narrower than the pattern specifications because I substituted acrylic which just doesn't stretch and block the same way wool does. I substitute acrylic all the time, unless it's a lace pattern that will need blocking to look right, and I've never realized that it changes the potential size so dramatically.  Now I'm wondering if this particular designer blocks more aggressively than others, or if I've just never paid attention.

I used almost three skeins of I Love This Chunky from the Hobby Lobby clearance incident and it's thick and squishy and doesn't split or snag or do anything else that makes me unhappy. I wish  I'd bought a ton more of it while it was $1.24 a skein but I'd never worked with it before and didn't know how much I really would love it.

In addition to loving the yarn and the color and just about everything else, I love the shaping. Instead of increasing every other row like just about every other triangular shawl I've ever knit, this one has increases every row which makes a much longer, sharper angle.

Aran Basket

Here's another project I made from Knitted Baskets by Nola Heibreder and Linda Pietz.

Pattern: Aran Basket, in the book Knitted Baskets

Yarn: Unlabeled Acrylic, probably Red Heart Super Saver Fleck

I used most of a skein of what I think is probably Red Heart Super Saver Fleck, double stranded, and reduced  the cast on from 96 to 84 because I wasn't sure I'd have enough yarn. If I was going to knit this one again, I'd make the ribbed cuff shorter.  It refuses to stay nicely folded, maybe because I used acrylic instead of the wool that the pattern calls for.

Midwest Barn

This was one of those accidental projects. I picked up an old magazine at a sale someplace, saw

a pattern I liked that only called for five colors of floss, and a few weeks later I started stitching. 

Pattern: Midwest Barn Cross Stitch & Country Crafts Sept/Oct 1992

The plan was to maybe put it on a project bag or something, but I definitely think it deserves better finishing than that. We all know I never frame anything, but for now I've got an excuse. There are two more barns in the series and I definitely want to stitch those too. 

Western Barn is definitely my favorite of the three, but I didn't want to put the project on hold long enough to figure out whether I've got that magazine in my stash already. Odds are that I do...or I can find a copy.