Coral Coast Wrap - Finished!

Rounding out my week of finishing projects is my Coral Coast Wrap.  This was just a fun knit, and I enjoyed the different colors.  I’m not a huge fan of singles yarn, but I do make the exception for these kits.  The different lace patterns kept things interesting, without being too difficult, and with enough straight knit or purl rows that I could do some reading while working on it.  It also made for good meeting knitting, and I had a lot of meetings last week.  Last weekend my sister Virginia called me about looking for linen thread and during the course of the conversation asked me how many projects I had going at the same time.  I tossed of “around two dozen”, which was pretty close, as when I spoke to her I did have twenty-three.  Now I’m down to twenty (plus eight that are hibernating).  

When I have that many projects on the needles I tend to focus on a couple at a time, working them in spurts until I get one pretty close to done, then I’ll focus on that one till I finish it.  Now that these are off the needles I’ve gone back to my two MKALs.  I have fallen behind on my Observatory MKAL - clue 5 is out and I haven’t finished clue 4, although I made a lot of progress on clue 4 yesterday.  Plus I need to work Clue 4 of my Box of Chocolates MKAL.

Pattern:  Coral Coast Wrap by Ambah O’Brien 

Yarn:  Hedgehog Fibres Skinny Singles 

Needle:  US 5 (3.75 mm)

 

Coral Coast Wrap - Section One Done

 

I have actually knit this section twice.  Somehow the first time through I got off a stitch on the first repeat of the pattern, so my k2togs did not line up nicely.  I thought about just ignoring it and even got two-thirds of the way through section two before I decided that I really did need to fix it.  So I ripped back and then started knitting from the original section one.  You can see the remnants of the original cast on.  Seems I knit a bit tighter this go around.  I am keeping the first and last two stitches in garter stitch as I think it just gives a nicer edge.

Colors:

January - Cedar

Pattern:  Coral Coast Wrap by Ambah O’Brien

Yarn:  Hedgehog Fibres Skinny Singles

Needle:  US 5 (3.75 mm)

Coral Coast Wrap - Cast On

 

I finally cast on my Coral Coast Wrap this morning.  This is the 2020 Jimmy Beans Shawl Club, and the pattern is by Ambah O’Brien.  I went with the Jimmy Beans colors, rather than the original colors, which matched the inspiration photo.  I haven’t seen too many wraps in these colors, it looks like most folks went with the original colorway.

I did not work a long tail cast on for this one, as you have to cast on 301 stitches. Instead I did a knitted cast on and I just kept casting on until I had a bunch of stitches.  Then I paused and start counting from the beginning of the cast on and placed a split ring marker after 50 stitches.  After placing the first marker I would count from the marker for placing the next one until I had the right number of stitches.  The last section has 51 stitches.

When I unpacked the last two tins yesterday, I had one in each hand and couldn’t remember which one was November and which one was December.  I guessed, and guessed correctly.  Fortunately they do have the month on the little slip of paper that is in the center of each ball.  Here are all the colors on the board that came in the December package in order from left to right and then top to bottom.

The January color is Cedar

Pattern:  Coral Coast Wrap by Ambah O’Brien

Yarn:  Hedgehog Fibres Skinny Singles

Needle:  US 5 (3.75 mm)

Xuan Wrap - Finished!

Thanks to a focused effort, and a couple of long meetings, I finished up my Xuan Wrap this past week.  I had enough of the Hedgehog Fibres yarn to work seven Mosaic sections.  The pattern has you end after a Garter Stitch section, working six repeats total.  I wanted to use up as much of my main color as possible, and wanted a little bit of a longer shawl.  I used skeins 13-21 completely, and a little bit of skein 22 from my 2019 Unique Sheep Advent Calendar.

I did not use the last two skeins on the right, and only a little bit of the third skein from the end on the right.

Pattern:  Xuan Wrap by Ambah O’Brien

Yarn:  The Unique Sheep Rare Breed - Christmas Carol Advent Calendar & Hedgehog Fibres sock yarn in Butter

Needle:  US 4 (3.5 mm)

Xuan Wrap - Four Mosaic Sections Done

This past Tuesday I had made it through three Mosaic sections and had just started a fourth.  As of yesterday I have completed four Mosaic sections and am over half-way through the fifth.  I am also getting into the green part of my yarn.  I have been using up each of my mini skeins, joining the tail of the current skein to the start of the next skein.  I am currently working with skein 19, I started with 13, so I’m on skein 7 of 12.  I will use up as much yarn as I can, extending the repeats.  The pattern has you end with a plain garter stitch section, but I may try to end with a Mosaic section.  We’ll see how the yarn usage goes.

Pattern:  Xuan Wrap by Ambah O’Brien
Yarn:  The Unique Sheep Rare Breed - Christmas Carol Advent Calendar & Hedgehog Fibres sock yarn in Butter
Needle:  US 4 (3.5 mm)

Xuan Wrap - Two Mosaic Sections Done

I’ve finished up two of the mosaic sections now.  The plain garter stitch rows between the mosaic sections make good reading knitting, otherwise I would find them way too boring.  I’m on my third mini-skein from my Advent set.  The first skein got me halfway through the first garter stitch section, and the second skein got me through the second mosaic section.  I have been using up each mini-skein and just attaching the next one.

Pattern: Xuan Wrap by Ambah O’Brien
Yarn:  The Unique Sheep Rare Breed - Christmas Carol Advent Calendar & Hedgehog Fibres sock yarn in Butter
Needle:  US 4 (3.5 mm)

Xuan Wrap - One Mosaic Section Done

I’ve finished up the first section of Mosaic knitting.  I had to rip back early on because I had messed up my colors.  I was using the written instructions, but there are reasons I use charts.  I hadn’t started with this chart because I don’t really like the colors used in the chart.  But I work better with charts, so I decided to use it. I just have to remind myself that the Main Color is represented by the red squares and the Contrast Color is represented by the yellow squares.  But my Main Color is yellow - hence a source of confusion.

Pattern:  Xuan Wrap by Ambah O’Brien

Yarn:  The Unique Sheep Rare Breed - Christmas Carol Advent Calendar & Hedgehog Fibres sock yarn in Butter

Needle:  US 4 (3.5 mm)

Xuan Wrap - Cast On

Ambah O’Brien is hosting a Stashdown 2020 this year and I am participating.  My plan is to always have an Ambah O’Brien pattern on the needles.  Now that I’ve cast off Lacy Business, I’ve cast on the Xuan Wrap.  I’ve been wanting to make this for a while but haven’t been able to find the right yarn combination in my stash.  I needed a gradiance, but all of my 6 skein sets have either too much yarn or not enough.  This weekend it occurred to me that I could use half of my 2019 Unique Sheep Advent Calendar set.  I pulled it out last night and separated it into skeins 1-12 and 13-24 and then pulled out some solid colors for the Main Color.  I ended up picking skeins 13-24, and a skein of Hedgehog Fiberes in the color Butter.

Here are the contrast colors.  I’ll figure out how I want to adjust the length of the pattern as I go along.

Pattern: Xuan Wrap byAmbah O’Brien

Yarn:  The Unique Sheep Rare Breed - Christmas Carol Advent Calendar & Hedgehog Fibres sock yarn in Butter

Needle:  US 4 (3.5 mm)