Joy to the World - Cindy - Finished!

I finished this shawl up on this past Sunday (October 27) and got it on the blocking mats that morning.  The border went very quickly and I just love how it came out.  The colors are so beautiful, and bright, and they make me happy.

With the completion of this shawl, I have used up all of the Grinch Advent Set.  Yay!  Another Advent set knitted up (I have so many!).

Pattern:  Joy to the World by Louise Robert

Yarn:  The Unique Sheep 4 Ply SW Merino Fingering and Kiri

Needle:  US 3 (3.25 mm)

Joy to the World - Grinch - Finished!

I actually finished this shawl back on October 12, but when I was laying it out to block I received a nasty shock.  An insect had gotten at it between the time I had finished the body (June 18) and when I started working the edging (September 28).

I was dismayed and horrified.  What was I to do?  I used up all of the yarn, so there were no scraps for darning.  After it was dry I carefully folded it up and put it in a zip lock plastic bag while I thought about possible ways to fix it.  Given that this is superwash, how would I secure my fix?  Even if I found a yarn to use.  In the end I decided to get some silk mohair in a similar color.  Of course picking a color from the web is always a challenge, so I erred on the dark side.  Here is the fix.

You can still see the ends that I haven’t secured.  Fortunately the whole was not too big and I was able to duplicate stitch and fill in what was missing.  The mohair makes the yarn sticky so I’m not too worried about it working out, and the silk makes it strong, plus it is lace weight so it doesn’t add bulk to the repair.  This will now be my go to method if something like this happens again.

Pattern:  Joy to the World by Louise Robert

Yarn:  The Unique Sheep 4 Ply SW Merino Fingering and Kiri

Needle:  US 3 (3.25 mm)

Joy to the World - Cindy - Body Done and Border Started!

I finished up the body back on October 13 and started the edging not too long after.  I really love the colors of this one, it just make me smile.  I did actually run out of the miniskeins on the last row of the center triangle, so I just finished up with the blue, which made the three needle bind off convenient as the yarn was already attached.

Pattern:  Joy to the World by Louise Robert

Yarn:  The Unique Sheep 4 Ply SW Merino Fingering and Kiri

Needle:  US 3 (3.25 mm)

Joy to the World - Grinch - Border One-Third Done!

This shawl has been waiting for its border for a while now - since June 18, to be exact - so a week or so ago I pulled it out and started working the border.  I am using one of my go-to borders, which I think looks a bit like the Eye of Horus.  It is pretty good TV knitting.  I have to pay some attention, but not a great deal of attention, to it.

Pattern:  Joy to the World by Louise Robert

Yarn:  The Unique Sheep 4 Ply SW Merino Fingering and Kiri

Needle:  US 3 (3.25)

Joy to the World - Cindy - One Triangle Done!

While my Wallflowers has definitely been monopolizing my attention at home, my work bag project has been proceeded nicely.  I finished up the first triangle over a week ago, but just hadn’t gotten around to getting a photo.  I do love these colors.  It is just such a cheerful combination.  I’ve already started the second triangle.  Sometimes I do think I should be more clever and make sets like these into a garment, but I really haven’t figured out how I would do that, and what I would be happy with, so I go with a shawl.  Maybe after I retire I will have time to figure something out.  That happy date is fast approaching.

Pattern:  Joy to the World by Louise Robert

Yarn:  The Unique Sheep 4 Ply SW Merino Fingering and Kiri

Needle:  US 3 (3.25 mm)

Joy to the World - Cindy - Cast On!

Having finished up the body of my Grinch version of this shawl, I had to pack another mindless project for my work bag so I caked up all the skeins for this shawl yesterday afternoon and cast on today.

I will be using the mini-skeins from right to left.

Pattern:  Joy to the World by Louise Robert

Yarn:  The Unique Sheep 4 Ply SW Merino Fingering and Kiri

Needle:  US 3 (3.25 mm)

Joy to the World - Grinch - Body Done!

Yesterday I finished up the third triangle.  Because I was using up each mini-skein before starting the next I was able to do the entire third triangle in the mini-skeins.  I had about two yards left over.  Pretty good.  I’ve joined the triangles, this time working the three-needle bind-off on the wrong side, and I’ve also picked up stitches along the edge that is at the top in the picture, so I can’t spread it out completely.

Pattern:  Joy to the World by Louise Robert

Yarn:  The Unique Sheep 4 Ply SW Merino Fingering and Kiri

Needle:  US 3 (3.25 mm)

Joy to the World - Grinch - Two Triangles Done and Third Triangle Started!

I’ve been getting lots of knitting done at work, and finished up the second triangle and cast on the third.  The third is easy because I just use the colors in reverse order and use the rest of each mini-skein before joining the next.  I do love the colors and how they are working up.

Pattern:  Joy to the World by Louise Robert

Yarn:  The Unique Sheep 4 Ply SW Merino Fingering and Kiri

Needle:  US 3 (3.25 mm)

Joy to the World - Grinch - One Triangle Done!

I had some good knitting time at work this past week and finished up the first triangle, as well as starting the second.  I do love the colors.

I think I have also settled on the main color skein for the other two sets of this Advent Calendar.

I tried several different full sized skeins, but this one has the most energy and really sings to me.  Although the numbering of the skeins goes from left to right, I am going to start with the lightest color and work the skeins in reverse order.

Pattern:  Joy to the World by Louise Robert

Yarn:  The Unique Sheep 4 Ply SW Merino Fingering and Kiri

Needle:  US 3 (3.25 mm)

Joy to the World - Grinch - Cast On!

Once I was getting close to finishing the body of the last shawl from the Nightmare Before Christmas Advent set I knew that I needed to cake up and cast on another easy knit for my work bag, so I grabbed the next Advent set in my queue.  This one was inspired by The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.   This set was dyed up as two twelve-skein gradients, although they are labeled as four six-skein sets.

The four sets are, from left to right:  Grinch, Mount Crumpet, Cindy Loo Who, and Christmas Glow.  Because these work up as twelve-skein gradients I am going to do two of my variant of the Joy to the World shawl.  For the Grinch shawl I picked the lightest of my neutral trios - Strandline.

I thought about trying to do something clever and make a colorwork garment with the mini-skeins, but I’m not a fan of doing colorwork with superwash yarn, and I really wasn’t into working that hard to figure something out, so I went with easy.

Pattern:  Joy to the World by Louise Robert

Yarn:  The Unique Sheep 4 Ply SW Merino Fingering and Kiri

Needle:  US 3 (3.25 mm)

Joy to the World - Dragons - Finished!

I finished this up on February 28 while I was home from work, taking a sick day.  I knit the border and read the third book in The Bear and the Nightingale trilogy by Katherine Arden.  A book recommendation that I had gotten from Harmony Reads, the companion book video podcast to the Fleece and Harmony knitting video podcast.  I highly recommend the trilogy.  It was a very good read.

I’ve already worn this shawl to work twice, and showed it off at a Fruity Knitting Knit & Chat Zoom session.

Completion of this shawl uses up the The Unique Sheep Dragon Advent Calendar from 2018, and most of another skein in my stash - the brown border, which was part of a neutral trio that I picked up at a Unique Sheep Retreat, when those were still happening.

Pattern:  Joy to the World by Louise Robert

Yarn:  The Unique Sheep 4 Ply SW Merino Fingering and Kiri

Needle:  US 3 (3.25 mm)

Joy to the World - Dragons - Body Done!

After finishing up the first triangle, I quickly knit up the second, and cast on the third.  I had created a spreadsheet to track my yarn usage, so after the completing the second triangle this became a project that I only worked on at home, but it made for some great reading time.

I did not take a picture of the finished third triangle on its own, as I was just so focused on getting the three triangles done and assembled.  While I was working the third triangle, I used my yarn usage spreadsheet to determine if I would have enough yarn on each mini-skein to finish both a right and wrong side row.  I thought about just joining all the mini-skeins together and knitting them till they ran out, but thought that might look a bit odd.  If this were a gradiance set I probably would have done that (and I have two other sets that are gradiance sets that I probably will do that with when I knit those up into this shawl pattern - unless I find some other patterns for those sets).

This is actually the wrong side of the shawl, but I thought it looked pretty, and Jezebel did such a great job of photo bombing.  She was very good about getting up and letting me flip it over so I could get a photo of the right side.

I did a three needle bind off to join the triangles.  Now I just need to pick up stitches along that bottom edge and work the knit on edging, which will also take care of the live stitches still left on the other two triangles.

Pattern:  Joy to the World by Louise Robert

Yarn:  The Unique Sheep 4 Ply SW Merino Fingering

Needle:  US 3 (3.25 mm)

Joy to the World - Dragons - One Triangle Done!

I have been dutifully weighing my mini skeins and recording everything in a spreadsheet so I can track my yarn usage, and happily everything is working out just fine.  This is a wonderfully mindless project that I can knit while reading, or watching TV that I have to pay attention to.  The colors were always a challenge, but we shall see how it all comes together.  It feels good to be knitting up stash, and especially Advent kits.  I love them, but it can be a challenge to find good uses for them.  Most of the patterns don’t use up all the yarn and I just hate having left overs.  This triangle used 99.5 grams total.  The entire shawl will use about 350 grams.

Pattern:  Joy to the World by Louise Robert

Yarn:  The Unique Sheep 4 Ply SW Merino Fingering and Kiri

Needle:  US 3 (3.25 mm)

Joy to the World - Dragons - Cast On!

As I was getting close to starting the edging on my Smaug Shawl I grabbed the rest of this 2018 Advent set, a 12 skein set called Dragon.  The skeins go from 1 to 12 from left to right, with 1 to 6 on the bottom row and 7 to 12 on the top row.  Given the variety of color I had already decided to make another Joy to the World shawl. 

This is the one that I made back in 2021.  It was an Advent set from Biscotte & Cie.  I had made a mistake when I was knitting it, knitting 10 rows of each of the mini skeins, but I liked how it had come out and decided to do it again with this set.  I have worn this shawl several times and it really is a joy to wear.  It sits nicely on the shoulders and is a nice size.  So, I went in search of a color to use as the center of the main triangles and border.  Given the variety of colors in my mini skeins I knew I wanted something on the neutral side, fortunately I had some neutral skeins of Unique Sheep Kiri in my stash.  The full sized skein is the darkest of a neutral trio that I picked up at some point.  The other thing that I had to figure out was the number of rows to work with my mini skeins.  My original Joy to the World had 10 mini skeins of 25 grams each, but for this one I have 12 mini skeins of 20 grams each.  Based on my yarn usage I knew that I could not get 10 rows out of each mini skein and still work the design as I wanted, so I decided that I will work 8 rows.  This will give my 96 rows total for the mini skein section, instead of 100 rows, so I will work 4 extra rows of the starting triangle.  Based on my yarn usage numbers it should all work out.

And here is the start of my first triangle.

Pattern:  Joy to the World by Louise Robert, modified

Yarn:  The Unique Sheep 4 Ply SW Merino Fingering and Kiri

Needle:  US 3 (3.25 mm)

Joy to the World - Finished!

I actually finished this shawl back on December 26, 2021 and then didn’t get around to posting about it.  I did my currently favorite knit on edging to finish it off.  I did not work the I-Cord edging along the top edge.  As you can tell it is a generous size.  It was a bit more of a challenge to block than I expected.

I ended up using blocking wires along the top edge, then did my best to make sure the yarn over spines and garter ridges were straight.  The lace edging I pinned out point by point.  Because I used a 3-needle bind off to join the triangles the top edge isn’t quite straight across, but that is okay.

Pattern:  Joy to the World by Louise Robert

Yarn:  Biscotte Yarns Bis-Sock & The Unique Sheep Kiri

Needle:  US 3 (3.25 mm)

 

Joy to the World - Body Done!

When last we met on this project I had finished both triangles and had 84.7 grams total of the mini skeins left.  I also had 88.9 grams of the teal.  I weighed one of the triangles and determined that it took 91 grams total.  So I knew that I did not have enough yarn to make two more triangles, but I had plenty to make one.  So I started a third triangle using the mini skeins, working them in reverse order, starting with 10.  I switched skeins only at the beginning of a right side row to keep things looking neat.  Then when I ran out of the mini skeins I finished off the triangle with the teal and then joined them using a three-needle bind off.  Now I need to do the finishing work, which will all be done in the teal.  I’m thinking of working an I-cord edge along the top, just to create a neat edge, and then working a knit on lace edge on the rest of the edges.

Pattern:  Joy to the World by Louise Robert

Yarn:  Biscotte Yarns Bis-Sock & The Unique Sheep Kiri

Needle:  US 3 (3.25 mm)

Joy to the World - Two Triangles Done!

One of these days I will learn to actually read the directions all the way through.  I sort of read them, and then I didn’t go back and look at them when I started knitting, so instead of decreasing the number of rows that I knit with each of the mini skeins I knit the same number of rows - 10.  And then wondered how that was going to work for making 5 more triangles.  Of course it wasn’t going to work.  I realized my mistake as I was knitting the last couple of mini skeins, but at that point I decided that I was committed and did not want to rip back or change what I was doing, so I just went with it.  I do like the size of my triangle.  The original pattern was more of a long scarf, which I’m just not that in to.  I did manage to get a second matching triangle out of the yarn.  Here are the weights of the mini-skeins after knitting the second triangle:

1 - 15 g

2 - 13.8 g

3 - 12.4 g

4 - 10.8 g

5 - 9.7 g

6 - 6.9 g

7 - 6.2 g

8 - 4.9 g

9 - 3.4 g

10 - 1.5 g

Just made it.  Now I have to decide what to do next.

Pattern:  Joy to the World by Louise Robert

Yarn:  Biscotte Yarns Bis-Sock & The Unique Sheep Kiri

Needle:  US 3 (3.25 mm)

Joy to the World - Seven colors done

This was the fourth project that I brought with me to Florida and this one did get worked on.  I have just attached color 8.  I’m not sure if I will make all of the triangles the same, or play around with colors and maybe reverse the order.  I even considered switching the knitting on the triangles to decreasing rather than increasing by casting on stitches for the next triangle when I finish this one.  I still haven’t decided what I’m going to do.  I think the key is to just have fun.  I did take the advice of the designer and cake up all of the yarn and put them in plastic zip-lock bags with the color number written on the bag so I can keep them straight.

Pattern:  Joy to the World by Louise Robert

Yarn:  Biscotte Yarns Bis-Sock & The Unique Sheep Kiri

Needle:  US 3 (3.25 mm)

Virginia's Charivari Shrug - Finished!

After finishing up the Salvia test knit I picked up this project again and finished it up - these are great projects to work on while reading, although when you're working on the second half there is a fair bit of fabric in your lap.  I had to set my Kindle up in a stand in order to use it.  I weighed my skeins after every row and captured all of the data so I could get yarn usage numbers and continue to refine the pattern.  Now I can make some yarn usage predictions and check them with my next shrug.

I also managed to get a beauty shot of the Watermelon shrug.

Pattern:  Traveling Zebra by Louise Robert
Yarn:  Bis-sock by Biscotte & Cie
Needle:  US 2.5 (3 mm) & US 4 (3.5 mm)

Watermelon Shrug - Finished!

I finally got around to re-blocking my Watermelon Shrug.  I thought about adding cuffs, but I really like the scalloped edge.

Pattern:  Traveling Zebra by Louise Robert modified to be a shrug
Yarn:  Bis-sock by Biscotte & Cie
Needle:  US 2.5 (3 mm) & US 4 (3.5 mm)