Gazania Shrug - Beauty Shots

To use up the rest of the yarn I picked up stitches and did a simple lace eyelet cuff.  This gives the sleeves a nice flare and also a nice swing to them.  This is an easy add-on, and I may add them to some of my other shrugs.

Pattern:  Traveling Zebra Shrug by Carolyn Blakelock
Yarn:  Biscotte & Cie Bis-sock
Needles:  US 2.5 (3 mm) and US 4 (3.5 mm)

Gazania Shrug - Finished!

Last Sunday we drove down to Andrews, North Carolina for the annual Unique Sheep Retreat.  I took this project along with me for car knitting and finished it on the drive down.  I joined the edges while I was down there, but not by grafting, I joined them by pulling the loops through each other with a crochet hook, alternating between the two needles.  It gives a firmer edge than grafting and does not stretch out the way grafted stitches will.  I waited until I got back home to work the cuffs.  I ended up doing a simple eyelet lace pattern (yo, k2tog every other row).  I'm not sure why I decided that this shrug needed cuffs.  It might have been because I had a lot of yarn left over from working the stripes.  It might have been because I only was able to work 400 rows of the central self-striping panel.  Although looking back at some of my other shrugs, I only worked 404 rows on my Strawberry Shortcake Shrug, 406 rows on my Peacock Shrug, and 408 rows on my Twinkle, Twinkle Shrug.  Do those few extra rows make that much of a difference?  I'm not sure, although not grafting the edge stitches definitely does.  We'll see how it fits after it dries.  I can always rip back and redo things if I don't like it.  That is one of the wonderful things about knitting.  There aren't many aspects of life that give you do-overs.

Pattern:  Traveling Zebra Shrug by Carolyn Blakelock
Yarn:  Biscotte & Cie Bis-sock
Needles:  US 2.5 (3 mm) and US 4 (3.5 mm)

Gazania Shrug - One Side Done

I was hoping to get a lot of knitting done this weekend, but woke up yesterday with a migraine.  My migraines are completely hormonal and are fortunately becoming less frequent, but I can still get bad ones.  I use Excedrin Migraine to combat them, cutting the pills in half, to take half at a time.  Yesterday was a two pill (4-halves) day, complete with visual aura and nausea - but no vomiting. Thankfully the worst did not last too long, although it always seems longer than it is.  Needless to say, the only knitting I could handle was simple knitting.  Once I was mostly recovered I tried working on my test knit, but had a mistake I couldn't diagnose, so I put it back down, not wanting to compound my error.  I was able to figure out what I had done wrong this morning - missed a yarn over, which made my stitch count off.  Easily fixed.

I did manage to finish up the first side of my Gazania Shrug.  I'm going to have a fair bit of yarn left over so I am pondering things to do with the cuff to lengthen the sleeves.  I was thinking about some crochet scallops, or maybe some feather and fan lace.  I want something that preserves the natural scallops of the edges.  When I went to weigh all of my skeins before picking up stitches for the second side, I did discover something.  Well, here, let me show you.

Dark Blue Skein - 54 g / 32.0 g - 22 g used
Red Skein - 50.6 g / 24.2 g - 25.4 g used
Orange Skein - 53.2 g / 32 g - 21.2 g used
Yellow Skein - 53.6 g / 32.1 g - 21.5 g used

See anything odd with my yarn usage?  Yeah, the red skein.  My gauge doesn't vary that much.  It appears that I did two extra stockinette rows on the red section.  Oops.  Oh, well, I'm not going to repeat that on the second side, I won't have enough yarn.  And I'm certainly not going to frog back.

Pattern:  Traveling Zebra Shrug by Carolyn Blakelock
Yarn:  Biscotte & Cie Bis-sock
Needles:  US 2.5 (3 mm) and US 4 (3.5 mm)

Gazania Shrug - Three Stripes Done (Almost)

For the trip back I pulled my Gazania Shrug out of my "backup" knitting and almost finished two stripes.  I had knit the dark blue stripe on Christmas Eve, but never posted about it.  I have a couple more rows to go on that wonderful orange.  I didn't get quite as much knitting time on the trip back, less traffic slowing us down, and Bruce let me drive for a few hours.

Pattern:  Traveling Zebra Shrug by Carolyn Blakelock
Yarn:  Biscotte & Cie Bis-sock
Needles:  US 2.5 (3 mm) and US 4 (3.5 mm)

Gazania Shrug - Central Panel Done

I finished up the central panel this past week - document review and telecons at work make for some productive knitting time.  I can't start knitting the body of this shrug until I finish my Charivari shrug, so I am focusing on that project this weekend.  Of course, finishing up this central panel meant that I had to cast on another one for my work bag.

Pattern:  Traveling Zebra Shrug by Carolyn Blakelock
Yarn:  Biscotte & Cie Bis-sock
Needles:  US 2.5 (3 mm) and US 4 (3.5 mm)

Gazania Shrug - Cast On

This summer I gave away the three shrugs that I had made.  Two of them I had made as gifts, but I wasn't really planning on giving my sister Liz my Gazania Shrug, which was the first one that I had made.  I'm glad I did, though, because it took forever to get a replacement set to make another one.  The first two sets (original order and replacement sent by Biscotte) never made it.  In the end I ordered another set along with several other Paintbox sets, figuring that maybe a larger package would have a lower chance of being lost on the way.  Of course once I had finished the central panel of my Charivari Shrug I had to cast on another one to put in my work bag.

Pattern:  Traveling Zebra Shrug by Carolyn Blakelock
Yarn:  Biscotte & Cie Bis-sock
Needles:  US 2.5 (3 mm) and US 4 (3.5 mm)