Dragon Tooth Shawlette - Cast On

Yesterday Bruce and I were out running a couple of local errands and we were talking about Christmas presents.  We don't do much in the way of presents.  We have a small family gathering with his side of the family in St. Augustine, where is mom lives, so we only have to get a handful of presents, well 6 to be exact.  For his mom, son and brother we're going to get something practical, but for his daughter, daughter in law and sister in law I thought I would raid my stash and my jewelry box.  Two projects immediately came to mind for his daughter and sister in law - both knitters.  Both projects are ones that I had gotten the yarn for without first looking at the yarn content.  They call for the same yarn type, and it is 50/50 wool/alpaca.  I don't do alpaca, it makes my hands feel funny, almost like I'm about to have an allergic reaction, but I never handle it long enough to get there.  So when we got back from our errands I tracked down the yarn.  One set had been entered into my stash, but the other one hadn't so I had to dig that one out of the "to be stashed" pile.  I went ahead and caked it up, printed out the patterns and packed up a couple of gift bags.  I'll probably gift them the pdfs via Ravelry.

But, while I was doing that it occurred to me that I had the perfect yarn for one of the patterns sitting out on my project table in my studio.  The yarn is Squooshy by Zen Yarn Garden and I had pulled all the skeins in my stash out when I was looking for yarns for multi-colored shawls.  So I caked that skein up and loaded the pattern into knitCompanion and cast on.  It is one of those one skein shawlettes that you knit from the bottom edge up, so you have to cast on a lot of stitches.  I like a long tail cast on, and don't like working from both ends of the skein at the same time (tried that once on another project), and I'm reasonably good at estimating how much yarn I will need, and I don't mind taking more than one try to get there.  I came up just a little short on the first go, but easily made it the second.  I also looked through my stash and think I've found yarn for the other project.  Even though I have a couple of other WIPs going I wanted something small, easy and reasonably quick to knit.  This pattern was inspired by the show Game of Thrones.

Pattern:  Dragon Tooth Shawlette by Amy Loberg
Yarn:  Zen Yarn Garden Squooshy in Twilight
Needle:  US 6 (4.0 mm)

Craftvent 2016 Day 4

I almost forgot to open the drawer this morning, but when I did, there was the second ball of yarn, and a card with useful knitting definitions on it.  I also noticed a slip of paper peaking out of the center of the ball.  I gave it a little tug and low and behold, there was the yarn information!  Sweet!  Not having that information was really bothering me.  How was I supposed to set up a project page on Ravelry?  I pulled the first ball out of the project bag, poked a finger into the center of the ball and fished out the slip of paper that was hiding in there.  It looks to be printed on that thermal paper sometimes used for credit card receipts.

And here is the shawl knitted as far as I can go without color 3.

Pattern:  2016 Craftvent Shawl by Rachel Roden of Unraveled Designs and Yarn
Yarn:
Color 1 - MJ Yarns Sophistisock in Cerulean Twilight
Color 2 - Baah La Jolla in Maldives
Needle:  US 3 (3.25 mm)

Craftvent 2016 - Day 3

Yay!  Today there was yarn in the drawer, and a card with the gauge.  I didn't bother with a gauge swatch.  Unfortunately, there is no information on what the yarn is, other than that it is fingering.

This is as far as I can go today, though, without the second color.  Hopefully that will be in the drawer for tomorrow.

Pattern:  2016 Craftvent Shawl by Rachel Roden of Unraveled Designs and Yarn
Yarn:
Color 1 - MJ Yarns Sophistisock in Cerulean Twilight

Needle:  US 3 (3.25 mm)

Liquid Gold Sinua - One Sleeve Done!

Once I finished up my Margaret Beaufort I picked up my Liquid Gold Sinua again and finished up the sleeve.  This is actually the second start on a sleeve.  I had started working the sleeve on the other armhole using the remains of the skein that I had been working the bodice with - the skein I didn't continue with when I joined the body at the underarm, and had actually worked through the end of that skein, but I had picked up more stitches around the armhole and I wasn't sure I liked how it lay when I tried it on.  So I picked up stitches around the other armhole using my old standby method of picking up a stitch for every other row and knit that one to completion.  That pickup gave me 68 stitches to start with.  I increased 1 stitch at the shoulder seam on the second row of the stitch pattern as I was working the short rows, and then picked up an extra stitch on each side of the underam seam to close up any pesky little holes that sometimes happen down there.  That gave me 71 stitches, which is what the pattern actually called for.  I started the decreases when I reached the elbow, and worked 6 sets of decreases every 10 rows.  I ended up working 5 full repeats of the pattern chart - the part that you repeat, which I liked because I ended the sleeve on the end of the repeat.  I did an I-cord bind off, and looked up how to graft my end to my beginning.  Actually super easy and pretty intuitive, once you think about it.  One skein of yarn was perfect for the sleeve, I even have some leftover.

I cut the yarn on the remains of the skein on the other side, and wove in the end, and have picked up stitches with a fresh skein, now that I know I can work the whole sleeve with a single skein.


Pattern:  Sinua by Susanna IC
Yarn:  madelinetosh DK in Liquid Gold
Needle:  US 6 (4 mm)

Tudor Roses - Margaret Beaufort - Finished!

I finished up the knitting on this past Monday, wove in the ends and blocked.  I finished up the sleeves last weekend, and worked the collar and bands on Monday.  I had to adjust the number of stitches I picked up because of the modifications that I had made to the pattern, but the adjustments were straight forward.  I only picked up 40 stitches, instead of the 46 called for, and when I started working the stitch motif I had to increase 3 stitches, instead of only 2, to get a stitch count that would work with the pattern repeat.  I put the extra increase opposite the shoulder seam.

For the bands I picked up 2 stitches for every 3 rows, which seems to be a good rule of thumb for getting a band that doesn't pucker or wrinkle.  I ended up with 28 stitches on the peplum (the pattern called for 25) and 79 stitches from the peplum to the collar band.  I had to adjust the spacing button holes (reduced the spacing by 1 stitch), and I ended up with only 7 buttons instead of the 8 the pattern called for.

Here's a close up of the buttons - they are metal buttons.

I purchased them from MJ Trimming.  They have a pretty nice selection of metal buttons.

Pattern:  Margaret Beaufort, by Alice Starmore from Tudor Roses (2013 edition)
Yarn:  Alice Starmore Hebridean 3 Ply (517 g in Lapwing)
Needles:  US 4 (3.5 mm)

Craftvent 2016 - Day 2

Today the little drawer held a container of stitch markers and a card with the pattern requirements.  I'll let you in on a little secret, I don't use stitch markers much.  I use them when knitting garments to mark seams or where the seams would be, if I weren't knitting the garment in one piece and the end of rounds and such, but don't usually use them on lace.  And when I use stitch markers I use plain stitch markers, like the ones in the picture.  I have some fun and fancy stitch markers that I've received as extras in various clubs, but I don't use them.  Sometimes I turn them into earrings.  I hope that tomorrow the little drawer holds yarn.

Craftvent 2016 - Day 1

On a whim I picked up this Craftvent Calendar from jimmy beans wool.  I shop there periodically (usually when my points are about to expire).  I just thought it would be something fun to do.

Every day you open another drawer.  By Christmas I'll have a shawl knit from 12 50 yard samples of different fingering weight yarns.  The pattern is by Rachel Roden of Unraveled Designs and Yarn.  For Day 1 there was a project bag and a card with the link to download the pattern.

The pattern starts with 4 stitches and ends up with 298 stitches and has a picot bind off and uses beads.