I’ve been spending about 5 hours a day in my sewing room. I love it!
Last Monday’s blog hop was incredibly rewarding. Reading those posts to our 20-yo selves was moving. Chloe has a wonderful follow-up that captures perfectly how I was feeling after reading the posts. Chloe was sweet to even link to my post.
Have you had a chance to read any of the other notes to 20-year-old selves?
I know I said I was taking a blog break – but this needed to be shared.
I bought a gorgeous hank of lace-weight baby alpaca/silk yarn in March of this year. I used the flower section of the Field of Flowers pattern from Fiber Trends.
Before blocking it looked like this:
Doesn’t look terribly interesting.
After I finished knitting I put the wrap/shawl in a sink full of cold water and squeezed until the yarn was saturated. I picked up the entire bundle and squeezed it to get rid of much of the excess water. Then I gently spread the wrap on a clean beach towel. Next I rolled up the towel and then squeezed it to get as much water out of the yarn as possible.
Once the wrap was drier (no longer dripping wet) I spread it on a super large towel and then pinned it.
Be sure the yarn is still damp when blocking.
The yarn will retain the shape that you pin. If I had wanted straight edges, I would have needed to pin them straight.
This is just to show you how long it is.
This wrap is helping me to look forward to winter. That’s sayin’ something!!!
I have been determined to learn to knit socks for a couple of years. I finally took the plunge a few months ago with the book Toe-up-2-at-a-Time Socks. First allow me to say that these pictures are a rush job.
I know myself. If I wait until the pictures are good enough…you will never get an update.
The first pair: 100% merino wool. Too itchy. They drive me batty when I wear them. *sigh*
The second pair: Ugh. I botched this pattern (On The Town) so many times. I won’t be doing this one again for a while. It’s just too tricky to read the stitches.
Third (and best) pair: The pattern is Seagrass and it looks nice and is very easy to follow (even when people insist on talking to you while you are clearly focused on knitting. HA). I used KnitPicks yarn “Comfy” and it is deliciously soft and cozy. My biggest goof on these was binding off too tightly. I can still get them on but it takes a bit of gentle coaxing. Lesson learned!
These are absolutely my favorite. I will make these again.
I went to a fiber arts fair with my daughter recently and I bought a delicious 1500yd skein of laceweight aplaca/silk. It is a lovely deep shade of purple. I am in the beginning stages of this shawl from a Fiber Trends pattern. I’m only using the center part of the pattern (the flowers) and am making it an oblong wrap which will be around 70″ long. Hopefully I will finish before winter.
I’ve finished the feet!
The last time I updated, all I had finished were the toes.
What I especially love about this method is being able to try on the sock in progress.
It’s too bad the world won’t stop and wait for me to finish knitting, knitting, knitting…
I’m so excited!
My needles arrived Wednesday.
Isn't my yarn pretty?
Since my yarn was already divided and ready, I cast on Wednesday afternoon and, in my obsession, stayed up late knitting and watching Frasier on Netflix.
I chose the pattern “Kid Stuff”. It’s the first pattern in the book.
You wanna see what I’ve got so far?
Aren't the colors nice?
I'm looking forward to wearing these!
So there’s my little update on sock knitting progress.
Tomorrow I will post about the chickens and their excursion into the snow.
