The Country Wife
Wednesday, April 2, 2025
Snapdragons, Maybe?
Today we were at the temple and saw these beautiful flowers out front. Are they snapdragons? Thanks for helping me identify them.
Tuesday, April 1, 2025
Swatching For Double Knit Button Band! Very Fun!
The sweater I am working on for the Knits That Fit course by Tonia of Nerdy Knitting calls for a ribbed button band. I don’t want to do that. A year ago I saw a sweater with a double knit button band. I just had to knit that sweater so I purchased the pattern for a chunk of change. I then saw it was knitted with fingering weight yarn. That would take me about six years to knit in my size…so I scrapped that idea. Every pattern I have seen with a double knit button band has a V-neck. I like that neckline for shirts but I want a crew neck in a sweater to keep warm. I wondered if I could knit a double knit band on this crew neck sweater so I made a swatch!
Here is the cute little crew neck sweater swatch with a double knit button band…knit with two different-sized buttonholes so I could decide which size buttons to use…not these specific buttons but these sized buttons. Dear One liked the size of the yellow button. What do you think?
The steek went fine but I used the crochet plan for reinforcing the steek. I did not like that method nor the leftover stitches which made a bulky mess. In class tonight Tonia shared that she had needle felted her steek swatch and loved the simplicity of this method and the results. I have a good mind to make another swatch and steek with needle felting, though I totally can take her word for it…
Monday, March 31, 2025
Ran Out Of Yarn—If You Can Believe It!
Today I went to the eye doctor. Love her and nice people there but it is always a significant amount of time invested. I ALWAYS take knitting with me so I don’t get into mischief. I specifically put the purple shawl in the car to work on and brought it into the office with me. After paying the upfront costs I went into the waiting room and pulled out the shawl. I was less than one row across when I ran out of the lavender yarn!
As I was sitting there knitting I began a big fight with myself about buying another ball of lavender instead of only using what yarn I had at home. Checking my calendar I saw that this is the Hobby Lobby yarn sale week, so I lost the fight. I went to Hobby Lobby and bought one ball of lavender yarn. I will use that up and call the shawl big enough. The second strand will be a mystery…! I really won’t buy any more yarn for this project. I will just slide in partial balls of yarn already in my collection.
Friday, March 28, 2025
First Strswberries of the season!
Dear One brought this lovely box of strawberries home today! I have eaten four so far. I was actually planning on eating strawberries for supper. He suggested pizza…
Tuesday, March 25, 2025
First Solar Dyeing Project!
Just finished, more or less, the first solar dyeing I have done! I am thrilled. I skeined up a ball of Patons Classic Wool and tied it in four places. In a quart Ball jar with lid I placed one cup tap water and 1 Tablespoon of vinegar and stirred well. Next I added four or five drops of blue gel food coloring and stirred well.
Adding about half of the damp yarn I dropped on four drops of yellow food color then four drops of red food color then shoved in the last of the yarn.
After carefully filling the jar with water I put on the cover then shook the jar to make sure there was water everywhere.
Next step was to put the jar on the back deck railing in the sun for three days. I brought it in every night so it would not chill down too much. Heat is a big part of solar dyeing. I am thinking this summer will be a great time to solar dye!!!
This morning I emptied the jar in the sink and found that the dye bath was entirely clear! That is good news. I then washed the yarn and hung it to dry.
I will be happy to see what happens when I knit it into something. I wonder what I should knit...any ideas?
Monday, March 24, 2025
Monday Marvel!
Over the weekend I finished the first project on the Ashford 32” rigid heddle loom. I am so happy.
As you know, I am trying to use up the yarn collection this year. This project, a shawl, used up five-plus balls of yarn…blacks and whites.
Tuesday, March 18, 2025
All Warped Up And No Place To Go...
As I have said several times, this is the year I am going to use up the yarn in the house. This is so I can with good conscience buy more for specific immediate projects. This is probably a pipe dream, but hey, it is still a good idea. And it really is not a pipe dream because I do not now, nor ever have I, smoked anything of any kind--well, except for that one puff on a cigarette during play practice on the stage at South Royalton High School when I was a sophomore and coughed so much I nearly, or did, throw up. That put me off smoking forever. Adding that episode to my lungs being what they are due to all the pneumonia and bronchitis I had as a child...well, smoking has not been part of my life. And I try to stay away from people who are actively smoking even today as it is still hard on my lungs.
So, that was an odd digression.
Now back to the subject in the title...
Yesterday I got up and started roaring around getting things done early in the day. By this I mean that I was downstairs by 9:00 AM having already completed my morning routine and was ready for something else. Well, Dear One would have loved breakfast but I was not interested in that.
I want to weave a shawl for the Relief Society closet. The yarn I pulled out a few weeks ago for this project was all the bulky yarn I had picked up on very serious sale at Hobby Lobby. These have been waiting for me in a nice flat-bottomed grocery bag from, I think, Harris Teeter (when we go on vacation I like to buy one of that type of bag from whatever store we use to buy our groceries-though on that front I am hoping not to be self-catering from now on, going out to eat has some real pluses to my mind--I know some people like to buy tee shirts to remember trips. Dear One likes to buy hats though they sometimes disappear on him...) so I pulled out that bag and took it downstairs with me.
Last year I had been fortunate enough to find an Ashford 32" rigid heddle loom with the old-style stand that has the little shelves on each side. The loom was $175 and came with a good variety of parts. If you don't know about weaving on a rigid heddle loom you should know that they are set up to use stick shuttles to wrap your yarn on for weaving the weft threads. For the 16" rigid heddle loom, I use a boat shuttle which came with it. That loom and accessories were WAY WAY more expensive than this 32" loom but did have several heddles in different sizes, etc and would have cost a couple hundred dollars more if I had tried to buy everything new. So this loom seemed like a good idea and was only a four-hour round trip to pick it up.
So...first thing yesterday morning I was ready to
warp the loom--which means putting the yarn on the loom through the heddle slots which will be the warp threads, as in the threads that run north and south in your project. The weft threads are the east/west threads in your weaving. Well, last week one day I decided how long the warp threads needed to be to give me the shawl length that I wanted and had measured the kitchen from the end of the island where the warping pegs would go to where the loom needed to be sitting to get that length. I meant to take a picture of this but was so into warping that I just carried on to the next steps.