Knitting Today: Midwinter Blanket Square Two

 A few months ago I decided that the time had come to really go to town on using up yarn in the yarn closet.  When the yarn is all gone then I can plan new knitting projects and buy new yarn with a clear conscience.  I have a feeling it will take me two years to complete this use-up-the-yarn project but I am confirmed in my idea to do it.  

Since I had a fair amount of the Hilda Yates yarn still in a bin I decided to make another Barbara Walker Learn To Knit Afghan.  I may have mentioned this before.  So I got started.  I started in with Square One which is a striped garter stitch block and planned to just knit as far as I got in the 63 squares from the book until the yarn ran out.

At one point I decided I did not need to knit every one of the blocks in order but could pass on the ones I did not like very much.  I knitted most of the squares up to number 12 then the Martin Storey Midwinter Blanket Make A Long was hatched out by the Rowan yarn company. There are six squares in that blanket.  The reindeer below is the second square.

You will notice that I am actually blocking this square, along with the garter stripe square (Number One in Barbara Walker's book), something I rarely do.  Because garter stitch is a square stitch, that square is supposed to actually be square and so is how all the squares in the book are to be blocked.

The reindeer came out okay but is not stellar.  It was meant to be knit either stranded or stranded and intarsia combined. I did not want to bother with the intarsia and all the hanging balls or bobbins of yarn which will explain the nasty vertical lines of blue yarn showing through the white.  Since I have such a high tolerance for error, I am just letting it go and will not re-knit the square.  It is just a blanket and will lie on a bed or over a chair after all.  

There is a lot to learn in knitting and even in these two squares.  I suppose I will need to do better in staggering the floats on the back of the next Martin Storey square so we won't have this mess again.  Still, I like it well enough to just leave this one.  At least, I think I do. We shall see.  Square 3 will be released this Thursday.  I think we are expecting it to be a heavy weather day so I can happily stay home and knit.  We shall see.

Knitting for the Fort Vancouver Knitting Guild

While in Portland the kind people at the Fort Vancouver Knitting Guild allowed me to come to one of their meetings when they had Cheryl Brunette, one of my knitting heroes, come to speak. I LOVED listening to Cheryl in person and so enjoyed meeting her and speaking with her personally.  She is such a fabulous woman and a knitting mentor to thousands.

When we were at the meeting one of the people did a show and tell about a neckerchief she had made for the Fort re-enactors.  She invited us at the meeting to make and contribute more of them.  I took the pattern fully intending to make one of them. Immediately I went to several local yarn outlets (you might know I would find some wherever I am...) but they did not have the required yarn.

When I emailed the nice lady at the FVKG and told her I was not going to come through for them after all since I could not find the yarn, she kindly sent me some!  So I started the neckerchief right away.  As you will have noticed, over the last two years I have done a LOT of knitting, but only in fits and starts, and the Knitting Guild project got put away as things became more and more busy in life.

Well, yesterday I was a day I needed to do some sitting so I pulled out the bag with the neckerchief in it.  I did not like the way it looked so I tore it out and started again.  This is what it looks like as of this writing:

The brown is the border and the yellow will be close to the neck.  It is all garter stitch and quite easy to do.  You will notice this semi-nice eyelet border.  That took me a bit to get right but only because my head was in some other place, but when I restarted from scratch, something clicked and it is going together well.  There are about 30 stitches in the yellow section. The brown section stays 20 stitches the whole distance. There needs to be 80 stitches in the yellow section so you can see I have a while to go.

Anyone who wants to knit this themselves can go to Knitty.com and find the pattern.  Here is the link.

Yes, that think that looks like a frayed rag quilt on the floor really is a frayed quilt that I made years ago and used to pad some of our more fragile items in the move.  I am using for a rug under my knitting chair until such time as the couch and loveseat arrive and we make other plans...

Mission Knitting: Wedding Gift

Friends eloped a few weeks ago.  Since then I have thought of knitting them something to celebrate.  I started out to make some kitchen scrubbies since everyone needs them BUT  I forgot that I used a US 11 needle for the last ones I made.  The needles I used to start these scrubbies were US 8.  Even though I was using two strands of worsted weight cotton yarn held together, on fifteen stitches it was obvious that this would not be a kitchen scrubbie so I changed to making coasters.

The project helped me use up several balls of yarn.  The family is a combined family with at least eight people so I made four colors of double coasters.  The box I made to send them is kind of cute but not quite large enough.  I will probably send it anyway...since I like handmade boxes.  I will have to make a belly band to hold it together...

They do not look like much but they will be great to put under mugs of hot chocolate.  In fact, I might make some for us, but not until I get the baby sweater project finished.  I was able to finish these while watching the live streaming of the Messiah from Temple Square.  We usually watch this at Christmas but it is actually Easter music. 

If you want to watch or listen to it, it is still available whenever you want until April 9, 2018  at LDS.org.  There is a 30-minute program before the actual music starts all about The Messiah.  Pretty interesting...but you can move the slider in about an inch until you see "The Concert Will Begin Shortly"on the screen.  I will be listening again, probably tomorrow night.  This music is so glorious.  Great music to knit by!

Knitting Today: The Sheep Project

It is my privilege to be a special friend to some ladies in our church.  Each month we visit together and watch out for one another.  Sometimes we talk about a gospel principle.  This month we will be having a discussion about The Good Shepherd.  Since not only are we all blessed by The Good Shepherd, but we get to be shepherds ourselves, to care for one another.  This being the case I decided to knit a little sheep for each of the ladies to hang on a cabinet door in her kitchen as a continual reminder to be a good shepherd herself.

This is what I managed to make:

You cannot see their legs because I have them all clumped up together and because they do not yet HAVE legs!  I am going to get pipe cleaners for legs.  The strings on their backs are for hanging.  I hope it works, and I hope they are a good reminder.

Using bulky yarn and a US size 11 knitting needle, I cast on 11 stitches then did garter stitch for 11 garter ridges (22 rows of knitting) then cast off.  I folded the rectangle, stitched around the edges, stuffing with a small amount of fiber that I had from a fleece I skirted, washed, dried, and carded.

The head was knit using a US size 4 needle and worsted weight yarn.  It was a more complicated pattern than the body....!

Three By Three Cable Cowl--finished two of them for The Grandmother Project

In the interest of finishing up current projects so I can get on with Christmas knitting, in the early morning no-sleeping-hours, I finished the second Three by Three Cabled Cowl.  It is knit in Queensland Collection Llama Soft Cotton, a yarn which has a put-up of 273 yards in a 100 gram ball and which is 80% cotton and 20% Baby Llama.  It was made in Argentina for KRI.  This yarn is lovely and soft, though at the end of the ball there were multiple areas where there seemed to be some dried glue on the strand of yarn.

This knitting was for The Grandmother Project at the White River Yarns shop where scarves and cowls are being knit for a group of grandmothers in Africa.  This is sort of a "sisters project" because these grandmothers are part of the Tuko Pamoja group and make beautiful baskets and other things for sale to help provide for their families.  To learn more about this group, click here.  Some of their baskets are, or will be, on sale at White River Yarns.  Also they will be at the Christmas Market with a Difference at the Church of Christ in Hanover, NH  Thursday, 7 November to Saturday, 9 November 2012.

This was a rather fun knit project, though when I put down the knitting to sleep and picked it back up, there were times when I started at the wrong row...out of 8 rows in the pattern! SO, there are a few creative spots on the cowl which is about 20 inches long in total.

The knitting was done on size US 7 needles with 33 stitches cast on.  The first and last 6 stitches of each row are knit.

The picture above shows where the buttonholes are at the end of the piece.  Some kind person has donated buttons to the White River Yarns shop so I am hoping someone will sew them on.

The skein of yarn I used made two cowls, with about 12 inches of yarn left over!