Tag: pretty

Yarn, Knitting and Crochet

Yet Another One?

Iris Rose

I find myself too driven lately. I know that I am a competitive person, yes, I can hear you who know me well sarcastically say, really?

I have been concentrating so much on design and creation to try to develop my business that I have lost a bit of the joy of just making. Well, I rebelled against myself this week and decided to take back the joy of creation, to hell with the consequences. That is really a sad/funny statement because, although I keep on pugging, I sometimes feel like I am standing still.

 

I love knitting shawls. I really love knitting shawls but had stopped as I have so many of them. Enter rebellion and, voila, another shawl is being born. Too bad, so sad competitive, compulsive me. You will just have to put up with yet another one.

Anyway, enough whining and let’s have a look at my mini rebellion. I have a stash of many, many, many skeins of yarn that I bought on an ebay binge a few years ago. I really have to use them or lose them so that I have room for something new or at least room to move in my craft cave.

These skeins are labelled as silk, wool, and cashmere. I would happily bet that they are made up of bamboo, cotton and acrylic but they are very soft and very pretty. I am not sure of the colours together. I may dump the brighter green but am waiting to see what my brain puts out in the way of a pattern after the yellow bit.

I actually remembered to write down what I am doing so that, if it ends up being as pretty as I hope it will be, I can share the pattern.

Thanks for listening and I hope that you have a happy week ahead.

Yarn, Knitting and Crochet

Pattern Buying

Iris Rose

What it is about patterns that turn us into collectors? Is it the beautiful photos of lovely yarn made into something that best shows off the reason why we couldn’t resist buying the yarn to begin with? Is it maybe that we just like to consider the possibilities of new projects or do we like to connect with other crafters by participating in their work?

I look at patterns almost daily and use them as a source to know what finished projects are trending in order to keep my own work relevant. A number of years ago I would download and print whatever caught my fancy until I had an enormous pile of patterns that I knew I would never make. Talk about a tree waster! I have wised up a little since and just download those that I know I will make and have the stash to use for the item. I still have a big digital library but am gradually going through and ruthlessly deleting.

Having said all that, I still lust after the new and beautiful and do treat myself to the maybe someday stuff once in a while.

One of my favourite places to find patterns is garnstudio.com. This is the Drops website and, although the patterns are translated from another language, there is a large selection of patterns for all types of knitting and crocheting. My only caution is that you read through the pattern completely and make sure that you understand it all before you start. This will save you some heartache later, experience talking here.

There is, of course, Ravelry too, a great place to buy and store all the lovelies. When I need some inspiration, browsing here almost always gets me started. Most of what I buy are toy patterns with the occasional, I can’t live without, shawl thrown in.

Have fun looking for that special, I have to make it, pattern and I hope that you have or can find the perfect yarn to go with it.
See you next week and I wish you a fun week filled with pleasant company.

Knitting

Reversible Baby Jacket

Iris Rose

I apologize for my lack of action lately. Life, you know? Anyway, I am back at the crafting game and have a couple of things to show you today.

I have finished my black sweater but haven’t taken a photo as black is terrible to take pictures of. You will just have to trust me that it fits, looks good and I am very happy with it. If I have an opportunity to have DH take a photo of me wearing outdoors, I will post it. Not this weekend however as it is supposed to rain and maybe snow. Yes, snow, got to love the Canadian prairies.

I did make a reversible baby jacket, knit sideways, though and am really pleased with the results. The buttons on both sides took a little thought but I am altogether satisfied with the finished jacket. It is knit with fine four ply and finished with crocheted edging to join it.

I seem to use the same crocheted edging on almost all of my kid’s wear. I think that it looks nice and leaves no bumps or holes to catch on. It is easy to do, here’s how. You need to work in multiples of six. Work an edge in single crochet with that multiple of six, ie: six, twelve, eighteen, etc. single crochet stitches. Turn at the end and double crochet into the third single from your hook. Chain one and double crochet four more times into the same single to make a shell or fan shape. Skip two single crochets and single into the next. That is all there is to it. Easy and very pretty too.

I have much more going on in the craft section of my life this week including dying yarn. Results for you next time. Have a happy week filled with crafty goodness.

Knitting, Yarn, Knitting and Crochet

To Err Is Human

Iris Rose

I didn’t get my ordered yarn in time to finish my Twister cardigan. I should be able to pick it up tomorrow and, hopefully, get to work on it this weekend.

I am working a craft sale tomorrow with the Springbank Creative Arts Club at Amica Aspen, 10 Aspenshire Drive SW, Calgary. If you are in the neighbourhood, please drop in a say hi. There is no admission fee and parking is free!

Maybe I need to reassess my completion date for the cardigan. I just may need an extra day or two.

Do you ever make mistakes in your crafting? Dumb question, I know, we all do. I am talking about those real doozies that make you want to cry but are so obvious that you have to laugh first.

I machine knit a basic black cardigan this week, an item that my wardrobe is lacking. I finished all of the pieces, carefully blocked them and laid them out to sew together. I thread my needle and, what, what is wrong with this picture? I forgot to reset the stitch size on the second front piece after knitting the ribbing! Good thing is I have a bunch of the yarn left. Bad thing is that the yarn is acrylic and, after a light steam blocking, this piece can’t be frogged.

I sat down yesterday and knit the correct size.

I published a blog on my old website about fixing a mistake in a lace sweater that I hand knitted. I made the back longer than the front with one too many repeats of the lace. I managed to save it after carefully picking up the stitches and unraveling the extra repeats then grafting it back together to finish it to the right size.

I think that there is some good information in this post and I hope that you will scroll back through time and have another look at it.

I knit myself a really lovely cardigan in a beautiful yarn. I joined the shoulders with a three needle bind off, knit the band around the front and neck and sewed in the sleeves. I pinned the sides together for seaming and, much to my great distress and using every curse word that I know, I found that I had repeated the first lace pattern at the beginning (bottom) of the back piece twice and only once on the fronts. I got ready to toss it into the garbage or at least a corner to gather dust but I just liked it too much to not try to repair it.

I have removed the bottom of a sweater before and reknit it down to increase the length but only in stocking stitch and never with this pretty a yarn.

I gathered my courage and here’s what I did. I left the sweater sewn as far as I had gone because who wants to undo hand sewn sweater seams. That almost never works out for me.
I used a contrast colour in a pale yellow so that I could still see it but not have any bright or dark fibres left when I removed it and, picking up one side of every stitch, threaded a life line through my knit stitches two rows above the last lace repeat that I wanted to keep. I then place two life lines one row apart on the two rows below the first row of garter stitch that bordered the lace pattern.


Next, I took a very deep breath and cut between the life lines. Yes, I cut the bottom of the back off. Working on the bottom piece, I picked out all of the little bits from cutting and, carefully ripped back to a couple of rows above my life line. I picked up the stitches with a circular needle, made sure that my count was correct and unknit back to the last knit row that ended the one lace repeat that I should have stopped at the first time around. I used a contrast waste yarn and worked two rows in stocking stitch then cast off to hold all of the stitches securely.


Putting that piece aside, I then used my circular needle and picked up one side of the bottom loop of each stitch between the two life lines on the top piece of the back. I used two life lines here as I wasn’t sure how the loops would hold when I picked up the bottom of each stitch. I then ripped back to the needle, used waste yarn and worked the same two rows of stocking stitch and cast off.


Now, to put the two pieces back together, I worked from the wrong side with a really long length of yarn (because I didn’t want to have to try to join in the middle) and grafted the loops from the bottom to the loops from the top piece. I checked to make sure that all of the stitches were included and ripped out the waste yarn from both pieces.
Success! My lovely sweater knit with the lovely yarn was now repaired and the fronts matched the back.

 

Thank you for reading and I hope that you have a great week filled with yarny goodness. Drop in to the sale if you can.

Yarn, Knitting and Crochet

Twister

Iris Rose

Do you ever buy yarn just because it is too pretty to resist? What a silly question! Of course you do, at least I hope that I am not alone in this habit. I can’t be because a lot of you write and post pictures of your large and lovely stashes.

Anyway, I bought four cakes of Hobbii Twister a while ago simply because I thought that they were beautiful. I had no other reason than that, honestly. I used most of one cake crocheting a girl’s poncho worked corner to corner style.

The yarn is really lovely. It has a nice hand, is easy to work with, and the colours are so pretty. The only knock against it is that it is not a true gradient which is what I thought I was buying. The poncho showed definite stripes although that doesn’t look too bad now that it is finished.

I was saving this colour for me thinking that a gradient sweater would be just about perfect made with it. When the striping showed in the teal, I put this lovely blend of greys and peaches away in disappointment as it just did not fit what I had in mind.

I decided to give it another chance. I am not a small person and crosswise stripes do nothing to improve my figure. That being the case, I thought to work a cuff to cuff style so that the stripes will run vertically. I played around with my swatch (yes, I do swatch to make sure that all of the work put into making a sweater results in one that fits!) and decided that the two cakes I have will be enough for a pretty cardigan.

This is what I have made so far. I determined that I needed to work the front and back separately in order to balance the stripes and also so that I could increase on the outside arm seam without it being too obvious.

I hoped to have this finished by now but, you know, life.

Have a super week and I will try to finish to show you next week. Kindness to you.