Tag: single skein

Crochet

Spring Flowers (No Rain!)

Iris Rose

This week I am switching up my crafting and presenting my latest crochet endeavor to you. I needed some decoration for my craft sale on May 5th and really didn’t have anything around that would do.

All of my booth and table decorations are geared toward Christmas as I normally only do sales at that season. Etsy, Made in Canada, is now promoting year round local sales with three, one each in spring, fall and winter. Robyn (aka DD1) made a string of crocheted Christmas lights last year that really looked great draped along the front of our table. She suggested doing something similar in a spring theme, so the idea of a flower garland was born.


I love to simply crochet, to heck with a pattern, when I am making three dimensional things. I have made many flower decorations for baby hats, so I am quite confident in basic flower design. If you are not comfortable winging it and want to create some loveliness for home, I highly recommend the Mypicot website. For a one time fee, you can download hundreds of stitch patterns including booklets of flower and leaf designs.


Back to my flowers, I made these in the evenings by trial and error, lots of error, and am really pleased with the final design. I crocheted a double yarn chain and joined all of the flowers, varying size and colour of both flowers and leaves.


I am very happy with the finished garland. It is more than I imagined; don’t you love it when that happens! I have a few extras that I am going to leave as individual with leaves attached for scattered adornment, maybe with wired stems.


I have been sweating over my knitting machine as well and have another almost sewn up yoked sweater done. I will post that photo next week after it is blocked.  Now I just need to settle on a hand knit project!  I have kind of hit a creative blank so having the garland turn out well is a big morale boost for me.

Happy crafting and may all of your yarn be untangled and all of your work come together beautifully!

Knitting

Done Dollies!

Iris Rose

Last week my subject was undone dollies. This week, tada, they are almost finished! I only have two little mermaids left to sew up and I am all done with this portion of my sale stock.  I went from this

to this

in just five days!  The little babies are about 15cm or 6″ tall and the little kids are 10cm or 4″ tall.

I had a good time putting these together. I usually have fun knitting these little toys; so much fun in fact that I keep on working on the knitting part with no regard as to how long the finishing will take. I normally regret my knitting impulse but this time it was different. I didn’t hurry through the process last weekend. I took my time with the faces and hair and really enjoyed myself.

  
I confess that I do like all of them but one. I am just not happy with the face on one little one but have a plan to redo the eyes and I think that it will make a huge difference. A couple of the little mouths are crooked but, as in real life, I am just going to accept them as they turned out. Someone will find them huggable I am sure.

  
I need to get back to reducing my stash and knitting little toys is definitely not the way. I see a blanket or two or at least a couple of bulky sweaters in my future project pile. Now if I can just get to it.

Have a happy week and enjoy whichever craft you decide to work with.

Knitting

The 3F’s of Project Mangement

Iris Rose

Every couple of months (okay six months, okay, okay, every year or two) I find myself surrounded by unfinished projects that I have started, in some cases, who knows why, and really have the urge to clean up.  This usually happens when I can’t find a single available 5mm needle when I know that I have several or when I can’t see my table top.  Sometimes the avalanche when I open the closet door is an incentive as well.

When any of these things happen, and sometimes all of them happen at once, I have a 3F day or maybe two days, okay a week.  Finish, frog, or fro out.  I know that fro is not used this way but I like the rhyme.  It also reminds me of two year olds cleaning up and right before the tantrum which describes me to a tee on 3F day.

Finish is, of course, the best action for an almost complete project.  Projects do not go in the finish pile if: they are ugly and will never fit anyone and that’s why they are not finished, they are so old that the style has already come and gone a second time so waiting another forty years is just foolish, or I just plain hate working with the yarn in question.  Anything that is not in one of the categories above is placed into a bin.  Every time I want to start a new project (which is every minute of every day) I force myself to finish one from the bin.  This method works most of time although once in a while I change the finish status of the UFO to frog just so that I can start something new!  The only one who really cares is me and I like crafting too much to work on something I hate.

Frog is next on the to do list.  All of the projects that I can’t bring myself to finish are set aside so that I can rip out, rewind and reuse the yarn.  This goes for the too old if the yarn is still nice, the ugly and will never fit anyone, again if the yarn is still nice and the I hate working with the yarn if it is because the yarn didn’t suit the pattern.  Maybe it just needs a larger or smaller needle or hook or to be paired with a contrast to dilute the impact.  I usually set aside an evening or two to accomplish restashing these never to be finished projects.

Fro is a hard one.  I, like any yarnie worth their salt, hate to throw away “good yarn” but have learned the hard way (remember I mentioned an avalanche?) that you just can’t keep everything.  Try throwing away a truly unlikeable project that you know you will never finish made with yarn that you will never like.  It is freeing in a way that you can’t imagine!  I have reached the point now where, when I look through my stash and wonder why I ever kept all of those ten metre or less pieces or even those part skeins of so-so yarn, I can gather them up and put them in the garbage can.  Yes, (and I can hear the response to wasting yarn) it is great to donate to charity groups but, if the yarn is too old or really awful to work with, why inflict it on someone else to work with or wear.

Get over the guilt and try your own purge and you will find that you may have some really lovely finished things, some really lovely recycled yarn and a great big space where all of the uglies lived!

New pattern alert: I have published a paid cardigan pattern on Ravelry this week.  It is lace and stocking stitch in multiple sizes.  Have a look!   http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/roses-and-lace-cardigan

Knitting

New Shawl But Not Yet So Here is Another One

Iris Rose

 

I have been working on a Shetland/Faroese shawl that I wanted to have finished by today.  Sadly, that is not going to happen.

I was working away at the final few rows and realized that I had made a mistake six or seven rows back on the longest part of the knitting.  Add to that, I am making the monster with a mohair blend yarn that is more than slightly fuzzy.  I also realized that writing a new pattern at the same time as knitting it and watching TV is a surefire recipe for disaster!

Once I recovered from my little temper tantrum and picked the shawl back up, I toyed with the idea of just ripping back the few stitches in question and reknitting them.  Simple, right?  I was wrong, oh so wrong to assume that this would be an easy fix.  I have done this before with cables and simple stitch patterns with great success but lace is a little more tricky than that.  All I have done is created a huge mess that I will have to rip all of the work back to and now I don’t love this shawl anymore.

Long story short, there will no new lace shawl pattern this week.  I do have photos of the work in progress so that you can see what to expect next week and also so that you can see my harebrained idea on how I should repair this oops the lazy way.

Just so that you don’t feel that I have let you down completely (although you didn’t know that the pattern was coming so I have not only not produced what I wanted to but now I have spoiled the surprise as well!) here is an alternative., my Textured Wrap pattern.

This wrap is knitted long ways and is a great way to use up those really lovely but single skeins of yarn that you (or at least I) buy just because they are too pretty to leave in the store but what the heck do you do with them now.  It has enough changes in pattern, simple pattern stitches, really, to keep the work interesting but you can still multitask a bit.  Pick out a palette of coordinating yarns and enjoy knitting this cozy wrap!

Textured Wrap

Size: 16 in x 76 in or 40 cm x 195cm

Gauge: 16 stitches x 24 rows = 4″ or 10cm, note: gauge is not critical for this piece but should be close to achieve the correct size.

Materials:10 50gr balls of worsted or dk weight yarn (90 to 140 yds or 80 to 125 m per ball,  I used 2 black, 2 dark brown, 2 blue tweed, 1 variegated, 1 heather, 1 light rust tweed, 1 multicoloured mini pompom).

Tools: One US 9 or 5.5 mm circular needle.  Shawl is knit back and forth but you will need a circular needle to hold all of the stitches and to allow you join yarn at opposite end of the work from the last colour worked.

Bobbles: Large bobbles are made in one stitch as follows:

In the same stitch k1, yo, k1, yo, k1, turn, p5, turn, k5, turn, p2tog, p1, p2tog, turn, k3tog.

Small bobbles are made as follows:

In the same stitch, k1, yo, k1, turn, p3, turn, k3tog.

With black yarn cast on 280 stitches and work 4 rows of garter stitch.

Change to mini pompom yarn and work 5 rows of stocking stitch.

Change to dark brown yarn on the wrong side and work 7 rows of stocking stitch.

Next row (right side): k11, make large bobble in 12th st, k11 repeat * to * to end.

Purl 1 row.

Change to blue tweed yarn and k5, make a large bobble, k11, repeat * to * to 6 st remaining, make a large bobble, k5.

Work 8 rows of stocking stitch.

Change to black yarn on the wrong side and k 1 row.

Change to variegated yarn and work 5 rows of stocking stitch.

Change to heather yarn on the wrong side and k 1 row.

Change to blue yarn on the wrong side and knit 1 row.

Change to heather yarn on the wrong side and k 1 row.

Change to blue yarn on the wrong side and knit 1 row.

Change to heather yarn on the wrong side and k 1 row

Work 2 rows of stocking stitch.

Work 6 rows of basket weave stitch in a 2 x 2 pattern:

Row 1: k2, p2

Row 2: p2, k2

Row 3: p2, k2

Row 4: k2, p2

Row 5: k2, p2

Row 6: p2, k2

Work 3 rows of stocking stitch.

Change to black on the wrong side and work 3 rows of reverse stocking stitch, (knit 1 row on wrong side, purl 1 row on right side and knit 1 row on wrong side).

Change to light brown tweed yarn on the wrong side and purl 1 row.

Next right side row, k4, make a small bobble, k9 repeat * to * to 5 stitches remaining, make a small bobble and k4.

Purl 1 row.

Change to black on the wrong side and work 3 rows of reverse stocking stitch as above.

Change to variegated yarn on the right side and work 3 rows of stocking stitch.

Change to dark brown yarn on the right side and work 4 rows of stocking stitch.

Next right side row, k8, slip crochet hook into last stitch on right hand needle and pull off, ch6, slip st into the back loop of the 2nd ch from hook, slip st into back loop of remaining 4 ch, slip loop on hook back onto right hand needle, k8, repeat * to * until 8 st remain, k8.

Work 3 row of stocking stitch.

Next right side row, k4, repeat * to * as above until 5 stitches remain, work crochet and k4.

Work 3 rows stocking stitch,

Change to mini pompom yarn and work 4 rows of stocking stitch.

Change to black yarn and work 2 rows of reverse stocking stitch.

Change to blue tweed yarn and work 4 rows of stocking stitch.

Next right side row, k9, make a large bobble, k19 repeat to * to * until 11 stitches remain, make a large bobble and k10.

Purl 1 row on wrong side.

Next right side row, k19, make a large bobble, k19 repeat * to * to end.

Work 4 rows of stocking stitch.

Change to heather yarn on the right side and work 2 rows of stocking stitch.

Change to black yarn and work 4 rows of garter stitch.

Cast off loosely.

Finish Ends: finish the short sides to match the border on the long sides.  With blue tweed yarn on the right side and starting at the edge of the first colour after the black border, pick up and knit 52 stitches along the edge ending before the last black border. Knit 1 row back on wrong side.

With black yarn, pick up and knit 3 stitches on the edge of the black border, k52 blue stitches and pick up and knit 3 stitches on the black border.

Work 3 rows of garter stitch and cast off loosely.

Repeat this work at the opposite short side to finish the wrap.

Weave in all those pesky ends and block lightly.  I pressed mine rather than stretching it to maintain the texture and weight.

Abbreviations:

Knitting:                      k = knit

p = purl

yo = yarn over

k2tog = knit 2 st together

p2tog = purl 2 st together

k3tog = knit 3 st together

Crochet:                      ch = chain

slip st = slip stitch