Knitwith Homespun

The fall issue of Interweave Knits is out and the cover has a coat on it that I just had to have. It’s called the Clasica Coat (Ravelry Link) and I am knitting it with my Dulce de Leche handspun yarn. The chances are I will run out of yarn but I contacted the vendor for my fiber that I used and she said she gets that colorway in all the time and she will be in touch and I shouldn’t worry. I am not worried any longer. My yarn doesn’t match the gauge for the pattern. I have modified to meet my needs. I am very happy with what I have so far. The back and hood extension are both done. The measurements of my finished piece fit the large size. That’s what I am trying to do so things are going well. I cast on 10 stitches less than the smallest size written in the pattern and adjusted the pattern to fit this adjustment. All is going well and I can’t wait to finish it. I cast on 78 and decreased by 10 stitches where it says to decrease. When it said to increase to 32 for the hood extension, I followed those directions exactly as that was for the textured pattern and I couldn’t adjust that appropriately. The hood extension says to stop at 22 inches but when I finished one of the pattern repeats for the textured stitch I was at 21 so I stopped there. Here are is a picture of the back with the hood extension.

I am working on getting my house together for my dad’s visit. He arrives tomorrow and I am cleaning and rearranging and getting everything done. It’s like a spring cleaning kind of situation for two weeks now. I am hoping to finish up my Teeny Grownup Coverup pattern within the next couple of days and get the finished post up too. Just wanted to check in cause it’s been a couple weeks since I posted. WTF? Thanks for your patience and I hope to post a real post soon.

Here is a random picture from my flickr photostream to keep you entertained. I feel it’s illegal to post without a picture. This is the best dog in the world just after her haircut for my dad’s visit. She is tired! It’s tiring to get embarrassed when they cut all your hair off and leave you naked!

Remember the BFF coverups? I’ll refresh your memory:
Now, Bella’s didn’t turn out as nicely mostly because she won’t stop growing. Darn kids and food! What a combination! If only you could stop feeding them all would stay status quo! But no, you have to feed them or they arrest you! But I digress. Bella’s turned out a bit snug so either I will make a new one or she will stretch and this one will fit her (which is what I expect will happen). However, this coverup has been so popular with those who have seen and Catrina’s family that I decided to write up the pattern. If you are interested, please let me know. I may post it for free or put it on Ravelry for just a few dollars. The girls love it for the slit in the side. They feel so grown up with that that they get too excited to wear it. Also, Catrina has a petite Aunt who apparently would like to steel it. She took it at a pool party and tried it on and loves it. She has asked Catrina if she can have it and Catrina said no she could not. I have an out of town guest coming to visit with my father in a couple of weeks. This is my step niece and her mother. She is 5 or 6 now and I think she would love to have a coverup like the big girls so I went and picked some yarn in her favorite colors and I cast on her coverup today. Here are the day-glow colors we chose: It should be done within a couple of days given the fact that I am frogging my shawl! That’s right, it’s over.

This is a shawl I am currently working on. It’s called the Seraphim Shawl and I love it. The link is a Ravelry link and is beautiful. My problem is that I have run out of my yarn. The pattern calls for 800-1000 yards of yarn and my yarn is the proper weight. I am in the middle of the second chart and I have about 50 more rows and two charts left to knit. I was going to use some of my two ply alpaca that I was selling on Etsy to finish but I don’t think that’s enough either. This yarn for the shawl is handspun and I don’t have any fiber left to spin more yarn. The brown alpaca is the same fiber that I spun with the silk alpaca I am using for this shawl. I am seriously considering frogging this shawl and choosing another pattern to use this yarn. I really want a shawl for this yarn and I have really enjoyed knitting it but if I continue with the alpaca and I run I may end up frogging anyway. Does anyone have any other suggestions for me? Any other ideas? Please help me out! I could really use the input!

Every other Friday night I meet with a group of ladies for Craft Night.  Craft night can consist of knitting, spinning, crocheting, weaving, tatting, embroidery, and other assorted boxed crafts.  Sometimes, people don’t even craft, but we frown on that.  There are between 5 and 8 of us typically.  Here are a few of us:

First from the left is Heather sporting her very own handknit beanie.  She found the pattern on Ravelry and made it her very own self.  She is a scientist and can’t handle knitting on the fly or even knitting loosely.  She cracks me up!  Next in the lineup is Stacy.  She is embroidering in this shot but most of the time she crochets at Craft Night and it is always held at her house.  She wants to learn to knit so I think we are going to teach her.  Next in the lineup here is Sandi.  Anyone who has read my blog before knows Sandi.  She is my sister-in-law and she has branched out so much that she currently is working on three projects right now!  Can you believe it!?

Last night was our regular craft night and there is a new yarn store opening up in Costa Mesa called Knit Schtick.  We decided to get together today and go down there when the store opened at 11 and then have lunch across the street at a Peruvian restaurant called Inca Grill.  Well the yarn store doesn’t officially open until tomorrow so this was called a pre-sale.  It really was a lovely store.  There are two large tables set up with about 8 chairs each set up around them to knit at with coasters for your drinks and holders for your patterns if you bring one.  There were two love seats in the front of the store with coffee tables loaded with magazines and books to browse.  Don’t even get me started on the yarns!  They were all beautiful and in some gorgeous colorways.  The owners were not only knowledgeable but they were helpful and wonderfully kind and obliging.  Heather wanted to buy yarn for a sweater and they spent a good 10-15 minutes helping her determine what to buy and how much and they are even going to make a special effort to get her a pattern from a sample in the store.  Don’t get me wrong, this place was packed with people.  When we got there, there was a line out the door waiting to get in!  The place was packed and I don’t think anyone there had any trouble getting their questions answered.  Heather got some beautiful Malibrigo in a brown and purple and gold colorway that is amazing.  She has never made a sweater before so I am very excited for her.

Now, on to what I got!  I never bought Malibrigo before so this is my first skein ever.  Isn’t it so pretty!?

I have no idea what I am going to do with it.  I love how the blue runs into the gold and the purple.  I got the extra skein of just the blue to really pull that out in the project that I make that is yet to be determined.

The prices at Knit Schtick were really quite reasonable.  I wouldn’t think they are high or particularly low but right where you might expect them to be.  I would certainly make the trip down here for any project.

I am open to ideas for this yarn.  I have two skeins of the Mariposa which has the green, brown, tan, blue, and purple and one of the blue totally about 600 yards of worsted.

After we left the store we went and had a lovely lunch.  We then dropped Stacy off at home and dropped by Joghurt for a refreshing treat.  This lovely yogurt place has a Tuesday Morning in the same parking lot so who were we to not go in?  That’s where I found this:

Which I got for $3.99.  Can you even believe it?  So after I got back and I was talking to Stacy on the phone, she wants to go there.  I may end up back there tomorrow!  Well to top off the weekend, I didn’t go through all my mail yesterday and I found this that I still haven’t looked at:

I have never knit anything from this magazine but I surely will.  These are always some of the most beautiful and fashion forward patterns I have ever seen and I love to get it whenever it arrives.  I can’t wait to finish this blog so I can look through this magazine!

There you have it.  All the news that’s fit to print and boring enough to share with you all.  That’s what you get when you don’t blog for a year and a day (or a couple weeks anyway).

Done coverup 1.  I know you may find this hard to believe, but Bella is almost a year younger than Catrina.  She is the youngest and the tallest in her entire class.  Moving on.  Catina’s coverup is done.  You can see from this shot the jogless stripes (haha) on the edge.  The girls love the slit up the side of this coverup.  Bella’s is going to be a challenge because the sizes are so different.  She also wants hers to have only one tank strap looking more “caveman”.  Bella’s will have orange at the bottom moving into yellow at the top.  After blocking, I had to shorten the straps a bit for Catrina cause she is much shorter than I had measured.  This will eventually work out alright because as she gets taller, we can just take the straps down and she can still wear it. I think the eyelets at the bottom turned out just like I wanted them.  Catrina loves it!

Postscript from the other day:

For those of you who read my previous rant and plea for advice here is an update.  Bella and I met with the Girl Scout troop leader and it went very well.  The leader had spoken with the girls and the girls assured Dawn that noone had said or would say something like that about Bella.  The girl who said it voluntarily confessed to saying it and the other girls chimed in that it wasn’t true.  Dawn explained this to Bella.  Dawn went on the ask the other girls what Bella could do to make better friends in the troop.  The troop made a few suggestions for Bella to hear and Dawn told Bella what those were and they were good ideas.  We took them to heart and will apply them where necessary.  Overall, I think it was a good meeting with her and Bella was pleased with the outcome.  The bottom line is this troop has been together since kindergarten and Bella just joined this year.  This was part of the problem since they don’t know her as well.  I think everything is going to go well from here on out as the girls have promised to make a better effort with her.  Alls well that ends well.  Keep your fingers crossed.

This is Bella and Catrina.  They are BFFs (I think).  I don’t get it but this is them last Friday at the park after school.  They played together and had a blast.  They love to dress up together because Bella has a bunch of dressy dresses that we have bought at thrift stores and relatives have bought for her because she is such a princess.  Therefore, Catrina likes to come over and wear these things.  One of the things that they like to wear is Bella’s coverup from a couple of years ago.  They like it because it’s strapless and cool.  I told them I would make them a coverup for their summer season that matched.  This is my project for this blog.

I told them it would have a slit up the side.  They loved this idea.  The rest is my idea.  I would design Catrina’s as a tank dress and Bella wants hers to be a caveman dress with the tank strap over on one side.  Here is my project so far.  I will be writing this pattern up and we will see if there is any interest.  I might sell this one for a buck or two.

There is some minor shaping at the waist.  I am having trouble trying to figure out the tank straps in a circular knit but everything else is going well.  I love the eyelets at the bottom and the rounded shape of the slit.  The gradation of colors will play into the pair of dresses.  Bella’s will be orange at the bottom and graduate to yellow at the top.  The slit in this dress is about 6 inches but for these girls, it’s from the knee almost to the hip.  They are very excited about that.  Any other ideas you all have to help me out with this would be greatly appreciated.

Contest link: http://www.divaknitting.com/blog/2009/05/15/4-year-blogiversary-must-be-time-for-a-contest

Turns out, Savvy has a gown she is borrowing for her baptism.  She also has a shawl, but as her Godmother, I’m pulling rank.  Both the gown and the shawl are borrowed.  I am knitting her a shawl that she can keep and hand down to her children for their baptisms or wear at her wedding.  I decided to design it myself after perusing a bunch of patterns on the internet.  What I intend to do it knit a square for the center, pick up the stitches on each of the sides and knit lace panels from there.  The next panel for each side will be a little more than lace and have some more detail and more coverage then the second panels.  Then, I will knit an edge with some lovely detailed design.  Should be fun.  Now, I started this yesterday and I thought I would make a cabled X for the center piece.  I hate it.  Not only does the cable not show up well enough or in enough detail, my X is not symetrical.  Please also note that my square is a rectangle.  I knew this would happen after I got to the center but I thought I would compensate for that later in the second level of panels.

The next step will be to frog this, cast on a few number of stitches, graph it out on some knitters graph paper, and use eyelets instead of cables for the center square.  It will be an X again but I think it will look much better than the cable.  I think if I were knitting at a tighter gauge, the cable would have looked much better.  The concept here is a lacy, airy, pretty little shawl and knitting a tight cable was a wrong turn.  Frogging now and posting other designs as soon as possible.

I have to say, of course, that I haven’t sold anything yet.  However, I am pleased with one thing that has happened.  A plurk bud, Illiane, informed me that I may need permission to sell other designers finished objects as a condition of the license provided with each pattern that I used.  I hadn’t thought of that and I try to be lawful in every respect.  I wrote each of the designers of the objects I am selling that I didn’t design.  I am very very pleased with the outcome.  So far, only one person has asked that I take their item off my Etsy page because she sells them on her Etsy page.  I took it dowm immediately.  The other two that I have heard from have granted me permission as long as I mention their name in my listing.  I have done this.  I am still waiting for one more response.  I am so pleased wtih people being so nice.  However, I think I am going to try to avoid this problem in the future and either design my own stuff to sell, or ask permission before I pull the trigger.

This is one of the designs that I have permission to sell (thanks Cosymakes) that I didn’t design.  I did, however, design and make the model and I grant permission to myself to use my daughters likeness here and on my Etsy page.

You know Savvy Rose, right?  This is her.  She is beautiful and she is being baptized at the end of May (hopefully).  I am going to knit her gown for the ceremony but I can’t find a good pattern.  Do any of you have one or know of one?  I want something long and lacey but with good coverage.  I don’t know why but once I figured out I was going to do this, I can’t seem to find anything.  There was a good one I liked in Leisure Arts Beautiful Baby book but I can’t find that either.  Ravelry has a few but nothing that pops.  If you know of one, please direct me.  Thanks!

I am too excited not to blog this finished sock.  I had such a good time knitting it and I am so proud of myself for the adjustments I made in the pattern and that it was all successful.  I really want to talk about it so I am blogging before I cast on the second sock.

One of the things I learned from knitting this sock is the cuff rib.  This was a new one for me but I love it so much.  The rib is knit one, purl one, very simple.  However, the difference is to knit the K1 into the back loop.  This makes the rib look so lovely.  I think I will use this again and again because the look is so clean and sharp.

Here is the photo of the finished sock.  The fit is lovely and even a bit big.  I was worried that it would be tight because to get the right size, I had to drop an entire repeat off the sock and that’s 11 stitches.  I thought that might be too many to make the fit right but I was wrong.  Now the 11 stitches is what I am most excited about adjusting.  This adjustment takes the sock from 66 stitches down to 55.  That’s an even number of stitches down to an odd number.  I am mostly a new sock knitter, I think, because this is only my 6th pair of socks or so.  I have less than 10 pairs of socks under my knitting belt so this is definitely a milestone for me in socks.  Here’s why:

I got to the heel flap and I got confused.  What am I to do?  The pattern says to put 23 stitches on one needle, 13 on another, and 30 on another.  Since I had 55 stitches I had to really think about what I was going to do.  So I broke it down.  The stitches on needle 3 (30) were for the heel flap.  Therefore, it didn’t matter how many stitches it was because it was just the heel flap.  I can do heel flaps, in fact they are my favorite.  I use the magic loop method for socks so I only had to spread my stitches over two needles.  I had done the leg with 33 stitches on one and 22 on the other since the repeat is an 11 stitch lace pattern.  Therefore, I thought it best to make the heel flap on the 22 stitch needle.  This worked well I think.  Once I realized what I was doing, it went fast and easy.

The next challenge was the gussett.  I am proud of myself because I didn’t even read the pattern for this part.  The lace repeat is so easy I had it down very nicely and it was like buttah!  Therefore, the gussett was smooth too.  I made sure I was knitting in the right direction and I picked up the selvedge edge stitches as I came to them and started the gussett decreases like an old pro!  So fun!  I decreased down to 22 stitches on either side of my center foot marker and continued the lace pattern down the foot until I got to two inches before the end of my toe.  That’s it!  The bottom of my sock is stockinette and 22 stitches wide and the top is perfect and lacy and pretty!  I never looked at the pattern again after I reached the heel flap.  I did look at the chart for the lace to make sure everything was correct but that’s all. I am so pleased with myself and my sock I could scream!

Here’s the next best part.  I blogged about this, I think, before, but this little cheater tool is my most favorite thing that I use for my socks.  When I get to the toe of a top down sock, I take my cheater out and start looking.  It’s so easy to use and follow.  I got it from Scout’s Swag and I can’t live without it!  I highly recommend picking one up.  On the other end of this same chain, I put a yarn cutter that I also keep with me everytime I go anywhere with my knitting.

Here are a couple of other shots of my finished sock.  Enjoy!  I surely will and I will knit this pattern again and again!

New socks hit the needles this week. I really miss knitting socks so I am now going to try to always have a pair on needles somewhere.  Therefore, I am only trying to conform to my rules by casting on this pair for this week.  I love knitting this pattern and I’ll get to that in a minute.  First, I had to adjust the size by dropping an entire repeat of the lace.  Cast on 66 was changed to cast on 55.  That’s a huge difference and I wasn’t sure it would work very well but it sure is and the fit is very nice.  The last pattern is fabulous.  It looks lovely and is very very fast knitting.  I can’t wait to finish these.  This is the best fit for socks for myself to date (although it’s only my third pair for me).  The color and yarn are really working wonders for me too.  The smoothness of the color transitions and the colors themselves are perfect.  I am thoroughly enjoying this knit and I’ll keep y’all posted on how these are going.  Hopefully, you will just see the finished object by the weekend.

This is my Cloudy Day Woodland Shawl.  It is finished and blocked.  It is quite lovely howver, I have some issues with it.  First, whoever spun this yarn did a lousy job! There is one skein which is significantly different than the other skeins of yarn.  I would say there is a difference of 2 weights between the one and the other.  I am probably the only person who will ever know this or even notice.  It’s just irritating and quite frustrating.  This is what we can chalk up to learning curve and beginners problems.

Somehow to me, this shawl is unfinished.  It is blocked to larger than the pattern specifications but to me, it seems small.  It also seems like it needs something.  Perhaps some edging in crochet or something.  I am not sure.  It doesn’t quite fit on my shoulders nicely.  It feels like it doesn’t fit.  I don’t know.  It’s pretty and warm and I love the pattern but I am not sure it is going to stay this way.  Here is a close up of the leaves.

The new shawl is another attempt at a handspun handknit shawl.  This pattern is called Seraphim Shawl and I chose it because it has a solid stockinette portion at the neckline and the lace portion doesn’t start until you are 247 stitches into the stockinette.  I feel this yarn requires something like that to show off the color and tweediness of it.

This photo shows the stockinette portion in progress and shows the yarn color.  Hopefully, this shawl will look finished as a shawl and won’t require additional work.

My Kai-mei socks are done.  I love knitting these so much.  I think I will keep the pattern in my gift repetoir because they are so quick and they look so special.  I love how the left one turned out.  It’s much more even and the edges of the panel look better.  I don’t know why it worked out this way but it’s definitely true.

Notice at the top of the sock along the panel. This panel has the improper edging.

At the top of this panel, the knit stitches are correctly placed. They do look more like hearts in this shot.

My Right Sock for Kai-mei is finished. Other than a straight stockinette sock, this is the fastest and easiest sock I have ever knit. True, I don’t have a lot of socks under my belt, but I love this pattern and truly enjoyed it. I hope to finish the next sock by tomorrow night. Here’s the scoop to date:

In the pattern, it’s written to have a row of knit stitches and a row of slip slip knit stitches next to it. Well, I’m a picker and my slip slip knits never look right so I always do a knit 2 together where it says slip slip knit. Therefore, my ssk along the panel doesn’t look right. I’m ok with that because I much prefer to knit as a picker than a thrower. However, I frogged the first panel when I noticed I didn’t like the lack of knit stitch at the top of the panel. If you look at the images above, you will notice the difference. There is also an issue with the way my last stitch on the needle stretches when I am knitting. I knit magic loop for my socks and this happens every time. It should even out somewhat (but not all the way) when I block.

Along the right side, you can see the direction the panel takes as you knit.

I adjusted the toes to fit me better but doing an extra K2tog on the right side of the sock two times so there is a steeper slant along my smaller toes. This is the first pair of socks I knit for myself and I am glad I did this because the fit is amazing!

In case you didn’t notice, I love this pattern! So fast and easy and this is well on my way to becoming my favorite pair of socks. I am casting on the left sock as soon as I am done here. Yes, these socks are knit specifically for right and left due to the lace panel running along the foot. I can’t wait to finish! Yipppeeeeee!