Author: Chauntel Ensey

I posted a new photo to apad2.

I am doing a LYS plug. While Tracy & I were visiting her parents over the weekend we had a knitting store outing. The first knitting store in Cameron Park opened and here it is!

The store is decorated really nicely, the yarns are easy to see, touch, sort through. I found the prices a bit higher than our stores here in SB but overall for a new store they still weren’t bad! I bought the items below.

I know you are thinking to yourself, novelty yarn, WTF?? Well, it was so cool knit up on the sample swatch they had I had to get one. I have no idea what I will do with it. It may end up as wristwarmers or some such thing. The Lopi will be either a felted bag or slippers.

And look at how cute their packaging was!!!

Let me just tell you, the ladies that own it/ work there are some of the funnest, happiest, friendliest knitstore owners I have ever dealt with. The store had a very welcoming feeling, that seems to be rare in knit stores in CA. Don’t tell me I shop at the wrong stores, I have shopped plenty of them! Village Spin & Weave in Solvang is my all time favorite in the area. Overall I would give Sierra Knitting Co. a 7 out of 10. For a new shop that is pretty damn good! They will be expanding soon too so their stock is going to just get better! Good for them!!! If you are ever on your way to South Lake Tahoe on Highway 50 stop in & buy something!

I thought I would give it a try, it’s green, I like green. It’s tea, I like tea. I like both of those attributes together even more, just not this sugary crap of a drink. Unfortunately for me, this time it ended up causing me to stop 4 times in a 3 hour drive for “potty breaks”.  No thanks!! Why would I try something fun? Why go out of my normal starbucks drink routine, do you ask? Well, we were traveling, it was warm & I thought I would be spontaneous! Okay, it wasn’t really spontaneous, I thought about it from my morning coffee order until I bought it 5 hours later. I won’t do that again, let me tell you!! Notice how neither of them have much gone. I didn’t want to waste my $4 so I drank about half, that was my downfall. Being cheap. I should have thrown this shit out!

Now this is a good green tea drink, if only it was blended with whipped cream, oh well!

 

So here is something interesting I had happen on this yoke sweater. When I did the provisional cast on I just whipped the stitches onto the needles without paying too close of attention to the tension of the stitches on the needle. Yeah, about 2/3 of the stitches were way too loose and formed a ridge once I picked them up and started to knit down the body of the sweater.

That was an easy fix just a bit time consuming. I went through with a small cable needle and tightened each stitch down the line. I ended up with about 8 inches of extra yarn that I knotted on the backside for now.

Here is the yoke pretty much done. I have to fudge with the neckline a bit more to get it just the way I want it to be but I think I know how to finish it.

If you look closely there on the bottom right of the sweater you can see the loop of yarn from tightening the stitches. I had most of the row tightened when I took the picture. Overall I am happy with the fair isle but the collar I am not so happy with. I will ponder what to do while I finish the body & short sleeves.

 

I had so much fun doing that yoke Sat & Sun that I decided yesterday afternoon to cast on another! This time I am using Knitpicks Merino Style wool in colors I had on hand. I am stashbustin!

The math to figure this one out took me a while. I couldn’t find my calculator so I did it all by good old fashioned long division & multiplication. I even did a gauge swatch to make sure I got it all correct! So once that was figured out I provisionally cast on in the main body color of brown. I don’t remember the actual knitpicks color name but I am sure it’s not anything close to the actual color. I am going to do short sleeves on this sweater, I think the cherry motif lends itself to that. I have a ton of cotton in my stash that I am thinking would be used perfectly for some fun summery fair isle tops.

The lamb’s pride yoke sweater is all divided for sleeves and body & I have an inch and a half or so done on the body. Tracy has the size 8, 12 inch, addi turbo’s that I need for the sleeves, once I get them I will start one of the sleeves too.

I forgot to mention it but I used one different yarn in this yoke. If you look under the large section of red you will see a light green with a little bit of sparkle in it. It’s berrocco Beadnik, it is prestrung with beads! You can’t see them on the picture, they are pretty spread out but they add just a tad bit of bling. I did another 2 rows of it up at the base of the collar too.

My thought is that you can never have too many stockinette projects on hand for working on in front of the tv, traveling or taking to a coffee house to work on. But isn’t knitting all about enjoying what you are creating? Not just torturing yourself to get something finished? Therefore, I will do as many fair isle yokes as I can until I just don’t wanna anymore!