Category: Blog

I am flitting from project to project the last 2 days & rather enjoying myself. I found a sweater & yarn for the project runway knitalong.

I also am loving that I got the yarn for the manresa legwarmers in the newest issue of knitty to make for a friend of mine! She requested them especially from me, fantastic!

I also am closing in on the finish line with the brown cherry sweater. Whew! Body & one sleeve are finished, I just have 16 more rows of rib on the other sleeve. Then I am going to rip out the collar & redo it. I just can’t be happy with it the way it is. I am considering making it a mock turtleneck. I think it would match the theme of the sweater nicely. We’ll see! Man, that is one crappy picture, sorry about that!

I love, love, love how this sweater is turning out! I made it long enough, tight enough, it just makes me so happy to make your own design/pattern & actually have it turn out perfectly! Once it’s done I promise to post pics of it being worn!

I have worked a little each day on the Mystery Stole. I am having a nice relaxing time working on it. I would like to be done with clue 2 by the time clue 3 comes out on Friday but I am not pushing myself. I want to enjoy all my knitting!

I realized today that I didn’t write down the pattern from where I joined the body under the yoke to the bottom of the torso. It won’t be hard, I just have to go back & do it. I would like to have this be an actual pattern, not one of my half assed patterns. It will be nice to have it done, washed & get a good wear out of it!

 

I thought I would put up what I am doing on the Mystery Stole 2 to show others how I have managed to have no mistakes with this lacework.

Firstly I colored in the chart. 5 stitches red, 5 stitches I left white.

I am using a 3m sticky notecard to mark the line I am on & keep notes if I need to. I have the right side chart in one side of my page protector and the left side chart is in the other side of the page protector, back to back basically. All I have to do is flip it over to go from right to left side. I move the notecard from one side to the other also.

At the top of the work you can see that I have markers. I decided to  place them every 10 stitches excluding the middle section with the center stitch. I have the markers spaced out like this:

10 sts, marker, 10 sts, marker, 10 sts, marker, 10 sts, marker, 9 sts, marker, center stitch, marker, 9 sts, marker, 10 sts, marker, 10 sts, marker, 10 sts, marker, 10 sts

I wanted to keep the center stitch alone to match how the charts have the center stitch designated. Knowing myself I would have repeated that center stitch going from the right side to the left side chart and ended up with many mistakes around that center stitch.

Also, as in most lace knitting you will have to move the markers every once in a while to get that k2tog or ssk to work out. Just make sure that you end up with the correct stitch count between markers real quick. I do have a habit of counting between markers on the wrong side row. It’s a simple safety measure.

Here you can see that I have the side I am not working on a circular needle held with a needle holder so that there is no chance of losing that side that is not being worked.

Here you can see my whole little setup. So far it’s worked miraculously. This is how I normally proceed with lace projects or any charted work actually.

I do hope that this will help anyone that has trouble with charts or lace patterns. These tips are a lifesaver. You can see that I have no lifelines. I don’t believe they do all that much to help. I am a preemptive strike person. Someday I may change my mind about them but as of now I have never found them to be a need in my knitting.

So Mystery Stole knitters, Happy knitting!

I decided that there are enough of us knitters out there that love the BravoTV series Project Runway that we needed a knitalong to go with this, the 3rd, season.

So here it is:

http://pr3knitalong.blogspot.com/

The ‘rules’ are listed on the site. I would love to see a lot of you join just to see what design of your own, or Michael Kors, that you knit! Please go have a look & I think it will be a lot of fun!

If any of you have the talent of making blog buttons I could use a few for the knitalong. Let me know if you can help me out!
Thanks!

 

‘What will your obituary say?’ at QuizGalaxy.com

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com

You know what is so funny about the second one? When I was pregnant with Sadie we lived in an apartment on the south hill in Summerland facing the ocean. Anyone who has driven up or down hwy 101 has seen the summerland hill. Our apartment building had 4 apartments above a 4 car garage. When I had the VW KharmannGhia it was rather unwieldy to get my big fat pregnant butt in & out of that car on a hill. So instead of the second car (much nicer & only a couple of years old but George drove it to work most of the time) being parked in the garage I was spoiled & got to park my baby in there. Well, one day I had a doctors appt so I went out to the car, got in, started it, put it in gear- the wrong gear, forward instead of reverse which is easy to do in 1960’s vw’s- and drove straight forward into our storage area! Now, I do totally blame that on being pregnant. It hasn’t happened since & never happened before so it must have been the mushy-hormone-doped up brain that I have when I am pregnant. Ask Tracy, all my intelligence & memory capabilities leave my brain & I become totally inept for 10 months. Eventually it comes back…..I think…..

I got another package from my sp!! And it had some really fun stuff! My favorite sock yarn, Trekking xxl, some hand made soaps that smell absolutely fantastic, candy which I am sharing with the kids, a banana chocolate shake mix that I walked right into the kitchen to make & voila~ Tyler had just eaten the last banana. Thanks so much SP! I am seriously thinking the trekking may need to be legwarmers, so tempting to cast on…must…stop…myself…

Look at how cool the soaps are…

….they will be so great in my bathroom!

Thanks again!

Interweave has the fall 2006 preview up on the website & I cannot wait for it to come! There are quite a few things that I know I will want to make! Vogue doesn’t have theirs up yet, huh. They usually have theirs up before IK does. Interesting.

I finished the legwarmers that I started ages ago. I had one complete & about 5″ done on the second so it was finishing up with all the increases on the second and sewing it up the back. I LOVE THEM!!

I also did get a solid start this morning on the mystery stole. I am only on row 29 of the first 100 (it’s a 50 row pattern that you do twice mirrored). I would like to get those rows complete before the second clue comes out on Friday.

I am using pure wool lace yarn from handpaintedyarn.com in black, obvi, on size 5 metal needles. I love it so far! I just want to go faster!

I am really liking the legwarmers & will be making more for myself & others. I am thinking it would so simple to make solid, plain ones on the knitting machine. I just don’t have the energy to break out the machine right now. It actually seems like less work to just handknit them ;o)

I finished the candle flame shawl using the super bulky merino from handpaintedyarn.com. It’s not as long as I would have liked but it’s wide enough to wrap nicely around. It used 4 hanks of yarn.

Once it’s done blocking I will take it outside for a bit of a photo shoot so you can see the pattern better. It’s gorgeous dahling!

 

UFO’s in the Andreasen household. I need needles to get the gauge right on the mystery stole but all the size 4’s I have are being used. Occupied as one might say. I have straights, what am I saying?? I own them but will not use them. I must finish either the second legwarmer that is occupying one set of 4’s or the brown cherry fair isle yoke s/s sweater body that is occupying the other 4’s. I was pretty proud of myself for even locating the size 4’s I needed! Now the decision, which project do I finish. I have a very distinct feeling I will work on both even though I won’t wear the sweater until the fall. It’s stockinette for 10″ and then voila! Finito!

Count on the fan & feather shawl is up to 1032 stitches a round, row 148 of 189. I timed a round last night & it took me 29 minutes from 10:44pm-11:13pm. Granted it was late night knitting & I had a hard time keeping my eyes open but considering I rarely sit all the way through an entire row it’s probably accurate. This shawl is the project that sits next to my chair at all times ready to be picked up & worked on whenever I get the chance. I am so happy that I am still motivated to work on this shawl!

I am excited to get a good, solid start on the mystery stole. I have the yarn I am going to use, handpaintedyarn’s pure wool lace in black. It’s not nearly as soft or as giving as the merino lace weight. But it’s still fabulous yarn! I will have to wait to get it started until my needles, as mentioned above, are free. Instead of a provisional cast on I am going to cast on to a spare pair of circs so that when I go back to that cast on I can just start knitting the other half. I got that off of the message board on the mystery stole 2 kal yahoo group. I have browsed others progress and it’s going to be a gorgeous lace project!

So for today & possibly tomorrow I will be finishing the legwarmer & the sweater so I can use the needles on my stole. Sounds like movie days to me. BUt I have cleaning to do. Lame! And I reseeded the grass in the backyard this morning to help out some bare spots so I need to be assessing the watering of the grass. I always forget to do that! Saturday I left the front sprinkler on for about 4 hours. Woops! The h2o company won’t be too pleased with me. I will not be too pleased either when I get the bill! sigh. summer in the southland with grass.

I joined the Mystery Stole KAL2. I have never done anything quite like this here knitalong but it’ll be interesting & since I like lace lately it works out well. Maybe it’ll end up being a christmas gift, who knows! I am using handpaintedyarn.com’s wool lace yarn on size 3 needles.

I found the candle flame shawl pattern & I am now officially addicted to this stitch pattern! It’s the perfect fast pattern for a triangle shawl like in the pattern but also a nice shapely scarf pattern.

Here is the shawl in handpaintedyarn super bulky merino 9 ply that I had on hand.

Here is the candle flame stitch pattern in a scarf using Malabrigo pot surprise merino, crack, yarn that I frogged from another scarf that I never, ever wore.

The scarf will be a christmas gift. I am starting early this year. My sisters-in-law are getting nicer gifts this year so I wanted to get a head start. Luckily I have the yarn on hand that I need, other than the glazed carrots of course. If I could find it in the worsted merino instead of the bulky wool that would rock!

The fan & feather shawl is moving along, I am on row 138 of 189. I do believe I just topped 1000 stitches a round. I didn’t count after the last increase row that I almost completed at knitnight the other night. And on that topic, Concert in the Park was nice! It ended up being Erin, Tracy, Kristin, Suzanne for a bit, Rachel stopped by & myself. It was fun, a little crowded & loud but we were way on the outskirts so it worked out nicely. By 8 it was pretty darn cool & we weren’t really prepared for it so we called it a night. I would totally be willing to do it again, don’t know if anyone else would but I found it a nice change of scenery.

I have moved past the crazy sock phase I was in. I still have socks on the needles that I will finish after the candle flame phase I am sure.