Simple Stitches, Crazy Stitches, Fun Knitting

Yay Knitting! We met and got up-to-date on projects.
Tricia worked on the teal scarf/shawl.

Tricia and teal scarf/shawl

Lois with an orange cable hat

Ethel got some new pink all-cotton thick-and-thin slubby yarn

purse body: garter-stitch sari ribbon

I’ve been working on another purse using the pattern on the front of this Quick Knits mag: it’s garter-stitch Louisa Harding Sari Ribbon.

 

 

 

 

 

The leather handles are from http://www.cindysbuttoncompany.com; I got them from Four Purls‘ vendor booth at the 2012 Florida Fiber Inn.

 

This other project I started is the Tokyo Scarf designed by Emre Koc featured in 101 Designer One-Skein Wonders, in Feza Alp yarn.

Tokyo Scarf in Alp

Ethel’s linen stitch cloth

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ethel was experimenting with linen stitch to duplicate some wash cloths we saw on Pinterest. I liked the subtle blending of the purple color band with the burnt-orange, but she liked the greater contrast of the blue band.

Ethel’s linen-stitch cloth with blue contrasting color band

Rainbow Loom

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then we brought out the Hands Free Rainbow Loom with Organizer Kit.

 

 

 

 

Ethel made a rubber-band ring on the loom in about 5 minutes.

 

 

 

 

 

Ethel’s rainbow-loom ring

Great fun!

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Curious and Amazing Little Beasties

A bit of excitement at Wednesday Night Knitting: the new school year has started for lots of kids we know and love, which means new knitting ideas are beginning to take root in our minds…here in Florida, however, we don’t look for fall weather for quite a few months yet.

Harry Potter knits

Mmmm, interesting things to perhaps try. Right now, I’m working on a scarf/shawl to match the purse. Easy: garter-stitch, something I can cope with in the evenings while winding down. And my newest read is Googling Your Family Tree by Dan Lynch. I’m not one of those who can knit and read at the same time, although with a garter-stitch project it seems reasonable that I could.

Ethel wore the sweater she got for her birthday.

hedgehog!

She decided to knit a hedgehog to go with her sweater.

pattern

hedgehog nose

Coincidentally, DH has a colleague who raises hedgehogs, the African Pygmy variety. He mentioned that he was looking for someone to help “socialize” some baby hedgehogs, a necessary step (he says) in preparing the little animals to go up for sale. DH wasn’t sure if we’d be a good candidate to help with hedgehog socialization, since we have the four highly opinionated, LARGE cats. Nevertheless, he’s been watching every available you-tube vid about hedgehogs. Curious and amazing little beasties, they are!

Meanwhile, Ethel’s been making lots of right-angle weave bracelets.

yellow

p

turquoise

blue butterfly

She has varied the sizes of the round beads, along with the number, size, arrangement and finish of the crystals. She especially likes the crystals from Fire Mountain, with the AB finish, which gives the facets of the crystals a rainbow-like glimmer. Beautiful!

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Meanwhile, Knitting

It was a beautiful day in the neighborhood as Lois and Ethel came by to knit.

I worked on the shawl, which is starting to get rather boring: garter stitch over and over. It makes for good TV watching, though; no counting, no pattern to worry over.

garter stitch shawl

the yarn for the shawl

The strands of yarn are not twisted together at all, they’re just 5 straight strands together.It doesn’t seem to make a difference in the knitting, except that once in a while a strand gets pulled out in a little loop.

Lois and Ethel

Ethel worked on a seed stitch slouchy celebrity hat to match the purple and gray sweater she’s knitting for Claire. Lois worked on a complex pattern, re-doing some parts to make it all fit.

We were waiting for word on Debbie’s new grandbaby Izzy. She finally did arrive, but way late in the night.

Meanwhile, Ethel showed off some new stash acquisitions from our almost-trip to the Florida Fiber In 2012. We had every intention of going, and we did go to Orlando. But we first wanted to stop at the Tuesday Morning in Ocoee, to check out the yarn, like we did last year. After spending almost my whole budget there, we decided to go back home, stopping at the big, nice, Joann’s in Ocala. It’s all gooooood. Oh yes, as Ethel mentioned, we did have lunch at the Yellow Dog Eats, which was quite an experience in itself. I’d been there years ago but it’s different. One of the employees had a microphone and was just chatting to whoever about random things all throughout. Ethel got a Waldorf salad, which was beautiful but very short on apples, and I got the Beast of the Middle East, a tabouli sandwich with a side of pita chips

Ethel’s Rozetti fuschia with sequins

A beautiful blue

Guanaco in blue denim

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Happy Birthday Knit-a-thon

We took the opportunity to surprise Ethel, our fearless leader, on the occasion of her birthday!

Happy Birthday Ethel!

Sadly, she fell and broke her wrist last week, and sustained some other injuries. But she still wanted to come and knit! Plucky!

Neither pain, calamity, etc. can keep the devoted knitter from her rounds

Tina brought the delish chocolate ganache cake, knowing chocolate is one of Ethel’s particular favorites. Mmmmm.

Debbie showed us what she’d discovered at Sip & Knit in Maitland: some tiny Hiya Hiya circular needles in sizes 0, 1, and 1.5, plus a skein of plushy yarn. The yarn is Debbie Macomber‘s Petals Socks 50
% fine merino superwash, 20% angora and 30% nylon. Wouldn’t anyone love to have a velvety soft sock from that next to your foot? The label says Debbie Macomber is donating all of her proceeds from the sale of this collection to help children all over the world.

the Petals sock yarn

Deb's circular needles for sock yarn

Lois and new project

Tina looming a hat

Lois has inspired us with her many beautiful hat projects. Tina is working on a beautiful loomed hat. I also worked on a hat, but boogered it up fairly well. I waited awhile before throwing myself on the mercy of Ethel, to HEEELLLLP me fix the brim. Duh, she helped me realize that it was supposed to be a garter stitch border, but was supposed to be a border of 4 vertical knit stitches, not 4 rows of stitches knit horizontally along the edge. This pattern was the Yorkshire tweed beret from One Skein Wonders. I find that some instructions in this book are not as easy for me to comprehend. Especially when the blurb said all you have to know is how to knit in the round…there were a lot of mysterious things in this pattern for the newcomer besides just plain old knitting in the round: Provisional cast-on, ssk, cable cast-on, waste yarn, I-cord, M1, double-pointed needle working of the 4-stitch vertical garter-stitch border that could have just as easily been worked in a rib pattern from the beginning, rather than adding it after the hat was finished. OK, rant over.

knitting on both sides of the needle. Say what?

Deb coached Ethel on the making of two knitted panels on the same needle simultaneously. We discussed how impossible this seems to be, last time, and it doesn’t seem to be any easier to grasp after a week of pondering. Meanwhile, Debbie did another fantastic feat, knitting on both sides of the needle. Remarkable!

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Passion, Purling and Patriotism

Wednesday Night Knitting started out with some new developments. 1) Lois brought a strikingly gorgeous flower from her garden

Passion flower vine

and 2) Susan came to join us! Yay! She wants to learn to knit.

Lisa showing Susan how to cast on with Lois observing

The flower is such an intricate natural work of art, which Lois says will be gone tomorrow. The bloom lasts one day! “Consider the lilies of the field; they neither toil nor spin…” Makes me feel a bit crass about blogging for recognition and/or renown in my own limited efforts…but how beautiful is the flower, today, right now!
Lisa, after having conquered intarsia (thanks, Wikipedia), is liking it much better. She’s now working on a rose-colored sweater from this pattern:

Seed stitch sweater

Lois is back to working on her hamster. We saw on Facebook Lois’s previously finished hat (dark rose with white Fair Isle hearts) on the happy recipient, her grand-daughter. Susan decided to start knitting and purling, with plans to make wash cloths and dish cloths. Amazing how heart-warming it is to find someone who appreciates those luscious knitted cloths!
My current project was #1 in the book One Skein Wonders edited by Judith Durant, felted coasters. I used the Debbie Bliss bulky Shetland tweed wool and was able to get 8 coasters knitted in garter stitch from the skein. Once they were knitted and the ends woven in, they were felted in the washer and dryer, which made them shrink to coaster-size. My idea was to do them in red, white and blue to match some other table linens I wanted to make for the patriotic holidays of summer (ok, I already missed Memorial Day so we’ll shoot for Flag Day and the 4th of July). A few eons ago I bought a needle-felting tool and tray but this is the first time I used them. It was awesome fun! You get wool roving from your favorite supplier –it’s on the shelf at JoAnn’s, A-1 Sewing, Yarnworks–and pull off a wisp of it and punch it into the felted coaster. A teensy bit of it goes a long way!

Using the needle felting paraphernalia

So here’s my raft of coasters with patriotic [in my mind] motifs.

Three cheers, I finally finished something!

Lots of projects in the works for next time!

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