September Stats

In September, I finished a shawl, a scarf, a baby blanket, and two stockings. So all in all pretty successful as far as finished projects go.

In terms of actual skeins and yardage knit up, it was not a successful month at all. In total I knit 2 skeins/ 588 yards. This is the lowest totals I've had all year.

There are two reasons for this. Firstly, I can't figure out how to count my stockings yarn, since there's a lot of partial skeins, so as of right now I'm not counting them at all. Therefore, my totals look less than what I actually knit. Secondly, I kind of lost my knitting mojo sometime in August and it carried over into September. I'm feeling really happy about my knitting now with my stockings projects, but those don't count for my totals as I mentioned above. And sock knitting doesn't make a big dent in the stash. We'll see what next month brings.

Shale Baby Blanket

 Pattern: Shale Baby Blanket from Brooklyn Tweed

Yarn: Cascade 220 Superwash 842 Iris

Started on: July 21st

Finished on: Sept. 14th

Comments/Modifications: I finished this awhile ago, but just never got around to taking photos of it until now.

I knit this pattern as written. I knit fewer repeats then the pattern calls for because I got bored knitting this. I like the pattern as it's very pretty and easily memorized, but it's super boring to knit. This totally killed my knitting mojo. I had to just knit a couple more repeats and bind off in order to get myself knitting again.

I know a lot of people love this yarn, but I feel very meh about it. Maybe it's my yarn snobby-ness coming through. It's a yarn that gets the job done and isn't terrible. The yarn is splitty, so even though the pattern was mindless, I had to pay attention to make sure I wasn't splitting the yarn.

FO Friday: Holiday Evergreen Xmas Stocking

Pattern: Holiday Evergreen Xmas Stocking from Annie Woolens

Yarn: Bartlettyarns in Light Sheep grey, Spruce Heather and Cranberry that came with the kit

Needles: US Size 6 - 16 in. circulars and US Size 8 - 16 in. circulars

Started on: Sept. 9th

Finished on: Sept. 20th

Comments/Modifications: I knit this as written. There are two options in the pattern for heels and toes. I chose to do the short heel. This was my first real time doing colorwork and using duplicate stitch. I enjoyed doing colorwork, I don't know why I was so scared about trying it for so long. I did not enjoy doing duplicate stitch as I talked about in a previous post. I'm glad it's finished. When I finish all four of the stockings, I'll duplicate stitch the names on the top over the light sheep grey yarn. That way I can pick which stocking will go to whom, and do all the worst annoying stitching all together at once.

Overall, I loved this pattern and am very pleased with the results. I know there are parts where the tension isn't even and it's not perfect by any means, but I think it's pretty darn good for my first attempt at colorwork. I can't wait to get working on the other three stockings. After that I'll most likely return to my regularly scheduled lace knitting.

WIP Wednesday: More Stockings

I started my second stocking. It's going much faster, since I finished the first one. The stockings are all fairly similar just with different patterns. I can feel my knitting mojo coming back to me. Even though, I've already made one, it still amazes me when the pattern emerges from the knitting.

WIP Wednesday

I'm still plugging away on my stocking. This week I worked on two new-to-me techniques.

The first is duplicate stitch which totally kicked my butt. I'm not sure if it was because I''m still figuring out my tension with the colorwork, which made it hard to see the stitches I was trying to duplicate or I just am terrible at it. I'm also not crazy about how it makes the knitted item super heavy. I re-did it a few times to try to make it better. In the end, I decided to just do as best as I can and leave it. It's not going to be perfect, but it's not going to get any better. This is probably the least enjoyable part of knitting this stocking so far. And I still have more duplicate stitching to do at the very end of the project.

The second new-to-me technique was the short row heel. This wasn't difficult to do and was actually quite enjoyable after I got into the rhythm. The first few rows, I had to really concentrate on reading the directions and making sure I was following them correctly. After that, it was smooth sailing.

I think those were the most challenging bits of the pattern, now that I've turned the heel, it should be pretty straightforward from here on out.

FO Friday: Fall Line Scarf

 Pattern: Fall Line Scarf from Knitspot

Yarn: Malabrigo Silky Merino in Madre Perla

Needles: US Size 7

Started on: Feb 27th

Finished on: Sept. 7th

Comments/Modifications: I knit this pattern as written. It only took me a long time to knit because I kept getting distracted by other yarn and patterns out there. I love the way the scarf turned out. I actually didn't block it because I really like the textured look. This yarn is super soft and squishy. This is another scarf that will go in my gift giving bin.

WIP Wednesday: Colorwork

A few weeks ago I decided I wanted to make a few stockings for my family for the Holiday season. I ordered some kits and they arrived this week. I know I'm in way over my head on this project as I've never really done colorwork before. (I did make a couple of super tiny 1 inch animals before, but that doesn't really count, since they were so small and super easy to make.) And instead of doing the reasonable thing and buying one kit to figure out if I truly do enjoy it or not, I bought 4 kits. Ha! This probably also explains why I have a million balls of yarn in my stash. I'm an all or nothing kind of gal.

In my excitement I casted on immediately. It was all smooth sailing until I got to my first row where I needed to use more than one color. I remember learning that my working yarn should always be the yarn on top, so I made sure to do that. In this particular row, my floats spanned five stitches (see first photo). That seems like a lot. I wasn't sure if this was going to affect my tension or if it's normal and I should just knit with whatever color the chart pattern tells me.


I consulted with some rav friends who suggested my floats should span no more than three stitches in order to keep the tension even and help me avoid accidentally pulling on the floats. So I frogged the first set of floats I did and made my floats span two to three stitches (see second photo).

The last photo shows my progress to date. I know these are famous last words, but I think it's smooth sailing again and it seems simple enough. I don't know why I was scared of doing color work for so long. It does seem simpler and more straightforward than lace. And I love knitting lace and do it all the time.

Little Iris

Pattern: Little Iris from Anne Hanson (purchased from Patternfish)

Yarn: Neeley's Knits in Breaking Bad inspired "Hindenburg"

Needle Size: US 3

Started on: Aug. 21st

Finished on: Sept. 1st

Comments/Modifications: I made a modification to the pattern. In the original pattern there is a ridge that separates the two motifs. I didn't like how the ridge looked so I took it out so that it would flow better. I did this by knitting Section A the hem chart. Then I skipped the ridge section. And jumped into Section B the body chart. On the first row of the body chart I decreased 3 stitches on each side of the shawl. Then I knit 11 repeats instead 8 repeats of the body chart. I followed the instructions for the rest of the pattern.

I really love the hem motif, it's so elegant to look at. Overall, I'm very pleased with how this shawl turned out.