Red, Pink, Purple

 It's been an interesting summer. I'm back to daily supply (substitute teaching) list. Let's leave it at that. 

Another red scarf in the bag. This one is crochet, a worsted weight, 4 rows of Double Crochet, and 2 rows of Double Crochet in the summer fine yarn I've used before (I have a giant cone). As I worked it, the fine yarn sections would contract inwards, and the scarf had this interesting bubble effect. It made it rather narrow though but I didn't know if blocking hard would straighten it out. I stretched and steamed and it seems to be behaving now.  99grams.

I finished the really large shawl I've been working on since mid-March (I think). I don't remember exactly where I found the pattern but it's a drop stitch lace, similar to the shrug I made last summer). You increase on one edge until you get to the width you want, then knit a wide section, then decrease. I wanted a large stole to wrap around me and almost be blanket like. It was really hard to stretch it out on the needles to check the width though. It's two strands of fine coned yarn (Spinrite tent sale?), and the black cone has a sticker indicating it's likely 50% wool, 50% acrylic and made in Spain. For those that understand the numbers, it's a 2/16. The other strand is a white and black plied together, totally unknown fiber. Originally I was going to use just it, but recognized that would take me a long time LOL.

I could have made it a little bit wider, but that straight section felt like it was taking forever! The decrease section got faster and faster, but I decided I didn't want to wind more balls of the yarn together so that I didn't end up winding too much and have a ball left over that I would never use, so I was carrying around two large cones of yarn. In the end, while the shawl is quite long, it's almost too long in the inc/dec sections. So, after washing and blocking I decided to cut off part of the narrowing end. 

Yup. Snip snip along the top of one pattern repeat. Gently pick out the stitches until back at one complete row and then I went back a few more rows to get to the start of the repeat. I casted off in pattern. This makes one long increasing section, a wide section, and a decreasing section that comes to a blunt end. 

It was at 299gr before I chopped the end off, that took off 12 gr. I'm going to keep it as 300gr because it's not like I can re-use that 12gr.

I'm also working on tiny bears for a local charity. I did two in a marled purple. I thought I grabbed the next size needles for the second purple bear but it seems I might have actually grabbed the next size smaller. They're the Bill and Ben Twin Bears from www.craftbit.com. That pattern sucks though, so I re-wrote it. If you'd like a copy, click HERE. There still might be some errors, so just let me know!

Disco Bear on the right. Sometimes they get their own personality. I see I forgot the mouth on the one on the left!

I got a large donation of yarn and the pink chenille and the purple were in it. The charity requests no animal fibers. I could not find a mid brown in my stash that wasn't at least some bit wool, but it was washable....I didn't want to risk it anyway. I don't like this brown but oh well.

Cut little bunny tail and freestyled floppy ears

Disco bear LOL. I don't know what happened when I sewed him together. The lower half looks like the toddler potty dance, the upper half is waving to the teacher to get their attention. 100gr for all the bears.

I bought 6 balls of red worsted yarn from Facebook Marketplace for more red scarves.

That's 1186gr of new yarn that I don't think I'm going to get knit this fall, but I'll be ready to go for next year. I was rooting through my bins and found a few balls of red Astra I had bought when I was making custom Christmas stockings. It's been awhile. Do I dare use it for scarves?

I've also been sewing but I'll save that for another day.  I've been trying to blog this post for a month but Blogger, on this account, has not been working for inserting pictures on my laptop. I can use a different account, and post pictures in the blog I have on that account (Ontteachertracy if you're into music teaching). I was down in the basement doing my morning yoga and thought I'd give the desktop a try. So at least I can post this way. It feels so retro LOL. Stuck in the cold (Air conditioning) basement!

Oh, and I'm test crocheting something and needed to buy yarn for that but I'll save that for another post.

Yarn In:  1182gr
Yarn Out: 1005gr + 500gr = 1505gr
Balance: 323gr more OUT than in
Costs: $20

This is such a falsified total LOL. All those bears were from donated yarn which I didn't count in my Yarn In total LOL.

Little Bit of This, Little Bit of That

 I have been working on a black/charcoal shawl/stole for what feels like forever. I think I started in early March--I think I worked on it at Lucy's Iron Ring ceremony (a really cool Canadian tradition for graduating engineers). 

It kept Rob warm at a "Brass on the Grass" concert in June (our local brass band, The Whitby Brass Band holds outdoor concerts in the summer)

It kept Megan and I very warm during Lucy's extremely cold graduation ceremony, in a big arena on the hottest day of the year. It's been on numerous road trips. It just feels like it's been FOREVER. It's probably wider than I realize, and I wanted to make sure it was long enough to really wrap around me. I've started the decrease section, and I finally feel like it might end!

I also finished (quite a while ago), another shrug that I had worked on during our New Brunswick road trip last year. It was supposed to be the easier of the two that I worked on during that trip, because it's just stockinette. But do I do easy? LOL. Every once in awhile I'd notice I had done a purl row on the knit side. It's knit cuff to cuff, and one arm ended up being quite a bit narrower than the other arm. I unstitched the seam, and added basically a long short row gusset under the arm. I added a ribbed band all the way around, but tried to incorporate shaping but it just didn't work and I think I undid that and just kept it as ribbing. In the end, I haven't worn it much--it's very warm, and even though I wear a lot of turquoise, it just doesn't work. 

It bled a lot when I washed it! Such a pretty colour.

I think this picture was to show the inside, one edge of the short row gusset I added to get more width in the arm. The sleeves are not quite wrist length, and this starts about 3 inches up from the wrist edge. It's a good thing it was a very textured, colourful boucle.

I don't have any shots of it on. Just scroll down a few posts and look at the other shrug. This one is just solid, no lace pattern. It was made with Mystique Mohair Boucle, 12ply, Hand Painted by Jan Gilray. I still have a 100gr skein (and a small ball). The tag says $9.99 but I think I bought it at Value Village. The shrug used 190gr (so somewhere is about a 10gr ball).

My middle kid Lucy and her boyfriend sometimes go to cat sit for his brother, and they wanted to take him some new mice, so I made a few. I couldn't find the pattern I used before...perhaps I should have searched this blog LOL. I don't even remember how many I made, or how much yarn they used...but let's just say 50gr.

And lastly, Megan is going to stay with her boyfriend and his aunt & uncle for 5 days and wanted to take a felted duck for their dog, so that got done last week. A whopping  112gr used up. 

I never really liked the feet in the pattern so I experimented. I tried short rows to make the points, and I tried a sort of chevron inc/dec pattern (like on afghans). Not happy with either, but oh well, I'm sure the dog doesn't care.

I did receive a donation of yarn for making blankets and baby items. I'm not going to count it right now, as I'm not sure how much I will actually keep. I'll get to that soon. 

Yarn In:  0gr
Yarn Out: 653gr + 352gr (this post)=  1005gr
Balance: 1005gr more OUT than in
Costs: $0

Delayed Reyna

When I was looking at my 2018 yarn totals and looked back at my 2017 totals, I saw  that I included the Reyna shawl in the totals. Mmmmm.  I don't recall actually blogging about it...did I even photograph it?!

We were going on a big family trip to a luxury cottage in the Muskokas, July 2017. I wanted a simple shawl pattern that would look nice with a handpainted yarn. I'm not sure where I asked for recommendations--I think on my Facebook page. "Reyna Shawl" was mentioned a couple times. It seemed simple enough.

I did no prep before we went. I didn't even wind the yarn (Araucania "Ranco Sock").

What better way to ball up a skein than with a view like this? Muskoka chairs are perfect for this.

 Less than a month later, the shawl was being blocked.

Dappled shade on a warm August day was perfect for blocking.

But I'm not thrilled. The colours are kind of muddy. If mud was purple, magenta and turquoise. Part of the issue is garter stitch when it's very short colour sections. I've worn it as a scarf with my winter coat, but that's about it. 

Estuary

While reviewing my blog for the year end totals, and trying to figure out when/if I blogged my coral socks, I realized that I had never blogged about my finished Estuary shawl. I had posted it on Instagram, but not here! I've been finding that happens a lot. I went back and edited my 2016 totals (yes, I made this shawl in 2016!), though the 67gr doesn't change things a lot, it did take it from a "more yarn in than out" year, to a "more yarn out than in" year. Barely. LOL. The cool thing is I could actually go back on my blog and find when I got this yarn! Apparently, it was March 2007! I tried working with it in November 2007, but wasn't happy with that project. Curlerchik and I have kept in contact, through blogging and then Instagram!

 These pictures were August 2015, at our favourite chip truck, which sadly disappeared. So I don't know exactly when I started the shawl, but it looks like I had a good chunk done here.

Apparently,  April 7 2016, I noticed a mistake, I had made a row with eyelets when there shouldn't have been. It's dead centre above, and off to the left below.

 Do you see them? I could not leave it. Rip Rip Rip.  I even blogged about the mistakes!

 I must have been really motivated to finished because by June 19 I had it finished and blocked.

 It's not a terribly wide "shawl", more scarf than shawl.

The colour reads more purple in sunlight. The pattern calls for fingering weight, and I think my yarn might have been more laceweight. I think I might have added a pattern repeat, but I'm not about to check it out now. It's a light, lovely little thing to wrap around the neck, or daintily over the shoulders with a sundress. Though I don't really do dainty.

I still have some of this yarn left over. I'm not sure how much but I don't think it's very much. Sometimes, you don't need to use up all the yarn. Sometimes it's nice to have a bit left, just as a keepsake.

Mistakes are Not Always Design Features

Often in knitting, you'll hear "Oh, it's not a mistake, it's a design element".  Once is a mistake, twice is a feature, thrice is purposeful.  Well, I made a mistake on this shawl, and didn't notice it till 27 rows later.  It is clearly a mistake, even if most people I showed it to could not find it right away.

 It was hard getting a good picture.  Running vertically, just to the left of the right pins, there are extra eyelets in the tips of the motifs.

 Close up, they do sort of blend in with all the other million eyelets, but they break up the tips of the motifs.

This picture shows it pretty well.

Of course, this is not a simple repeating pattern with clearly defined stitch repeats (chevrons or feather and fan type patterns).  Dropping down the offending stitch and reknitting it 27 rows....in this pattern, I wouldn't even do it if it was just ONE extra eyelet, and I think I did it 8 times.  What I don't understand, is how it didn't affect the next right side row!

The only way to fix this was to rip out the rows.  I thought maybe I could take a thin needle through a row just above it and then tink the last few rows, but the pattern undulates too much.  I kept it pinned down, and ripped the rows back, counting each row as I went.  I ripped 27 rows.  Then, I had to figure where this put me on the charts, since there are two charts, and one is 40 rows, and one (the section with the errors) is only 20 rows.  There is 4 rows in the 40 row chart that serve well as "landmarks" because two of them have a M1 at one end of the section, and two rows have it at the other end of the section.  In a sea of YOs, K2tog, SSK, SSP2O and K3tog, a M1 stands out.

I got it back on track, and I'm keeping care track of which row I'm on this time (you repeat the shorter chart something like 5 times, and the longer chart, it doesn't say how many times!).  It seems I've barely used any of the yarn (KnitPicks "Shadow", I think), but now I'm in the "even width" section so I'll just keep going on these charts for quite a while.  I wish I had made it one chart repeat wider, and actually, after ripping out the 27 rows, I would have had to rip out only about 20 more rows to get back to those charts...oh well!

Something for Me!

I've had a hard time in the past while, making things for myself.  I had some great mitts, but they've gone missing.  I've had a few hat failures.  I made a nice black hat last winter, and then a green set in late spring (which is starting to look messy--darn angora!).  I was making some pink socks in a Cookie A. pattern, and ran out of yarn. Nice to see though, when looking back, that I have made completed socks since then.  However, I started some other socks last winter, and the second ball of yarn has gone totally missing.  How does that happen?  I have a machine knit top on hold and a machine knit shawl that is also in time out.  I also have a sweater that is on hold, due only to the fact I need to lay it out and measure.

Every time TracyKM Designs is slow and I start thinking about knitting for myself, I suddenly get some orders.  I used to joke that my kids are like the cobbler's children...everyone else has new shoes except the cobbler's kids.  My kids don't get nearly enough handknit items from me (some don't like them!), and I get even less it seems!

Last Christmas, Tin Can Knits had a special offer to get a free pattern.  I chose "Branching Out" because of it's graphic, non-lacey lace.  I got started at New Year's, and it started out, like all top down shawls, super quick.  I had put the pattern on my new tablet, and found  the ability to make notes on the pattern very helpful.  Though I found it difficult to find the pattern on my tablet sometimes, LOL. 

(I don't know why Blogger is rotating my pictures!!)  This shows it half blocked.

I used Patons "Lace", which is mainly acrylic.  I knew it wouldn't block out a whole lot more, so I knit it at a tension that gave a nice look to the stockinette sections at the top.  I added several (or many!) repeats to some of the charts to add more length.

I chose the yarn, knowing it has long stripes, thinking the graphic design will not be hidden with the stripes.  For the first couple colour changes, it seemed to line up perfect with the pattern changes.  But then of course, as the shawl builds, and the rows get longer, the stripes get narrower.  Near the end, I actually used another ball and started the same colour, so I could get a wider section.

In the end, I'm not too fond of the stripes. I've been thinking of overdying, in a light blue shade.  I just want to tone down the white so that it's a pale blue.  What do you think?

Yarn In:  10 078gr

Yarn Out:  140gr + 5202gr = 5342gr

Balance:   4736gr more brought IN than out 

Costs:  $291.79/265 days = $1.10/day



Let Me Count the Ways

I've been working on a shawl, "Branching Out", since New Year's (okay, a couple days before New Year's).  The beginner went super.  Usually does with top down shawls.  Then I worried that my mixed blend Paton's "Lace" would not block out much, so I added repeats of some of the charts.  I'd work on it for a few days, then get to a new chart, or get an order, or sidetracked somehow, and it'd sit for awhile.  And I have the pattern on my tablet, and although I can mark where I am on the pattern, sometimes I have a hard time finding saved/downloaded items on it.  So, the shawl had been languishing on and off.  We have been having a "staycation" with my husband's American relatives, and that meant driving around playing tourists, AND my youngest's skating lessons are now over an hour, so I thought this would be a good time to get back to it. 

I was starting the very last chart on the weekend.  Because I had done extra repeats earlier, I knew I might have trouble.  However, the previous chart is only a 4 row repeat, and I figured it should actually be easy to start the last chart (figuring each half of the shawl increases by 2st every RS row, so 4st over those 4 rows, and the new chart had a 12 st repeat).  I started the new row 1, but it didn't seem to line up right with the previous row.  The previous chart was only a 4 st repeat (I think...), so the new 12 st one should fit nicely, shouldn't it?  The strange thing is, all along the shawl, the yarn over of the previous knit row is treated as a single knit stitch--never part of  a decrease.  The row 1 in this chart took that yarn over and put it into a decrease.  I did not like that and it seemed to be creating a problem.  The following rows did not do this either.  So, I opted to knit that first stitch, and then start the pattern, lining up a centred decrease so it fell on top of a group of three stitch from the last knit row. 

Once I did this, it was going well.  I got to the middle, and the chart says that now you work across the middle, not doing the YO, k1, YO that had created the centre spin up till then.  I had to fudge some stitches to get that centre k1 to line up nicely with the new pattern, then continued on my way, fudging the end of the row to get it to end properly.

Did the purl row.

Started the next knit row.  Went well, until about 1/3 way across.  I investigated, and found an error in the previous knit row.  Argh.  Ripped out that knit row, the purl row, and 2/3 of the knit row below :(

This set me back a bit.  Got the row re-knit (if the pattern had kept the centred spine, I could have just ripped out the two rows from the mistake to the centre!).  Got the purl row done.  Got almost 1/2 way across the knit row....again, something wasn't right!  This time, I decided to just rip out the two rows.  While this was faster, I did end up with a little bit of the yarn I had unravelled left.  Hard to describe--I had unravelled from the middle to the end, two rows; but I had already knit across to the middle.  So, I re-worked the two rows using the long strand that was attached at both ends...when I got to the last stitch of the purl row (meeting up with where I had left off on the next knit row), there was a bit of yarn left, in a loop.  Theoretically, I should have used it all up to re-work the stitches it came from!  As well,  I somehow ended up with the yarn from the ball in between the (circular) needles...I can't even describe it.  Had to slip the stitches off onto another needle, free the yarn, then slip them back (or knit them off actually). 

So, I got back on track, and now that the pattern is (correctly) established, it's smooth sailing, and the last 14 rows are flying by.  Well.  Flying means 25 minutes for a knit row and 17 minutes for a purl row.  I'm going to count my sts and rows at the end...

Green Eggs

Now, with most eggs, you can't just leave them laying around.  Nope, not recommended.  However, for this one, thankfully that was okay.  According to Ravelry, I started this mid-April 2011.  It went quite quickly at first, but well...the combination of the fine yarn...the endless repeats of the main chart....losing the pattern repeatedly....making the chart the background on my laptop so I wouldn't "lose" it and then having the laptop break....I finally finished in mid-May 2012.  And finally blocked it early September 2012.  Right before my husband dropped my beloved camera onto the concrete step.  Sigh.  So these pictures were taken with my older camera.  It's rather challenging to take pictures of a green shawl in a primarily green backyard!

 I used a cone of machine knitting yarn.  The stamp inside the cone says PC 40 -8801W (or could be -6901W) and also PE 50% CM 50%.  I never bothered with a flame test, with a 50/50 content who knows what will happen.  There was some shrinkage and fluffing when I steamed it.

 I was only going to steam out the points since I didn't want it any larger, but I went ahead and did the whole thing. 

It's huge.  On my shoulders, it comes down past my wrists.

 And weighs nothing.  94grams.  Over a year spent; a noticeable dent in the size of the cone, and less than 100grams. Which I don't get to count towards my stash busting since I started it last year before I started keeping track.

The points have relaxed quite a bit since I steamed in on the long weekend.That's alright.  The points don't keep the sun off you, or keep you warm.

And oh yeah, the pattern is Omelet, from www.knitty.com.  The longest one egg has ever been cooking.