knit

Ribbed Neck Warmer

No matter what I have on my needles, I am always easily distracted when my husband says, “I wish I had……..do you think you could make that?”  Well, he has been getting back into fly fishing, and it is usually pretty chilly and damp on the river. A regular scarf isn’t practical with the ends flying around getting caught in the line or snagged by a hook.  I had just made my cabled neck warmer and he said that would be the perfect thing for fishing, but plain and made of something that could get wet.  So I dropped all my other projects to whip up a special neck warmer for his next fishing excursion. I decided to make the first version out of some Lion Brand Wool-Ease I had sitting in my stash, a little bit of wool for warmth and acrylic to keep it from shrinking and keep its shape. It is super soft too.

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View and download the pattern here

Ribbed neck warmer

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Felted Slippers

Back in 2002, I made my husband a pair of the felted clogs that were all the rage then. They were made using this pattern by Bev Galeskas for Fiber Trends. They lasted about 4 years without leather soles.  I ended up making them for myself and one of my kids too. Mine and then Joe’s. I added leather soles to Joe’s and they have worn well. The next pair I made for hubby, I put leather soles on and he wears them in the yard and garden and taking out the trash and everywhere. They have lasted about 8 years now, but they are wearing out from the inside. I decided I would try a new pattern and my hubby, who does not do well with change, graciously said he would love any pair of slippers that I made for him.   So I decided to use Julie’s Men’s Felted Mocs at Lavender Hill Knits.

I had some yarn that I purchased many years ago on a trip to Vermont, it would work perfectly. I had already made a hat for a friend from it but I was pretty sure I would have just enough to make the slippers.

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Using the yarn doubled to get gauge I had just enough to make two soles with sides.

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I had just this much leftover! Whew!    So I made the uppers and the heel flaps with some Cascade 220 in a charcoal grey that I had in my leftovers basket. I think it blended quite nicely.

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As with all felting projects, the knitting always ends up looking so huge and I never quite believe that is is all going to work out. Here are the slippers next to MY feet, pre felting.  Granted my feet are smaller than hubby’s feet, but still, they are huge.

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I felted them in my front loading washer.  I usually have good luck with this even though “they” say you can’t use a front loader for felting. I just put them in a lingerie bag, then toss it in the washer with a  beach towel and a pair of old sneakers.  I set a custom program to hot wash and no spin and pray.

Here they are fresh out of the washer, I made Hubby try them on while they were still wet; he is such a trooper putting cold wet wool on his bare feet while I fuss about whether they are the right size or not. They seemed a little big to me but he likes them roomy, so we let them dry in the air for a few days.

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I felt that this pair would look better with the leather patch type soles than the full soles that I usually use. I also used the grey yarn to whip stitch around the uppers and tack down the decorative heel flap. The sides of the slippers curled more than the sample in the pattern, but Hubby is happy with them and has worn them every night since I finished them. He promises these will not go in the garden, he’ll use the old pair for that.

Here are his happy feet.

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sometimes you need something cute

Our high school is participating in the 1:1 computing program for students. This year  each student received a Google Chromebook with a case to protect it.  We are an Apple family and Rose was disappointed that they didn’t all get MacBooks, though it seems the Chromebook is easier to integrate and much less expensive and for many families, this is their student’s first computer. They are small and cute and have a touch screen. They have many social sites blocked so the kids won’t all be on Twitter and Instagram but then they still all have their phones. However, the case doesn’t fit that well, you have to jam the computer into it and squeeze to get it zipped closed, so Rose asked if I would knit a quick sleeve for hers, and “can you get it done by Tuesday when school starts?”

So we perused my stash and found a couple of balls of yarn that were part of a gift bag from a Mindful Knitting retreat I went to back in 2006. Pink and grey, really soft and just the right weight. I swatched a little to figure out how many stitches I would need to go around the computer. I only had to rip it out once before I got it right.

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I decided to use this project to learn a new technique that I have been meaning to figure out for a while. The Jogless Join. This is where you can change colors while knitting in the round without an obvious “jog” in the stripe. It’s pretty simple once you actually try it.  Here you can’t even tell where the old row ends and the new row begins.

Then we decided we would make the stripes in the Fibonacci series, since this was for school and she’ll be taking calculus and physics and all. I was impressed that she could tell me the code for the series. 1,2,3,5,8,13,21…..  you add the two previous numbers together to get the next value in the series.

The deadline turned out to be no big deal since Tuesday night was a rare slow night in the ER and I wasn’t assigned to the trauma zone.  Therefore I could knit while I watched my admitted patients sleep.

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You can see the Fibonacci stripes marching out nicely, then in reverse so as to use roughly even amounts of each color. The pattern will be available on my revelry page soon.

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If you look closely you can see where the new color joins on each stripe, the beginning of the round moves over to the left one stitch each time. but overall I think it looks better.

The finished product with a garter stitch open edge to prevent curling.  Rose is happy and as soon as she showed her friends they immediately wanted one too. A sure sign of success with teenagers.

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My Candace Shell

I’m trying to work my way through my stash before I spend more money on yarn. I can’t remember what I planned to make with this particular yarn, It is Sirdar Spree, a bulky weight mostly cotton yarn. I made the Candace shell with it, just using about 3 skeins of the wight that I have. You can see it on my Ravelry page here. It was a quick knit on size US 10 needles. The pattern uses 13’s but I must knit extremely loose, I kept going down a size and knitting a swatch and still getting too few stitches per inch.  It will be a great top to wear for the rest of the summer.  IMG_5269IMG_5545  IMG_5376 IMG_5375 IMG_5516 IMG_5543 IMG_5542

 

I might have liked a little shaping at the waist, even with the vertical ribbing, I find the bulky yarn just makes me look bulky too. The yarn is not that fun to knit with because it splits very easily, and catches on everything. The pattern itself fits me perfectly though, I knit it in the second size, The colors will look great with my linen pants. Now on to the next project, another sweater with some more stash yarn or a wrap with the rest of this yarn? 

 

 

What is normal?

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Because it is totally normal that mom and daughter are sitting beside each other knitting in matching dresses.