skein

New project - Striped Illusion

This is a stealth project, being worked on when Mr C is out.  It's his Christmas present.  I had two skeins of Artesano Aran in grey left over from knitting Jerrard's scarf and as it's such a lovely, thick, warm yarn I thought I'd use it to knit Chris a scarf.  He loves bright colours, but was happy to have another seaman type scarf (two tails with ribbing around the neck) in grey.  I thought I might liven it up a bit with some colour, and decided to knit a striped scarf with neck ribbing. 

Yesterday I found a book which I bought last year called Knitting New Scarves. Here's a blog!  Lots of unusally constructed scarves, and I've been wanting to cast on several of them.  So instead of knitting Chris a normal striped scarf I thought I'd do the Striped Illusion. It's plain garter stitch, with stripes not quite lined up and movement between the two ends of the rows every stripe, so it looks as if there are two layers, not one.  A photo best describes this (taken in a darkened room in a hurry, before Chris arrived back on Sunday!)

The colours are red and grey.  All he knows is that it's grey plus 'a colour' and also that I won't be knitting regular stripes.

It's not difficult at all, and, as I'm doing two short tails, I won't be bored to death with the pattern.

Love it! The problem now is that I see several other scarf projects I have to do! 

Multnomah Shawl

A slightly dishevelled Dawn in a slightly out of focus shot.  Last night I asked Mr C. if he'd take a few photos this morning, before he went to the boat.  There was I, having a bit of a lie-in, half way through my cup of tea, when he wanders in with his coat on ready to go to the boat!   I had to quickly get up, unpin the shawl (still blocking!), sew in the two ends and throw on some clothes whilst he stood there, waiting.  Talk about not giving me much time! 

 

Pattern: Multnomah Shawl

Started: 29th October

Finished: 6th November

Needles: 3.25mm

Yarn: Starry (you can't see the sparkles but they're there!)

A lovely quick pattern.  Garter stitch plus feather and fan, yum!

 

In all the rush I forgot to get photos of the finished lace wrist warmers!  I don't like having just one or two small wips, I  need to ensure that there's spare projects in line in case I end up with ... nothing on the needles!

My unsuccessful knitting day

So I had a day off yesterday. With Multnomah off the needles I needed to cast on something, and decided to use the rest of the Starry yarn to knit some beaded lace wristwarmers.  I fancied beads, and with only about 125yds (or so) of Starry left found an ideal pattern - Heartstrings Beaded Lace Wristwarmers.

I personally don't see the point in wearing wrist warmers, give me hand warmers or gloves any day. But these are intended to go into a teenage box of small knitted gifts for my nieces.

If I was knitting these for myself I'd choose a darker bead, but I thought that these sparkly beads would go well with the sparkly Starry.

I cast on. I noticed that my beaded edge didn't look like the ones photographed, but chose to ignore this and knitted one wrist warmer. Decided to look at the finished wrist warmers on ravelry - nope, mine did not look like those either!  So I went to the Heartstrings site and there's errata on the very first row!  I was placing beads every other stitch instead of every stitch.  As I had 26 beads 'spare' I presumed that there was an error and that i had to do the same on row 2.  Misplaced asterisk! 

So, after a whole day of knitting, I have this progress photo:

 

Yes, back to square one.   It was also an identical photo at 11pm - I decided to frog again!  These are for a niece, and 72 sts was just too much width. 
I moped about, looking for another project to start. But nothing jumped out at me.  I wanted to finish these, the bit was between my teeth!  So I cast on a third time with justs 60 sts. 

 

 Not finished yet - I have about another 1.5" of cuff to knit.  This isn't the most ideal yarn for the pattern, far too busy, and the beads are very sparkly, but it will be fine for the recipient.  I may knit these again in a plain yarn, so that the lovelyl lace pattern shows up.  In a few months, just not now!

On the shawl front, Multnomah is blocking!

Plain dk socks

As I've said before, this first week of daily blogging has an unusually high number of FOs! It won't be happening every day!

These are some plain socks for Mr C's birthday in December.

The yarn is a German sock yarn (label lost as usual) and he chose the colour when we were over in Germany last year.

Pattern: top down, ribbed leg, plain foot, heel flap and gusset on 52 stitches.

Yarn: dk sock yarn

Needles: 2.75mm

Started: 24th October

Finished: 5th November (a quick knit, but I only knitted on these when Chris wasn't around.)

I'm off work today, so plan to do a whole lot of knitting.  I've cast off my shawl as well, so nothing on the needles!  I've decided to try to use up the remnants of Starry, about 120 yds, and am thinking of little wrist warmers.

New project alert! Multnomah Shawl

Something new on the needles now!

This is the Multnomah Shawl (whose name I keep forgetting, and I have to look it up every time).

Yarn is Stardust from IKL, a sock weight yarn with sparkly bits!  Though unfortunately the sparkly bits aren't showing up in the photos.  The colour is called Turning Tide, and is a lovely mix of blues and purples.

 

It's darker and more purple than this.

It's a lovely pattern - just simple garter stitch and now I'm onto the feather and fan pattern.

I have a soft spot for feather and fan, such an effective lace pattern. Give me either feather and fan or a small repeating lace pattern and I'm in seventh heaven!  This is the commuting knitting this week, I'm hoping it will grow fast enough so daily photos look different!