Picture Time

As promised, shots of my most recent FOs.

Twist & Shout - which is perfect for showing off the baby bump



Baby Girl's first mom-made sweater, Sherbet, with the addition of arrow cables down the front panels. Lovingly modeled by Pooh bear





Bella's Mitten's - A fun and fast knit!





A quick self made baby hat - too big for a newborn as I had intended when I started out, but just perfect for a friend's 6 month old. Eventually I'm going to rework this pattern for newborn size as well, then will post on this blog.



And my best work of this year, the gorgeous In The Pink. I truly am thrilled with how this one turned out - so much that I'm thinking I can't be selfish keeping it for myself. I have a certain person in mind who I'm hoping might make good use of this.

Keep Moving Forward

I'm learning that with knitting (and in some cases life as well) sometimes I just need to follow directions whether or not they make any sense at all. I can't tell you how many times I've read and re-read a section of a pattern trying to figure it out, and have just not been able to see where I'm going with it. I'll get to a point where I'll do one of two things: either throw down the project in exasperation and ignore it for months or just start blindly following the directions, hoping for the best. The funny thing is that when I go with the latter, nine times out of ten it'll be exactly right and actually make sense once it's on the needles.

Case in point is the edging for In The Pink, the spiral shawl that I was working on in spring. My goal was to have it finished in time to wear to my girlfriend's Tahoe wedding in June but clearly that did not happen. Mid May I hit that border edge, didn't totally understand what I was to do, and put it down in frustration.

Just last week I finally picked it up again. I read through the directions a couple of times and still couldn't picture it but thought, "What the heck, I'll give it a shot." Lo and behold, it actually started to make some sense! I hadn't realized that the edging would be worked perpendicular to the body of the shawl until I actually gave it a shot:



It's amazing that time and time again if I just take a "Keep Moving Forward" stance on knitting I will have success. It's not like this is a new lesson for me, yet I still have to remind myself of this fact every time I hit a wall.

"Around here, however, we don't look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things... and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths." - Walt Disney

Shalom & In the Pink

I finished up Shalom.


I much prefer a people model for FOs, but since the intended recipient is skinny and I am, well, not, I had to use a chair instead. I added a little embroidered OM (or at least the semblance of, I hope) to cover up a mistake in the border. Mom always said, if you've made a mistake you might as well show it off in style! To tell the truth, I actually like the way it turned out.



Oh yeah, and remember how I was bemoaning my stupidity at ordering so few skeins? It turns out that skinny people don't need as much yardage - I ended up using one less skein than I had originally ordered. Which means that now I have a shitload of Knit Picks Shamrock in Connolly. Go figure!




Sunday night I started working on In the Pink using the gorgeous Blue Heron Yarn featured previously in my blog. The pattern, despite the way it looks when you print out the directions is actually very simple and easy to follow so far. In fact, it's somewhat addicting, which could be the combination of the easy-to-memorize pattern, luscious yarn, and the fact that whatever fragrance was in the yarn shop where I purchased it still permeates the yarn so with each stitch I get a whiff of deliciousness. (FYI - The shop is Knit and Pearl).


I honestly believe this gem of a pattern would be queued and knit more frequently if it was written more simply and with the addition of pictures (currently the pattern is very wordy and has nary a photo). For example, I realized that on the center circle from round 12 through 54 it could have been written simply like this instead:

Round 1: (yo, k1) 3 times, k to 2 sts before marker, k2tog. Rep to end of round
Round 2: k to 2 sts before marker, k2tog. Rep to end of round
Repeat these two rounds until you have 27 stitches between markers. Then, repeat round 1 once more (29 sts between markers).

I think that a lot of knitters are intimidated when they have to follow page after page of instruction and don't always take the time to sit down and look at what is really going on with a pattern. Also more detailed and step by step pictures of the process are very useful for visual learners (myself included).



So far I've finished the central medallion and right side (picture above shows the center medallion at about halfway done - more pictures to follow when I have good lighting).

Tonight I began working on the left side and found that Rows 5- 7 didn't make sense. A quick Ravelry search lead me to these alternate instructions by Ravelrer KnittingToday which I have copied below directly from her pattern notes:

5) K3, (YO, K1) twice, YO, PM, SSK, (K1, YO) twice 3 times, SSK, YO, K1, YO, K3
6) K3, P24, K3
7) K3, YO, K1, YO, PM, K3, Yo, K1, Yo, M, SSK, K1, (K1, YO)twice 3 times, SSK, (K1, YO)twice, K3

I'm scurrying off to try this out now - hope it works!