I have made some progress on Kassiani since my last post. I am in the final sections now and while the rows are almost at their largest, it is going pretty quickly. I am hoping to have it finished and blocked in time for Stitches Midwest in a few weeks.
I have am cooking up a new design based on a stitch pattern I saw online somewhere. I can’t remember where I saw it, probably Facebook or Instagram, but I saved the picture and began looking through my stitch dictionaries for it. I never came across it so I decided to try and re-create it just by looking at the picture and knitting it as best I could. I surprised myself by finding I could do it, and charted it as I went. Here is the resulting swatch and my hand written charts which I will use to make a digital chart later.
I swatched it in my Organic Cotton Sport weight yarn because I am thinking to do a baby blanket and I may even do a sweater set to go with it. More on that later. I am trying to finish Kassiani before I start this new project.
Okay that’s all I have time for right now. I have a big to-do-list today including delivering an order of dyed fiber to the mill today that I did last week.
Well, here I am again after a shockingly long hiatus. I saw Needlefingers catch up post yesterday and was inspired to dust off my blog and get back to writing. I like to keep this little record for some of the same reasons Kristi stated. It’s a good way to refresh my memory of what happened when. That gets increasingly helpful at my age, LOL. Also it’s a good way to share with interested parties what’s happening with the business and my knitting. Sure, I can and do use Ravelry to record knitting projects, but sometimes, like now actually, when I am working on a design of my own that I plan to publish the pattern for, I tend to wait until it’s published to post it there.
Which leads nicely into what is on my needles anyway? Well I started this current project around the end of July I think, after I finished my Sprossling in Classic Merino Superwash Sock yarn.
I had this idea to design a Shetland style lace square, but with some modifications on the traditional model. I wanted to make it using my one of my newer colors, Honeydew, in Classic Merino Lace. Time for a picture, yes?
I picked out a lace pattern from Barbara Walters Treasury and tried swatching from the written directions just to see if I wanted to pursue it. I got about eight rows into a thirty-two row repeat and gave up on that idea. I could see I was never going to make it through the swatch without a chart. So I then spent several hours charting the design and got back to my swatch. I liked it and calculated by gauge how many stitches to cast on and got started. This picture above is taken about a month after I cast on and before I started the border.
What I did that was different from traditional lace squares, AFAIK, is work my center square from one end to the other rather than on the diagonal. I realized after awhile of knitting that I could see the wisdom in the diagonal square for actually producing a square. In order to make the stitch pattern come out even mine is slightly taller than it is wide. I didn’t want to be work mine diagonally because of the pattern direction. I proceeded hoping for the best. :-)
Finally I reached to point of picking a border design, and went with an Ostrich Plume. By the time I had done one repeat of that I had well over 1000 stitches on the needles I think and decided that was quite enough and time to pick an edging. At this point I and on the final side, having passed the third corner this weekend, and heading to the finish line.
I am not completely sure how big this thing is but I am on the seventh skein of yarn, heh heh. Is anyone going to want to make this? LOL! We shall see, but it is pretty impressive if size counts for anything. This has been my exclusive knitting except for a quick foray into baby sweater knitting around Christmas and New Years for some of the grandbabies.
We are also hard at work in the woodshop this winter/spring making a huge, and I do mean huge, batch of mahogany and walnut boxes. We are finally to the sanding stage. We have to sand all the insides of the box pieces before we do the glue up/assembly, which is to come next.
Oh, I told you back in June how we had gotten a couple guinea pigs, right? Well in September we added a kitten to the mix. Here’s Mimi. :-) She was rescued from someones car engine and we adopted her. She was around 7-9 weeks old I think when we got her which makes her around 7-8 months now. The top picture is from October 2017 and the bottom one was taken last week.
Okay, I’ll close for now and see you soon. Thanks for reading!
Yikes! Where did the spring go? How can it already be Memorial Day weekend and the unofficial start of summer? I guess time flies when you are busy (and old, LOL). I knew it had been awhile since I posted but I didn’t realize my last post was April 25th. Sorry about that.
I have been traveling much and basically checking in at home long enough to do the grocery shopping, launder my clothes and throw them back in my suitcase. :-) I have a bit of knitting progress on my Sprossling but it’s still not a sweater yet. I have the back almost finished. Forgive the lighting please; it’s in my hotel room.
When I AM home I have been enjoying the wildlife feeders we have in our yard. We see all kinds of critters and birds at the feeding stations. Here’s a feeder Jerry made for the squirrels (in hopes they will stay out of the bird feeder, LOL). Check out the one on the ground eating what the other one drops. :-D
I am in Wooster, OH at the moment for the Great Lakes Fiber Show. I hope to see some of you who are regulars to the festival. I am in my usual spot, for those of you who may be new to the show, that is Bldg. 39 booths 31-33.
I have always thought that the drive through Cincinnati is an interesting one. The way the city skyline appears coming in from the south on I-71/I-75. I decided to try to snap a quick shot on Thursday. I was kind of rainy, but still looks pretty cool.
The top image is the raw shot and the second is cropped to zoom in the perspective.
Well, I guess that will do for today. I hope I don’t leave you hanging for a month again. No promises, but I will try. There’s a new grand baby due in a couple weeks so at the very least you will probably hear from me then if not sooner. Thanks for hanging in there. :-)
