Project Updates

My triangle shawl is just about complete! When I made the previous shawl, I noticed that the ends didn't stay put and wormed their way out of place. This time trying to avoid that. I am going to weave in the strands of yarns, then tack down the ends with a needle and thread. I finished it before the weekend and I have been putting that off just because I know that is going to take some time and I wanted to keep knitting my other projects. :-)

I decided I wanted to finish off the shawl with something other just a simple cast off and wanted to try to match the side edgings. I did a row of dropped garter stitches and then knitted up 3 rows of garter stitch, casting off with a larger needle to let it be a bit more giving. I was quite pleased with the results and quite pleased that I was able to guess when to do the dropped stitch row and have plenty of yarn to finish up the final rows and cast off!

It certainly isn't as large as the first one, but much more solid and sturdy, and I don't think I will have the any problems with the loops pulling through. It is very soft and a bit slippery, so I am considering putting three buttons on the front. I need to experiment, but I am pretty sure I can make some crocheted button loops and place them on the edge of the shawl. It might take some time, but I think I I can get it to work. So far I am very happy with the results that I have so far.

As for other projects I am still working on the Moss Knit Blanket for Tyler. It not exactly the quickest knit since I am moving the yarn back and forth for my knit and purls and it's quite large! Good thing I am using a thick yarn or he might never get his blanket this year!

Lauren's country squares blanket is much easier to knit and I can take the squares with me a lot easier than I can Tyler's blanket. She choose to make it larger with 12 squares instead of the 9 the pattern calls for, using three colors. Each color (pink, purple & blue) will have four squares with a green yarn to whip stitch to hold them all together. I am not a big fan of homespun yarn and have a hard time not splitting the yarn when I try to knit with it. I found I can't knit it with my Denise needles and went back to using my more blunt bamboo needles. The drawback to those is the cord isn't relaxed like my Denise ones and added to make frustration at times. I also noticed that the blue yarn we choose isn't as soft as the other colors and isn't as smooth when knitting. Now I did say it was much easier to knit, I did, however, despite the problems with the yarn and needles, it's all in garter stitches, so it is knitting up a little bit easier than that triangle shawl!

Of course I couldn't resist starting another project, especially after I saw this pattern for a shawl. In my stash I have some beautiful Bernat Soft Boucle in natural that was supposed to be for another pattern that I ended up not using. I also really like the texture of this yarn, plus it's so soft (and machine washable), it would be perfect to use for this shawl. After a couple of false starts I finally cast on and got started, worked about 12 rows, only to find I dropped a stitch.... and took out about 8 rows because it's very hard to figure out how to rescue a dropped stitch with this yarn! It's also hard to knit with my very pointy denise needles. I tried another set of needles that were more blunt, but the yarn doesn't slide easily. But I haven't given up on this yet, I really do like the way the yarn is knitting up and I love the feel of it. I have some skeins in red that I have set aside for a sweater, so this will be good practice for that future project.

I feeling rather icky and instead of finding my knitting relaxing it's more like a sedative. So I am not getting much done until I am feeling much better.