The Wedge Circle

There are various ways to create a circular shawl. The first way is to evenly increasing 8 stitches every other round to form wedges.

CO 8sts. Join in round, being careful not to twist.
R1: [k1, yo, pm] 8x.
R2: Knit around.
R3: [k to marker, yo, sm] 8x.
R4: Knit around.
Rep R3&4.
This shaping actually creates an octagon, which you then block into a circle.

To make the swirl curl in the opposite direction simply [yo, k to marker] every other round, rather then [k to marker, yo].

To work a circular shawl made up of wedges from the hem to center, use the same concept and similar formulas as working a square shawl form the hem to center.

Determine your final gauge and the desired radius of your shawl. The radius is half the width of your final shawl, or the length from the center to the edge of your shawl.

1. [number of rounds per inch] x [desired radius] = [number of rounds total]
2. [number of rounds total] / 2 = [number of decrease rounds] you divide by two because you decrease every other round
3. [number of decrease rounds] x [8sts decreased per decrease round] = [number of stitches decrease]
[number of stitches decreased] + [8 BO stitches] = [number of sts to cast on]
Make sure your cast on number is divisible by 8.

CO this number and work 8 evenly spaced single decreases every other round until you have 8 sts on the needles. Break, yarn, leaving a tail, and thread the tail through all live sts, pull tight and weave in your end. (The same way you would finish off the crown of a hat.)

So if you cast on 48 sts. Join in the round, being careful not to twist.
R1: [K6, pm] 8x.
R2: [K4, k2tog, sm] 8x.
R3: Knit around.
R4: [K to 2 sts before marker, k2tog, sm] 8x.
Repeat R3&4.

The previous post in this series is on center out & hem in squares and can be found over here.

Related posts

• Shawl Geometry: Square Center Out and Hem In
• Shawl Geometry
• Looking back at knitting Gene Tierney
• Knit, knit, knit

Finally got around to blocking. Love this pattern.

Annis.

By

Sussana IC

Yarn= Malabrigo sock yarn.

Then, Tanis released the Sproutlette Dress pattern in March, and I finally saw something that could scratch my baby dress itch! It was the perfect little baby girl knit, and I needed it badly.

Since I definitely wanted it to be a comfortable dress for summer, I decided it needed to be cotton. I ordered some Cascade Ultra Pima Fine in Deep Coral, since it reminded me of the original color Tanis made. I couldn’t wait to cast on!

I made a mess of it to start – all my fault – by using the chart and not noticing that the knits and purls are switched on alternate rows, since you’re knitting back and forth at the beginning. Much grumbling ensued. After ripping back, I started following the written instructions so I wouldn’t run into any more self-inflicted mistakes. It was all smooth sailing after that, and I was completely charmed with both the pattern and the yarn.

Two weeks ago, I finished up the dress and blocked it. It needed it, as the scalloped edging benefited from some straightening out. And here’s the finished product!

I made the smallest size, 0-3 months, and it seems a little big to me compared to commercially sized baby dresses. But the beauty of babies is that it will all fit eventually, and that if the dress is a little large on her, it’s still not a huge deal. I also loved the opportunity to put a sweet little button on the back.

I really liked the idea of using a contrasting color button, and I felt like it really had to be a flower to keep in theme with the dress.

Overall, I LOVED this little project. And my baby dress itch is over – for now.

Since it used far less yarn than I thought (about 306 yards – Ravelry page here), I’m still working on the Dandelion Days cowl with the leftovers, and still feeling unsure how that’s working together, but plugging along for a while longer before making a decision!

I finished this skirt two weeks ago and I’ve already been wearing it quite a lot since then. It’s the Hollyburn Skirt by Sewaholic, in a beige and brown tweed that has a golden thread woven in, though you can’t really see that on the pictures. I lined it with beige Venezia, following those instructions, and the buttons I chose are wood.

The fabric is quite thick, which was kind of a pain to work with when came the time to sew the button tabs, but all in all everything went smoothly, even tough because of the thickness you can sometimes see the bulk of the pockets through the skirt.

The pattern was very straightforward, so I really took my time and focussed on achieving a very clean finish: French seams (my first ones!) on the lining, handsewn hem, hand-picked zipper…

I wanted a classical skirt that wouldn’t be boring either (hence the golden speckles!), and I’m really happy with the result.

Also, a thing that is always very important to me in a garment is to be able to ride my bike comfortably when wearing it (I bike to work, and everywhere as a matter of fact!), and this skirt passes the test, yay!

PS Pirouette, Cacahuète is the title and chorus of a well-known French nursery rhyme with an allusion to golden thread. Plus “cacahuète” means “peanut” in French and my skirt is kind of the color of peanuts (well, the background is, I assure you!).

This is, technically, my first granny square! Watch how it grows…

I loved how fast I saw progress with this project! It was addictive…

This is what the body of the shrug looked like before the addition of sleeves. Now that is one big granny square!

The next step was to pick up stitches for the knitted portion of the sleeves. I don’t know why, but I’ve always loved picking up stitches! Its one of my favorite knitting skills (and I think I just certified myself as a Knitting Knerd for having a favorite knitting skill… yikes!)

This is what the ribbed sleeves look like… in progress, that is!

And before I knew it… voila!!!! DONE!!!

This is my feeble attempt to get a good shot of the back!

And that is what the shrug looks like all completed and folded up!

In conclusion, I really loved every aspect of creating this project. If I wasn’t a die-hard devotee of crochet before, I definitely am now! In an odd way it makes me love knitting more, too. I love both crafts and the way they complement each other, and this project is the perfect embodiment of that. I am also definitely planning to try more of Vickie Howell’s patterns! I made this shrug as a gift for someone, and I am very excited to give it. Okay, in all honesty, it did not start out as a gift for someone else… it was a gift for me! [Insert guilty grin here] As I made steady progress and got a feel for what it was going to look like, though, I kept thinking how much it would suit someone I know. I just know this person is going to love it, so making the decision to gift this project was an easy one!

~Peace to All Beings!~

It’s finished and I could not be happier!

On Thursday I wove in the ends and on Friday I fastened the buttons which means that my pretty cardi is ready to wear.

I really liked knitting it. The lace yarn was easy to work with and since there was not much pattern, only straight knitting I could do it while watching my boys and talking and it was easy to put down and come back to.  The only tricky part was the ribbing at the bottom and the sleeves.  All those knitting and purling through the back loop (which I had no idea how to do (thank you youtube!)) and those twists… but it looks really pretty.

Blocking was not hard and I think the flowers are looking fab.

I made size 1 exactly like described in the pattern except I added a few stitches to the fronts and back to make the body a little wider and it fits great but maybe I should have mad it a little longer.

Overall, a cute, well fitting crop cardi, great to wear with high waisted skirts.  The lace yarn turned out beautifully and resulted in a light, airy fabric which I love. And those flowers…

This weekend I made that gray circle skirt to go with the cardi.  It’s made from cotton voile and is very light and super fun to twirl in.  Since I hemmed it with a rolled hem on my overlocker it was very easy to make and I imagine it will get lots of wear this summer.

I don’t have any new FOs this Friday, so I thought I’d take a look back at one of my older pieces. Gene Tierney, the divine

I’ve recently fallen back in love with this shawl and have been wearing it everywhere the past couple days. It’s large and cushy without being heavy or dense. It’s super easy to wear, and looks great with just about anything.

I originally designed this shawl for the Sanguine Gryphon’s Fall 2011 “Film Noir” pattern line. The original sample was knit with two skeins of Mithril (which the Verdant Gryphon now carries) in the “Der Blaue Engel” colorway. I’ve since re-released the pattern, which you can get here.

The craziest thing about this shawl is how much I LOVE it now, compared to how over it I was when the pattern first came out.

Since I tend to design very large, intricate shawls that can’t generally be whipped up in a couple days, I try to be very conscious of deadlines and how much I’m knitting when I’m knitting on a deadline for a publication. Usually I work out how many days between when I get the yarn and when I need to mail off the sample, then I determine the number of rows I need to knit every day between now and then to get the sample done with plenty of time to block it and mail it, and make sure it gets to the publication on time. Usually I try to build in plenty of cushion into this schedule because I’ve found that, just like I don’t really knit small shawls, I don’t really make small mistakes either, and the larger the shawl the larger the mistake.

Somehow this didn’t whole planning thing didn’t happen for Gene Tierney.

I don’t remember why this process didn’t happen. Maybe it’s because it was summer, or I had a lot of other work at the time (theater and knitwear), or because I knew I was going on vacation for a week so I’d have lots of knitting time, or I just got distracted because I knew it was a rectangle so I didn’t have to front load so much of the knitting like I do with shawls where the stitch count increases. But for whatever reason it didn’t happen.

So about half way through my week-long family vacation, in the middle of August, in the middle-of-nowhere upstate New York, I glanced at my calender and said “shit.”

The shawl was due in something like two weeks, and I hadn’t exactly been power knitting through the sample. I think I had maybe one repeat done (out of six).

So I flipped. And then finished knitting the shawl in seven or eight days. Not something I can highly recommend.

I blocked the shawl, wrote the pattern, sent the shawl off asap and just made the deadline. At which point, even though I loved the pattern, and the yarn, and the design, I was a little over it.

Needless to say the feeling I had when the pattern finally came out, all I could think was “thank god it’s done.”

So, I eventually got the sample back, put it in a drawer, and didn’t look at it for awhile. Re-released the pattern, but then put it back in the drawer. Only to pull it out one day this spring and fall in love all over again.

You can find the details for the pattern here.

And see more photos here.

If you’d like more FO Friday posts, visit Tami’s blog.

Related posts

• No Swatches
• Shawl Geometry
• Shawl Geometry: Square Center Out and Hem In
• First Third of a Shawl

Somehow I managed to completely miss Work in progress wednesday, so I’ll do an update on my Giant berry granny tomorrow! That has been my main project for the week, the others have spent some time waiting for me to get fed up with it. But I don’t seem to be getting fed up with it yet, although the rows are getting pretty endless…

But back on topic: Finished objects! I finished my Lindisfarne shawl, but I’m not calling it officially finished until it’s been blocked (which is a necessity in this case!). It turned out a bit small and has me at a loss on how to wear it. I’m regretting altering the chevron rows to make it wider now. But I’ve decided on a plan of action if even blocking does not help. I will add a braid and pompoms and turn it into a cute capelet!

I did finish some other things this week: hexipuffs! I finally picked my dpns up again and got a puffing. I have high hopes of making my goal of 15 for this month! I only have 4 left to go. And one of the puffs I will be sharing today is quite special as it it puff number 25. It sounds like a lot, but it really isn’t when you consider how many you will need to a quilt… So I’ve decided to not think about numbers too much and just go with it and have fun.

These were this weeks first 2 puffs. A purple sparkly puff and a hand dyed brown and blue variegated. Puffs like the second are special because they are made of my first hand dyed yarn ever. And the colours are just really pretty.

I had ordered some yarn in colours that were still missing form my beekeepers quilt form ebay as the pastel yarn I had been using for puffs is so ridiculously soft. I ordered a light orange an bright yellow and a glorious midnight blue. The blue is the exact colour of my favorite shade that the sky turns just before full dark.

Isn’t the colour amazing? It almost seems to give off light!

The yellow did not agree with my camera unfortunately. It is quite a bit brighter. It actually borders on neon… The puff with the bow is number 25! (I have a grand total of 27 now I think) I have decided to give every 25th puff a bow in one form or other. Might be tricky to come up with enough different ways of adding a bow! The puff on the right was an experiment. I’ve decided to call it a success as in reality it’s quite charming. I wanted to do something different and so made an intarsia puff. I forgot that the switching to the yarn from side to side would create a seam down the middle, but the duo puff is quite cute. It somehow reminds me of a bum!

That’s all for this week. I’m heading back to my granny blanket to take some pictures for tomorrow!

Will be linking up with Tami’s Amis again!

Lots of love,

Renée

Anyway, I have a finished object to share. I made a pair of fingerless gloves for a WWFY swap.

Pattern: None, but I’m pretty chuffed with it so I might write it up. It’s been ages since I’ve written or released a pattern. It’ll probably be free.
Yarn: recycled wool/angora/nylon, overdyed not by me.
Needles: US 6/4 mm and US 1/1.25 mm

The yarn I used for these was a heavy lace weight/light fingering. I wanted to make these as quickly as possible, so I tripled the yarn to get a worsted weight, with which I made the body of the glove. I knew worsted weight would be too thick for the fingers. The recipient wanted half fingers, otherwise I would have left them off.

What I ended up doing was just using the yarn untripled (as the weight it actually is) and knitting the fingers out of that.

The result is pretty nice. The body of the mitts worked up super fast because it’s in worsted weight and the fingers took practically no time at all. Maybe an hour per glove including weaving in ends?

I’m definitely going to make a pair like this for me and take notes this time. The pattern will probably be in one size and you can change needles to change sizes. Maybe I’ll write more than one size.

I’m doing lots of other knitting and weaving too. I have some really cool inkle bands to show off but I need to get pictures. In fannish news, I finished watching Star Trek Next Generation and started on Deep Space Nine, which I like. I took a break to rewatch some Stargate Atlantis and have feeli.vs because I adore that show. And Joe and I are still working through the Star Wars EU. I like science fiction. In other.breaking news, water is wet.

No FO Friday project to post today.  Several WIPs, just no FOs.  I just can’t seem to settle down to focus on any one thing; I’ll pick a project up, knit a couple of rows, put it down, pick up a different one, knit a couple of rows and on and on.  I suppose I need to tweak my outlook a little.  Instead of feeling unable to settle and work on one thing enough to make a big dent, I need to look at it as working on all projects, neglecting none.  Yeah, that’s the ticket.  I’m attending to everything.  Commence attitude tweaking now.  Ah, much better.

WOULDJA LOOK AT THAT

A pair of doves have built a nest and taken up residence on our electrical box outside, underneath our patio roof.  I’m pretty sure there are eggs in the nest, they’ve not left it untended since building it.  Us going in and out, taking pictures of them, watering plants, this all occurs within probably eight feet of the nest, but they seem unperturbed by the activity.  We put a feeder out in the yard so they wouldn’t have to range far for food.  I’ve seen a dove a couple of times at the feeder, I hope it’s one of the pair.

Under the covered deck – smart birds, I think

CAN YOU STAND TWO MORE?

Pool Fun, Reunion 2013

The Sprout says, “It doesn’t get any better that this.” and “Oh, Poolboy, bring me another bottle, straight up, room temp.”

Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.  John Ruskin

B

]]> http://yarnstead.wordpress.com/2013/04/26/gratitude/ Fri, 26 Apr 2013 14:10:55 +0000 Cindy http://yarnstead.wordpress.com/2013/04/26/gratitude/ It looks like spring is finally here! It’s been a time of shifting priorites and self-discovery, and surprisingly, getting stuff done. So let’s get right to some stuff in my creative life that I’m feeling grateful for this season.

1. Finished objects

Wall hanging, background wet-felted, plant needle-felted

Small rug woven on a peg loom. Warp is worsted-weight cotton yarn; weft is strips of old T-shirts.

2. Works in progress

I finally accepted that with so much going on, I just don’t have the bandwidth to do more complex projects right now. So I am letting go of my plans to do a Neville sweater, finish the SPAKAL I discussed in previous posts, and try to salvage my Boreal sweater project (no fault of the pattern or the designer, I just “winged” too many parts of it and ended up with 75% of a sweater that doesn’t fit me and would be really hard to fix). I am almost done with a top-down cardigan (Lucy by Cherie Christian) made out of Peace Fleece yarn. I have enough yarn in my stash for at least two more sweaters and am enjoying looking through Ann Budd’s book on top-down sweaters and Ravelry for pattern ideas.

I also got back to my bird needlepoint. I am going to get as far as I can on that with stash yarn, so stay tuned to see how that goes.

Bird needlepoint in progress. Only some of the birds I do have authentic colors.

3. Winter Sowing

Winter sowing is a gardening technique I recently learned about and am eagerly trying. It’s an alternative way to start seeds that eliminates the need for artificial lights and hardening off. I improvised some containers, but their lids didn’t stay on very well. I’ll be sticking with modified milk jugs in the future.

My winter-sown pots (hollyhock and ground cherry) when I put them out in February

My winter-sown pots the day after I put them out

Winter sowing tomatoes last week

4. Square Foot Gardening

Square foot gardening is not a new technique, but I’ve finally learned about it and am trying it this year. Looks like it will save work and money and increase my garden’s productivity. With our slow spring and the date to last frost still about a month away, I’ve only planted carrots, broccoli, and greens so far. Pictures when they start sprouting.

5. Blog and podcast inspiration

Thanks to Mason-Dixon Knitting, my favorite blog, for the idea of lightning round blogging, which you will be seeing here sometimes. The idea: blog as much as you can in 15 minutes, pics and links as time allows, so that you blog more regularly. Also a big thanks to the Knitmore Girls Podcast for keeping me inspired to make sweaters despite my busy brain.

Pattern: Montague Bulky Lace Vest

Yarn: 1 skein Cascade Ecological Wool in 8063 (Latte)

Size: 38

Notes: The pattern calls for knitting the vest in three parts (two fronts and a back), seaming them all together, picking up stitches around the bottom to knit a garter stitch edging, and finally picking up stitches around the fronts to knit the ribbed shawl collar.  I do not enjoy seaming that much so I knit the body of the vest in one piece starting with the garter stitch bottom edge.  I made the body slightly longer than the pattern calls for before splitting for the armholes in the interest of getting to the end of a pattern repeat in the lace.  Once the armholes were knit and the shoulders were seamed I picked up stitches around the front edges for the ribbing.  I picked up more stitches than the pattern calls for to account for the extra length in the body.  I also knit the first three stitches on each end in garter stitch to keep them from curling.  If I knit this again I would leave the garter stitch edging on the bottom until last then pick up and knit it around the bottom of the whole vest including the shawl collar.  Finally, I crocheted one round of crab stitch around the armholes to help stabilize them.

a reusable duster:

some stuff i found in the back of the fridge:

a couple of books i read and some doodling with embroidery (also known as the work in progress):

The ginormous wedding gift blanket – and part of the reason I only managed 19 FOs last year…

[Heads up - this is a image-heavy post. And a long post. I apologize in advance. Thank you all in advance for your visits and comments and views. I really really appreciate it].

For all of you who are looking to take a color vision eye test – sorry, you won’t find one here. Instead, this post is all about color and knitting and stash and the such. Yup, today’s Knitting and Crochet Blog Post tackles color:

Day Four (Thursday April 25th): Colour Review
What are your favourite colours for knitted or crocheted projects. Have a think about what colours you seem to favour when yarn shopping and crafting.

Only after writing this part of your post should you then actually look to see what colours you have used in your projects. Make a quick tally of what colours you have used in your projects over the past year and compare it to the colours you have written about. Compare this, in turn, to the colours that are most dominant in your yarn stash – do they correlate?

Now think back to your house animal – do the colours you have chosen relate to your animal in anyway – if you are in the house of peacock, for example, are your projects often multicoloured and bright?

Some of the projects I knit in 2012…

I like color. I do. While I have plenty of black and grey items in my wardrobe, I also like and wear clothes in jewel tones. That would probably surprise my mother who is always complaining that I should wear more color. I bet that the Indian woman in her – you’ll just find way more colorful Indian sari rather than black. Western fashion is definitely influencing Indian fashion, but you’ll still find bright colors in combinations that I don’t think many people will wear here. I mean, a bright orange and neon pink shirt here? To wear as everyday clothing? Not my cup of tea. But when I’m in India, in a Sari store it looks just fine and I find myself seriously contemplating if I’d look good in that. Huh. I guess it’s all about the environment.

I’m not as much a fan of pastels… I just prefer the look of jewel tones. There’s something about those saturated colors that make me happy. Pastel colors – meh. Although I do like them a lot in my stash and knitting. I’m not a colorway discriminator I’m just more of a color style discriminator. I like semi-solid colorways way more than crazy clownbarfy combinations (for all of you non-knitters, clownbarfy yarn is yarn that looks like a clown, well barfed on it: crazy multicolored). Not that I don’t enjoy funky socks, but honestly I’m much more likely to wear something that isn’t. And I don’t like pooling – especially not in garments. On my feet, ok, I can deal with that, but a sweater with pools color in patches here or there? Nope, I’ll likely not wear it, or overdye it to fix the pooling. And you should wear what you feel comfortable in, IMO.

baby cardigan - grey yarn and crazy clownbarf yarn held together, and scrappy linen stitch scarf – ways to ‘break up’ multicolored yarns and avoid pooling…

For me – I go through phases where I prefer one color over another. For the longest time blue was my favorite color, then I went through a green phase. Then I started wearing more red (again) and right now I really feel like knitting something in yellow. And wearing yellow. It just makes me so happy. Overall, I tend to stick to primary colors. Oh, and stripes. Give me stripes any day.

some of my stripey projects…

As you can see, I love stripes. I have 21 projects with stripes, with an even mix between self-striping yarns and my own stripe creations. I’m actually joining a striped project KAL with any kind of striped project: socks, sweaters, scarves and shawls etc. And I have plenty of patterns involving stripes in my queue. One of the projects to be cast on within the next 30 days is a striped one. I have about 130 projects with some form of stripe element in my queue – not even counting those that could be modified with stripes.

So – I guess I’m beelike in that I move around between colors and design elements. At the same time, I have a thing for yellow right now and since so many of my gifts are in a dark/grey/black color, I have a bee color scheme going. And then the stripes, well, bees are striped. Ha!

Btw, last year’s knitting and crochet blog week also had us put up a post on the topic of color. It’s funny, I just took a look at what  I wrote, and yes, most of it is still true. I do like color, I still like striped yarns but not crazy color combinations, yada yada yada.

I leave you with a contemplation on my stash. I started putting this together yesterday as part of the Infographic but then decided to save that data for today’s post. (Btw, for all of you who asked, I got most of the information from my Ravelry project page and by playing around with the advanced search feature). The image isn’t  statistically correct – the percentages are different –  but the color sequence does reflect the color preferences in my stash.

Related articles

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I did finish a quick project.  This was a test knit of a cowl off of the Free Pattern Testers group on Ravelry.

My Rav page here.

Pattern: Cerato Cowl by Nadja of Schneckenstrick.  The pattern will be released on May 1st I think.

Yarn: Knit Picks Chroma Worsted in Sunrise, 1 skein.

Needles: US 5 and US9

Start Date: April 16, 2013

Finish Date: April 19, 2013

Notes: I knit the pattern as written, except I ran out of yarn.  My row gauge must be different from the designer’s because my cowl was as tall as it was supposed to be, but I had to stop 7 rounds early.  This didn’t affect the patterning much.  I only have a couple feet of yarn left after that.

Nadja’s cowl was knit in Malabrigo Rios and looks super classy.  Mine is… less so.  I still like it, but it definitely feels like little girl colors.  Though, twice while working on it, on two separate days, people noticed that it matched what I was wearing.  I took a number of me-in-the-bathroom-mirror pictures.  I’ll edit this post in a bit and add one of those photos.  I will try to get some real pics soon though.

Also, the quilt is DONE.  Even the binding and an embroidered label.  I can not wait to get some good pictures of it to show you!!

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Took me long enough, haha. I cast this on as my NaKniSweMo. Christmas kntiting got in the way, other knitting got in the way, I started my second semester of college… Life happened, haha!

But now that I’ve gotten it done, I’m thinking I should have gotten it done earlier… cause there was hardly any left on it. Just the sleeves and edgings.

. Such a delightful pattern, it was a joy to knit. So quick and simple, yet there was enough to keep me completely interested the entire time.

So, this is the Audrey in Unst Cardigan by Gundrun Johnson

The yarn that I used, I got in London while we were there last year… it’s Patricia Roberts Lambswool No. 2. It’s a really amazing yarn, it reminded me a lot of knitting with Brookylyn Tweed’s LOFT. Its very airy and has a really nice looking drape. It was a little scratchy while it was in balls, but its definitely gotten softer during the knitting process.

Definitely is at the top of my favorite sweaters list, haha!

If you’re looking for a really simple sweater that you can easily modify to fit you – this is the sweater for you!