Tag Archives: Multiple strands

Jan15

WIP: January sweater

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I cast on this sweater on January 7th. I think I have knitted on it every day except one. Sometimes when I’ve been at work all day, I am a Netflix zombie in the evening. But most days I’ve added to it, and it has grown satisfyingly quickly.

Above is the finished torso, with stitches on waste yarn awaiting the sleeves. It only took two evenings for the first sleeve. The other one was finished tonight while I enjoyed the company of my friends at our Hygge gathering at my house. It was perfectly timed as I was on the straight stretch at the top of the sleeve while they were here and didn’t have to concentrate on any more shaping.

Once they had left, I united body and sleeves, leaving four stitches on waste yarn on each piece at the underarms, and knitted four rounds without any decreasing. And that’s where I’m stopping for the night.

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The hem of the sweater is very curly but I intend to knit hems in a different colour and weight of yarn, à la Elizabeth Zimmermann, once the rest of the sweater is done.

I have to confess that my gauge swatch was inaccurate, one reason being that I knitted it flat and now I am knitting in the round (I should have known better), and the circumference is coming out considerably smaller. However I think it will be fine. In the case of the sleeves, I was able to slip the first one on my arm to get an idea of the length and circumference I needed.

I’m really feeling the tiredness now. Just did four days of work in a row, which I was not crazy about. Thankfully I have the next couple of days off so I will be able to get to the gym and also do grocery shopping. I’ve nearly finished Book 2 in the Poldark series, “Demelza,” and need to pop over to the library website to reserve Book 3.

What are you doing to make the winter comfy and cosy?

May1

This is one heavy project

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Huge, heavy, but oh-so-colourful

 

 

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Close up – especially love the variegated with the three solids

 

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Experimental stuffing 

I knew it was big. But this took

5 crochet/knitted blankets
2 shawls
I commercial throw blanket
2 thin quilts

It occurs to me it would be good for storing spare pillows too. I might have to stuff some in as well as the blankets to get it nice and firm.

I will do some decrease rounds next. The pattern just says to do one decrease round and then make a drawstring. But I’d rather reduce my stitch count first.

It’s a beautiful sunny Sunday and I must get out and walk today. I was hoping for at least some sunbathing yesterday but instead Tai Chi Man and I cleaned out the cold room, tidying, vacuuming, relabelling the storage containers, and then I had to make dinner for all five of us (ds1 came over).

Today is May 1st, a new month and a new motivation for raw foods. Tai Chi Man and I plan to eat raw for the month of May. I am hoping to see increased energy, joints feeling young again, clothes fitting a little looser. I have my holiday in June visiting family as extra incentive.

Here goes!

Mar25

Hanging basket

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The beauty of having a Ravelry queue is that if you ever run out of inspiration for your next project you just visit your queue and see what you added to the list of potential projects. I do keep it fairly controlled – I know some people have thousands of things in their queues – but mine is only five pages long  and periodically I will weed the list so it doesn’t get out of hand.

This morning, I noticed the Hanging Basket pattern, which is not in English on the blog but is written out in full on the Ravelry project page. It’s very simple and with multiple strands of yarn, or one strand of a super bulky, it’s really fast.

I started it while waiting for ds2 to get ready to go snowboarding. The drive is about an hour, and I managed to get a lot done despite being squished in the back seat with a man-sized son on one side and a snowboard on the other (we only have a small car, so we have to fold down part of the back seat). Tai Chi Man and ds1 were in the front. Son number three once again didn’t bother to go. That was his last chance for this winter.

Conditions were perfect, with the temperature at the village elevation being around zero, and the snow was not too icy so there was plenty for the board to carve into. I fell down a few times as usual, and I’m sure I’ll feel the full extent of my sore bits when I try to get out of bed in the morning!

I quit the slopes before the men, so enjoyed some more crochet time in the lodge. And the basket was finished!

It’s a good size but I haven’t decided where to hang it yet. I used two strands of worsted and three of DK and a 10mm hook. It would be fun to play with the pattern and make different sized ones.

So that was my day. Work tomorrow but thankfully not Sunday (it’s one of the three days per year that the store closes).

 

 

Mar25

My new rug!

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imageI’m so happy with this. I love the colours and the squooshiness and how it brightens up  the spot in front of my washer and dryer.

I think it weighs abut 5lbs and it certainly burned through a lot of old DK and worsted acrylic that I’d had lying around for some time.

Happy Easter/Ostara/Friday to you all. We are celebrating by going snowboarding en famille. We could tell that yesterday people were getting into the long weekend mood because lots of  them were leaving work early and creating traffic havoc! I hope it is peaceful where you are.

Mar23

Home day!

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Utility room rug WIP

 

What do you do with a home day?

So far, mine looks like this:

  • get up a little later than usual
  • have a slow start to the action by messing about with email, Facebook, Ravelry etc on my iPad
  • eat breakfast (toast and marmalade, mmm!)
  • put away laundry, do more laundry, clean bathrooms and kitchen, water plants (discover aloe vera is definitely not thriving since I divided it up and repotted, so put the pots in timeout on the deck)
  • enjoy some couch time with my crochet and my video lectures (Chinese Thought meets Modern Science)

Plans for the rest of the day include:

  • prepping dinner
  • tackling the table runner/placemats sewing project (even if I just get this started, I will feel better about it)
  • going for a walk and maybe even picking up some dumbbells for an actual workout

I have to confess that one of my favourite emails to receive is the Google Calendar notification that tells me, “You have no events scheduled for today.” But as you can see, I’m not doing nothing!

Mar21

Utility room rug

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The mat down by my washer and dryer is showing signs of wear. It was crocheted many moons ago with strips of gingham fabric and it used to live in my kitchen. It’s time to say goodbye and replace it with something new.

The new rug is in progress…

…five strands of yarn, made up of two random DK, one random worsted, and two olive green worsted that used to be a cardigan and were knitted up double stranded and therefore frogged and wound into balls double stranded. 10mm hook.

It’s coming out a little wider than expected (tight chain, I guess) but that’s okay. It’s just half double crochet in rows, mindless crochet that I can do without having to concentrate on a pattern.