Knit One Below... Great Book

I saw the book Knit One Below (rav link) on a ravelry post about the best books published in 2008. Being the craft book person that I am I gave the list a perusing and found this one on the list. I hadn't heard of it before and thought hmmm, I will have to look that up at some point and see what it is all about. Well, then the next time I was in Barnes & Noble there it was on the shelf! I looked at it and was fascinated by the technique that is used for all the projects throughout the book. Most of the projects looked pretty straight forward and I decided that I really wanted to try out this technique. It also didn't hurt that I had a coupon to use. What is really fun about it is that it makes vertical stripes of two different yarns through your whole piece. Without intarsia or fair isle or slip stitching. Once I got the hang of the movement it was really fast and fun. After I got back with the book I quickly picked out a couple of stash yarns and set to work on a vest. I finished the vest the other day and today tucked in the ends and it is currently blocking. Yeah!! I can't wait to see how it looks on my daughter once it is dry. Maybe she can even wear it to church on Sunday given that we are evidently forecasted to revisit winter this weekend around here. The other nice thing about a lot of the projects using this technique is that they are reversible with both sides having a really cool look to them.

Back to the Blog...

Well I know that it has been forever since I have posted anything but I want to try to get back to it.

I don't know if it is the weather or what, but I have been suffering from major craft ADD. I seem to bop from one project to the next and then to another whole craft and back again. Luckily I have been getting things done and making real project progress. So why haven't I been sharing any of this? Well good question...

My main project today has been some test spindling of some alpaca that I have to see how I would like to spin it and figure out what kind of prep work it is going to need. It is from a mixed bag of raw alpaca fleece that is a couple of pounds and then some. I am planning for sure to spin it dirty and so far this spins pretty nicely.










I also have some of my very first corespinning to share. I have been wanting to try this technique for a while, but for some reason I find it intimidating. So the other night I got a wild hair and just did. This is what it looks like now that it is has had a bath and then dry. I am mostly happy with it, but I can tell some practice will also really help me out. I don't like the bumpiness it has in sections. I wish that I could get the whole spin to be even and totally smooth but still poofy. That is what I love about other people's corespun that I have seen. I think that this is destined to be a hat of some sort as the yardage is around 70 yards.

December Lights Tam

December Lights Tam
Originally uploaded by sparklingscraps

The week before Thanksgiving I took a free class at Sophie's for knitting the tam from the Interweave Knits holiday issue. The yarn I cose to use was Baby Twist from Alpacas with a Twist. This yarn is so soft, you just can't even imagine! I forget between times knitting with it, but every time I do, I think I would like to knit everything out of it. It also doesn't hurt that there a ton of colors to suit just about every project.
I have been wanting to try fair isle for a while now but for some reason have been really hesitant to do so. Well it turned out to be not bad at all. I even was able to knit with the two colors in two hands. I think if I did enough of this I could talk myself into being nothing but a continental knitter. .. But I am not there yet! I changed the colors in the hat and am not totally thrilled with how well it shows the pattern but overall I am really happy with how it turned out. My one major complaint is the weaving in of the ends. Man oh man are there a ton. I can only imagine if you were doing a cardigan in fairisle. I think weaving in the ends would take as long as knitting the sweater! I still need to block it so that this will get it's tam shape, so I will update with that soon.

Shrug this

Shrug this
Originally uploaded by sparklingscraps

This is the "Shrug This" pattern from One skein wonders. It was a super quick knit taking only about a day to finish. I wasn't overly thrilled with the pattern and had to make some changes for it to fit my daughter, but in the end I am very happy with how it turned out! And she loves it and wore it to church this morning so I give it a thumbs up.

Hemlock ring Blanket

Hemlock ring Blanket
Originally uploaded by sparklingscraps

Here is my finished Hemlock Ring Blanket. This was a fun, fast knit. The only place I got a little hung up was on the border. By the time I got there, it was a lot of stitches around. I had a bit of trouble in blocking this though. In fact, my husband and I played a little tug of war with it to stretch it enough to be able to get it to lay flat and be able to block. I am not sure why that was the case, but am happy with how it looks now! For this blanket, I used 5 skeins of the red hemp/wool yarn and 2 of the creme hemp/wool yarn. For the body of the blanket, I held two strands together while for the border I just used one strand. This project has really opened up a whole ton of new ideas for me. I had pretty much written off doilies as something that while it might be fun to knit would just be a useless item and therefore not something I would knit. Knowing this little trick of upsizing the yarn and needles and going for it with grandmas doilies is awesome and something I will definitely be doing more of!

Indianapolis Vinnland socks

Vinnland socks
Originally uploaded by sparklingscraps

Here is where I am with my Indianapolis socks. To refresh your memory, I got the fiber for this on our vacation to Indy this summer. Since then I have spun all of the fiber into a navaho plied sock yarn. I love this pattern. It is not difficult at all but the outcome is really great and looks like it is so much more work than it was. I just started the second sock yesterday and it is moving along more quickly than the first one did. I can't wait till these are done and I can start wearing them!

Turtleneck Shrug... All Done!

Turtleneck Shrug
Originally uploaded by sparklingscraps

Yeah I finished the shrug. This is from Scarfstyle. I made it from Alpacas with a Twist Landscapes yarn. It is silk and baby alpaca, so it is very soft. As you can probably tell my daughter likes it!
I did make some modifications to the pattern. First of all since I knew that the pattern length for the arms would be too long, I knit the neck first and then picked up stitches from the neck and knit the sleeves in the opposite order. That was I could better control how long they got and it would give me the option of adding length later as her arms get longer. When I got to the end of the sleeves I also thought the regular sleeves were a little boring so I increased one stitch in each section of ribbing to give the bottom of the sleeves a little flare. She says that is her favorite part! I loved this knit although the repetitiveness of it made it go on the back burner a couple of times. I definitely would recommend it to other knitters and plan to make another soon!