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!

Last night we to the wedding of one of my husband's cousins. Now he said he though all week about the fact that at the reception there would be a dancefloor and much hilarity would ensue when H hit the floor. Honestly I hadn't thought of that. As soon as we got to the reception though H started asking when he could dance. Well, you know how it goes... eating, cutting cake, etc. It took a long time before we could give him the go ahead. When he finally got out there, it was full force and for the rest of the evening. He was definitely the center of attention as everyone was just dying laughing watching him dance to the fast songs and then tickled when the seven year confidently asked them to dance for the slow songs. He danced with with young and older women alike, from his sister to his 86 year old great great aunt. Very Very cute. I am not sure how long it will take to lod the video but if you have a bit of time you should check it out. Oh and that is the garter on his arm. He caught the garter and his sister caught the bouquet. All in all I think they had a blast!

Beginning of a sideways sock

Beginning of a sideways sock
Originally uploaded by sparklingscraps

I have been seeing projects that other people have been making that make the self striping yarns go sideways. I love them, but the patterns are just really confusing to me. I figured I just needed to jump in and start on one and see if I could figure it out. This is the free version available on the Knitpicks site. I can already tell that I am going to want to make modifications on this pattern, but will probably wait until I get to the second sock to do it.

9/12/07- This sock turned out awful. The pattern was written to fit a size 9 woman. Ok. So after knitting for a bit it was clear that the length that was coming out of it would never fit a size 9 foot. So I thought ok maybe it will fit my 11 year old. Kept knitting. Soon it becames clear it wouldn't fit her either. I have a seven year old so I thought maybe it would fit him. Well, this morning after supposedly getting the point where I had finished knitting all but the toe, I held it up to his foot and it barely covered the top of his foot. Obviously not going to go all around his foot and heel. Now granted I did knit with a US1 instead of the US2 suggested but that just shouldn't have made that much of a difference. The good thing that I did get from this pattern is that I learned more about this kind of construction. I think I can take what I learned here and make up my own ideas and pattern. Whew!

Hemlock Ring Blanket

closeup of stitches
Originally uploaded by sparklingscraps

Well in blog surfing the other day I found a beautiful blanket made by Jared of http://brooklyntweed.blogspot.com/. It is a blanket made from a vintage doily pattern. The catch is that it is done on larger needles with much chunkier yarn. The result is that the 15 inch across doily is turned into a 4 ft across blanket. The pictures of it were so lovely that I just kept going back to see it again and again. I just love how the center flower looks. So finally I decided that I would definitely make it, but now right now. Yeah... I'm sure you all see where this is going don't ya! So I cast on for it on Saturday and it is so fun to knit! I just couldn't put it down. I would say at this point I am about three quarters of the way through it am loving it even more in person! The yarn I chose was from my stash and it is a hemp/wool blend in blood red. Very nice!

whew now that's better

whew now that's better
Originally uploaded by sparklingscraps

Well I did it! I tinked back and fixed the problem and didn't cause anymore problems on the way. Woohoo! Now I really love how it is looking. The yarn color, the stitch definition, everything about it is just how I envisioned when I picked this yarn out. I am so proud of myself for not letting this be a reason to stall out on the project. Usually for me this is a reason to throw a project in the basket for a long hibernation. So, now onto clue 3!