Cakes two to tango...

Happy to report on this windy, but beautiful Sunday that I finished the Cakes Two to Tango Shawl I started a little over a week ago:

 The yarn used was Lion Brand Shawl in a Ball in the colorway Community Coral.

The "Cakes Two" refers to using two cakes (or skeins) of self-striping yarn, and alternating the cakes every two rows to create a different kind of striping than one would get working straight off a cake (or skein).  Of course, you don't have to use self-striping yarn to make this shawl, but it sure is fun to watch the colorful stripes play out as you work.

And also, of course, I can't leave well enough alone and just let the colors show up where they will.  Well, actually I did - up through the first chevron, but as the shawl got longer and wider, I decided to cut up the skeins and roll balls of single colors so I could control the color placement a little better.

I wasn't much concerned with how the single stripes ended up laying, but I wanted the two darker (wider) chevrons to balance each other.  Looking at the above picture, I think they do - more or less.

But now I'm left with many mini balls of yarn of different colors, looking for just the right project to use them in:

At the moment, I'm thinking I will mix them with some compatible yarn(s) and make a linen stitch scarf.

On another YOP note, Maria at Yarning With Ruby has suggested we YOPers meet up on Zoom.  I'm happy to say, this morning our small group from church used Zoom to meet up and I liked it (once I got over seeing my own mug on the screen).  I've got my comfy little spot ready to sit and chat with my fellow YOPers if we can manage to make it happen.  

For non YOPers, I hope mentioning ZOOM encourages you to use it (or other chatting options) online to connect to someone(s) during this time of physical distancing (if that appeals to you).  I'm an introvert who's fairly happy to have long days to myself, but even I have started to crave a little face time with other human beings.  Now, if I can just get my sons to agree to meet me on it...

Stay well.

Wash your hands.  

Please keep healthy.

Shawling along...

I thought I'd have my Lace-Edged Poncho finished this week, but I got sidetracked by a pattern shared in a Shawl CAL on Our Happy CAL Place on Ravelry.    People were whipping out this fun striped shawl in no time and I decided I needed to give it a go.

Once you start making this thing, it's difficult to put it down.  So I kept going and had it finished over the course of three days: 

Pattern:  Cakes Two To Tango

To be completely honest, I'm not too sure about the colorway.  It's the color Spirit in Lion Brand Mandala yarn.  Made up in this shawl, I go from thinking it's pretty and interesting to thinking the bright turquoise color is just too much.

But the experience of working this pattern was a happy one and I may try it again with other yarn.  Mandala is a DK weight yarn and it made a nice weight shawl/scarf - even if the bright turquoise isn't exactly my thing - in winter, anyway.  

I don't know, though...  maybe if I had a dark gray coat (or maybe a coat in colbalt blue 😃), I'd love these colors.  See what I mean?  I keep flip-flopping.

I like the pattern, though.  And I think this would be a fun project made from individually selected colors along with a neutral color (as opposed to using self-striping yarns). Or maybe that's just me wanting to be more in control.  😉

Here's a picture showing it more "shawl-like":

I do love the picot edging

~~~~~

And while the colors in my January/February Temperature Shawl are going to be all over the place (and also leave me little control), I'm enjoying this month (or two-month) long project:

~~~~~

And lastly, my Lace-Edged Poncho got just a little love this week.  

I'm not real sure what I'm doing with the colors here.  I had some idea of doing graduated widths of each color as I progress down the shawl, but I didn't start out with a concrete plan so I'm not sure how this is going to end up.    I'm also considering not making the lace edging.   I don't know.  I like the concept of this short poncho.  But I may find I'm doing too much adapting of the pattern.  We'll see. I'll just keep crocheting and hopefully next week I'll be finished and will like it.

~~~~~

And now finally...  

with this post, my 2019 Stash-Down begins!

My goal this year is to use up 

100 skeins (or more) of my yarn stash.   
I'm happy to report 
I'm starting the year out strong:

2019 Yarn Stash-Down progress:  6.4/100 skeins

While I don't expect anyone to keep close tabs on my stash used vs projects made, for the sake of my own personal accountability I'd like to put down here that this week I ended up donating two skeins of yarn after trying it and not liking it.  I don't know how often that will happen, but I'm giving myself more encouragement to get rid of yarn I know I don't care for.  My "getting rid of" will be my gain - and hopefully someone else's.   Again, not that I expect anyone else to care, but I will probably make note of that kind of thing in YOP posts when it happens.

And this year, behind the scenes, I plan to be knitting more dishcloths to use up some of my kitchen cotton stash, and the yarn used for those will show up in the week's tally that the cloths are made in.  But I only plan to show those cloths (in one picture, most likely) in the last YOP post of the month.  

And that's it!

To see what other YOPers are up to, 

visit our group on Ravelry.

Oceanside Shawl

Yesterday I finished my, what I'm calling, Oceanside Shawl (pattern is called Ruthie's Sunshine). 

I soaked it in warm sudsy water mixed with Dreft pur-touch baby detergent and then rinsed it out.  I don't know if baby detergent was necessary, but it sure left the shawl with a nice barely-there soft scent.  And then I didn't block it, but rather (after rolling it in a towel and pressing out most of the water), I just laid it out on another towel to dry - didn't pin it, or try to open up the stitch pattern.  I felt like it was pretty perfect as it was.

That said, I did want my shawl a bit wider than the original, so I added some extra stitches (an extra V stitch in each section where those appear), so my shawl is probably wider by an inch or two from the original.  My shawl measures 16" x 74".

Also, I did not do as the pattern instructed and crochet half the shawl, then go back and start it again going the other direction (which would make a seam in the center back).  The stitch pattern on this really doesn't not need for that to be done. It looks just fine hanging down on either side, don't you think?  Without studying the stitches closely, you really can't tell that the "shells" go a different direction on either side.

Now... this yarn is interesting.  I've never used it before, so I'll give a little review.  It's Lion Brand Shawl in a Ball in the colorway, Healing Teal.

For the most part I like the self-striping.  And I like the effect of the white cotton thread that is spun into this colorway.  I'm not sure, though, what I think of the unevenness of the thickness of the yarn. There are lots of large slubs which produce fuzzier places in the finished project.   I'm used to this in say, Red Heart's Unforgettable, and, like Unforgettable, it can be a bear to unravel (actually, I think this yarn was harder to unravel).   The cotton thread spun into it also produces a different feel in how it handles. It's hard to explain, but it has to do with both the random thick-and-thinness of the acrylic fiber (which stretches to some degree), combined with the cotton threads which don't really stretch at all.

The short of it is that it took some getting used to.  While it took me telling myself it was okay while I was working with it, now that this project is finished I'm deciding that the cotton thread is a plus in that it adds strength to what appears to be an otherwise un-spun acrylic fiber.  I'm not sure there are a lot of projects I'd use this yarn for.  It makes a nice shawl, so I guess the name of the yarn (Shawl in a Ball) is fitting.

And that's all she wrote!  To see what other Yoppers are up to, visit our group on Ravelry.

2018 Yarn Stash-Down:  18.17/100 Skeins

Shawling along...

Last week I commented that my progress on my two Spicier Life Blankets seems to slow down with each new section.  I don't know what's up with that, but I decided I needed to take a break from those projects.

Wanting to participate in the April's Monthly CAL (which includes shawls) on the Our Happy CAL Place group on Ravelry, I decided to dig out some skeins of Lion Brand Shawl in a Ball yarn I bought at a deep clearance price last December, and start a shawl using the pattern, Ruthie's Sunshine.  Here's just a peek at what I've got done so far:

I think I'm going to call mine Oceanside.

I kind of love the pattern, but I keep making mistakes! And then I don't find them until several rows later!  I'm about half-way finished, but if I hadn't had to rip back so many times I'd have this thing finished by now, I'm sure.

It's a very simple pattern, and because it's so easy, it's tempting to believe you can mindlessly crochet this, but I don't recommend it. I find I really need to hold the thing out after every row or so and count the double crochets (and/or the V stitches).  Counting either of those makes my mistakes stick out.  Not counting will get me every time.

Next week, I imagine it will be back to my Spicier Life Blankets since I really do want to get them finished.   And maybe I'll have this Oceanside shawl finished soon!

To see what other YOPpers are up to, visit our group on Ravelry!

A fine finish to 2017...

It's the last day of 2017 and I'm so happy to have finished a project that's been languishing now for several months.

My Lost In Time Shawl/scarf is finally blocked, tassled, and ends woven in:

I'm mostly pleased with it, but I'm tempted to regret my tassels.  Not that I made tassels, but that I used all the colors in my scarf in the tassels.  They look a little clown-like to me.

And what's up with all those uneven ends?!?   I've trimmed these things at least a half a dozen times.  But then I take a picture and they're shaggy again.   And  maybe they're too long?  I don't know.  I can always trim them up (again), but I don't really know what size (length) of tassel looks best on a shawl like this.  I'm open to suggestions.

One thing I'm very pleased with is how I finished off the edges:

Basically, I followed the instructions for the border, but when I made the picots, I caught that stitch in the back of the corresponding stitch in the last row of the shawl itself (catching up, also, the chain-5 in the first row of the border.  None of that will be clear unless you're making the shawl for yourself.  I'm just making note of this for myself to remember in the future, and for anyone else who may be curious how I did that.  Basically, it eliminates the dangling border that the pattern creates.

I want to make another one of these - the pattern is that easy.  But next time I want to use a self-striping yarn (like Red Heart Unforgettable, or Lion Brand's Mandala yarn).  Or...  this shawl is beautiful done in a single color, too.  Mine above is made using Stylecraft Batik.  I love the stonewashed look of this yarn and the easy care of 80% acrylic and 20% wool fibers.

I won't be making it again too soon, though.  I've got my sights set on some other projects.  I have more projects that have also been languishing, and I'm hosting a CAL in the Our Happy CAL Place on Ravelry in January where the theme is Pillows.   So it looks like I'll be making a pillow here shortly...   I'm thinking of using the first two weeks of the Elements blanket to make a pillow.

To see what other YOPpers are up to, visit our group on Ravelry.

Happy New Year, everyone!

A week of randomness...

On one hand it's been a quiet week.  Nothing exciting.  On the other hand it's been a week full of distraction.

The week started out with the discovery of a water leak and a couple of days of having a plumber here -- first to diagnose the problem, then to do what we all hoped was an easy fix.  A week later we're realizing the leak is still there.  What makes the leak hard to diagnose is that it's likely in a pipe that is buried in a cement floor in the basement - an expensive and messy proposition to fix because cement will need to be busted through to make the repair.

I'll spare you the details, but with our family room somewhat in disarray (because an entire closet of games and other various stored items had to be emptied out), and a house project bigger than me staring me in the face every day, I've found life this week to be...  well...  a bit distracting.

Which meant I was a prime candidate for "see shiny new crochet project (on Ravelry), make shiny new crochet project!"

And I did!

First, I finished the All Shawl by Doris Chan:

The yarn is Lion Brand Heartland in the colorway Olympic.  I'd bought bunches of this yarn once upon a time thinking the color was gorgeous, but for some reason once I had it home I couldn't imagine what I'd actually make with it.

Being committed right now to working from stash as much as possible, I went stash diving.  I think this was a great project for this yarn.  It makes a drapey fabric, and isn't this lacy border pretty?

With that finished, I decided to give Planned Color Pooling a try for a  Learn Something New CAL on Ravelry...  I'd never (intentionally) done this before, so now seemed as a good a time as any to try.

Using a crocheted linen or moss stitch, at first I thought this technique maybe wasn't as hard as I had imagined.  I got to work and the first two repeats of the color pooling pattern looked pretty consistent:

But then, the argyle pattern started getting smaller:

And then this weird teeny argyle repeat happened (twice):

And then the pattern opened up again - to start the whole thing all over, presumably:

Not wanting to be defeated, and honestly feeling somewhat hooked on the technique, I searched for other helps and found a variety of resources.  Some people say consistent tension is important, some say counting the stitches per color is more important than tension.

I tried again, using Marly Bird's technique of neither counting the stitches, nor worrying about tension, but rather watching how the pattern moves.  This technique seemed more my style, but I found it too difficult to actually see the pattern moving as I was working it.  It's one thing to see the pattern clearly "moving" when you lay it down and step back from the fabric, or looking at a photograph.  But distinguishing just how the stitches are moving as you work each row isn't so simple when it's right in front of one's face.  Maybe this is easy for some people, but I found it extremely difficult.

After trying this technique a couple of different ways, I decided I needed to give the whole thing a rest.  I was mentally exhausted, and I don't care what anyone says - this is not easy.   Addictive, yes. Easy?  No.  Even Marly Bird admits that while it's addicting, people who've had success with planned color pooling will have frustrations at some point - because variegated yarns are all different.  And even the same colorway made in different dye lots may behave differently from one another.  I just don't know how much I want to do this if frustration is a given.

Exhausted and feeling the need to soothe my weary brain, I decided to start a ripple blanket I've been meaning to do for over a month now:

This is baby blanket sized and I'm enjoying the colors.  The ripple stripes are going to be random sizes for (what I hope is) a modern look.  This is another project made totally from stash and since I have more of the Seafoam (blue/green) color, the blanket will feature larger sections of that; the white and charcoal gray figuring in in such a way that I can make good use of what I have and hopefully finish those colors up as the blanket finishes.   It's an easy project that I imagine will be finished shortly.

And now I start a new week where once again, the first thing on the docket Monday morning is calling the plumber.  It's a good thing I like this plumber.  I'd just rather not have to see him so often (I don't think I mentioned we discovered this plumber when we had to have a new water heater installed earlier in the summer).   We've had our fill of water woes this year.

To see what other Yoppers are up to, visit our group on Ravelry!