A year and a bit and a whole lot of projects

It's been quite a while since I've posted any crafting updates though I have certainly been busy with my crafting.

I ended up making a total of FOUR of those little llama cowls as a friend of my sister loved it and wanted one for her son's girlfriend (I think) and then loved the one that I had made and my sister asked me to make another one like that for her friend to surprise her.

After that, I finished off a scarf for a friend as a surprise birthday present. It was also a test knit and my friend absolutely loved it. The color ended up being exactly what she wanted and she wears it a lot, though more as a head scarf than a neck scarf.

 

 

It was fun to see the difference between pre- and post-blocking. It was another reminder of how important it is to block. 

After that, I worked on a project that took about 7 months to complete. I made two double knit scarves for friends who were getting married. Husband gave me an initial design to work with (which I had to modify a few times because gauge in double knit is different than in normal knitting and if I had been using my entire brain, I would have remembered that stitches are wider than they are tall and the letters in the scarves would have looked less...squished) and I modified as I went along. My mom dyed the yarn for me and it was a lot of fun to work with though I did get tired of the project because it was taking forever. In fact, I was finishing it at the local reception three months after their wedding ceremony. For that reason, I don't have any photos of either scarf finished because I was working past every deadline that was set. The original plan was to have them done in time for the wedding but that wasn't going to work as it was taking much longer than I thought it would and when it came to opera week at work, I didn't knit the entire week. To be fair, it was a very physically demanding show and my hands ached from some of the set-up. Then it was to have them finished over the 4th of July weekend when I flew out to Colorado and back but my flights got canceled due to bad weather and Husband and I drove out to Colorado (I did most of the driving) and I ended up losing some (a lot) of knitting time. There was also project fatigue. I have experienced this before and it's usually in socks as I'm on the feet because it takes forever to knit the feet of my socks. If it wasn't for the fact that the yarn wasn't crinkly, I would swear that the socks were frogging themselves overnight so I would have to keep working on them.

Luckily the bride took lots of pictures. Here's one of her holding up her husband's scarf.

 

When Husband first asked if I would knit something for the couple, he wanted me to do intarsia for the letters and the fish. I believe I told him that double knitting would be easier. Perhaps it would have been more accurate to say that double knitting would have a more finished look to it. It was definitely not easy but there was a rhythm to it. When I finished, I said I was going to take at least a few days off from knitting as these were the only things I had worked on for such a long time (almost true; I did try to do a test knit of some double knit finger less mitts but I got confused with the pattern and then the deadline came and went before I could puzzle it out). This wasn't what I intended my first double knit project to be. In fact, Mom had bought me yarn and a pattern for a MKAL but I got sucked into these scarves instead. Probably for the best as they ate my soul or at least felt like it.

I managed to not knit anything for nearly two months. I believe that is the longest I have ever gone without knitting. In fact, I probably would have gone longer except the conference I was working was so...full of itself, that I couldn't focus on reading. (Seriously, I think there was some sort of competition to see who could say the most words and make the least amount of sense.) I went home after the first day and cast on the Owlie Mitts that I was going to make for a friend. I had completely meant to get around to them and hadn't. See the bit about the scarves above. At the time, she really didn't like knitting. Since then, she's gotten into it. I felt like I was in a bit of a race to finish the mitts before she decided to try her hand at them. I didn't take many pictures and haven't done a whole lot of documentation lately but I did manage to snap one photo before I mailed them off to her.

They were a lot of fun to work with and I got to use up some of the beads that I bought forever ago to make faire favors to hand out. I made a few shortly after I got them and gave them out for a season or two and have never gotten around to making more. There are also quite a few beads still left. The best part is that my friend got them as a complete surprise and her son thought that they were for him! I should ask if she's learned how to knit in the round yet...

While having friends over for dinner, I showed off my handy work (not sure if pun is intended this late), wanting to gauge the interest of one friend who has a thing for owls. She gave some nice comments about the contrast between the beads and the yarn, which I knew wasn't the best but I wanted to use what I had on hand. She then offered to buy a pair from me in an orange tone. I finished those much faster than the first pair but failed to get a photo of them. Eventually I'll get a photo as I hope that she'll be wearing them out at the Renaissance Festival once it gets colder. In fact, we met when I had stopped by to visit with other friends in the dance troupe she performs in and she ran up to me asking if she could take a picture of my fore panel because she loved the color. She was happy with her pair once I got them into her hands.

I have also managed to pick up the All Shook Up socks that I started back in 2015.  While I have marked them as finished, I believe I still need to weave in the ends but I got a little into the Disney Planning Mind and haven't gotten around to that yet.

 

My sister asked me to make her another Christmas gift. The last time she asked me to knit something for her,  it took a few years. This time, it only took a few months. The biggest issue was/is her head size. I ended up doubling the yarn and adding stitches so that I knew it would fit her head unlike the last hat I made for her. So even though I had planned to work on it while at DisneyWorld, I ended up not having large enough needles to work with the doubled yarn. At least I was at DisneyWorld, so I couldn't pout. That seems to happen mostly to children who have very few coping skills and don't know when to stop.

 She ended up loving it even though she didn't get it until February. It was a faster turn around time than with the cowl I promised and eventually made for her. It also fit her head much better than it fit the dog's head.

I also joined the Heroes of Yarnia MKAL in January after returning from our family trip to DisneyWorld. I put myself on a yarn fast because, well, Disney is expensive and worth it and well, I should use some of the yarn I have. The problem became that I didn't have enough of two colors to make into a double knit scarf that would have enough contrast. So my mom helped me dye some yarn when I visited her in January for her Fiber to Shawl competition. (When I say my mom helped me, what I really mean is that my mom dyed me the colors that I wanted; I only gave opinions while she did the actual work).



When I got back home, I made a mess of winding the skeins (they were larger than my swift, I eventually used the backs of chairs instead). This scarf is going even slower than the previous double knit scarves. Not only is this one out of sock weight yarn, but the charts are far more complicated.

Clue 1

As you can see, there are a lot of little charts within each clue. It's been fun to pull out my dice and roll to determine which chart I would knit. I also purchased the Knit Companion App so that I could keep track of where I was in the pattern.

I haven't had nearly as much knitting time as I would like as I have to sit and focus on the chart so I can't just mindlessly knit in front of the TV. I've also  not been traveling with this project in hopes of keeping the yarns from getting too tangled.

Clue 2

It wasn't until I got through the first clue that I realize that the colors are the ones usually associated with boys and girls. I had decided on the colors completely independent of each other, simply picking ones that I would want to wear. This is the second time this has ended up happening. The last time was in a lighting design for a show that dealt with gender (parents bring home a new baby and the baby won't tell them if they are a boy or a girl and the parents are too polite to look, so they decide the baby is a girl). I ended up lighting show with blue and pink from the front to mix it to look white and cast crazy shadows. It was a fun show to do and it was kind of nice to have a pleasant memory come up while knitting.

All of the clues have been released and I'm still on clue 3. It'll eventually get done but I've been working on a couple of other projects that are nearly finished.

Before the yarn was dyed, I took one of the yarns I tried to do the Yarnia scarf with and finally cast on the Cookie A Tulip socks that I had the yarn for to begin with. I saw the yarn and thought it would be perfect for the sock pattern. I was very right and will eventually have patterns. These are also technically finished, but I still need to weave in the ends.

With those socks finished, I decided I had to cast on this cravat pattern from the Minnesota Yarn Shop Hop. This year was my favorite year so far because everything was inspired by music. Each shop played music tied into their theme and it was delightful to visit every shop. It was a lot of fun. This pattern has also been a lot of fun to knit though I'm feeling grumpy about the last four rows because they are taking forever. Of course, there are probably about 800 stitches or so in the row.