Photo Friday - Burberry Cowl

My new favorite pattern - the Burberry Inspired Cowl.

Burberry

It may not look like much but... What it is is fantastic!  It's a simple, once around the neck cowl, knit with worsted weight yarn on slightly too large needles with cables spread over 16 stitches and 30 rows.  Because the cables are so large and so spread out, you really don't 'see' them as cables.  They look more like folds than cables.  And the whole thing is knit with a fairly loose gauge so the resulting fabric is soft and drapey.  

And want to talk about soft?  I used Berroco Ginkgo that I picked up recently at my new local yarn shop, The Center of the Yarniverse.  The yarn is a 52% silk and 48% wool blend and is Heaven in a skein.

I loved the pattern so much, I cast on a second cowl the same day I finished this one.  And the whole time I've been knitting the second one, I've been thinking about what yarn I have stashed that would work for a third.  

Or maybe I should just go yarn shopping.  Again.

Photo Friday

So, I mentioned the other day that I'd had the brilliant idea to knit 18 miniature Christmas stocking ornaments...

yarn spindle

All I can say is, thank goodness for my yarn spindle from Knit Picks.  Okay, so the spindle itself isn't really showing up in that photo, but that's because I have it loaded with three skeins of yarn.  

I'd ordered the spindle a while back when it was on sale and I needed to spend just a little more to get free shipping from Knit Picks.  (I despise having to pay for shipping.)  I received it, thought 'cool,' set it on the shelf and sort of forgot about it.  Forgot about it until I started knitting all these *^*&^&^$^% miniature Christmas stockings, that is.

Ordinarily it doesn't bother me too much when I pull from the center of a new skein of yarn and a big glob of yarn comes out.  Ordinarily, I knit big things that will easily use up the big glob of yarn rather quickly.  But that's not the case when knitting miniature Christmas stockings.  

And when I realized I could put multiple skeins of yarn on the spindle at once without fear of tangling....  Miniature stocking knitting became much, much enjoyable.

Now, if Knit Picks would only make a tool that picks up all the beads I've dropped on the floor....

Photo Friday

Yes, it's that time of year...

Christmas gift knitting

The season of black & white photos.  Hopefully, by removing the color, the intended recipient of this knitted Christmas gift won't recognize it for what it is.

Photo Friday

Our weather took a dip recently and it's starting to feel like winter.  Just to the west of us even had a massive ice storm last night.  Thankfully it was only miserably cold and rainy here.  A perfect day/night to stay tucked safely indoors with my knitting.

weather cowl

And speaking of weather and knitting...  I got to add in a new color stripe on my weather cowl.  Well, not new, but the first medium blue stripe of the season.  For some reason, I'm quite excited about it.

I can not believe I've kept up with this weather cowl.  When I started it, I had no real hope of actually knitting a stripe every day indicating the day's temperature.  Thinking that I'd never follow through on the project for more than a week or two, I didn't spend much time choosing the colors.  I simply grabbed skeins from the stash pile, assigned temperature grades to them and started knitting. 

I deeply regret that decision now.  There's not enough contrast between the light green (54 - 66 degrees) and the light blue (44 - 53 degrees.)  Even up close and in person you have to really look to see the difference.  And don't even get me started on how harsh the dark green (67 - 77 degrees,) yellow (78 - 88 degrees) and the orange (89-95) stripes are.

Oh well.  Live and learn, right?

Photo Friday

It took a while but...

Weather Cowl 10/24/18

Fall arrived.

Photo Friday

Can you guess what I'll be doing with all these F's?

Photo Friday

I hope this post makes it out into the universe.  Hurricane Michael roared into town about 30 minutes ago may I say, my goodness!

Michael isn't even a hurricane anymore, but... good grief!  There were no bands of warning rain.  Michael simply arrived and it began to rain RAIN.  Rain and thunder and the trees are bending over from the wind.  And I'm seriously hoping that noise is the neighbors who work on their (race??) cars 22/7 and not a tornado's freight train roar.

But, knitting....

Ferrum from Unplanned Peacock Studio

I was too impatient to photograph the yarn while it was in it's original skein form.  It's another fiber festival yarn purchase.  The yarn comes from Unplanned Peacock Studio and is an absolute delight to knit with.

Thanks to Karen's suggestion over at Pumpkin Sunrise, I'm knitting a Purl Ridge Scarf.  The pattern is a very simple, free one from Stephen West.

Purl Ridge Scarf

I'm so happy to be knitting such a simple pattern on such lovely yarn, specially tonight. (I'm typing this Thurs. night.)  At this rate, I don't expect the power to stay on for long.  Heck, I don't know how it's stayed on this long.  Anyway, this cowl pattern will be The perfect project for knitting in the dark while we wait out Michael's departure.

And while we're talking about Michael, my thoughts and prayers go out to those in Florida.  And the Carolina's for that matter.  They certainly did not need any more rain!  I can not imagine what this storm must have felt like in Florida if it's this strong in Virginia. And I imagine a lot of folks rode the storm out in Florida because there wasn't much advance notice of this one.  Anyway, my thoughts and prayers are with those down south.

Photo Friday

I really should have titled this post something different.  "Photo Friday" implies there will be at least one decent photo.

And  yet...

and

My Noro Cowl, knit with Malabrigo Rios is blocking.  Blocking in bad lighting in a Very disorganized house.

We are still doing some remodeling/renovations/'sprucing up' to our house.  At the moment, we are (1) painting and (2) tearing up the carpet and replacing it with wood flooring.  85% of our belongings are shoved up against one wall in one room and the other 15% of our belongings are, for reasons unknown, sitting on the dining room table.  And as these things go, my husband is doing the remodeling/renovations/sprucing up himself and every time he gets out a tool or opens a bucket of paint, he gets a call to go do a paying job... and off he goes.  We've been living this way for so long now, I'm starting to not even notice the chaos I call home.

But what does that have to do with bad photography?  Well, first, the natural light in my dining room is nonexistent, except for about twenty minutes in the afternoon when the sun shines a direct and blinding beam in through the french doors.  And then there's the fact that it took me almost a full day to dig out the blocking mats and then the blocking pins from the 85% pile.  By the time I had the Noro Cowl laid out on the pads, the light was gone.  And of course, several of the bulbs in our dining room chandelier have suddenly burned out making the light even dimmer.  There's no telling where the replacement bulbs are....  And there you have it.  Bad photos for Photo Friday.

But bad photos or not, I'm in love with my Noro Cowl.  Or I will be once it's dried and sewn into place.  I'm fascinated how the Malibrigo yarn pooled and how one end is mostly yellow while the other is more red.  And that line you can see in the first photo that looks like the end of one skein butting up against a new skein of a different dye lot... isn't.  The two skeins of yarn meet up in a completely different, and unnoticeable place.  That line is simply the magic of pooling.

Now, if it would just cool off enough to even consider wearing it.

Photo Friday

There's nothing like an Etsy shop custom hat order to motivate me into knitting hat #24.   Only 28.75 more hats to knit before December 31st.

Photo Friday

Phew!  'The Season' is over and done with work-wise and I had a full week, Monday through Friday off.  I spent it knitting.

The Coffee Shop

Well, knitting and preparing for Hurricane Florence.  Luckily, thankfully, I was able to get lots of knitting done while I waited for giant containers of water to freeze into ice blocks.

I received The Coffee Shop value pack in the mail last week and was excited to start knitting with it rather than try to figure out how and where to store more yarn.  In my excitement, I just grabbed a needle (US2) and cast on enough stitches that I could comfortably begin knitting in the round.  Then I cast on a few more just to be sure...  And I started knitting random width stripes.  It's going to be a cowl.  And I love the warm, understated, earthy browns.  It's been a great, easy project to help calm my pre-hurricane jitters.

Speaking of hurricanes...  I'm writing this in advance in anticipation of power outages.  Obviously I don't know what kind of damage Florence has done as of this morning, but I continue to keep all the east coasters in my thoughts and prayers throughout this storm.  Stay safe!

Photo Friday

I'm finally back to hat knitting.

Hat #23

This one's just a plain, simple stockinette hat knit with Patons Classic Wool.  The color is Pumpkin.  It's the perfect project for my current fall fevered, I Gotta Catch Up on Hat Knitting panic mode.  

This is hat number 23, being knit in week 36.  It's no wonder I'm in panic mode.  I need to knit 13 more hats this week in order to be on schedule for the 52 Hats in a Year challenge.

Photo Friday

Are you participating in the 52 Hats challenge? 

Hat #22 out of 52

Hat #22 completed in week 35.  I've got a bit of catching up to do.

Photo Friday

After finishing the denim faux cabled fingerless gloves the other day, I decided to be a responsible adult and pick up a project from the UFO pile instead of starting something new.

Although I love the colorway of these socks, I hadn't been enjoying knitting them when I tossed them into the UFO pile.  It dawned on me recently the reason I wasn't enjoying them was that the dpns I was using were too pointy.  Way too pointy! While knitting the purl stitches on the heel flap, I kept splitting stitches and ending up with more on the needle than I'd started with.  I'd gotten frustrated and tossed the sock into the UFO pile.

About the time I realized what had been bothering me, I also realized that I could use two circular needles instead of dpns.  I don't know why I've never knit socks this way before.  My goodness!  Knitting socks on two circular needles is SO much faster than knitting with dpns!  I'm sure that unless today is the day you learned to knit, you probably already knew this but.....  Oh my goodness!  This has been a life changing realization for me!