FO Friday – quick projects

Before I get into what I finished, have you seen these guys before?

It’s been over a month since Arne & Carlos came to my favorite local yarn shop – yarnology all the way from Norway! I wasn’t able to attend the class they hosted but I did make it to the book signing. I already owned this book.

Sadly I’ve only made one of the knitted balls – a snowflake ornament back in 2013.

Still, I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to have them sign a second book, so I purchased another book that night.

Papa wants me to make him a Norwegian sweater at some point so I’m hoping to learn a few pointers. Actually, what sold me was an adorable fair-isle teddy bear that I fell in love with. I want to make one for myself – although if it’s finished in the next couple of years, it might get “stolen” 🙂

I’m still a bit reluctant to start my long-suffering sweater project. Also, I’ve been doing so many knit projects I thought it was time to insert a bit of crochet. So, I picked up my weather afghan project again. I was 3 1/2 months behind – half of September and all of October, November, and December to work up. Fortunately, I picked a really easy stitch pattern and was able to finish them all in a couple of nights.

Then I laid them all out on the floor and Papa and I discussed possible layouts of sewing them together. We finally came up with one we felt looked good.

These still aren’t completely done. I have a soft cream color that I’m going to use to add an additional 2-3″ at the top of each one. I’m going to use that area to embroider the name of each of the months. It also solves the problem of not having the same number of days in a month – and thereby a number of rows in the square. I can adjust the top section’s height so each month’s square block will be exactly the same size.

There will also be a smaller border between the columns of squares and around the whole thing to give it a sense of unity. I haven’t decided if I’ll add a color legend explaining how the colors match different temperature ranges – and maybe even a section that shows the year.  In any case, it’ll take me a while to finish each square and get them sewn together … so maybe I’ll be finished by the end of 2015.

I love Jane Austen – especially Pride & Prejudice (the book and BBC version). I was rather excited to find a Jane Austen knit-a-long (KAL) but wasn’t sure if I’d have time to complete anything. However, the KAL offered a bonus entry for prizes if you worked up that designer’s cozy / trinket pocket. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it now – but it’s a cute, quick project that only took me one evening to finish.

Pattern: A Jane Austen Pocket
Designer: Tanya Marie Willis Anderson
Yarn: unknown worsted weight from stash
My Ravelry page

I’m currently working on another KAL project that is supposed to be done by March 15. It’s called the Knotted Rib hat – probably because the indented stitches look like they have little knots in them. It’s a fairly simple hat, however, those knot stitches are slowing me down, otherwise, I would have expected to be finished by now. Great stash project though!

This is the finished project I’m most proud of.  Once again I participated in the Designers Challenge on Ravelry. The Jan/Feb challenge was this:

• Object: a pair of adult mittens
• Theme: use at least 1 self-striping or long colorway/gradient yarn
• Technique: worked in the round

I had some gradient yarn in my stash but it was either fingering weight which wouldn’t be very warm or hand wash which isn’t very practical for mittens. Nuts! – that means I have to go buy some yarn LOL!

The nature of long gradient yarn meant that either I was going to have to purchase two skeins and try and match up the colors … or have mismatched yarns. I decided it would look neat to have coordinated but non-matching mittens.

I have one problem that occurred – I grabbed a set of needles that I thought were the size I needed. It wasn’t until I finished them and tried to figure out why they were so narrow that I took measurements and discovered the needles were two sizes smaller than I had planned! Well, no wonder.

Still, I love how they turned out – if nothing else, they’re nice and dense so they’ll be plenty warm and they’re made with superwash (machine washable) yarn. I do have enough yarn I could try making another pair, so I may do that just to make sure my pattern idea is correct.

Pattern: gradient striped mittens
Designer: me
Yarns: Cascade 220 Superwash and Classic Elite Yarns Liberty Wool
Colorways: 904 Colonial Blue and Glacier
My Ravelry page

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