Long weekends are for knitting

It’s hard to believe September is already one-third over! The long weekend came, and so did the the falling leaves decor and pumpkin spice everything.  This past weekend was exceptionally busy for me at work, as one of our biggest vents, that I’m responsible for co-ordinating, took place.  This meant that I took full advantage of the Labour Day weekend, spending my time knitting, reading, cooking, and very little else.

Just before the long weekend, I finished a pair of fingerless gloves.  The pattern is Cross My Palm by Kate Atherley; it’s a paid pattern, was very fun and fast to make, and would certainly recommend spending the $5 on it!  I received the pattern as part of my Great Toronto Yarn Hop registration, and the yarn, Koigu Painter’s Palette Premium Merino (KPPPM) was another Yarn Hop acquisition. I loved the colours of this skein and am waiting for the weather to get just a touch cooler before getting good use out of these mittens.

Over the long weekend, I also started a hat, one which I’ve been itching to make for months.  The pattern is Grandifolia Head by Vickie Hartog, part of her Grandifolia series of shawls, cowls, and other accessories. I’ve put it off in the past, largely because it has an i-cord cast on, and being frank, I just didn’t have the attention span to work almost 150 rows of an i-cord; over the long weekend I had nothing but time, so cast on I did.  The yarn I’m using is Stitch Please Amethyst Label in their Men in Tights colourway, a vivid and beautiful shade of emerald green. The yarn was bought at the 2016 Knitters Frolic and has sat patiently while I gathered my patience to start.

The picture doesn’t do justice to the colour.

With the days creeping along, as they inevitably do, I will need to switch gears and start thinking of holiday knitting.

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FO Friday: The Doodler

Pattern 
The Doodler by Stephen West

Yarns
Cascade Yarns® Heritage, 5657 Hunter Green

Indigodragonfly CaribouBaa, Hipster Franz and the Hung Bean Stalk

Mineville Wool Project #2909 Sock

Shawl to Cowl Experiment a Success!

I know I’ve already professed my love for bandana cowls on this blog, but it bears repeating, I think.  I love this accessory, so much so that one of my latest projects turned a shawl pattern into a cowl.  Any that I’ve made before have all been patterns for this particular style, but there aren’t a lot of patterns on Ravelry, at least, not a lot of patterns easily found with searches.

Knowing the basic structure of the cowl, I took a shawl pattern and adapted it to become a cowl.  In a nutshell, I knit flat, increasing 4 stitches every other round until a certain length, then I joined in the round, increasing 2 stitches every other round, at the centre of the cowl.

It worked really well with the Jocassee pattern, a free shawl by Kemper Wray.  It features garter sections and drop stitch sections, and because it didn’t involve any super fancy stitch designs or lace, it was a good shawl to experiment with.  I’m rather happy with the finished cowl but am looking forward to cooler weather before I can wear it more often.  It’s far too hot here in Canada for any extra wool around the neck!

I’d also like to try this again, perhaps with a more complex stitch design and see if I can replicate my results.  

The Great Toronto Yarn Hop

Let me tell you about my Saturday.

For the last 12 years, there has been a giant yarn crawl in the City of Toronto, a fundraiser for an organization called Sistering: A Woman’s Place, “a multi-service centre for homeless, at-risk and socially isolated women in Toronto.” Recently rebranded as The Great Toronto Yarn Hop, I bought my ticket back in June and eagerly awaited this event!

Here’s how it worked, in a nutshell.  There were several ‘teams’ you could join (and buy your ticket for), and each team followed a particular route visiting a number of yarn shops; in Toronto, there is quite a large number!  At the end of the day, all teams met at a pub where you could compare purchases, and raffle tickets, sold throughout the day, were drawn and prizes awarded.

I joined Team Linen, largely chosen because I liked the first stop of the day, easy to get to from Transit, located in historic Kensington Market.  Although I’ve been to Yarns Untangled before, I was looking forward to seeing what they had in the shop. After time spent at Yarns Untangled, and a skein of Robosheep Yarns Sock purchased, we jumped on the TTC and headed to Stop #2, EweKnit.

EweKnit was the largest shop we visited, located at Bloor and Ossington, with a large main floor selling yarns as well as fabric and needlepoint kits, and basement set up with looms where they offer weaving classes.  I was good to my budget, only buying a single ball of Classic Elite Yarns Liberty Wool, and it’s already earmarked for a project.

Stop #3 was Knit-O-Matic, a bright shop on Bathurst, just south of St. Clair, complete with store bird to welcome groups.  This stop was particularly busy as there was another team in the shop at the same time, but I somehow managed to do perhaps the worst damage to my budget here.  I bought two skeins of Cascade Yarns® Avalon, adding to my stash of two and a half skeins. What I had wasn’t enough to really make something with, but adding these extra metres could mean I have enough to make a nice light summer shirt.  I also bought a skein of Manos del Uruguay Alegría:

With colours like that, how could I not?

Our final stop was another shop I’ve visited before but was happy to return to Passionknit, on Yonge, north of Lawrence. At this last stop, my allotted budget had significantly dwindled, and my backpack was bursting with yarny-wonderfulness, so my sole purchase was a skein of Koigu Painter’s Palette Premium Merino (KPPPM), in their special colourway released for Local Yarn Store day.

I had so much fun during the Yarn Hop.  Six skeins of yarn, four shops (two new), and I met people from all over Ontario at this event. A cowl in progress was easily accessible during our travels, and I was able to get in a few stitches on transit.

This was me, on Line 2 (Bloor) line travelling from Stop 1 to 2; stitches in progress, wide stance to prevent falling over.  As I said, so much fun.

Foiled by Meterage Yet Again!

How is it that it’s Monday already? I have not intentionally fallen behind on my posts, but it feels like I’ve just blinked and June has somehow ended.  Anyone else feel this way? Just me? Great.

I’ve been busy, making really great progress on my Doodler shawl by Stephen West. See:

I’m done Section 1 and am well on my way with section 2, and all in all I’m really happy with this project.  That is, I’m happy I’m no longer playing Yarn Chicken, a game I woefully lost.

Remember weeks ago, when I wrote about my Captain America shawl and didn’t pay attention to required meterage? And remember when I had to frog almost half a hat because I, oh that’s right, didn’t pay attention to meterage.  Well, I wasn’t about to do that again.  Pattern called for 325 metres.  I had 345 metres in my skein of Mineville Wool Project.  I’ll be great, I foolishly thought.  Only a handful of rows to go, and I ran out of yarn.  A trip to the yarn store later, I find a skein that’s as close of a match as I’ll be able to get, so I work a few rows, and the new yarn sticks out like a sore thumb.  It was painfully obvious that the skeins didn’t match.  So I frogged the entire wedge, rows and rows of work, and I re-worked the wedge alternating the two skeins.  It worked, and with the cabled edging being worked along the top, I don’t think it will be as noticeable.

The full skein on the left is my new one – the colour difference is clear between that one and my original colour…

After two painful instances of not paying attention to meterage, I thought I did good and was in the clear. Maybe this is my trend this year. Oh I truly hope not…