Tag Archives: Stashbusting

Stash Sunday

Knoontime Knitting

I am working on the Emerald Keep scarf for the Keepsake Tour, which of course means that I instantly want to play with something from my stash. Doesn’t that always happen?

So here’s what’s on my desk right now, that’s not the Keepsake scarf:

Top left is my character binder for the novels currently in progress, (Sealed by Duty and Sapphire Dream, in case you’re curious).  Under that is my Franklin Planner.  On its side is some pretty Caron Simply Soft Paints yarn, which I bought when I bought the yarn for the Emerald Keep scarf but am not using in it.

Which begs the question, what shall I make with it?  ~rubs hands together~

Next is my keys.  This is important.  Hard to get into the house without them.

Don’t ask me how I know that.  I don’t want to talk about it.

Moving right along, we come to the Caron ball band for the light green yarn in the Emerald Keep scarf.  The glue failed and it fell off, so I brought it in here to make sure I have it up on Ravelry before I discard it.

The grey is for a possible pair of Quill’s Socks, which were featured in Emerald Fire and remarked upon by every editor who worked on it as well as several fans.  Yes, Teeka finished the socks, yes, Quill liked them, and yes, I’ll feature a pattern for them when the website redesign goes live – and I might even make a pair of them to give away at some point.  Though, in all honesty, I probably won’t have time to make them for this Keepsake Tour.

Next is the yarn I bought to make Rachel a pair of fingerless mitts she can use in the hot climate of the Nevada desert.  I’ll use some kind of lace pattern on them, probably but right now I’m just sketching with it.

I realized I caught the edge of my little post-it note with Rule #11 from NCIS:  “When the job is done, walk away.”

On the right of my desk, I have two needlework kits that I’m looking forward to starting.  One is a ladybug which is in honor of the fictiious Ladybug Bed and Breakfast.  The other is a lovely peacock I bought while visiting Rachel last month – I adore peacocks.

What’s in your stash?

Stash Sunday: Introducing Aubergine

Knoontime Knitting
She has a name now!

I’m so excited – I settled on a name, and I’m nearly done with the scarf!  This picture is a little too heavily slanted toward blue, but you get the idea.  I’ve decided the name is Aubergine.  I should be done in another day or two.

This is a fun project because the stitch is much simpler than it looks.  It’s just a four row repeat, and two of those rows is to Purl across.  What could be easier?  This would be suitable for a beginner, as long as they know how to cast on and bind off, knit, purl, and do yarn overs.

Pro-tip – keep your yarn untangled by moving the working skein around the waiting yarn on each color change.  Otherwise you’ll have a wadded up mess before you go five or ten repeats.  No fun.

Stashbusting – The Ugli Bag

Knoontime Knitting

This picture is a bit yellow, and the middle of the bag is beige and not lemon.  But behold, my friends, the Ugli Bag.

The top is super soft, fuzzy furry overdye with a thick central filament of a bulky yarn.  I didn’t have much of it, so I couldn’t at first figure out what to make; then I decided on a gift bag.

Then I ran out.  What to do?

The beige stripe is the leftover marino and alpaca blend that I used for a lovely scarf wrap that I’ll feature in an upcoming article.

Then I ran out of that.  Uh-oh.

Enter the blue.

Hrrrh?  The bag is a mixture of browns, pumpkins, and beige.  blue?  BLUE?

Well, orange’s complement is blue, and so it’s a natural choice.

Sort of.

Then it hit me – do the strap in blue, too.  The prior picture shows the top of the strap so you can see the texture.  This one shows the bag.

I didn’t realize, though, when I put in a 2-stitch edging of garter stitch that I would cause the strap to fold in on itself.  It worked to my benefit, actually, because instead of being ultra wide, the strap is now just the right width and the double-thickness means it will be stronger.

You can get a better idea of how obnoxious the blue is next to the orange, though, in this shot.  It’s not quite as neon blue as in the image, but it’s somewhere between muted and neon (how’s that for precise?).

I’m going to line the bag with muslin to give it some strength and I’ll show pictures once that’s all done.

Knit on!

Stashbusting – The Purple Purse

Knoontime Knitting

From some leftover purple overdye comes this little confection of a purse.  I had to laugh, though:  I showed it to someone at weaving class today and the first thing they said was, it’s cute, but it’s not big enough.  What would you use it for?  When I said it’s a gift bag, they said they weren’t that organized.

Organized?  It doesn’t take any organization at all to use up our stash in these little bags or other small projects.  Quite the contrary, actually.  If we use it up, then we don’t need to organize or store it – and if it’s a gift bag, we can give it away and get it out of our house, and make somebody really happy in the process.  A win-win, in my book!

I figured out one thing, though.  I used the Woven Stitch from Barbara Walker’s A Treasury of Knitting Patterns.  If you’re a knitter, get this book and the other three in the collection as you can.  They’re a treasure trove.

But I digress.  So, Woven Stitch.  It calls for a K1 before the repeat begins on Row 2, and a K1 at the end of the repeat on Row 4.  I wasn’t thinking, and knitted the bag on 3 needles in the round like a sock.  I did each pattern repeat distinctly, one on each needle, not thinking that when I took it off the needles it would be a tube.  In the front left of the image above, immediately to the left of the handle, there’s a vertical stripe of stockinette (stocking) stitch going up the purse in the midst of the Woven Stitch; it’s echoed on the other side as well.  I actually like the effect but had a “derp” moment when I took it off the needles and realized my mistake.

If you’re reading that and trying to figure out why it’s a mistake, consider this:  even though you’re knitting on three needles, you’re knitting in the round.  You don’t need the edge stitches to keep the integrity of the design the way you do in back-and-forth flat knitting.  I should have just omitted those extra knit stitches on either side of the design and then you’d never be able to tell where I began and ended the row repeats (which, since I was knitting in a circle, were rounds and not rows).  Clear as mud?  Good.

 
Here’s a bigger picture so you can see what I’m talking about and use my thumb for scale – it really is a cute little bag.  But, honestly, I would use it for keys and cell phone if I was going out for the evening somewhere casual but where I didn’t want to drag my planner and ubiquitous backpack.

The woven stitch when knit flat has a curl to it, so I decided to do a seed stitch for the handle instead so I didn’t have to worry about edge stitches to keep it flat.

Here’s a detail of the handle and a look inside the maw of the bag.  Rowr!

One more stash down; a lot more to go.

Stashbusting – The Harry Potter Sweater

Knoontime Knitting

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there was a knitter.  She wanted to knit with all her heart and she bought a book on knitting.  She tried and tried and tried some more, but try as she might, the drawings just wouldn’t make any sense.  Sadly, she put away the needles, and the yarn, and the book; and that might have been the end of the story.

But then, one day while at her place of work, a coworker was knitting.  The knitter went up to the other knitter and asked where she learned to knit.  The knitter, the first one, said that she learned knitting from a knitter at a knitting shop who taught knitting classes.  Our knitter was so excited, she went that very day and signed up for knitting lessons.

After some time passed, she went back to her book on knitting and what do you suppose happened?  The drawings made sense!  She decided to make a sweater for her young boy, who was only ten.

But, as all things do, things became complicated in the form of sleeves.  Sleeves are an evil plague that infect many, many kinds of sweaters, including the simple boat-neck sweater in her knitting book.

The knitter put the sweater away and made many, many other projects – including this blog!

The young boy of ten is now twenty-one.

And the knitter finally finished the sleeves!

Of course, the young boy is no longer young, nor a boy, nor small enough to fit said sweater, but that’s a story for another day.

The End

Front View of the Harry Potter sweater (it’s in the colors of Gryffindor, for those of you who aren’t HP fans; that’s one of the Houses at Harry Potter’s boarding school)

Side View (ignore the wall that needs painting; we’re not done with remodeling yet)

Stashbusting – The Jewel Scarf

Knoontime Knitting

I have named my little scarf:  I shall call it, mini-scarf.  No, kidding.  The Jewel Scarf.  Why?  There aren’t any jewels in it, and no beads, but the colors are shiny and remind me of jewels.  Ergo, the jewel scarf.

Sadly, since it’s metallic, it’s tough to photograph because the lighting gets wonky; here’s another shot with the flash so you can see it a little better.

This pattern is kicking my butt, though.  It’s deceptively simple:  Row 1, K1, *YO, S1 WYIB, K1, PSSO*, K1.  Easy peasy, right?

Okay, if you don’t read knit-speak:  Row 1, Knit the first stitch, then the pattern repeat is:  yarn over, slip one with yarn in back, knit 1, pass the slipped stitch over the knitted stitch, repeat until only one stitch remains; then knit 1.

The purl row is identical, just with purls instead of knits.

That’s where the problem is – I keep forgetting to slip that first stitch, or I forget the yarn over, or I end up with 3 extra stitches by the time I realize I have a mistake.  I’ve pulled this silly scarf out about five times so far and am about ready to throw my shoe at it.  Today I seem to have gotten it, though, as you can see.

Stashbusting, I’ve got your number.  ðŸ™‚

What are you knitting?  (Or crocheting?)  (Or making?)

Journey into 3-D: Notebook – The Jewel Scarf

Knoontime Knitting

I learned a valuable lesson when working in 3-D:  never take the knitting needle out of live stitches by accident, especially when working a lace pattern.

I bought some lovely yarn on one of my trips and, since we just moved, I can’t find the ball band to tell you about it.  But suffice it to say that it worked up into a lovely narrow scarf for use with a work outfit or something.  Just as I was trying to figure out how to cast off, I pulled out what I thought was the non-working needle and voila.

It was the working needle.

For those of you who don’t know what I mean, in knitting, you have live stitches on a needle.  If you have experience, you can generally put them back on a needle.  It takes practice.  I can do it, if I’m careful, with stockinette stitch – so-called “plain” knitting.  I can do it with rib stitches and garter stitches too.  But lace?  Not so much.

Sadly, I fiddled and faddled and put the project away sometime last year or early this year.

In moving, I found it again and decided to bite the bullet and start over.  Yesterday, I sat down with my trusty ball winder and took the scarf apart.  I’m going to make it over again with a pattern from Barbara Walker’s A Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns, called “Rick Rib.”  It’s a combination of rib stitch and lace.  It’s very simple to work, just two lines, and can be made on any even number of stitches.  I’ve cast on twenty and started.  Here’s how it looks so far (there’s not much yet, but from tiny acorns…)

Here is the project with the yarn next to it.  The jumbled bits are because I did about six rows and realized I’d made several errors and had the wrong stitch count.  Some knitting days are like that.  I started over this morning and it’s going more smoothly.

I love the way the knitted cast on looks like a series of sideways knit stitches.  I’ll post more pictures once I have the pattern established so you can get a look at it.