A Little Yarn On The Side

Ha!

I managed to squeak both both scarves in under the Mad Dash wire, giving me 2090 yards for my Mad Dash team (which luckily had some faster knitters, so we made the 12,000 yard mark) and 34 projects for the year!  Of course, what I wanted to do was immediately cast on more lace, but I would REALLY love to see a physical reduction in stash this year, so I cast on a one-row scarf instead: The yarn is an acrylic that I've had for a while, and generally I only use acrylic for baby clothes, but I really like this colorway.  AND it's been in my stash probably 9 years, and this scarf will use it all up--and hopefully make a great gift.  THEN I can revisit the lace thing.......... The two runners with fleece for a backing have been finished and washed,  and while they turned out okay, I'm not overly thrilled with the bottom one with the decorative ties.  The stippled one was certainly the bigger pain to actually MAKE because the fleece was so stretchy, b...

*  Publish a free pattern on Ravelry, and the next time someone asks you for a chart, make one using Roman numerals..... *  Walk into your local knit night and announce that with Global Warming, soon no one will need knitwear at all. *  Take a small ball of yarn with you when you go out for sushi, and start knitting with your chopsticks while waiting *  This: * or this: * Call your local police station to report a tip on a local yarn uni-bomber, but specify that he does occasionally dabble with acrylic 4-ply *   Confront the local quilter's guild for encroaching on your craft-store turf--if possible, with a catchy background score by Bernstein. *  Take your knitting out in public, and the next time someone says, "I would never have the patience for that," tell them the doctor says it will keep you off the medications and maybe the shock treatments....

Thanks for your kind words everyone!  I am SO in love with the new shawl!!!  And to give credit where credit is due, this is the Raverly link to the Begonia Swirl shawl , which a lovely knitter has chosen to share for free.  Aren't knitters the best? I've had a bit of an up-and-down (literally) week with the back, so only a tiny bit of sewing: which was trying single decorative stitches in variegated thread as ties on a table runner with fleece as a backing.  Not bad, though not my favorite.  And the limit of this week's sitting. Since there's been a fair bit of laying on the heating pad, I took the opportunity to try out the size 17 needles I just bought, and made half a scarf before having to stop because I couldn't find the second ball of yarn.  My organization "skills" are just truly frightening sometimes.  I liked the pattern, so I started a second scarf with slightly smaller needles (10) and some of the oldest yarn in my stash: wh...

Really???????????? So while it would have made sense to stick with big needles and big yarn during the Mad Dash, I became obsessed with the Begonia Swirl shawl (because I'm me and must complicate everything), but I am pleased to announce that I am at the bind-off: I already added the first 600-yard ball of yarn to my tally, so it's not going to go up by much and I'm nowhere NEAR my 3000 yards, but I am going to have a beautiful new shawl for spring.  The knitters who are knitting 12,000 yards by themselves are multi-stranding, which is great if you end up with lace yarn and decide you don't like knitting with lace yarn, but I wasn't even slightly tempted.  The reason I have so much lace yarn is that I like knitting with it, I like how it looks, I like the softness of the projects, and it would be stupid for me to take yarn I like and waste it on a project I don't like.  So, I'll probably won't even make it to 2000 yards, but that's fine.  I...

Which is more of an accomplishment than you might think.  Immediately after bragging about my bravery yesterday, I seared my index finger with the new mini-iron Andy gave me for Christmas, which I thought would be perfect to use to baste the runner with some bits of fusible webbing.  And it might have been, but it's really hard to operate with a throbbing finger.  And even if I had wanted to, the runner had developed a furry problem: This morning--not to lose my imperfect streak--while trimming off a spare thread, I managed to snip the top of the table runner AFTER sewing the backing on and turning it inside out.  After sticking it down with some Fraycheck, I thought the best solution would be some gold stitching around the edge.  Because I used fusible fleece, it doesn't have to be quilted--which is good, since at this point I'd have probably stitched one of the cats into it--but the stitching will help hold it's shape.  or the new slightly-cur...

Now you might have noticed that you haven't seen any progress on this: That would be because the next step had me worried--trimming off the edges into a smooth curve.  After all that work, taking any cutting implements to it in any way just scared me.  It's sort of like cutting steeks in a sweater, and on Pinterest I'd seen some spicy spiral runners where people had obviously trimmed badly and left wonky-looking runners.  So, it was easy to drift into other projects while this one languished, but I caught myself looking at other fabrics to put together for other versions of this, and decided it was time to gird my loins --at least figuratively, as I think with my hip problems I shouldn't be doing any girding anywhere near my loins--and finish this baby.  Using my dressmaker's curves, I started cutting point to point, and, having to take one break for some deep breaths, I have: a table runner ready for backing!!!!!  Since this is the first one, I'm go...