Category Archives: WIPs

Just Be A Sweater Already

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Hello from DK weight yarn sleeve island! It’s a balmy 70 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit in Kansas and it’s hampering my desire to knit with a full sweater in my lap. I really am ready for my Radiate to just magically turn into a sweater already.

Sleeve number on is complete with all my decreases marked with super fancy paper clips. And I’m roughly halfway through the decrease on sleeve number two. I have plenty of yarn and I’m not seeing any discernable pooling with the black. So I think this is the home stretch. I just need to find the mojo!

Happy Knitting!!

The Last Heel

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Thanks to some socially distanced travels to the grandparents this weekend for Jellybean’s 6th birthday…I have almost finished socks!! My Retro Rainbow Socks are almost complete and basking in the early Kansas fall season.

The first sock is still complete and the second one is a complete tube with a finished cuff. I have a sneaking suspicion that my socks will end up being fraternal rather than identical. Most certainly due to my gauge and no fault of the dyer. This pandemic and remote school has played all kinds of hell with my tension.

Fingers crossed I have a finished pair of socks this week! Happy Knitting!!

School Line Knitting

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I am now officially a school pickup and drop off Kindergarten mom. Thanks to the weirdness that is 2020 the husband and I now have to plan school drop and school pickup into our work day. And with temperature/mask checks….the car line can be long.

I’m going to leave the politics and drama out of this and I’m not soliciting any advice or input. My family made the hybrid learning choice for Jellybean because that is what we need as a family. It will be CrAzY stressful and I have already forgotten to pick up Jellybean after school (it was day two of in person #momfail).

So I’m choosing to use this roughly 30 to 40 minutes a day to knit in line and have chats with Jellybean about superheros and the best snack foods. For as long as this lasts I hope to get some bonding time with Jellybean and maybe crank out some more socks.

PS. My Big Bang Theory project bag makes me super happy.

Happy Knitting!!

Radiate Sleeves

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My Radiate body is complete and I’m squarely into swimming on sleeve island!

I managed to slip on this garment and I’m pleased to report that it fits. It does need a good blocking for the fabric to relax into that good sweatshirt style fit I want. I’m super pleased with my alternating skeins of the hand dyed yarn. I can’t discern any pooling or flashing in the sweater body. I do not plan to alternate skeins on the first sleeve. I have enough yarn left over that I can knit the full sleeve from the same skein of yarn.

I can FEEL this sweater almost being done. So I’m hoping to power through the sleeves so I can have another fall sweater.

Happy Knitting!!

Radiate Ribbing

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Can I get a hallelujah and an amen? I have finished the body of my Radiate and i’m starting the hem ribbing.

I added an extra inch and a half to the body length than the pattern asked for. I know I want to block the body out a bit wider for a nice sweatshirt style fit. So that means I am going to eat into the length a bit even with super wash yarn that is likely to grow. I want my finished sweater to fall at my hip line

One other modification I made is to turn the hem into a split hem. Being a women with robust hips and waist I really like how the split hem allows a garment to stretch and lay nicely on my body. I think I am close to finishing the back hem. My plan is to knit the front hem to be a bit shorter to create a mild high/low effect.

Fingers crossed this goes quickly! Happy Knitting!!

Clearing The Deck

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Also on a quarantine reaction front, I decided to use some of my kid free time last weekend to do a little “crafting round-up” to see if I could clear the decks a little. I just had the urge to organize and get rid of projects that don’t make me happy. I ended up cleaning my craft room bookshelf and the crafting corner where I dump all my projects. I came up with the following:

  1. A tote of WIPs I hadn’t looked at in at least two years or more
  2. My ginormous mitred square memory blanket and project bag
  3. Two giant knitting bags with many many project bags in them

Y’all, I dumped the whole shooting match out on the living room floor and just started sorting. I managed to empty three project bags and reclaim the yarn and needles for projects I just didn’t want to do anymore. I repacked my tote with three projects I still want to have on hold and organized my scraps for my memory blanket into one place.

That let me with one bag/pile of WIPs I actually feel like I want to work on. Including a blanket project that I forgot I had from….ahem….four years ago?

I’m hoping the revs up my mojo a little bit. But at the very least I feel a little less burdened with “to-dos” and projects. There is a lot of potential in that bag I just need to realize a little of it maybe.

Happy Knitting!!

A Half Finished Rainbow

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Thanks to slow and steady progress I have my first finished Retro Rainbow vanilla socks made from MustStash self striping yarn.

I finished the afterthought heel. I have a pretty deep instep so I modify the afterthought heel to fit. If anyone is interested the recipe I use is on this Ravelry page. This go around wasn’t my neatest pick up and some of the stitches are stretched pretty hard. I may have to do some rearranging or reinforcing after I block these socks.

I avoided second sock syndrome my immediately casting on the second one. I knit about three or four stripes on the winery date with my husband. So I have a good start on the second sock.

Starting Over

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Even with my decreased knitting mojo, I have been making decent progress on my DK Ripple Bralet. I completed the body and the shaping for the first strap. The pattern specifically tells you to knit with negative ease. So I chose an appropriate pattern size for my bust measurement BUT I didn’t gauge swatch. That was a poor choice.

When I slipped this sweater on to see how long I needed the straps to be….it was beyond sausage casing tight. It was completely unwearable. Even my husband could tell and raised an eyebrow at me, sigh.

Cue the sad violins…because this is what my bralet looks like now. I ripped that sucker right out. The good news was that I hadn’t gotten far enough to wear I needed to cut the yarn. So I still have one full complete skein.

I did measure my gauge before ripping so now I know I need to go up two full pattern sizes to get a fitting garment. So I’m choosing to think of that first attempt as a REALLY complicated swatch. I haven’t gotten around to re-casting on again. I hope that isn’t a bad sign. Maybe this project just needed a good cooling off period?

Happy Knitting!!

Date Knitting

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The COVID situation isn’t really getting any better in my region of Kansas so my family and I are really limited in what we feel safe doing. And that has led us all to feel a little cooped up and grumpy. But I was able to find a great babysitter inside our “bubble” and I convinced the hubby to drive me out to my favorite local winery, Prairie Fire Winery, for our first outside the house date in 6 months.

The owners are extremely careful with sanitation and social distancing so I feel safe there. And on weekends they have live music outdoors. We grabbed our masks, my knitting and had some wine in the shade while we listened to a couple of very talented local musicians. I tasted some very yummy Traminette and a semi dry Vignoles varietal.

There was something very soothing about watching the prairie grass wave in the wind and knit round and round on my Retro Rainbow vanilla sock. Also, the hubby got pooped on by a bird….twice…I couldn’t stop laughing. May have lost some wife points over that one, oh well!

Happy Knitting!!

WIP Wednesday: DK Ripple Bralet

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My DK Ripple Bralet grows apace. I have completed the main body section and working what I think will become the top band?

I have to be honest, I only skimmed through the pattern before starting. So I really don’t know what is happening. I’m just blissfully doing what the pattern tells me. And right now that is 1.5 inches two different kinds of ribbing, one for the front and one for the back.

Surely this will end well right?