Tag Archives: knitting

Cast On: Sherwood Forest Wrap

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I might be getting close to the number of time I can mention my birthday trip to Portland before you guys quit this blog so I’m just going to talk about one last thing. I honestly spent more time pre-planning my yarn and travel projects than I did the rest of my suitcase. Which led to some interesting outfit choices during the trip, but I have no regrets!

I was SURE I had settled on casting on a new Sockhead Slouch in some lovely rainbow and grey sock yarn from the Wichita Woolery I got last Winter Woolfest. I had caked it up and pulled the needles and pattern all into a project bag ready to hit the airport. And then literally at the 11th hour I changed my mind. At 10 pm the night before my 4:30 am wake up call I decided to cast on a whole different project, a huge rectangular wrap.

I pulled the skein of Trampoline from KnitCircus in the Sherwood Forest colorway off my shelf where it had been staring at me and I cast on the Pride Wrap by Nicole Tavares. Its a rectangle wrap designed for a 150 gram gradient, which is what my skein was. I literally got the 200 stitches cast on and I worked one row before closing up my suitcase.


I knit on the airplane a little but A LOT just lounging around my friends house. She got me some amazing socks as a birthday present and I thought they paired nicely with my knitting. And I decided to call my wrap the “Sherwood Forest Wrap” after my yarn color instead of the pattern name. I think it has a nice ring to it.

I managed to work the first garter section and start the stockinette section. It takes me awhile to work across a row and back with the large number of stitches so I didn’t make what looks like a big chunk of work. But it was several hours worth for sure!

I was also a little disappointed because the pattern is a paid for pattern (and not an inexpensive amount either) and it has a pretty big booboo in one section of the directions. I am guessing this was not tech edited and I emailed the designer to politely point out my issue. I love this project and I’m not going to give it up. But I’ll see what kind of response I get from the designer before I pass any judgement.

Happy Knitting!!

A Visit To Twisted

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While in Portland my friends graciously offered to help me find a yarn store. And we wandered our way into Twisted and y’all….it was amazing.

They had a well curated shop of lots of amazing mainstream yarn lines and many indie dyers. And with no sales tax in Oregon….I fell down hard and basically handed them all my birthday money. The staff was knowledgeably and helpful but just let me shop and squish yarn in my preferred way. They had Quince & Co and Brooklyn Tweed, neither of which I had seen in person before. I think I lapped the store three times just taking it all in! My friends were so great and helped me shop. They asked some very thoughtful questions and really took an interest in how the whole knitting culture worked.

I came away with quite the haul. There were two skeins of fingering weight, five skeins of DK, five mini skeins and three enamel pins. And I did actually try to thoughtfully purchase so that I didn’t just buy pretty yarn to linger in my stash. I bought yarn in color combinations that went together and with projects in mind.

The tweedy yarn will be a two color shawl, the Hazel Knits in green hues will be some sort of a faded project, the Twine will be combined with existing stash for a shawl and the Knitted Wit will be happy socks for my feet.

I can hear Jellybean rustling in his bed so I need to get moving this morning. I’ll try to get up a separate post where I geek out a little harder over this yarn haul.

Happy knitting!!

A Well Traveled Hat

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My Four Seasons hat was very well traveled during my recent birthday trip to Portland.  This is where my hat started at 6 am at the Kansas City Airport. The terminal was shockingly busy for such an early Saturday morning. But based on overheard conversations, a TON of people were headed to Mexican resorts to escape the impending arctic blast.

I only knit on this hat while on modes of transportation during my trip. And by Monday morning when I boarded my flight it looked like this. (I also treated myself to a Mimosa to cap off a wonderful weekend. It wasn’t the greatest I’ve ever had but it felt decadent to do while traveling without the fam.)

And this last photo is brought to you by the KCI airport bathroom. I literally bound off the top of the hat while we were taxiing to our gate. The gentleman seated next to me complimented me on finishing so quickly. I think I earned some bonus points with him because I had asked him if my knitting would bother him  during the flight. He nicely told me it would not so he earned some good karma points in my book as well.

It’s a good thing this was done. It was 18 degrees with a feels like temperature of 9 degrees. I literally wore this out of the airport and all the way to my car….ends hanging out and all! It was perfection!

I’m going to drop this hat into a nice Eucalan bath and hope to have some non bathroom selfie FO pictures later this week. Happy knitting!!

P.S. My shirt says “I run on Caffiene, Wine and Bad Words”. I got a few chuckles from fellow passengers during my travels.

Sock Surgery

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Happy Black Friday, I hope you are having fun in the chaos or avoiding it all together, whichever is your bag. I’m in the “avoid it” group so I’m sipping coffee and contemplating a turkey sandwich for breakfast.

But I digress, I need to do some sock surgery. My Accidental Travel Vanilla socks made their way on to my feet and into my boots this week. But I was annoyed all day long and constantly having to unzip my boots to pull up my socks.

After lunch I was beyond frustrated so I took my whole shoe off to diagnose the problem. And I found it….the heel is too small. I knit these pretty early in my afterthought heel career. And I knit it just like a standard wedge toe, knit one round and decrease the next round repeating those until done. Nowadays I knit my heels differently. I add extra knit rounds in between the decreases to add depth to the heel to fit my round heel.

I guess the blessing of this heel is that I can pick up the edge stitches and then rip back the heel to knit a better one. I’ve pulled these socks out of my sock drawer and put them in the mending basket for a rainy day when I need a quick project.

Happy Friday and Happy Knitting!!

Halfway Done Zen

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I feel like I need to do a little pat on my own back. I have powered through a whole metric ton of bulky weight knitting. I have reached the halfway point on my Zen Yarn Garden Chevron Baby Blanket.

I have used up just under half of the blue and grey yarn. And then I added in the middle color block of red. Instead of measuring these rows I simply knit until I ran out of red. This took just over 1.4 skeins of bulky red yarn out of my stash FOREVER….bwahahahaha.

I think the solid middle section in that pop kind of color really add to the color blocking of it all. And makes the blanket less sedate and more fun. It kind of blows out on camera but I adore it in real life.

And smart Rachelle decided to start weaving in my ends. I plugged on some episodes of The Good Place and went to town with my darning needle. I got all the loose ends woven but I’ll wait to trim them until after its washed and blocked. I only have four stripe sections left and this blanket will be done!

Happy Knitting!!

Knitting The Card Game

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Ya’ll….I may have lost my mind when I opened this box. Earlier this summer I back the kickstarter for Knitting the Card game and it FINALLY came!! I’ve been seeing this pop up all over my social media feeds and I’m beyond excited to have my own copy.

I immediately ignored my cluttered office and messy kitchen and started the game. I roped my dad into playing with me. He’s a great sport!

Turns out he is also a sharp tactician. He read the full rules and promptly whipped my butt. He knew all the rules and I was too busy fan girling to bother with rules. I was cruising along and I got 100 first but I didn’t know about the pattern deduct. So lesson learned….read all the words next time! We played a second time and this time I won that round. The game was super easy to pick up and I can’t wait to convince more people to play with me!!

American Thanksgiving is this week…..I will have more family around to rope in…..

FO Friday: Dark Side Vanilla Socks

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I have a FO and they are just about the wackiest pair of socks I have every knit. My Dark Side Vanilla Socks are done and ready for their recipient!

Pattern: 72 stitch vanilla sock made from a sock snake/tube

Needles: US 0s

Yarn: Knit Picks Felici in Dark Side and Cascade Heritage Sock in Grey

These socks are one full 50 gram skein of the Felici  split between two socks and then roughly 25 grams of the Cascade sock. I definitely didn’t split these evenly and one leg ended up longer than the other. You can see that one set of cuff ribbing is about double the other one. So the socks are now equal in total length but not in ribbing. I’m rolling with it.

And as pointed out so very eloquently in the comments of a previous post. The stripes are reversed because I knit toes from both ends of the sock snake so when I split in the middle they became opposites. And you can totally see that because the red and purple stripes are exactly opposite one another in each sock.

These delicious socks are bound for Portland Oregon as a gift for a dear friend whom I plan to visit this fall. I have a quick weekend trip up my sleeve to celebrate my recently acquired status as 35 years old. She is a dear friend and VERY knit worthly. Not to mention she is letting me crash for free in her house, so it’s only fair!

And I still have the other 50 gram sock snake in this color to deal with. I need to decide if they will be socks for me or another quick gift pair for Christmas….decisions decisions…..

Crazy Orange

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Jellybean needed to blow off some steam the other day so I took him for a post school trip to Skyzone. He got 60 minutes of literally bouncing off the walls and I got to sit and knit where my project matched the landscape, lol.

I had one other mom ask me what I was knitting. I gladly obliged and told her about my project. I even told her she got bonus points for knowing it was knitting! I’m still plugging away at the brim of my Four Seasons Hat. I am not aiming for any particular length or measurement. Just knitting until it looks good and then I’ll start the main body. Nothing super scientific as this is just my purse/zen project.

See you guys tomorrow with something extra cool!

A Present for My Eyes

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My mother is amazing at a lot of things. And shopping for a bargain is one of her most finely honed skills. She was in Joanns with some quilting friends and spied an Ottlite in the clearance section. This is a RARE occurance and she was intrigued. She asked an associate and they told her it was a old “design” that they were told to clearance because a new appearance/look was coming in. So she got a CRAZY good deal on this light and presented it to me for my birthday.

I decided to put it to good use weaving in the ends on my Dark Side Vanilla socks last night. I just plugged it in next to the couch and went to work! My 35 year old eyes LOVED it. It was so easy to see the dark colors and catch the purl ridges. I may never be able to go back to regular light. I might have hugged my mother extra hard for this one!

Happy Knitting!!

Knitting In The Wild

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Jellybean was due for his semi annual dental cleaning and he CRUSHED it. I was so proud of him because he did the x-rays, cleaning and exam like a big ole brave kid. I managed to sit quietly in the corner and knit on my sock. The dentist was duly impressed with both Jellybean’s performance and my sock knitting.

I finished the last two rows of the cuff and cranked out ten or twelve rows of the first heels on my Dark Side Vanilla socks. Current me was very grateful that past me inserted those needles and cut the work apart so it was ready to go!

Thank goodness for purse knitting!!