Knitting Dragonflies

Winter winds, snow and ice? That translates to lots of knitting. I had a birthday to knit for and a couple of skeins of Hometown USA by Lion Brand. I was drawn to this yarn due to the extreme softness, it just made me squeeze the skeins and the vibrant colors, and then noticed that it was 100% Acrylic. I’ll be the first one to tell you, I hardly ever knit with a yarn that does not have some natural fiber in it, but this felt so tempting I couldn’t resist. I usually buy Wool Ease Chunky with a fiber content of 20% Wool and 80% Acrylic, but kept going back to this one. I just couldn’t stop touching it. It is a super bulky yarn at 9 sts x 12 rows per 4 square inches. Available in 63 colors, the solids and multis are 100% acrylic, and the Tweeds are 94% acrylic and 6% Rayon (due to the tweed bits). I decided to try it out, as I had fallen in love with the Tampa Spice color, I thought it would  be perfect for my birthday gal. I wanted a Cowl pattern, and loved the look of the see...

Winter weather has been crazy this year! Seems like warm to cold temps. Coldest temps I’ve seen in a long time. What better to get everyone in a great knitting mood! I wanted an easy shawl pattern to high light the handspun yarn. It was my first time that I spun a pound of fiber, I picked out an unlikely color (for me) because I tend to look at my stash and it is all blue. Pumpkin or persimmon colored Blue Faced Leicester fleece ! I splurged on a pound and wanted to see how much yardage I would get from it. I spun it up and plied it, It ended up giving me approximately 700-800 yards or so. It looked a little matt or dull to me, so my girlfriend suggested that I added a strand of something else. I picked out a spool of Sulky thread in the blendable colors, it did take 3 spools, I ran my plied yarn back through the wheel and loosely added the thread. The result gave it just enough dimension to make me happy. Large enough to wrap around your body in the house, in a chilly office. Yet ...