Knitting Dragonflies

Yay! This definitely was a slog-a-long! I started it in July of 2010 and finished it in July of 2012. Sound the horns, where is my knitting tiara!! But in my defense it was a long road. I had many gauge issues, due to using a yarn that was thick and thin ( Colinette Point Five in the colorway Cardinal,) bought, of course for another pattern, then frogged, ( see this post ).  Now this yarn is a beautiful, hand painted yarn, which is why I bought it, but I detested knitting with it. It seemed to suck all of the moisture out of my hands, (this may just be me). So I had to knit in small increments of time. The skeins are only 55 yds in 100 gms, so I had a crazy strategy of using multiple circular needles to knit it with. I had one circular at the collar, and bottom, and one circular on each sleeve. ( gauge issue post here )   I had the body done, kept the live stitches on all of my circular needles and figured, due to my limited number of balls of yarn, I would knit the esse...

I did quite a bit of knitting on vacation. The drive there, I was trapped in the car with “the sweater”, so I had no choice but to knit. That was my strategy and it worked, but after 6 solid hours of knitting I was still on the collar! Well really the shawl collar which includes short rows and the front. Due to my yarn shortage I had taken the bottom and sleeves and put them on waste yarn. My strategy was to finish the front/collar, and then see how much I had, if I had enough, finish the bottom. I made my husband stop at a gas station and take photos so I could tell what it looked like, I was trying to tell what it looked like in the front seat of a small car. *grin* . No not there yet! I was surprised at how much knitting it took to get it long enough, basically I just knitted on the collar/front, until I was sick of it, and called it done. I then knitted a bit on the bottom, and then put a k2, p2 ribbing on it. Still knitting on the bottom ribbing here. After I was happy enou...

A quick sketch of a tree in my backyard, now minus its leaves. Done with a office supply felt tip marker, a fairly fat one. And finally some fibery progress…. After dithering about after every two rows, I decided to forge ahead on my Iced Sweater from Knitty made with Colinette Point Five. Due to the flash, the colors look pinker than the actual yarn. This is a top down sweater pattern, and after sweating the gauge for a bit. I’ve decided to consider it as a suggestion as to how much “off” I’m going to be, and try to compensate from there. I have no idea if I’ll have enough yarn to complete the sweater. I have 10 skeins of 50 m each = 500 meters or 546 yds. of Cardinal, (it is fairly bulky, I’m not sure if it is considered super bulky). The recommended needle size on the label is 17 and I’m using a 10 to get close to the gauge needed. This resulted in most of my problems, the knit is turning out to be thick and rather stiff. But I’ve decided to think of it as a warm sweater/coat...

The Winter Knitty is up!! I love the scarf on the front!! This has begun me to ponder....am I inspired mostly by yarn I find? Or a pattern? It seems lately that I have spent a lot of time searching for the right pattern. I recently frogged a sweater (pattern inspired) and am searching for what to do with that yarn. I have gone through my stash and am on a mission to try to pick out something, or maybe a lot of somethings to do with it. Guess I am on a destash kick. I bought some Colinette Point five recently in the cardinal colorway, picked that out because I ran across the pattern in the yarn store and then started shopping for yarn to knit it in. (this was when I had just gone into the store to buy a pair of needles) Oops.. Looking at my knitting book library and magazines, I have come to the conclusion that most of the time I am inspired by the pattern and then go looking for the yarn to knit it out of. Which ends up to be something other than the pattern was written for (of course)...

I did make a rather big yarn purchase.... Found this pattern and then had to find some yarn to go with it. I needed something, I am still madly knitting and quilting for the craft show. After it is done, I am going to start working on this..... In the directions it says to work from two skein at a time, using one for one row and the second for the next row, to keep the pattern random. I have never heard of this, it sounds like rather a pain, but possibly a good idea.