Mostly Knits

Well it’s been three years since I started this blog and a lot has happened. First the wrist is doing great. I’ve got a lot of hardware in it so it should last. It took a lot of physical therapy and healing, but that was expected considering that I didn’t just break it, shattered it. For some reason I can’t doing anything simple.

Now on to what’s new. We moved to Florida, specifically the Tampa area. Love it. We found a house on two acres with a pool and lots of oak trees. It’s just what we needed. Of course during the move to the house I fell and hurt my knees, so had to have surgery for that. I just finished my second surgery a few weeks ago. Next step, according to the doctor, is knee replacement. Oh yay!!

Enough of that sad sap stuff, now on to the knitting. I have been knitting a lot since I got to Florida. Part of that is because I discovered the best knitting shop around, Knit n Knibble. It’s a great place to just hang out, knit, get inspired, and have a cup of coffee at the same time. It also happens to only be a few miles from where I work so that makes it easy on the days I don’t carpool to stop by, (which has been very seldom lately). In the past three years I’ve knitted about 18 projects, mostly baby stuff because a lot of people at work were having babies when I first got there and then our granddaughter had a son last year (yes, makes me a great-grandma). But I’ve also gotten in other projects such as a few socks, shawls, some toys, and I am designing a sweater for myself. For anyone interested in seeing pictures of most of these items you can find them on my Ravelry projects page under the user name of Martha1958. With all of this there were three projects that were really big challenges, two of the shawls and a toy cow.

The first challenge, which took a year to do, was the Aeolian Shawl by Elizabeth Freeman. I made this for my Sister-in-Law and after I gave it to her she decided to learn to knit (great inspiration). Knitting the shawl wasn’t the challenge, it was the seed beads and then the blocking. I had never worked with beads this small before. I’m not even sure how many I used; I just know I went through almost two tubes. I used a crochet hook to put them on the stitches and had to make sure I had a lot of light to see what I was doing. There other part of this challenging shawl was the blocking. This is where I made my biggest mistake. I got in a hurry and really didn’t block it correctly. You’ll see in the picture that I should have spent more time on the edge. So the lesson learned here is to take your time in the blocking process and do it right.

Blocking gone bad

The next challenge was the other shawl I made, but it was a challenge for a different reason. This was the 105-3 knitted shawl in “Alpaca” with various lace patterns by DROPS. This was a challenge because the pattern was so poorly written and it seemed to go on forever. Had I read through the pattern I would have seen the confusing bits and either graphed it out or just not taken the project on. The shawl itself came out huge. I ended up breaking a set of circulars and bending another set on this project. I still haven’t blocked it, because I don’t have the room. So I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it. So I guess the lesson learned on this project is to read through the instructions before you start to know and to really look at the pictures that people have posted on Ravelry. Had I looked at some of the pictures I would have seen how big the shawl was going to be.

The last challenge, which is still in progress, is the Sonia Cow by Janice Anderson. The knitting, which is done, was somewhat challenging on a couple of sections, but the sewing up is a bear. I am still working on it. This was something my Mom wanted and every so often she will ask me about it. When she first came to Florida for a visit I took her to Knit n Knibble and that’s where she saw the cow and decided she wanted me to make it for her. Maybe I’ll get it done by Christmas. Lesson learned – don’t take your non-crafting Mother to a yarn shop and if you do, don’t tell her “sure I can knit that.”

Next time I want to talk about the sweater I am trying to design and all of the issues that come with designing a sweater around a specific stitch pattern.