All posts by Peneloping

Finished Project: Damask

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Pattern: Damask by Kitman Figueroa
Yarn: Malabrigo Sock, 1 skein
Started: May 11, 2011
Finished: May 23, 2011

Ravelry page

Have I mentioned how much I’m in love with this pattern? And the yarns?? The pattern came with three available sizes and all the small took was most of one skein of Malabrigo Sock yarn.

Fresh off the needles it looked so soft and squishy and on the smallish side.

Damask

The border is my favorite. 🙂 And this is before blocking!

Damask

I soaked it for about fifteen minutes, rolled it up in a towel and stepped on it, and then pinned it to the carpet where the wingspan grew to 50″ wide.

Damask

The pattern looks a lot more complicated than it is. It was a little overwhelming at the beginning because it starts off with nearly 300 stitches  to keep track of and every row feels like it takes a decade to finish.
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I’m pretty sure knitting lace is my new favorite thing.

2 Comments finished knit - - - - - - -

For fun, a list!

– I’ve started plotting out Christmas pressies. I know, it’s six months away, but I realized that I’d kept making mental notes of certain knits that I wanted to make for certain people, and rather than drive myself crazy and break all of my fingers in November, I figured it would be smarter to spread them out and start ridiculously early. I made a preliminary list yesterday and already have present ideas set aside for fifteen people. Yikes.

– Have I mentioned how much I love getting things in the mail? I’m currently awaiting a laundry hamper from organize.com (my old one perished nearly six months ago and I’ve been employing a “laundry corner”, ie pile, aka huge mess), caviar and foie gras from igourmet.com (my year abroad in France spoiled me in a way that makes my bank account cringe), and Socks a la Carte which I’m super excited to knit from!

– I feel sort of in limbo because I don’t have a “main” project right now. I have a list of side projects but they’re all either missing some element that I need to obtain before I can continue or they’re just not what I feel like doing right now. I’m hoping the sock book and the 20% off Jo-ann’s coupon sitting in my email inbox will fix this.

– Today’s my Friday! I’m so excited to sleep in it’s unreal. I’m not really sure when 9am started to count as “sleeping in.”

– I’m contemplating getting an ereader for textbooks when I go back to school in the fall. Anyone have experience with this? Or just experience with ereaders in general? Right now I’m debating between the touchscreen editions of the Nook and the Kobo. It’s a $10 price difference but I prefer the look of the Kobo. I’m studying psychology so the majority of my textbooks will be pure text so the fact that it’s black and white shouldn’t be an issue.

-Damask is finished!! Project page coming soon!

Stitches

This weekend was highly productive in the realm of learning new stitches.

For example I learned how to make bobbles:

Bobbles

And nupps:

Damask

And the Kitchener stitch.

Kitchener stitch

Seriously, it’s like magic. Where did the seam go? Oh, yeah, it’s INVISIBLE.

I also finally figured out Row 31 (it gave me headaches for a week so it gets capitalized) of Damask, worked up to row 36, realized I’d made a mistake several rows back, ripped out to row 29, and then powered through to row 74. Have I mentioned how much I love this pattern?? She gives you directions in written and charted form, lots of lovely pictures from different angles, and three different shawl sizes. Plus the shawl itself is gorgeous. I still have about 50 rows to go, but considering it’s a bottom-up pattern, I should be done with it by tomorrow or the next day.

Yee!

I also got a library card (can I stop being an old person?) and checked out Twinkle’s Big City Knits by Wenlan Chia. The review online were terrible, but the patterns were so cute and so quick to knit up that I couldn’t resist trying one out. I finished about 80% of the Best Friend Sweater in about five hours. It’s super cute but I can’t decide if I like how huge the bobbles/cables are. I used the biggest yarn they had at Joanns but I might go back and pick up some Lion Brand Thick & Quick because it’s slightly lighter weight.

Sidenote: “Thick & Quick” = terrible nickname.

1 Comment knitting - - - -

Happy fun roving times.

I have a new project in mind.

About four years ago I saw some lovely belly dancing ladies at a local Renaissance Faire standing around their booths looking glamorous as they spun yarn on what they explained was a drop spindle. I immediately got it into my head that I was going to get myself one of those contraptions and learn to spin and spin all of my own yarn and be awesome. Keep in mind this was before I knew anything more advanced than “knit” and “purl”.

I went online and ordered a (terrible) drop spindle and 100 grams of un-dyed wool roving. I even did some research on dyeing wool with Kool-Aid and found this amazing Knitty article and went out and bought all sorts of colors to try. I was absolutely ecstatic until I realized that the belly dancing ladies had made it look so much easier than it was, and why wouldn’t my spindle stay spinning?!

So anyway, that idea kind of died.

But ever since then I’ve wanted to learn to spin, spin my own yarns, and knit something that I could say was entirely handmade.

So last week I bought a drop spindle from Knitpicks, and yesterday I ordered 500 grams of wool roving. I even picked out the pattern. I thought it was perfect, since I can’t seem to spin evenly. Hee. I think I’m going to go with the Ice Blue Raspberry Lemonade flavored Kool-Aid, but less concentrated so it comes out more muted.

And in the meantime, I’ve been having tons of fun with the 100 grams of roving I already had.

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I know, it’s totally uneven, but I feel like the little kid at the end of the credits of X-Files episodes. I MADE THIS.
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Sidenote: does anyone else have the drop spindle from Knitpicks? I was kind of confused about the complete lack of hook or notch or anything to keep the yarn in place. I ended up stealing the hook from my other drop spindle and sticking it on this one, which sort of seems to work.