Many of you have donated generously in the past to this wonderful program.  I work with Pastor Dee Moore on the project and she recently contacted me saying that even though infant loss has been reduced (yay!!), they are running very low on shawls.

In case you have not heard about Wrapped in Care, here is some information from the brochure (see links to the right for flyers if you would like to share them with a knitting group or prayer shawl knitting circle):

What is this program about?
The Birth Center of United Hospital and the Newborn Intensive Care Units of Children’s Hospital and Clinics of Minnesota have initiated a shawl project as part of their bereavement support program for women who suffer the death of an infant.

This program will allow mothers to be wrapped in the warmth of shawls during a very traumatic and painful time.  In addition, if the mother is not discharged yet, they can also provide a far more beautiful background than a hospital gown for pictures that will be treasured for a lifetime.  [They really do use the shawls as a backdrop for the final pictures they have of their baby.]

What can I do?
Share a very special and generous gift by knitting a shawl for the program.  Hand-knit items are a treasure.

If you do not have time to knit a shawl, financial contributions are also welcome.  (See contact information below).  Sorry, but we are unable to accept yarn donations.

What kind of shawl is needed?
The shawls can be of different sizes, shapes and colors.  Prayer shawl patterns work well.  Please follow these criteria when selecting yarns:

–          Soft yarn, easy – care fibers preferred (please include care instructions if possible)

–          Yarns that are one color in soft hues without a pattern or variegation work best for photographs

Where do I send my finished shawl?
Mail your shawl or monetary contribution to:
Checks should be made payable to “Perinatal Loss Cart Fund”

Rev. Dee Moore, C/O Wrapped in Care
Children’s Hospital and Clinics of Minnesota
GardenView Building,Suite503
345 North Smith Avenue
St. Paul, Minnesota 55102

If you can dedicate some of your very precious knitting time to this program, it will mean a great deal to someone who will cherish it!

Reply to Heidi:

There is a link to some patterns on the right hand side of the blog which I added below — but they are pretty boring!  Any prayer shawl type pattern will do.  I did a Ravelry search of free shawl patterns using worsted yarn and ended up choosing Tethys.  I am not sure your skill level or the type of knitting that you enjoy, but there are tons of patterns that will work.

Rule of thumb: easy care, not variegated yarn.  I am using Caron Simply Soft and will “steam block” it to block it permanently.

Wrapped in Care Free Patterns

Last spring my knitting peeps and I participated in a knitting shop hop.  One of our stops was Needlework Unlimited.  They were hosting a trunk show by a designer that I had never heard of before: Bente Geil or Geilsk on Ravelry.  She is Danish and many of her patterns are in German.  A sweater was on display that I fell in love with called Dydsmønster…whatever the heck that means!!

Bente Geil’s Dydsmønster

It wasn’t yet available so I waited.  And waited.  And waited.  Until my birthday.  Then I rushed over and bought her Geilsk Tweed yarn and the pattern – in English!!  I started it right away and have been working on it quite regularly ever since…but it is a slow knit (32 sts and 34 rows per 10 cm).

I think I would be done with it by now but for one little problem.  Yes.  That pesky little problem called “did you read the pattern?”  I thought I read the pattern, but therein lies the problem.  I missed one very small and very important sentence: Continue 8 row repeat 6 times.

When  I joined the body and split off the sleeves,  I missed that one little sentence.  As you can tell from the picture, the bottom flares out quite a bit – in actuality, you almost double the stitch count by adding two sts per cable section every 16 rows.  Because I failed to do the straight away section, I started my flare right after the underarms.

So instead of the sweater shown above, I got this:

The bright red is what I knitted – the dark underneath shows what it was supposed to be.  It was a lot of extra knitting.  A lot of WASTED knitting, because I had to rip it all out back to the underarm.  Thousands and thousands of sts and hours and hours of knitting.  But I’m not bitter.    I kept thinking there was something wrong and I should have trusted my instincts, but every time I looked for that all-important sentence, it eluded me!!!

Despite it all, I plunged forward yet again.  I really like the design and the fit.  So I am far from done, but still enjoying it.

It looks much better on a person with arms (sorry, Lettie!).  I just love the bold raglan shaping:

The triangular wedges are on the fronts, the shoulders, and the back.  I have several inches to go on the body but decided to take a break and work on the sleeves.

You can see how nicely the cables flow, even though the direction of the knitting under the arms is reversed.  I added the cabling right under the arm where the sleeve starts, which was not in the pattern.

I hope when it gets done it is cute and fits because it sure is a lot of work.  This designer is very talented and there are a few more of her designs that I like.  Her yarn and patterns are available at Needlework Unlimited so you do not have to order from overseas.

Replay to Laila:

Thank you for commenting and giving us a definition of dydsmønster!  Actually, the cables are not true cables — they are worse!  You make elongated sts on the WS row and then pull the last 4 sts over the 1st 4 one by one on the RS row.  They take longer to make than regular cables if you cable without a cable needle.  Also, they do not rip back as easily!! 

As already mentioned, Susan and I attended Meg Swansen’s Knitting Camp earlier this month.  On our way to the wilds of Wisconsin, we stopped at Amazing Threads, one of the yarn stores that Susan frequents.  They had a store sample of a shawl that we both had considered making: Imagine When designed by Joji Locatelli. It’s a simple but elegant shawl, made by combining garter stitch, short rows, and eyelets. The shape lets it sit nicely on the shoulders.

I started it on the way to camp, and finished it right after I got home. After experimenting with some lovely Madelinetosh, I decided to knit it from the same yarn the shop had used: Anzula Dreamy, soft and drapey blend of merino, cashmere, and silk. The store had a proprietary color — Neptune. I hate to be a blind follower, but sometimes it’s the way to go.

In other words, I used the exact same yarn and the same needle size (a U.S. 6, 4.0 mm) as the person who knit the shop sample. Even though I generally knit a little loosely, my shawl didn’t block out to be as large as the sample. It would have been easy to make a larger size by adding stitches and rows in a few key places, and I had plenty of yarn left over. Unfortunately, I didn’t know it was going to be smaller until it was finished. The pattern called for two skeins and I barely dipped into the second one. It’s still a nice size, but I do wish it were a little larger. The shawl still has a fair amount of spring to it, so I might try blocking it again. Le sigh. I might even make a second one in a different yarn.

Below are some not great photos. It’s hard to photograph the shape.

Can you capture the light of a firefly?  Can you hold a sunbeam?  YES!  Buy gorgeous yarn!  It is almost impossible to capture the colors in pictures, however.  Here are my skeins of Lost City Silks in Honeydew (green) and Cerillos (aqua) — 1000 yds/90 grams, $60.  Now, go buy your own and see what I mean!

My DD Elder just returned from South Korea, and Sally and I came back from Knitting Camp in Wis-con-sin (said with emphasis in a nasally Minnesota whine).  That counts (it is part of the world, after all!).

I told my daughter that she HAD to go to a Korean knitting store and get me something with Korean writing on it.

She found Banul:

They seemed to have a lot of cute, knitted toys.

And loved covering the walls with elaborate knitting:

She bought me a Japanese book because the [crocheted] patterns were cuter! 😉

And here is my lovely daughter, proving her knit-worthiness as she models her new Aranami shawl:

I had no idea how to wear it, but she threw it on in a flash with her impeccable fashion sense!

Sally and I had a great time at Meg Swansen’s Knitting Camp 2.75.  It is hard to describe what went on, but generally a lot of “show and tell” as Campers shared their latest projects, general discussion/Q&A about knitting minutiae, and other knitting-related activities.  Linda and Penny were our besties at Camp, and next year I hope that Kim can again come along.

We met Denise, a newbie to Camp, who dyes her own line of yarns.  We were gobsmacked by her laceweight silk yarn ($60/skein, 1000 yds/90 gms) — sold at Lost City Knits.  I am just selfish enough NOT to share the link, except that I already ordered two skeins in the colors of my choice: Honeydew and Cerillos.  I am not very original.  Denise had two shawls knit from the identical  colors and I just had to have them both!  She mentioned that Honeydew was not a big seller, so she designed and knit a shawl in that color.  It was drop dead gorgeous and now awaits her test knitters to finish it up.  Hurry it up, peeps!!

I am working on a couple of projects that will be revealed in the near future and I will share pics of my Lost City Silks when  they arrive!!!

It’s happened to all of us. (It happens far too often to me.) We finish a project, and we don’t love it the way we had hoped. It may not be a disaster, but it’s not what we wanted and so it gets shoved to the back of a closet to be forgotten. With knitting, that’s really a shame because it can take so long to knit a sweater or shawl or whatever.

One of my most recent meh projects was my Summer Solstice sweater. I liked the pattern and I liked the yarn (Fibre Company’s Arcadia in the color Summer Sweet). I didn’t like the result. I had made it just a little too short (the result of not having purchased enough yarn because when I bought it I wasn’t sure what I wanted to make out of it). A reminder of what it looked like on Lucy:

See? Nothing “wrong” with it at all. But it hit me at unflattering spot and I just felt dowdy in it. Susan kept telling me to fix it. I resisted because to lengthen it required finding yarn in a different dye lot that looked plausible, removing the collar (because it is added last), knitting the additional length, and then reknitting the now even longer collar. Le sigh.

I finally decided to go ahead. I found three skeins of yarn that looked close. To be on the safe side, I chose to reuse the collar yarn for the additional length; I knew that the dye lot difference would be less noticeable if I only knit the collar out of the new yarn. So, I removed the collar, winding it into a hank/skein. I wetted it, and hung it up to dry. (That step was to remove the kinks in the yarn.) Using just that salvaged yarn, I was able to add five inches in length to the sweater. Here is my “new” Summer Solstice. (Forgive the poor quality of the photos; it is SO humid in Washington today that my camera lens kept fogging up when I went outside and it was very difficult to get any pictures.) You can see how much longer it is by looking at the hem in relation to the sleeves, even though I added an inch or so to them, too, as long as I was at it.

I think the difference in dye lots is virtually undetectable. Yay!

My other reclamation project was not a knitting one. A couple of years ago, I purchased a T-shirt meant to be worn as a tunic. I really love the color and the pattern on it, but it was too long. Too short — too long — why can’t anything ever be perfect? I had ordered this online so hadn’t been sure of the length when I bought it. It looked stupid. My sewing machine doesn’t have a serger, and I didn’t feel like spending more $$ on this thing.

Well, the other day I thought I’ll just cut it off and do a decorative hem by hand. It might work. And it did! I used an embroidery stitch in a thread color that I thought would work with the pattern.

We all know the most famous split personality: Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde…that is what I call my latest FO.  Do you want to go to the dark side or into the light??  YOU decide!

This is my Gradient Cowl — it is like getting two cowls in one!  I used 4 skeins of Shibui Silk Cloud, colors Clay, Honey, Grounds and Mineral:

From Left to Right above: Honey-Clay-Honey-Grounds-Mineral

It is as soft as the underbelly of a baby bunny and really nice on the shoulders when the air conditioning is set too cold!  I also want to make a blue –> green version.  It is really nice…except for grafting seed stitch with 3 strands of mohair.  Did not turn out well.

Update on World War Z — fantastic!  L O V E D it.  So scary, so realistic, great zombies, lots of action, great story line.  It did not seem very much like the book, but that’s okay I guess.  My adolescent male self rated it an A+!!!

I don’t want to step on Susan’s post (contrasting her two shawls, below) or hide it by doing anything too fancy here.  But it’s after midnight on the east coast, so even though she’s in Minnesota:

Happy Birthday, Susan!!!

Yes, it’s me!  I am back after travelling into the abyss that is know as the “High School Graduation Open House.”  Is this common in all of the U.S. or is this a Minnesota/Midwest phenomenon??  Egads.  But my open house is done and doner so I am feeling pretty footloose at the moment!

Okay, A Tale of Two Shawls.  As you may remember, I recently finished an Aranami Shawl in Brooklyn Tweed’s LOFT yarn.  My daughter loved it but preferred something lighter, so I decided to make her one — but in Cascade 220 Fingering (a misnomer if ever there was one: Cascade 220 is so named because it is the yardage of their worsted weight yarn 220 yds/100 grams; so what does that have to do with fingering weight yarn??!!??).

Anyway, I finally finished my second Aranami.  So boring.  And the second one to boot.  Quadruple boring (boring increases at a geometric rate).  I took both shawls to my knitting group and did a “blind taste test” – actually, I asked them to vote for their favorite: “If you had to choose one of these two shawls to keep as your very own, which one would it be?”

100% chose the $25 Cascade 220 Fingering version over the $72.50 LOFT version for both the look and the feel.

Here they are side by side (LOFT on the left, Cascade Fingering on the right):

The LOFT version has a browner tint.  The Cascade colors have sharper contrast: the bottom tiers are whiter, the top tier much darker.  There are also gauge differences, and I had to add a tier to the LOFT version for size.  Though I did not add a tier to the Cascade version, I did add a small amount of knitting to the top two tiers…described in detail on my Ravelry project page.

The Cascade yarn, thin as it is, has amazing strength.  I loved working with it and would highly recommend this yarn.

My current project is a copy of Sally’s Gradient Cowl – mine is in golds and browns.  Yowza, it is pretty yarn!!

PS – She loved it!! (and preferred the Cascade, given the choice – much drapier and lighter weight).

When Susan and I were at Yarnover, we both fell in love with a make-it-yourself necklace kit with wire, beads, and wire ribbon. The project is Falling Leaves, designed by Bev Pilarzyk. For me, wire knitting never turns out quite like it does for the “pros.” I’m not unhappy with my necklace, but it’s not as beautiful as the one I saw at Yarnover. Just sayin’.

On the other hand, I was able to make this in a quick afternoon, and it was fun to do something so different from what I usually knit. I’m not sure where I will wear it, though, which is my own issue and not the designer’s. It seems a little dressy for most of my activities. (Then again, getting dressed at all seems a little dressy for most of my activities.)

Here, though, is my little necklace. I knit four leaves as called for in the pattern, but I am showing it here with just two. (You can play around with how you want to wear it.) I apologize in advance for the poor quality of the photos.