theraineysisters knitting and so much more

Happy Birthday to the Little Sistie!!  Yes, it’s that time of year again when we celebrate the little half of The Rainey Sisters!!  This year I did something different: I knit Surly a present!

I recently posted about my Bella Serva, and how I dug up an old kit from my stash.  Well, I only had ONE kit in my stash, but I thought Surly might like one of these.  I bought some La Bien Aimee Mohair Silk laceweight and worked it with Berroco Remix Light.  It worked well!

Bella Surly

The Remix is not as luxurious as silk boucle, but rather has a raw silk vibe.  Anyway, Happy Birthday to my favorite sister in the whole wide world!  She’s my rock!!

Oh, now THAT is a tortured pun!!  I just took Lilli Pilli off the blocking board and I think it is a success!  I used stash yarn (again!!  Good for me!): Grinning Gargoyle Seda Sock, Color: Storm, and a special purchase of Phydeaux Joie Fingering, Color: Spring Lake.  Spring Lake was a special colorway for Coldwater Collaborative, now called BE. at Lakeside.  They dyed 4 colors, one for each season on Lake Minnetonka.  Spring is the only color I bought, but I thought it looked so pretty with Storm.  The shape and length is similar to Time Trades, which I LOVE!

The pattern calls for three colors, but I only used two.  Several people did that.  By making it narrower you have enough yarn.  See my Ravelry project notes for details!!

This thing was a total slog: acres of garter!!  So slow.  So boring.  I think it will look cute with a crisp white shirt in the summer to stave off air conditioning.  That seems very far away today with below zero temps!!

I just finished Childhood, a pullover designed by Ankestrick.  I’m in love with the yarn and the way the sweater fits and feels.  Do I have photos of myself in it?  Of course not!  My only available model was Loki and I get enough dog hair on my clothes without letting him try on my sweaters, too.

This is a quiet pattern with little details that you might not notice at first glance:  curved hem (flattering on me), purl stitches on the shoulders that flow into the sleeves, purl stitches on the sides that flow into the ribbing), a slightly oversize fit with narrower sleeves.

The star is the yarn, which I’ve found hard to capture.  It’s Blue Sky Fibers Eco Cashmere.  Very expensive and worth every penny for an occasional splurge.  The color is Black Rose.  It’s a deep brown/black marl.  Gorgeous.  Great to knit with and when blocked it became butter soft.  I love touching it.

Because I fell in love with the yarn, I used it even though it’s heavier than the yarn called for in the pattern.  As a result, I knit the XS to end up with a size M.  That worked well although when it came to the sleeves, the number I picked up was just barely enough at the top.  I did NO sleeve decreases at all until the end when I decreased two stitches to accommodate the 4 X 1 ribbing pattern.  True stovepipe sleeves.

Here are some not great photos.  The color is most true in the darker shots.  I’ve thrown in a puppy photo as a bonus.  We will have had Loki for a year this coming Friday!

And here’s Loki, who figured out how to get on the bar stools next to the kitchen island.  He’s a handful.

I sell some patterns, and I teach some classes.  Not a ton of either.  BUT, when those forces collide, it warms my heart!!  I taught several sessions of my Plaid Squared class at BeWoolen in Champlin, near my home.  You see people struggling with this pattern (entrelac is not intuitive!), and you also see the beautiful color combinations that people use.  At the end of class, we do not get to see the finished product, so getting to see the felted bag is a joy to me!

I love the bag, LOVE the colors!!  I am inspired to knit yet another of these bags!  Great job, Sue — I am beyond impressed!

Last week I was at my Tuesday knitting group and someone was wearing a scarf that I recognized — it was Bella Serva and I knew I had a kit for it in my stash — for YEARS.  Seeing her wearing it inspired me, so I immediately cast on and away I went.

Some issues ensued.  I misread the pattern and skipped an important set up row at the beginning, and I made a mistake in my lace.  The yarn is not really rip outable (yes, I made that word up!).  So I fudged the lace boo boo big time.  Fixing the bad cast on was another story!!

The cast on has you hold both the boucle and laceweight mohair together and cast on 387 sts with a size 10.5 needle.  Then you are supposed to go down to an 8 and knit a row (this is the part I missed).  Continuing on with the just the mohair and the sz 8 needle, you knit the lace pattern.  I hated how my cast on looked.  It bothered me every time I looked at it!

So, after I bound off (using a regular bind off instead of the recommended i-cord BO), I picked up the first row of the Angel Hair and cut off my cast on.  Using both yarns held together, I knit one row on an 8 and then bound off from the WS as to knit using the larger needles. I do not recommend doing this, but it worked and looks much better!!  I did look carefully today to see if I had missed any sts and I found two!  Ack!!  I stitched them down and they are fine.

I love, love, love the color!!  Most of the other kits were very bright and multi-colored.  I chose this taupey color because I thought it looked classy and subtle.  To me it looks very vintage!!  This last picture is for Janet even though it is not the best picture!!

I just finished a sweater that took me ages to knit relative to the simplicity of it: Rossore Pullover from the cover of Interweave Knits.

Sally and I both looked at this and thought: Rowan Felted Tweed!!  So, I rushed to The Yarnery and bought a zillion skeins.  Sally had a bunch in stash, so I filled in some of her colors and bought 8 colors for moi.  You may remember that I visited Surly in Boulder in early December.  We collaborated on this sweater while I was there.

The problems started with the gauge difference and the top-down yoke.  We had to make SO MANY adjustments…after MUCH ripping out, we both moved along.  Then we decided that some of the colors we had chosen weren’t that great.  More ripping.  More shopping.  More knitting.  Surly ended up changing out a lot of her colors.  I stayed pretty much on track.  My Rossore is now blocking:

The top color is shown better here:

I hated knitting the Latvian Braid (and reknitting the Latvian Braid!), so we both substituted purl ridges for some of the color transitions (I describe these in detail on my Ravelry project page).  I really like how they turned out.  I also did the neckline with the purl ridges, after plucking out my cast on 🙁 .  I will revisit this project once it is dry and off the blocking board!!  This is not a fabulous sweater, but I think it will be very wearable.  It fits well and I think it will be one I grab often!

From Sally:  I’m still knitting mine.  Yes, I had several colors in my stash, but only one skein of the colors I chose.  And I needed to dip into a second skein.  No one out here sells Felted Tweed.  I ordered it online and they sent the wrong color!

Stick a thermometer in it, this scarf is DONE!!  A year in the making.  Not because I am THAT slow, but because the knitting took place day-by-day (or week by week…month by month??).  I am referring to my Weather or Knot Scarf as created by Scott Rohr at The Yarnery.

This was a super fun project and I am thrilled to get to the end.  My scarf ended up to be 8.5 x 82 inches.  A nice size.  I used Tukuwool Fingering for most of it.  My gold and orange are Elemental Affects.  They ran out of my original gold and the replacement was completely different!!  At that point I subbed Tukuwool.  Tukuwool has a lot more yardage so no running out of those colors.  You really cannot see the gorgeous teal in these pictures — for some reason I could not capture the color!!

I kept reading about people spending hours weaving in ends.  I spent 3 minutes!  I had one end to weave end when I bound off.  I spliced all my other color changes.  I made a few other changes which are described on my Ravelry project page.  I was not thrilled with the blocking of this yarn.  I expected it to soften and be easy to shape.  It looked awful!  I ended up steaming it in addition to wet blocking.  I should have just steamed it!!

And, Happy New Year everyone!!

PS to Amy — I did regular splicing, not Russian joins.  Regular splicing does result in a candy cane effect, which did not bother me at all in this project.  Russian joining, where one color ends abruptly and the new one starts, is more time consuming to do and not really necessary for this scarf.

I recently finished Spring Square designed by Hinterm Stein.  (If you haven’t checked out her wide range of designs on Ravelry, you should.)

My photos are terrible most of the fun in this sweater is in the details along the shoulder.  In other words, arms required for decent photographs.  My mannequin just doesn’t cut it and it’s so hard to take photos of oneself in a sweater!  The floral motif at the back neck gives the sweater its name.

This design uses a really interesting top down construction and way of moving from shoulder to shoulder that was fun to do.  It’s a well thought out pattern; I like the fit enough that I might use the pattern as a template for something else.

It has a sort of modified dolman fit and then tapers to the waist/hips.  I lengthened my Spring Square and made it less tapered.  Other than that, I followed the pattern very closely.

The yarn I used is Carol Sunday’s 3-ply Eden in the Cielo color way.  The contrast color is the same yarn in Mist (left over from the brioche scarf I knit last year).  It is wonderful yarn to knit with and feels great against my skin.

Someone turned one year old a few days ago.  Hard to believe the transformation!

Man, have I been cranking out the hats!!  One or two a day it seems!  I reknit a hat for one of my daughter’s friends.  She had a baby and LOVES the Purl Soho Garter Ear Flap Hat I made him.  He keeps growing!  This is the second redo and to me looks big enough for an adult!  Try to outgrow this one, you little monkey!!

I also knit two hats for The Yarnery.  They asked for some shop samples and this project could not be easier or a quicker knit.  The pattern is called PALET.  I got two hats (child and adult) out of one skein of Woolfolk Flette Bulky.   I blocked them over a plate and bowl/vase.  Kind of an aerial act for the small hat!!

The yarn is super soft and you literally can knit this up in an evening.  Perfect for a last minute gift!!

PS to Marlys: I used Rowan Pure Wool worsted washable for the gray and random stash yarn for the cream.

PS2 to Janet: Thanks for commenting!  Just to clarify…my doilies are handknit, designed by Herbert Niebling!  This one is called Frosted Ferns.

We are getting into that special time of year – holiday parties, family gatherings, work soirees!  The list goes on.  How about adding some festive flair when you host or attend one of these fêtes??  I just posted a FREE pattern on Ravelry called The Hostess Hat!  To wear or share!!

It’s just for fun.  It’s a quick knit and is a great introduction to beaded knitting.  A skein of Cascade 220 (Ruby color #9404) will make 2 hats and one skein of Natural (8010) will be enough for FOUR hats!  Happy knitting!!

PS to Samina and anyone else who has never knit with beads: This could be one of the easier beaded projects to learn with!  The beads are big, the yarn is big, the crochet hook, though small, is kinda big!!  The knitting is basic…