theraineysisters knitting and so much more

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.