A Good Sunday for Knitting

It is HORRIBLE outside! Cold, rainy, windy. The waves along the back shore are huge and crashing up onto the road. Not a fit day out for man nor beast, as my Dad always liked to say. So, of course, the surfers are having a ball. I was just out at Good Harbor Beach watching them. Yeah, they’re nuts but they are so cute.

But it’s a good day for knitting talk and I have a couple projects that I want to post so I whimped out and came home where it is warm and there is plenty of hot tea.


I finished my cute Cornflower Beret. I made it using two skeins of Knit Pick’s Ambrosia, a scrumptious alpaca and cashmere yarn that is meltingly soft and very, very warm. The pattern is based loosely on one I downloaded from the Lion’s Branc site but I added the cables and it is very cute. And warm. And soft. Now I’ve started a second one in Knit Pick’s Elegance alpaca/silk yarn in Wild Rose.

The current shawl on the needles is also a triangle based on my very favorite Garter and Lace Shawl from Knitter’s Scarves and Shawls. I am making this one with Knit Picks 100% Pima cotton Crayon in Pink (can you tell I like Knit Picks yarns?) I have a long way to go on this because I want it to be a generous shawl that will wrap well but still be light enough for spring and summer evenings. But I’m really happy with how the lace stitches are working together. I started out with an interesting, raised butterfly stitch that I kept for 20 inches before transforming it into the Razorback Shell stitch from Interweave Knit’s Traditional Lace Shawls. I’m not sure what it will turn into next but I am really enjoying working on this one.

Finally, I am very pleased to report I screwed up big time and then found a way to fix it! I had a large cone of deep black cashmere from Robin and Russ Handweavers that I have been dying to do something with. I decided on a long stole knit simply in the popular Arches Lace pattern. It worked up beautifully and is wonderfully soft and warm BUT I made a bad choice - instead of knitting it widthwise I knit it lengthwise. The problem was it stretched lengthwise way too much leaving me with a shawl that was half as wide and twice as long as I needed it to be. I was about in tears when I got an idea - turn it into a cocoon!

I lay it out full length and then folded the short ends up at an angle and wove them to one lengthwise edge leaving a space of four inches for the back of the neck. I then crocheted all around the remaining edge in a pretty shell stitch. I then picked up the stitches around the sleeve openings and knitted in the round until they were narrow enough to add cuffs using a simple K2P2 ribbing. It is wonderful! I wore it last night with a pair of black velvet trousers and a white silk shirt and it was both beautiful and warm. I love solutions like this!!!

Well, my literary advisor has informed me that I have to sort through my blog entries and separate them into categories. There are, it seems, rules about successful blogging and I am misbehaving. I have updated my photo to one taken this summer, expanded my bio, and now have to organize my posts. Sigh.

I’d rather be knitting......

Thanks for reading.