Smock It

Finished the next article for the American Livestock Magazine.  A simple block that is the first of many blocks to be created for my new project, an afghan.  the afghan is meant to be a study of stitch patterns created in various degrees of difficulty.  Here are a couple of sneak peeks!

It did not take too terribly long to decide what the Elsebeth Lavold Hempathy wanted to be.  There is a longing in the air for stable warm temperatures that do not fluctuate at the drop of a fine cat hair in our neck of the woods.  If you live in Kentucky, you so get what I am trying to say and for those who do not,  in a few short days we have gone from 60 to 19 temperature wise.

So to not beat around the bush, why not shoot for thoughts of Farmer's Markets & long walks on sandy beaches with the sun shining on your back.  And that is why I chose the Ilene bag for my first Hempathy knitting project.

While the pattern is fairly straight forward, I did a wee bit of tweaking.  When knitting the base rectangle, I added several rows so that the edge would be tidier when picking up the side stitches.  What I will do next time is knit a few more rounds after picking up the stitches in blue as I think it might look a little better.  Not saying it isn't cute as it is, I just like to tweak things a little here and there:)

The color was then switched to the two pretty little green chartreuse balls of Hempathy.  As I had never knit an expanding market bag before, I opted to knit a couple of extra rounds in the mesh pattern.    Once happy with the length, the color was changed back to the original blue and a quick switch of the needles for a 1x1 rib which was knit to my desired length after which I followed the pattern to a tee;)

From the photos, it should be quite visible that extra rounds were not necessary, but I opted to err on the side of caution.  To give you a good idea of what I can cram in this bag.... Stuffed with in are: 2 lbs of wool roving, 6 skeins of Noro Kureyon, 1 skein of Noro Silk Garden, 2 huge skeins of handspun yarn (1 pounds worth) and a couple of felted flowers.  Yes, this bag is that huge!!  And the kicker.... I could have crammed in so much more!!!

When switching colors, I knit with the end of the old ball and the beginning of the new ball for a short length of time.  The mesh lace hid this very well.

Next time, I will pay more attention to where the 1x1 rib is placed for the handles.  Would have liked this much better if the join could have been kitchnered.

One ball of blue

Two balls of chartreuse.

And Fred did a great job of over seeing my knitting!

Dead Fish Hat

It's a craze on Ravelry as the hat is sure to bring a smile to the face of young and young at heart alike.  I finally knit the Fish Hat after joining the KAL in the Namaste Farms Ravelry group.  And can you say LOVE!  

It is an easy, fun and quirky knit.  Once over the idea that stripes do not need to necessarily be the ones in the original pattern, knitting was a breeze.  Just wasn't very fish like in my opinion, unless you were in love with Clown Fish or African Cichlids.  I'm more of a Striped Bass or Rainbow Trout kind of girl;)

Enjoyed it so much that we started a KAL on my shop's Ravelry page:  A Tangled Yarn.

Want to know what I did different with my Fish Hat? Well, here you go:

After doing the short row lips…..

K3 from ball A, K3 from ball B Repeat to end of round. Repeat for all rounds.

When it came to the decreases, I either K2tog or SSK depending on which stripe I wanted to decrease on that round. On the knit rounds, I made sure that if I decreased a stripe from 3 stitches to 2 , that I only knit 2 on the knit only rounds when I came to that section of stranded knitting…. and so on and so forth:)

Let me tell you, I would not recommend using all of the same color way for the striped like I did. At one point, the stripes were VERY similar in color during the last couple of decrease rounds and it was pretty hard to keep up with the strands.

The eyes were easy peasey even from someone like me who can crochet, but would never claim to be more than able to follow only the very simplest of crochet directions.  Using worsted weight (#4) black wool yarn, I did a slip ring and crocheted about 9 single crochets into the slip ring and joined using a slip stitch.  On the next round change to  white worsted weight yarn chain 1, do a single crochet in the previous round's single crochet, do 2 single crochet into the next single crochet of the previous round, repeat to end and join with a slip stitch.  Very sorry if these directions are not very easy to follow, I'm a Knitwit not a fabulous hooker:)

Digitabulum Fingerless Mittens

It has been quite some time since I posted and thought it would be a good idea to start out the new year with a free pattern!  Hope you enjoy it!!

Digitabulum

A Free pattern by Stephanie Stratton of LunabudKnits

Yarns:
1 skein Silky Flamme by Elsebeth Lavold. 
1 small 20 yard skein of Handspun yarn with approximately 6 wraps per inch or WPI which is the same as the Silky Flamme used.

Needles:
US 10 DPNS

Notions:
Darning needle, scrap yarn and stitch marker to mark beginning of rounds.

*NOTES* If you do not want to use handspun, there should be enough yardage to the Silky Flamme to knit both pair of gloves.

Wrist
Using the Longtail method, cast on 21 stitches using handspun yarn. Rounds 1-11: K2 p1 ribbing for 11 rounds 

Rounds 12-13: Change to commercial yarn and do 2 rounds of k2p1 ribbing. 

Rounds 14-16: Knit all.

Thumb Gusset
Round 1. K1 m1 to last stitch m1 k1. 

Round 2. K all 

Repeat 1 & 2 until there are 31 total stitches. 

K 7 rounds. 

Knit to the last 4 stitches and slip them onto waste yarn. Slip the first 4 of the next round to the waste yarn as well.

Fingerless Fingers 

Re-join in the round. 

Rounds 1-5: Knit all. 

Round 6: K2 p1 to the last 2 stitches and purl 2 together. (21 stitches) Rounds 7-12: Switch to handspun. K2 P1 ribbing on every round. 
Bind Off.

Thumb 

Pick up the 8 stitches held on waste yarn. In the corner pick up two stitches of the previous row and knit them tog. There should be 9 stitches. 

Rounds 1-5: K2,p1 ribbing. 

Bind Off all.

A Free pattern by Stephanie Stratton of LunabudKnits

Copyright 2012 Stephanie Stratton.  May not be sold, but can be freely givenJ

Fingers crossed, Here is the PDF!

Perfect Pie Shawl

I was working a home and garden trade show when I started this shawl. I had brought the book ' Weekend Knitting' by Melanie Falick with me to keep me occupied, and decided on a whim to go to the kentucky crafted show that was next door. Bought a few skeins of Kid Mohair Blend from Koenig Farm Spinnery and got started right away. The pattern is actually a pattern from Veronik Avery. I opted to use the knit lace edging as opposed to the crochet edging and I really like how it turned out:)

Close up of Shawl Detail

whole shawl