Handspun love

Have gotten a little tired lately hearing people say that art yarn isn't good or useful for knitting. What is a girl to do?  Knit a fun art yarn shawl of course!  Here is a sneak peek before the ends are woven in. 

A bulky cashgora corespun yarn plied with a polyester sequined thread. Oh, and it is a rainbow gradient yarn:). Thinking it should be another shawl!

Really into bulky lately!

Fred helped me pick a batt to spin the other day. Basically if chunk- muffin touches/loves on  the wool I can't sell it. Like to keep the fibers kitty free for allergy sufferers:)

Applebutter was jonesing for more horsey treats the other day. Looking forward to when the cold weather goes away! 

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!

The shop

As it is Valentines day this week, a treat was in order.  We had a great evening filled with laughter and red velvet hightop cupcakes with cream cheese icing centers....... YUM!

There is an awesome array of knitters, crocheters, spinners, and all around fabulous fiber folks who come to the knit night on Monday nights and knit day on Thursday days.  It makes every meeting that much more special!  

One of the more interesting facts about the Sit and Stitch groups currently running is that the majority of knitters who attend are not local.  It really warms the heart to know that something as simple as creating something with a bit of string can bring together so many.

With that said....... I LOVE what I do!  I love how it brings people together.  I love how we sometimes come to find how small our world really is.  I love when we have conversations at knit night about two people living in the same town in another state around the same time, but not meeting one another until they come to the little shop in Nicholasville.  I love how each of us are so different, but still the same!  I love my fiber peeps!  

If you are ever in my neck of the woods, aka Central Kentucky, please stop by the shop, A Tangled Yarn.  We would love to have you on Knit Night or Knit Day!

Fred is of great help assembling afghan squares.

He is also the Mack Daddy of fiber weights and is happy to help keep your fiber from floating away!

The beginning of the second 'Fish Hat

Don't forget to check out our fresh off the carder batts too!

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!

ALMOST.......

DONE!!!!

I'm at the end of my spring cleaning and have put a good sized dent into the mound of washing waiting to be put through the washing machine.... And all I can say is 'YAHHHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOO!'.

I think the issue that really started this massive 'Spring Cleaning' mission is the simple fact that I have a tendency to be a hoarder. You see, when I was growing up, we moved at the very least once every year and some of my precious junk would magically disappear. This was compounded by the fact that once we stopped moving, Dad and I started collecting. We didn't really collect anything special, just stuff other people did not want. See, if someone would say, I'm throwing such and such away, one of us would run right over and bring it home. Not that I went over board with hoarding, but I'm putting a stop to it before it becomes a problem. Honestly, I think this trait was passed down to us from my Granny (Dad's Mom)....lol She is a tidy little hoarder as well....lol I think hers stems from growing up in Liverpool during WWII.

Anyhow, enough of the explanations and on to the good stuff.... Pictures!

I'm finally able to cutely display the Casein Knitting needles available at LunabudKnits:)

An old horse tooth I found in a barn and then found again in a cute little box(pictured below).

The jeweled frog box.

The first load of stuff that went to Good Will. I'll tell you one thing, there are a lot of expensive clothes and shoes in those 4 bags, but it was like a weight was lifted from my shoulders by donating them to Good Will!

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