Category Archives: Work in Progress

Remnants From Yesterday’s Work

Yesterday was a fairly successful day.  I put the finishing touches on Sugar’s first Christmas set, completed the embroidery on Gina’s mohair Christmas sweater, completed the Santa hat to accompany the mohair sweater, and worked a bit more knitting Millie’s mohair Christmas sweater.

I took these photos this morning from yesterday’s work.

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Today I hope to finish Gina’s sweater by sewing on the button beads and stitching up the underarm seams.  I also need to add the little belt loops for the ribbon waist tie on the dress and figure out the perfect color of tights.  Maybe I will finish knitting Millie’s sweater and/or start sewing her dress.  We’ll see.

Have a great day everyone!

Bye for now!

Another Weekend Here and Gone

How did your weekend go?  Mine flew by.

Yesterday afternoon I drove the short distance to the nearest forest preserve.  I wanted to see how fall was progressing in nature (and get some exercise).  As you can see from my photos things are still pretty green.  I wanted to photograph the wild dark purple asters and lavender monarda, but the battery on my phone died before I could capture those.

I captured some white asters.

sun lake 2075_2And milkweed…

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sun lake 2078_2This is all forest preserve land.

sun lake 2081Sometimes trees become natural art sculptures; I always like to capture those.

sun lake 2079_2In my studio, I knit another Santa hat, started embroidering Pukipuki’s Christmas dress, finished up a fun ensemble for Gina, and Millie picked out her Christmas dress fabric.

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wip 10-05-15 368Hope you all have a perfect week!

Thanks for reading!  Bye for now.

 

Still Learning DPNs and Having Fun

I spent the bulk of the day yesterday working on my DPNs.  I stopped knitting the hat I showed you yesterday and decided to learn the invisible cast on technique so I could knit from the top down.

You are probably wondering why.  Good question and I have a good answer.  That white mohair, while so beautiful for its fuzziness, tends to get knitted in with the red wool.  It is so fuzzy that for nearly 10+ rows after changing to my red wool I am still trying to get it to stay out of my red stitches.  Truthfully, it is nearly impossible to do this 100% and that bothers me if it is avoidable, and it is; the solution is to knit with the white mohair last.

Okay, so that meant learning the invisible cast on.  The first thing trying to learn this new cast on taught me is that I am not very coordinated, and I don’t have a photographic memory in the least.  I watched the tutorial again and again and again.  Hmm, where have I heard those words before?  There are four needle movements for every two stitches cast on.  Finally, I had to write out a cheat sheet and I was then able to perform the steps four times to get 8 stitches cast on.  I won’t lie, it probably took me an entire hour to get this.  And then, I kept on practicing it throughout the day to get it down better.

You probably have no idea what my notes mean, but it was all I needed to get this down, sort of.

invisible cast on notes 350And, after a day and evening of knitting this is what I made for my Little Darling, Gina!

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dpn santa hat 348Here’s my Santa hat, my first DPN project!  I had the pom pom left over from last year, so I pinned it on where the one that will match this outfit will go.

For next time, I will use a rewritten pattern to make it a bit longer with a wider “fur” trim band.  I also don’t like knitting garter in the round because it involves purling in the round, which I am not comfortable doing, so I will probably knit that part flat and make a short seam for that area.  I found pics of garter stitch in the round and it looks seamed anyway.

Oh, Happy October everyone!  It really feels fall-ish here todyay, very breezy and cool with  puffy white and dark clouds moving rapidly across the sky, but it’s mostly sunny; it’s a very perfect fall day in my opinion.  And, the moon is still out at almost 10:00 am!

Thanks for reading and big thank yous for your comments.  I love reading them and commenting back.  I work by myself all day (except for my dogs, of course), so it is so nice to connect with my readers.

Bye for now!