Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Holiday Knitting continued...A FO and a WIP

I finished and blocked the blue Summer Flies shawl a few days ago. The pattern was incredibly fun to work with and I loved the ever-so-slight hue changes in the yarn I used to knit it. Gotta love hand-dyed yarn. While I was knitting it, the yarn was dying my fingers ever so slightly, so I was worried that the shawl would bleed horribly while I soaked it before blocking. Fortunately it did not bleed at all!
 The picture above represents the color of the shawl best while the two below it show the details more clearly.
 Since I had approximately 440 yards of yarn and the pattern only called for 380 yards, I just kept knitting the ruffled edge until I thought I reached a safe enough point where I could start binding off without having too much leftover yarn.

The pattern called for a picot bind off (binding off 2 sts, slipping them back to the left needle, cable casting on 2 sts, then binding off 5 sts)... I forgot that the picot binding ends up using a lot of yarn since you're creating lots of stitches with the cable cast on. I followed the instructions for the picot bind off until about half way through the row when I realized I would not make it through to the end of the shawl. I wasn't sure if I could properly pick up all the right stitches if I ripped back the last binding, so I decided to forge ahead, binding off 6 stitches, rather than two, then increasing that to 8, until the last few sections ended up binding off 10 stitches!
I wasn't sure whether I should go back and rip out the last row so I decided to see how I felt about it after it was blocked-- honestly, it doesn't bother me very much at this point. I don't really think it's noticeable unless you're actively looking for it, so I'm going to keep it the way it is for now. This shawl is meant for my boyfriend's oldest sister, a woman I admire very much and really enjoy spending time with. After I finish the rest of my holiday knitting, I might come back to this and reevaluate whether I want to rip out and rebind off that last row.

I started a scarf for my boyfriend's father. I bought this beautiful worsted weight yarn while I was out in Apple Valley last week, helping my parents move into their new house. And I cast on for the scarf yesterday afternoon:
I am thrilled with the way this scarf is knitting up! I love the horizontal strips of colors and think it's looking rather professional. This is the pattern from Son of Stitch 'n Bitch I mentioned in my previous post. I'm not generally a fan of scarves since they always take so long to knit up so I'm hoping to complete this by the end of next week. Then I should only have 3 infant and 4 children's hats to knit before my Holiday knitting will officially be complete! Depending on how much time I have, I might knit up hats for the boyfriend's brother and brother-in-law, too.

I'm pretty sure I know what I want to knit for my boyfriend but I think it'll be a good idea to get all these little projects out of the way first.

I've also been cooking and baking lots of yummy treats but I don't have too many pictures of those. I  made a batch of Buckeyes for a Halloween party this weekend...

... and a modified version of Pumpkin Chili (fully clothed), some Apple Walnut bread and Sesame Chicken with rice.

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