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What Are You Working On
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Lent Projects
It was fun to make things for myself. Unfortunately, baseball practice has obliberated my beading time ;-) and cut into knitting time.
I only finished the cowl featured in my last diary.
I actually made negative progress on another lace cowl, as i ripped it out and started over. First of all, the needles were too short for the stitches. That may have been the only reason. I had errors, and I could hardly push the stitches apart enough to see a couple stitches by themselves. I need to make a pattern note. 143 lace stitches are awfully crowded on 16". They seem very happy on 24".
I did knit a few rows on the giant colorful shawl, but this project is kind of intimidating in its amount of knitting left to complete. I will obviously have to get over that mental barrier quickly. Four rows a day is always a handy mantra.
I made an Easter goal to get to section 2 of the Solstice Shawl
I have knit 5 rows of the much more complicated section 3 and totally bombed out. I ripped out half of the shawl using a lifeline. I have re-knit 4+ of those 5 or 6? rows and it is going better. I am learning to keep the lace pattern lined up by constantly referring to the chart. And establishing the proper pattern early and getting a feel for it. Making any needed corrections early. And with those double yarn-overs, I cannot purl into two in a row, they get so twisty to knit into again. So I purl one and knit the second, even when the designer doesn't say so. But she says so on other rows, so I think it's okay. I am really really tired of purl 3 through the back loop, I am so tired of it I don't even care about the purl 2 together through the back loop.
Here is a sample of Section 3. I have to count every 5-8 stitches, or every repeat. I had a knitting teacher last summer who said "Stop making mistakes! Don't make mistakes". Well, I make mistakes. Frequent and obsessive counting and pattern comparison helps me find them when they are easiest to fix. I seem to forget the yarnover after a complicated stitch, or I drop that yarnover when preparing for the next complicated stitch. By complicated stitch I mean purl 2 or 3 through the back loop.
These are the 5 rows on the half of the shawl I did not rip out.
Here is an out of focus closeup of where I started re-knitting, with the yarn for the ripped out rows waiting in giant loops for me to pick it up again.
Oh, I am playing with fabric for my Veterans quilt for NN13. And I have made some progress on my legwarmers, I am probably at the halfway point of the first one, or a bit more. I am ready to pick up the lace cowl I abandoned when I moved it to different needles. It needed a short time-out. ;-)
I think they will be very warm, with the Lamb's Pride w/ the mohair, and knitting the worsted on size 6 dpns. If this spring doesn't warm up, I may yet finish one while it is still cold enough to wear (first on one leg, then on the other ;-) )
Link of the Week:
The top 25 best free knitting patterns
To this, I would like to add from my recent projects,
Twist Your Neckwarmer h/t kirbybruno
Spiral Rib Legwarmers, pictures above in progress
Wavy Feathers Wimple, & more pdf's available here.
On free patterns: Sometimes you get what you pay for. Or you get for what you pay. Anyway, at Ravelry.com there are currently over 68,000 free patterns. Some of them are from well-known designers or yarn companies and they are tested. Some of them are the lunatic scratchings of a crazy person. At Ravelry, you can look at a pattern, and see who else has made it in their projects. And see their project notes. It becomes evident quickly via the notes if it was a lunatic scratching. And you can send a friend request to me, I am JenniferQKW there.