Work in Progress Wednesday – Butterfly at Rest/Night

Ages ago I received a counted cross stitch kit for a fairy as a birthday present from my mother called Butterfly at Rest. At the time I had started getting into cross stitch, and since I have a love of fantasy and science fiction I decided that even though this was a daunting project on a 28 count fabric. Ironically my sister gave me a chart book for Christmas of some Butterfly Fairies. The book had two patterns, one of which was my Butterfly at Rest renamed Night and other called Day.

I was fairly new to cross stitch at the time, and I’m not sure what happened, but somewhere along the line I got a little messed up on the pattern and I gave it up. Thankfully I had only done a few hours of work on it.  So when I was going through old projects I picked this one back up and undid all the original work I had started.

Now after several sessions I’m starting to see the pattern take shape. I imagine this project will take me a fairly long time to finish, but I’m looking forward to seeing the finished result. I’m finding it is something I can really only do during the day when I’m sitting near the window with good lighting due to the very slight color variations.

I’m not sure I’ll end up keeping this particular project when I’m finished, mostly because it’s not really my style, but it’s going to be something I’ll be very proud of.

Felted Bowls – Part 1 of 3

I finally got around to felting all the bowls to my satisfaction. I initially tried felting the bowls in my washing machine, but they didn’t seem to want to felt. I was worried that they wouldn’t come out since the yarn was a blend of soy and wool. So, I also tried felting them by hand, which produced better results, but they still didn’t seem to be felting as much as I was hoping for.

Since I had made a total of six different bowls, hand felting was getting a bit tedious, so I left them to sit for a while. I decided to try felting them in the washing machine one more time. After two rounds they finally looked decently felted.

After searching through my stash for yarn for another project I did come across some more of the soy yarn I used here in two different colors, both solid. I’m not sure that I’ll try felting with them considering the amount of time it took to felt these. But, since I did come across another felted bowl pattern, I may just give it a try.

To see my original notes on the three bowls pictured, you can check out my original post on my progress here. And the original pattern can be found here.

 

Work in Progress Wednesday – Bath Mat

Due to some rather unfortunate incident I no longer have a bath mat. At the moment I’m using some towels on the floor, so when I came across a pattern in One Skein for a bath mat and I eyed the six skeins of Sugar & Cream in Cream sitting on my shelf, I couldn’t help but grab a hook and start on my way.

I’m not entirely convinced this will make the greatest bathmat in the world considering all the holes, but it is at least cotton and will absorb water readily. It’ll also be super easy to clean and I’m hoping to have this finished quickly.

You can find the pattern in One Skein by Leigh Radford. There are a lot of great projects in there, including some felted bowls I’m considering trying out, especially since I finally finished felting up all the bowls I made previously. And I would say that not all of the patterns will necessarily only use one skein, as can be evidenced by the pattern for the bath mat, that is unless you happen to buy a giant 840 yard skein of cotton yarn.

Seed Stitch Scarf

I wanted to do something simple, but not just a straight knit pattern for my father for Christmas. I perused Ravelry for a while looking at various scarf patterns, when I came across the seed stitch. It gives a nice texture that is simple, but not nearly as boring as just doing straight knitting. It seemed perfect for my dad.

The yarn I used is Loops & Threads Charisma in Lakeside. It’s a super bulky acrylic yarn. I cast on a total of 20 stitches and went back in forth in the K1, P1 of a standard seed stitch.

I’m pretty pleased with how the striping in the yarn worked out. There isn’t too much crossing over of colors to other rows, so it almost looks like a used four different colors of yarn.

The Gathering

I can’t even begin to express how much I have fallen in love with this cowl. Not just because it was inspired by a great TV show (that’s based on a fantastic book called Outlander), but because it’s so quick and versatile. However, this cowl is no longer in my possession. It was the first of two knitted gifts I sent off for Christmas. This particular cowl went to my stepmother who absolutely loves the Outlander show.

It was my stepmother’s love of Outlander that sent me on a quest to find a pattern inspired by the show. I wanted to make something special for her that she’d enjoy wearing in the cooler weather, especially since she lives in Colorado. I came across several different variations for this particular cowl, but I ended up choosing The Gathering by Kalurah Hudson.

 

As per usual, I modified the pattern a bit. The original pattern calls for a minimum of 16 to cast on but I did 24 to make it longer. I also skipped the twists because I prefer to have it flat when folded down.  The yarn I used was the same as in the pattern, which is the Wool-Ease Thick & Quick in Barley.

I got to test out my provisional cast on skills again as well as actually doing the kitchener stitch to bind it all together. Hopefully I will be making myself a version of this cowl so I can get more practice with both (but I’ve got to wait until I burn through a lot more yarn since I don’t have any super bulky yarn in the stash)

The really fun part of the whole process was using the giant size 50 needles which are a whopping 25mm. I’m really hoping that I’ll find some other great patterns to use with these needles, aside from another version of this cowl that I’ll make for myself.

This cowl is fantastically stretchy, so it can be easily pulled down over the shoulders without the top flopping around your neck all loosey goosey.