Felted Bowls – Part 3 of 3

Of all the bowls these are my favorite. I wish they were a little sturdier. I imagine if I washed them one more time they might come out that way, but I’m happy with the way they look and the size they are at, so I’m leaving them as they stand. These ones only went through the wash twice before coming out as they did, which I attribute to the fact that these were the only ones I knit.

I imagine that this set of bowls will get the most use and I’ll probably make another set just like this but in another color and with a 100% wool. I’m going to keep these on my dresser to hold my odds and ends.

You can find my original notes here.

And for some comparison, below is an image of all the bowls I felted:

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.

Work in Progress Wednesday -Hooded Shawl

Due to the holidays, progress on my knitting has been slow. I’ve added a whole 6 rows to the shawl since last week and I’m guessing I won’t make much more progress this week unless I end up having a lot of time at the New Years Eve Party I’m going to, but since it’s a boardgaming party, my hands won’t exactly be free most of the time.

And since I’ve only added a few rows, I decided not to add a picture this week. Once I start adding the hood I’ll probably post some picture updates.

I hope you all are having a good time this holiday season. I’ll see you Monday to share one of the Christmas gifts I made.

Work in Progress Wednesday – Hooded Shawl

On a recent visit with my mom she pulled out some baby cashmere yarn. I couldn’t find it in my heart to say no to such a fine offer. So, I brought the yarn home with the express idea that I would start on a project right away.

At first I thought I was going to make a whole set of items to wear. I thought about making a scarf or cowl and a hat and maybe some gloves,  if there was enough left over. But when I was talking to friend about how we both have this really big curly hair that hats just don’t really work with she mentioned that she wanted to make a hood and then I thought about some hooded scarf patterns that I had seen. Eventually I came across a pattern for a hooded shawl and I had to try it since I had the exact right amount of yarn.

Unfortunately, not all things go well. I already know I’m going to have to make some adjustments to the pattern after finding out that the Mulled Grape color was from a bad lot. There were several breaks and tears in the yarn making it very hard to work with. Which basically means that I’m not going to have enough of one of the colors to actually do the shawl the way it’s meant to be done. I’m pretty sure I’ll be cutting out the last alternating section.

The one really nice thing is that because this is such a simple pattern it is very quick to knit up. So after I add the hood I may try and see if I can stretch out my yarn to finish the rest of the shawl, and if I can’t, I won’t have spent too much time trying it.

For now I’m going to knit to the end of the next large lavender block and then start working on the hood with placement on the side. I’m guessing that’ll I’ll end the shawl with an I-cord of the mulled grape after the last lavender block. It’ll only make the shawl 10 rows short along the top edge (but 20 total rows of the pattern since the edge stitches are slipped at the end of a row), which should be fine since most of the images I’ve looked at show the hood spanning from the first alternating section to the beginning of the third large block, which is what I’ve knitted so far.

 

Jasmin Headscarf (Headband)

As winter approaches (very slowly in South Central Texas), I decided to work on some head coverings. Since it doesn’t usually get super cold in Texas, and because I have a large mass of hair, I decided to go with something that would help control my hair without killing the curls, but also could be pulled over my ears to keep them warm.

I found the Jasmin Headscarf pattern in 25 Knitted Accessories to Wear and Share. And it can also be found in French Girl Knits. Both books are produced by Interweave. I was drawn to the leaf pattern and would have loved to have done it in green, but I ended up trying something a little different. I used two different yarns both of which I no longer have the information about.

The silver is what I believe to be a bamboo blend, at least the yarn looks similar to bamboo blends I’ve used in the past.  This particular yarn had been used in another project by my mom and I was just using two partial skeins that had been made into cakes.  The blue is some sort of ribbon yarn that was originally meant for a shawl, which I lost the pattern for and I decided to just trash the project and either use the yarn for something else or donate it to Goodwill as I’m not very fond of novelty yarns.

However, after searching around on Ravelry I saw that a lot of people used the ribbon yarns in combination with regular yarns and the effect looked quite interesting, so I decided to see how my wintery leaf headscarf would look.

I will say, the images in the book did not do the headscarf justice as to how large it actually was. I started out doing the pattern as called out, but realized that it was going to be massive, so instead of doing all the repeats of the pattern, I just did it as charted without adding repeats of the leaves across the middle.

This is a pattern that probably should be blocked, especially if doing the full repeats, but I found that when worn this modified pattern is pretty visible as it stretches out. I’m pretty happy with the results. I did have to take apart one end when I realized how stretchy it was and needed to shorten it. So now I have a small ball of of both yarns together, which I’m thinking about trying and doing a baby headband with and just breaking the middle of the headband into a single line of alternating leaves instead of two leaves.

The other change I did make to my pattern was that instead of doing two halves of the headscarf and then using a kitchner stitch to put them together, I just continued the leaves all in the same direction so that I wasn’t doing as many new things, since I’d never done a provisional cast on before or the kitchner stitch.

I think at some point I will come back to this pattern and make it as designed, but I’ll be doing both halves at the same time for consistency in my knitting.

Work in Progress Wednesday – More Felted Bowls!

I’m back! And I’ve started a new set of nesting bowls. This time they are done in a knit style. I’m not really sure how this set of bowls will come out, since the pattern seems very much like I’ve made a hat rather than a bowl, but they are very similar in shape.

I’m still using up my Pattons SWS yarn. This time I’m using the Natural Geranium color. I used most of one ball on the first bowl shown above. And depending on how much I use on the second bowl I may only end up with two bowls in this color and style. But I might be able to squeeze out three depending on what’s left over after the second one.

The pattern is, overall, very simple. Cast on as many stitches as needed to achieve desired opening (with the idea that it will shrink). Knit for several rows in the round (30 for the largest bowl, 25 for the next one and 20 if I can squeeze out a third). And then start a slow decrease. This pattern called for K2 TOG, knit 7 for the first round of decreases which meant I needed a total for my cast on that was divisible by 9. Each round after called for once less knit in the repeat and a few rounds of just plain knit interspersed between decreased rows. And then the bottom is sewn up after you bind off. I did a few extra rows of decreasing, though the pattern called for only 12 rows once you started the decrease, just because I didn’t like how big of a gap I needed to sew up.

Hopefully I’ll get all my bowls finished and felted to actually share the finished results with all of you. And then I can figure out which one I liked best so I can start making lots of felted bowls!

Afghans!

The first thing I every crocheted, outside of just making chains for miles, was an afghan.  Unfortunately that afghan has since passed on and was much loved and cherished.  Since I moved to Texas I didn’t think I’d ever make another one again, at least not till I moved back to a cooler climate.  But then I wanted to do something special for my dad when he got remarried.

Thus we have my first ever knitted afghan.  This also happened to be the first project I’ve actually done since moving to Texas almost three years ago and it was done last year, before I had decided that I needed to start knitting and crocheting more often.  All the yarn for the project was bought specifically for it as I wasn’t working on emptying out my hoard yet.  I also don’t have a whole lot of blue in my stash, but it’s my dad’s favorite color, so I had to buy something just for him.

Considering that knitting is not really my strong suit and it had been 2 years since I had actually handled yarn in any fashion other than to move it out of the way, I’m pretty proud of the results.  I also don’t anticipate that I’ll be making any more afghans soon, not to mention I don’t have very many skeins that would work well together, so I was a little sad to leave this behind when I visited my dad in Colorado.

But it does give me something to look forward to when I get my stash down to zero.  It means I can go buy yarn and I can make myself a new afghan since the only ones I have are ones that were made by my mother.  There’s just something about having something that was made by me, for me.