Happy Dance!

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah!  The La Vie de Bois socks are finished. The socks are designed by Heather of Highland Handmades and Fiberistafiles.  The pattern was well written and not a difficult lace sock to knit. I liked the heel on this toe up sock. It is alway rewarding to finish the heel with no holes. ;~)

Still working on the garter stitch striped baby blanket ala SheilaD37 from Knit1Hearttoo podcast. This is a fun knit and may become my go to baby blanket as it is inexpensive, 100% cotton, soft and colorful. 

I plan to cast on a toe up sock with an afterthought heel knit from Knit One Crochet Too’s Pediwick sock yarn.  I encouraged my LYS to order several new colors. I plan to use the watermelon colorway and two of the greens to knit the socks. I am planning to make the toes, heel and cuffs in stripes of dark and light green. The main body of the socks will be the watermelon color. I am going to make this sock for the LYS as a sample to help sell more of this yarn. I hope this turns out as well as I imagine it.

I found buttons for the off white baby yoke sweater that I finished last week. The buttons are chickens!  Just need to block the sweater and sew on the buttons. I made the 12 to 18 months size so that the baby will get more use out of the sweater.  This is knit using the Basic Baby Yoke Sweater in Plymouth Yarns Jeanne Chunky on size US 10 needles.  This is one of the 5 hour baby sweater patterns. This pattern is a keeper. 

Still working my way through Maggie Righetti’s book on sweater design. Hope to start my cardigan sometime in March. We’ll see.

Busy week coming up. Not sure how much time I will have for knitting or reading.

Until next time........

Waskle-ly Wabbit!

The weather is heating back up this week. The lows have been in the upper 60s and the highs in the upper 70s or lower 80s. The garden is continuing to sprout nature’s goodness. 

The beets and carrots are coming up cheerfully. 

beets

Carrots

Peas

The mesclun and microgreens that were planted from seed are coming along nicely.  

Mesclun & Microgreens

The broccoli, cabbage and romaine that was put out as plants are another story.

Broccoli

The romaine is gone. Several of the broccoli and cabbage plants are nibbled down to nubs.  

Can anyone say hasenpfeffer?

The butterfly bush and the ferns, coleus’ and amaryllis are champions.

On the knitting front, I picked up a different cotton yarn to see if I could make the baby sweaters and booties that would shed and pill less. The first sets were made of “I Love This Cotton!” sold at Hobby Lobby. Incredibly soft, but after it is blocked it looks hairy. The new yarn I chose is a 50/50 cotton/acrylic blend called Baby Bee Hushabye Solid also from Hobby Lobby. It is knitting at a larger guage, so I had to take even more stitches out of the star booties pattern.  But that is not the part that is the most worrisome.   The yarn is squishy and soft in the skein, but the finished products feels like it is made of rubber. I hope after they are blocked they soften back up.

So this time I went to my LYS. I have two more cotton yarns to try. The first is a worsted cotton by Blue Sky Alpaca. It is heavenly. We will see how it knits up and blocks. The second is Berroco’s Weekend a 75% acrylic / 25% Cotton. It feels softer than the Baby Bee so I will keep you posted.

On a happy note: My LYS picked up for me at a yarn show some non-wool sock yarn. It is from Knit One Crochet too’s Pediwick, a 66% Bamboo / 34% nylon 100 gram skein with 392 yards. The colorways that I got are named the exciting names of #698, #863 and #662.  #698 is navy; #863 is milk chocolate and #662 is robin’s egg blue. I am looking forward to testing these out.

Also, my LYS is participating in the festival of trees this year. The flocked tree will be a covered with miniature sweaters. I think I might knit a few as a thank you for the shop owner looking for the sock yarn for me.

It’s swatch time!