Vacation knitting

I should finally finish the new Stephen West shawl tonight after working on it all during vacation.

I loved seeing the shawl resting on the back patio loveseat - yellow and white stripes looked great with yellow, red, and charcoal grey.  I was able to sit in the sun, feel a lovely breeze, and look at the lake while knitting.

I love these colors together.  The grey and the chartreuse are from deeper stash, the red was purchased especially for the project.  Hopefully some finished project pictures soon!

And back.

I am back from vacation, trying to catch up with laundry, grocery shopping, and photo editing, but here is a little taste of my first day on vacation. Completely on accident: yarn, weaving, spinning wheels.

Adirondack bound

See you in 10 days or so!

Antsy

Last summer P and I dusted off our passports and went to Belgium.  This summer there will be no lovely European adventure, but we are about to dust off our passports again.  And just in time - I am getting restless.

Bruges 

We leave for the Adirondacks next week, and due to the curious position of Michigan and the Great Lakes in relation to our destination, it is a shorter trip to drive through Canada.  Who knows how long the border crossing will take? - sometimes it has been 10 minutes, other times, about 1 1/2 hours.  Instead of crossing the flatlands of Ohio, we will be crossing the flatlands of Ontario. With bikes, a spinning wheel, and a Pembroke Welsh Corgi we will certainly be making an entrance. (Don't worry, Zeby's paperwork is all in order.)

Not wild and exotic stuff, but at least it has a different currency - I have been patiently culling Canadian money out of my regular US change for the last year. I may be able to buy a Canadian chocolate bar in pennies.

Grey Jewel Cowl

Sometime in mid-June I came across a beaded cowl pattern on the Stash 'n Burn group on Ravelry. I think I cast on the same day, and the only thing that slowed me down was picking out the PERFECT beads at T & T Trading Company.  Of course, rather than coming home with one $5.00 vial of beads I came home with a selection of about 12 vials of $2-$10 beads. Yeesh. I am SO not about restraint sometimes.

Pattern: Jeweled Cowl by Sachiko Uemura

Yarn: Treadsoft, hand dyed by Nancy McRay (my boss!) ~490 yards of sock yarn

Needles: US 7

Beads: 8/0 Japan 649 GREY AB beads, 1 vial from T & T Trading Co. in Grand Ledge, Michigan

Mods: I used the size 8/0 beads called for in the pattern, but discovered the crochet hook was tearing apart the yarn a little bit, so I devised a way to bead that didn't use a hook and didn't require pre-stringing either.  I followed Sachiko's advice and knit the first stitch before the yo through the back loop.  This kept a nice neat line of yo's as the cowl progressed. 

This gorgeous thing will be staying at Woven Art for a few weeks as a shop model, and then will be sent off to a friend.  I will be teaching a one day Tips & Techniques class around this project to help people learn the new beading method I worked out, and to help them through the simple lace.

A little word about T & T Trading Company - it is a fantastic brick-and-mortar shop out in the farm land west of Lansing - perhaps 20 minutes from where I live.  I have gone several times, and I have never left empty-handed.  In fact, I get delusions of grandeur when I am in there - especially if I have been browsing etsy before I go. (I have to remember  I am NOT a jewelry maker.)  The wall of 6/0 and 8/0 beads is humbling.  You can buy vials, but you can also get bulk beads should you need a 1/4 kilo of Japan beads. (I may have bought 2 1/4 kilo bags of silver and peacock beads last year.)  I have tried my more local bead stores and have found only 2 or 3 colors of beads appropriate for knitting. T & T has dozens of colors.  Whenever I teach a class involving beads I always encourage my students to go there.

I was thinking I might want to go back there this week - even though I have MORE than enough beads. So. Addictive.

Houndstooth Check Cowl

This project was a total queue-jumper during a terrible bout of start-itis I experienced a few weeks ago.  I have been working with a lot of fingering weight yarn recently, and the idea of a quick two-skein chunky project was irresistible!  And since the pattern was also written by a friend I felt an extra incentive to cast-on.

Pattern: Houndstooth Check Cowl by Megan Knitprints

Yarn: Misti Alpaca Chunky in charcoal and yellow/grey, 1 skein each

Needle: US 10.5

Mods: I didn't bother getting gauge - I wanted a big luxurious cowl that I could wear with my enormous down coat this winter - I can easily double this around my neck. I knit the pattern as written, then knit through row six, then did Jeny's Surprisingly Stretchy Bind-Off.  I love using Misti Alpaca Chunky for two-color projects, and I certainly have a bunch of leftovers - so I may be knitting another cowl soon with a solid main color and leftovers for the accent colors.  My finished cowl measures approximately 36 inches in circumference, or 18 inches when laying flat and 8 inches wide.

Here you can see the right side and the wrong side - both are lovely. I would highly recommend using a 20 inch circular needle - I used a 16 inch because it was free and it was a super tight squeeze!

Summer Startitis

It seems that my favorite thing to do this summer is to cast on for new projects.  It is all I can do to keep focused on the five projects I have going.  Right now my favorite project is more than halfway done.  It doesn't travel well - beads and tools aren't easy to set up in the car - but it IS gorgeous.

This project comes out of stash - in fact, out of my tremendous sock yarn stash.  I am trying to diligently knit down some serious yardage there.  I am Cold Sheeping again until Rhinebeck, and participating in the Sock Stash Knitdown (SSK) challenge to try to use 12 skeins of sock yarn for the year. So far I have used 5. Yeesh, behind already!

The Jeweled Cowl by Sachiko Uemura is a free pattern on Ravelry, but the designer has asked for people to donate for Japan relief in lieu of payment.  So I will be making a donation to UNICEF. Maybe it was all the trick-or-treating I did in the late 70s to early 80s, but I miss those little cardboard boxes full of pennies.  So UNICEF gets my money this time.