Colorful Cocoa

 Let me begin by saying that I hate the fact that I cannot get a good picture of my knitting with my damn camera. Ugh. This scarf is awesome and these pictures do not do it justice at all.

The scarf is Holey Cocoa! by Silvia da Silva. It is a simple 2 row scarf that it easy and fast to knit. I was able to watch tv (NCIS season 3) while knitting. The yarn is Noro Tanabata in colorway 6, mint/sunflower. I love this yarn. It is colorful and fun and surprisingly soft. I got the yarn at the Clever Ewe about a year ago. It was on sale...maybe a buy one get one? I got 4 of them and I did not pay very much for it.

 So yeah, these terrible pictures just do not do this scarf justice. It is so much better looking than this. Oh well, I love this scarf and that is what counts! I can wear this with just about anything :-)

Flying Duchess

 I used the Imperial Yarn Erin that I received in the August Yarnbox to make Flying Duchess by ambah. It was an easy knit, although the cast on was 351 stitches. I used the cable cast on and a stretchy bind off that I believe is called the lacey bind off.

 The project went pretty quickly and the yarn was fine to work with. One thing I noticed was that the natural color had an odd odor to it. Even my dogs went for the natural yarn. It made my eyes water and itch if I got too close to it.

I blocked it, but the damn dogs felt I had pinned it out for them to walk and play on. I picked several t-pins out of Captain's tail hair.

I'm hoping it relaxes a bit now that it is dried and unpinned. I tried arranging it on myself and I think it looks terrible on me. I like the pattern, but for some reason I just don't like it on me. Of course, that is usually how it goes when I knit things for myself. That's why I like hats, socks, mittens and scarves so much. Those never look too awful on me.

Socks! I love Socks!

 I love self-striping sock yarn. Love it. A favorite place to get self-striping sock yarn is the White Birch Fiber Arts on etsy.com. She does some fun combinations and always has different colorways going. Two of my favorites are Nothing Says Screw You Like a Rainbow which is the sock up above and A Dingo Ate My Baby which is the sock below.

I use Susan B. Anderson's sock pattern How I Make My Socks. It is an easy and fast pattern that is well written. It showcases the yarn beautifully. In fact, I've made 10 pairs of socks and used this pattern for 8 of them. Yeah, I like it :-)

A Few More Photos...

Just adding some more photos of the kids in their vests.

Initial Vests

 I wanted to make vests for the kids to wear for school picture day this year. I thought it'd be cute if they had vests with their initial on it. Not sure if it'll show up in the actual school photo. Of course, I think these pictures show it, and the children, quite nicely!

 The pattern is Kid's Vest from the book More Last-Minute Knitted Gifts by Joelle Hoverson. I've knitted this pattern once before for my nephew, Eric. I used Caron Simply Soft yarn. It is pretty sturdy and is washable which is good when my kids are going to be wearing it. I found the yellow shirts online at Target. I 'eyeballed' the color and it ended up matching the yellow yarn perfectly. 

School picture day was this past Monday. It'll be a while before the pictures come back. I can't wait to see them!

Yarnbox

Back in May (I think) I saw that a friend had signed up for Yarnbox. It is a company that each month sends out a box of yarn and a pattern. Each month there is a different yarn featured. It is a great chance to try yarn that you normally wouldn't. I was excited to try it because I find that I fall into a yarn rut of buying the same brand over and over.

The first month we got two skeins of supermerino yarn from ArtYarns. My pictures are terrible and you can't really get the true color of these yarns. At first I made SMASH and PUNY by Rebekah Darylin. I really like this pattern and I love the edgings used in it. Seriously, I love the way the edges come out. Yeah, I know...I'm weird. Anyway, while I liked the pattern it was definitely not the pattern for the yarn. I ripped it out and decided to make something for Irene with the crazy colorful yarn. 

 





                                       

 I made the Diamond Rib Lace Bolero by Christy Hills for Irene. It used it all but a tiny bit of the yarn. It is also super cute and perfect for Irene.

 With the jade colored yarn I made the Crooked Paths hat by Melissa LeBarre. This is one of those patterns that knits well when you use multiple stitch markers. Thankfully, I have a fair number of stitch markers that the very kind Danielle sent me (and that I wrote about a couple of posts ago). I can happily say that I made no mistakes because of the stitch markers, so I did not have to rip back any of the hat. That makes me ridiculously happy. I do not like to have to rip back knitting.

 The ArtYarn was June's Yarnbox. For July we got 2000 yards of lace weight yarn from Unique Chic Studio. I got the colorway Fresh. I normally never knit with lace weight yarn. I do have a good reason for this! Lace projects have a lot of charts and yarn overs and is so easy to mess it up and lose your place. With three kids running around I have to set aside my knitting frequently. Sometimes it is hours before I get back to it. With lace projects I lose my place as well as stitches from the needle. Still, I was surprised to find that I had several projects saved in my favorites on Ravelry that used lace weight yarn, but were not lace projects. Confused yet?

Basically, I have a shawl pattern that uses lace weight yarn but has not lace work in it at all. It does have a crazy 'suicide' ruffle that requires picking up a million stitches in order to add a ruffle to the shawl. The pattern uses 1600 yards so it would use up a fair amount of my 2000 yards of yarn.

In August our Yarnbox was actually a bag since the yarn we got was so big. We got three skeins of wool yarn from Imperial Yarn. I got what they are calling the 'greys' box. I really like this yarn. It is a thick wool that is perfect for Michigan weather. I can imagine knitting up something that I can wrap around myself as the weather gets cooler. I have a couple of different patterns in mind, but I am still undecided. It helps that Yarnbox has a group on Ravelry so I can see what other people are making with their yarn.

Sadly, I've had to put my Yarnbox subscription on hold. School started today for the kids and (shockingly!) they needed shoes and school supplies and backpacks. Also, picture day is next week and school pictures are crazy expensive. I did, however, knit them vests with their first initial on them to wear for picture day. I will post pictures of that soon.

So, I love the Yarnbox experience. I love getting the new yarns and patterns. I am hoping that I will be able to get my Yarnbox account off hold in the new year! Totally worth it :-)