While I have been busy at work, I have also been busy knitting. This is the season when I finish my Christmas projects early...and then add things to give to people.
This year, I am adding two
Simply Spring Beanies and a festive trio of
Almost Lost Dishcloths. As I have a (cough, cough) plentiful supply of yarn, it does not take me long to put these projects together.
The dishcloths are made out of Willow Yarn's
Sudsy, which is my very favorite yarn for these projects. The colors are nice and the blend in the yarn keeps those colors from fading out quickly. As I had a stock of red, green, and natural, I am making one in each color.
The Simply Spring Beanie is a multi-size top down beanie pattern. I have used it several times and will use it again. The fact that it is a free download on Ravelry does not hurt. For this particular Beanie, I started with the grey and added the red. The third color looked black in the low light in which I was knitting. When I took the hat into a brighter space, the colored revealed itself as a dark, toasty brown. That was a bit of a surprise, but when I really looked at it, I decided that I liked it.
I have a smaller hat to do as soon as I finish the third dishcloth. I am going to decide on the striping and the colors when I have a chance to look at what is available in my carefully curated (translate: stuffed into one of two cloth baskets) supply of washable worsted yarn. As the hat's recipient is seven years old, I can work with a brighter palate if I decide to do that. Not sure yet what will happen.
Also fresh from the needles is a baby blanket for one of my knitting friends. Her son should arrive next month. A while back I had been leafing through the Mary Maxim catalog and saw
Baby Blankie Yarn. As I was unsure of who I was knitting for, I bought both the Honeydew and Apple Blossom colorways. Being a huge fan of self-patterning yarns, I knew that I would eventually use both.
The Honeydew colorway is nicely gender neutral so I chose that skein. The yarn comes in a skein
large enough to make a blanket. "Great," I said to myself, "only two ends to sew in!" The gods laughed. This skein had four or five knots....that tugged on came apart easily. If I could live with knitting the knots into the fabric, I would have been making a big mistake as the knot would have, without doubt, come apart when the blanket was washed.
The bottom and side edges curled enough so that it was really bothering me. As it is acrylic and can't be blocked, I was wondering how to fix this. When I washed the blanket and put it through the dryer on low, the curls relaxed and disappeared. I was very relieved. I hope to pass this project off this week.
Once I finish the second beanie, I am..going to....knit for me!!!!!
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