25reasons | knitting

The Good Wife and Super Easy Lap Blankets

posted on March 3, 2013, at 7:58 pm

Now, I know what you’re probably thinking. What on earth do lap blankets have to do with a good wife?

Super Easy Lap Blanket No.1

So let me start at the beginning. You may have noticed that I haven’t posted for about three months. As some of you may know, I’ve been busy with my new Stitch 56 website that got rebuilt from the foundation up. After a successful launch, with lots of very gratifying feedback, I fixed my attention on building the business. Building the number of people looking at my site, building the number of people Liking my Facebook page. Trying (but not succeeding very well) to build the number of followers of my Twitter tweets. Building the stock lines I’m carrying in the shop. And building the number of sales each week.

Love the colours!

In the meantime, every evening, Moshe and I have been glued to the telly watching The Good Wife. We started at the beginning, the first episode of the first season. And we’re LOVING it!!! I mean hooked. Have you seen it? Did you you love it? Who’s your favourite? Kalinda? Peter? Diane? Will? Cary? Now, I know we’re kinda behind a little, like 4 seasons behind, but we’re just catching up as fast as we can. We’re somewhere in the middle of Season 3 I think, or maybe a smidge further.

This wool is so soft!

Anyway, I hate to just sit and watch and do nothing. Truth is, if my hands are idle, my nails end up taking a beating. Or is that a biting? Yeah, not good. So I decided to invest in a little Manos del Uruguay Maxima from Purl Soho, one of my favourite stores, and knit up a Super Easy Lap Blanket.

It’s no kidding a “super easy” knit job

It’s so soft! It has a gorgeous hand, not too heavy, not too light. Just right. A beautifully “cozy soft, decadently toasty, [.....] kettle-dyed, hand-spun 100% extrafine merino wool”. And the range of colours is so phenomenal. I kinda went a little bit overboard though. I decided to make 4 of these blankets, so we each could have our own for those cool winter nights of TV viewing. Well I just kept buying more colours! You know how it is, I put together a row of 7 colours, stood back to look at the selection, moved them around a little, changed this one with that one, took one out, added one in. You know.

See, just the right size!

And just when I thought I had four x 7 rows all lined up in perfect harmony, I’d mess around with them one more time. Then check the website for a possible better colour to use here, or another colour palette for another blanket, and so it went. On and on. By the way, Purl Soho didn’t have all the colours in stock, so I spread the shopping love around at Flying Fingers Yarn, and Happy Knits, and I think I bought one skein from another shop that I can’t remember the name of. Just do a Google search and you’ll find what you need.

I’ve just started on the second blanket.

You won’t believe it, … then again, maybe you will, but I have another few colours on their way to me in the mail. I just needed them, you know? In case they’re the perfect match, better than the one I’d already settled on. For the fourth time.

a pretty seascape

Those are some of the colours that might make it into this second blanket. Well, probably they’ll make it in. Depends on what my new order delivers.

they’re just so pretty together, aren’t they?

Here’s what I have left, after the first blanket.

I know, it’s nuts isn’t it!

And just so you can see all the wool in this full-to-the-brim plastic bag, here are some pics from both sides of the bag…

can you tell how gorgeous they all are?

OK. It’s been a long but lovely day. Glad to have been able to show this to you. It’s not rocket science, this pattern. Just a nice feeling of accomplishment when it’s complete. Time for the next ep, and more knitting. Yay!

Moshe? Are you coming?

Oh, and I’ll post pics when this second one is done.
x Helene

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Wrapped In Baby Soft Chevron Knit

posted on March 8, 2012, at 8:11 am

Do you remember the saga with the little chevron baby blanket I started knitting for Austin? If yes, you’ll recall that the first skein of wool ran out well before it should have, leaving me with only 18 of the 20 rows I needed. After emailing The Purl Bee and doing a swatch gauge as was suggested, which came up exactly right, and then, after I emailed them the pictures I took of the swatch with my ruler showing the correct number of stitches per inch, and then not hearing a peep back from them, I decided it was time to come up with an alternate strategy. As you might remember, I ordered another skein of the cotton, but when more than a week had gone by and it still hadn’t arrived in the post, I picked up my circular needles and forged ahead with Plan B. Here’s the result.

Austin's Chevron Baby Blanket

How gorgeous is it! I’m so happy with it, I just can’t wait to wrap him up in it.

it drapes so beautifully, and feels wonderful in hand

The Blue Sky Cotton is a lovely yarn to knit with, although the blue has already shown minute signs of pilling, even though it hasn’t been used yet. I’m hoping that doesn’t get any worse, or it’ll be really disappointing. I’ll let you know down the track how it wears.

the underside looks great too!

See the blue (Mediterranean) stripe across the top? That’s the second skein that finally arrived. Thank god, because all of the skeins knitted up short by 2 rows. Overall, I had to make up 14 rows! That’s fairly significant. I can’t work out how the original blanket was made using the pattern they provided. It’s a mystery to me. I had the right size needles, the perfect gauge… Anyway, I think it turned out just fine in the end. Don’t you? Austin thinks so…

Now, what’s my next project???

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The Gauge Swatch

posted on February 14, 2012, at 11:32 pm

I received a quick reply from The Purl Bee, surprised – as I was – that I’ve run short on my yarn. Jennifer asked me to check the gauge, so I did another swatch. Here are the results:

4" = 12 stitches

I’ve emailed her this photo, along with these showing the length of my tail at the beginning, and measuring the actual blanket:

close-up of my knitting

not too long a tail

At least now I’m reassured that it’s not me or my knitting. I think this skein just came up short. Even though it apparently hasn’t happened in forever with this yarn. It definitely is very strange, don’t you think? Anyway, Purl Bee is being very helpful, so we’ll see what happens next.

Pattern Review | Chevron Baby Blanket progress

posted on February 13, 2012, at 10:45 pm

I fell in love with this blanket the moment I saw it on the Purl Bee website. It’s knitted in beautiful colours of Blue Sky Cotton, a gorgeously soft 100% cotton yarn. If you read my earlier post, you’ll know that I’d bought two extra skeins of yarn – one in Mediterranean, and one in Raspberry, planning to wait till my grandchild was born before deciding on which to use. When our darling Austin was born on 15th January, I knew the Raspberry was clearly out, and after much deliberation, I happily settled on this line-up:

Chevron Baby Blanket | colours - Mum and I converted the single-yarn skeins into double-yarn balls

First the Mediterranean, then Lemongrass, Lemonade, Bone, Tulip, Drift, and finally, Sleet. The Graphite didn’t make it in. So, one evening last week, I began knitting, but because I hadn’t done this for some time, I wasn’t fluent with the technical terms. I stopped pretty much immediately after having cast on my 100 stitches, and took the whole thing into my Wednesday morning sewing session with Trish, who ended up undoing a row for me that I’d messed up, before showing me how to proceed.

Great, no problem, I kept going, and for the next few evenings, I knitted and knitted and knitted. It felt nice, I remembered how much I enjoyed this craft, and in no time really at all, I approached the end of my first ball of yarn.

how pretty does it look!

If you decide to knit this blanket, I have some feedback about the pattern that I think is essential for you to know.

I'm nearly at the end of my first ball

Since my knitting supplies are void of counters of any kind, I created a little checklist to keep track of the repeats.

see the problem?

I still have another three rows to knit, but not enough yarn to even do one more row. I’m now not very happy. Even though the pattern makes mention of possibly running a little short with the first colour…

which I think is still not really acceptable

What am I supposed to do? I either make the first colour four rows shorter than the others, or buy another skein. Except now I’m wondering if I’m going to run into the same problem with each of the other colours, and will end up having to buy double the amount of yarn – most of which won’t be used of course since I only need an extra three rows – making this one of the most expensive little 26″ x 33″ baby blanket ever! I’ve written to The Purl Bee, asking them about it, and hopefully will get an answer soon. In the meantime, I’ve ordered one skein of Mediterranean from Jimmy Beans Wool (much cheaper postage $5.30 vs $17.50 quoted by TPB for shipping one skein of cotton, and cheaper prices in general). I hope it arrives soon. This little munchkin is already approaching his one-month birthday, and I need to finish his blanket before he outgrows it!

I’ll let you know how this goes. Wish me luck!