Day 1 of Completion Challenge

I had knitted a Christmas wreath in October.  It has been hanging out on my dresser waiting to be finished.

First thing I did was sew the ends together.  Nothing fancy I just overlapped them and wove the needle up and down across the ends.  Knowing this part would mostly be covered with a bow I knew I didn't need to Kitchener it.

I had the wreath siting on my dresser braided for about a month.  What I noticed was the braiding had time to relax and not look so tightly pulled as my first one.  I liked the look of this better.

Also having hung around on my dresser the bow was misplaced.  So, I quickly knitted another.  I didn't know what length it should be so I knitted until I could tie a nice bow with a little hanging.  Then I cast off.  Steamed it flat and tied it up.  I really love the look of the tuck stitch for the bow.  I used punch card number 3 on my Studio MOD. 700 standard machine.

My next trial will be to find some way suitable to back this wreath.  I tried a wire wreath frame for the first one and it didn't work out too well.  This time I tried using a wooden embroidery hoop.  It was cheap and easy to find the right size.  What I don't like though is seeing the wooden hoop from the side.  I had it hanging in my entry way last night and I didn't like that the first thing I saw was the wooded hoop. 

So, I moved it to my kitchen where I don't see the hoop as much. 

 Just my darling little wreath.

Christmas Project for the Guild

Meeting before last someone in our guild asked about any Christmas ideas to knit.  I got to thinking what a great idea to get started learning something now rather than waiting for December.  I started looking through my binder of free patterns and I came across a Christmas Wreath for the Passap Duo80 or E6000 first.  It looked like something from the 70's, but I loved it.  I don't speak Passap, but it seemed like what they were doing was knitting tubes and braiding them.  Great idea, but not feasible for our meeting.  We'll bring our knitting machines, but we don't bring ribbers.  We only have 2 hours.

Then I found Heidi's Braided Christmas Wreath pattern.  This talks about making strips of knitting and letting them roll in on themselves.  Something we can totally do in our machine knitting meeting.  Comparing the two patterns I decided to do a little something of both.  I really liked the simplicity of the Braided Christmas Wreath, but loved the color combination of the Passap Christmas Wreath.

So, I picked out three punch cards that seemed from the naked eye to be completely different (I really need to do swatches.)  After I got the strips done I thought that 2 weren't as different as I would have liked.  I wasn't sure they'd even look good together, but decided to just go with it.

As I was sitting on my bed manipulating the strips to decide what order I wanted them in.  Quite frankly I was trying to remember how to braid when my son walked into the room.  He talked with me a bit about his day and then as he turned to leave and he said, "I'll leave you to play with your Christmas snakes."  OK I thought it was pretty funny.

As I started braiding I was relived to see that the patterns did actually work together. I had knit 3 strips 30 inches long. I did 335 rows at T3 on my Studio Mod.700 standard gauge. According to the pattern it would make a 13" diameter wreath. Mine was stretched to 12" and I think it is too thin.

I wanted a bow and did a 30 inch strip of tuck with punch card #3 the red yarn. 485 rows T3. I wanted to give the bow a hint of texture. I folded the strip as if tieing a regular bow.  Then I hot glued everything onto a 12 inch wreath frame from JoAnns.

Since the wreath was not looking like something I'd want to hang up or give away I decided it would be my prototype.  Things I would do differently would be not to braid it so tightly.  I would not stretch it to fit a wreath form.  I'm going to use wooden embroidery hoops since they come in many more sizes than the wreath forms.  I'm going to do swatches of my punch cards giving me a better idea of what their finished pattern will look like.

My 2nd Cupcake Hat Recipient

At first she didn't want her picture taken.  I'm 2 1/2 years old and I'm not in the mood.

I then asked if I could take a picture of her in front of the Christmas tree.  Got to make it fun for them.  And let's face she made it fun for me too.

The Cupcake Hat Was A Hit

Here's my 6 year old little friend wearing the hat I made on day 18 of my "25 Days of Diana".  I mailed it to Portland, OR for Christmas.  Her mother said that she put on her hat and coat the next day and was standing by the door ready to run errands.  Normally, she needs prompting to get ready to go.  Hey anything I can do to make a mother's job a tad easier I'm willing to do.

Allison's First Machine Knit Anything

My daughter wanted to knit her friend a hat for Christmas. She picked out a camouflage like yarn. They are in ROTC together I think that is the reason for the choice. Plus she said her friend liked green.

We cast on and started knitting everything was fine. Then my daughter decided to really knit fast. Back and forth she slid the carriage. Zip, zip, zip was the sound of the carriage. I suggested she slow down, but I'm just her mom what do I know. Then we found out why going slowly would be a good idea. Something didn't knit right about.... 20 rows ago. After examination I decided it would be easier to unravel the whole thing and start over. Easier and faster that is. It went pretty quickly and my daughter seemed to enjoy unraveling the knitting. Again listening to the zip, zip, zip of each row unraveling.

We casted on and she took off knitting again. This time at a slower pace. I taught her to just keep and eye on the knitting. After each row make sure things look like they've knitted correctly before starting the next row. Once one gets more experienced the faster one can go. After about 50 rows she wondered how many more rows. I told her she was almost done. She couldn't believe how fast it was going. Everything went correctly the 2nd time and in about 20 minutes she had a knitted hat. 15 minutes later the hand work was done and hat was ready to wear. While I did the hand work she prepared the pom pom. That's one thing she said the hat had to have....a pom pom.

Swirl Round Baby Blanket Crazed

I just love this pattern. Easy and impressive is right up my alley. I hope everyone tries this pattern of Diana Sullivan. Again her videos are linked up with her blog and can be found here.

This blanket I made bigger and with non baby colors. I intended this one to be for my mom and dad for Christmas. They also have a poodle, so we know who will really be sleeping on this blanket.

I used 80 needles in all to this size. It is a really nice large size for an adult to curl up under and read a book... with one small poodle.

I used Lion's Brand Vanna's Choice yarn. I had bought this particular yarn in 3 different colors in 6 ounce balls. I had intended to do this circular blanket with 9 wedges. 3 wedges in each color. My 6 ounce ball made 1 9/10ths wedges. I needed more yarn. I figured if I got 3 more 6 ounce balls in the three colors I'd be good. WELL famous last words.

When I woke up in the morning and saw the 3 9/10th wedges hanging from my knitting machine in the sunlight I instantly didn't like the 3 colors together. In skeins lying on the table they looked great together. Worked up in knitting I thought they looked terrible. I had purple mist, denim mist and taupe mist. The purple or the denim looked really good with the taupe, which was more of a chocolate brown. The purple AND denim did not look good together at all in my opinion.

Now faced with 2 colors and would have to do 10 wedges and how much unraveling do I want to do. I started and ended what I had on the machine with purple. The color I decided not to use for my parents blanket. This really ended up being easier to recover from than had a chosen to stick with the purple. I would have had to nearly scrap the whole thing.

I decided to unravel the incomplete wedge (the last knitted wedge) and to leave the complete purple wedge (first knitted wedge) on until the end. I would then some how hang that last wedge excluding the purple wedge and then unravel it. I don't know how I did it, but it worked.

If you look closely in the pictures you can see a slight ridge between 2 wedges, but in person you don't notice it. That's if I don't point it out. AND my mama taught me not to point things out that bother me. She says nobody else would even notice if I kept it to myself. It's hard sometimes, but I'm getting better.Everyone loved the Swirl Blanket. I'm intending to make at least 3 more.

Peppermint Kiss Baby Blanket

Blanket with flash and don't mind the water spot. Iron went crazy with some light steaming.

That's what I'm calling my latest creation. I just love it and don't know if I'll even give it away. I made this using the videos posted by Diana Natters on Youtube. You can find links to the videos on her blog "Diana natters on." This blanket is called Swirl Round Baby Blanket. When I saw a picture of this blanket my immediate thought was peppermint candy. So, I knew my first blanket would be done with red and white.

I'm a pretty novice machine knitter and I found the video easy to follow. I kept it up on the computer and would replay bits to keep me on track. I had a minor problem with joining wedge 9 with wedge 10, but it was just a misunderstanding on my part. With a replay or two I was able to see my mistake and successfully join the wedges.

The pie crust edging was unbelievably easy. I'd never done it before and really enjoyed learning a new technique. I wasn't sure how to end it. I made sure the last "pie crust" piece over lapped the first then I did a latch tool bind off. Doesn't look quite a good as I would have liked, but it looks just fine too. Only I would notice it and maybe an experienced machine knitter if she really looked closely. I might email Diana and see if I did it correctly or if there is another way to do it. Most of all a big thank you goes out to Diana Sullivan for talking the time to film a fun project for us all to enjoy.

blanket no flash