Flagel Knitting Files

A few skeins of cotton yarn might have also come home with me from Shepard's Harvest.  I had an idea for what to do with it.  Picture by Sheryl Thies I found this wrap years ago and loved its look for summer.  It is a part of a collection by Sheryl Thies in her book Nature's Wrapture  and the wrap's name is Waterfall.  Mom had gone to a knitting event in her area last year, won this book and passed it on to me.  (The pattern is also found for free on Ravelry, here .)   I remembered the wrap used cotton yarn and found just the cotton I wanted at Shepard's Harvest. Interlacement makes Cabled Cotton using a complicated process that cables the strands of cotton in a way shown in the photo above.  The hanks have a generous 270 yards/248 meters of mercerized cotton.  I am using a sized 7 needle to knit the Waterfall pattern giving me the kind of fabric I want.  The colourways are Reds Plus and another in Black.  The black looks more like a purple/dark gray rather

Before I start, Happy Memorial Day to my U.S. family and friends.  Hope you are all enjoying your day off and duly memorializing those who have fought for your freedoms.  Now on to the business of today here in Canada. When picking up stitches to join a sleeve to a sweater after the body has been knit OR when you pick up the gusset stitches on a sock, there always seems to be a hole or gap if you do exactly what the pattern tells you to do.  Generally there are a set number of stitches to pick up, but then there is some span that doesn't get covered.  The span creates a rather large hole.  The photos below shows those long spans on either side of the hole.  There are techniques to fix these holes using the leftover yarn and darning it shut, but my skills in this area are lacking.  My work always look sloppy at best and often there is still a bit of a gap when the darning's complete. Hole under an arm.  Photo credit - Laura Chau Hole at the gusset.  Photo credit Kni

Remember at Shepherd's Harvest I purchased a skein of yarn?  In case you don't remember, the yarn is Nako lace weight in the colourway #412 with 550 m or 600 yds.  It is a wool, alpaca and acrylic blend but, of course, the colours are what spoke to me. What's not to like about a dark blue, teal, rust and cooper combination I am using a feather and fan pattern to create a wrap with this single skein.  The wrap I settled on has no special edging at the sides or cast-on and bind off.  Here's the pattern I am using called Feather and Fan Short Scarf by Kelly Faller of Firefly Knits.  It is simple, a very easy four row lace repeat pattern that from my POV carries a certain punch. The needle size is very big, U.S. 10 1/2 or 6.5 mm.  It is the yarn that does all the talking though.  And rather than stopping at a set length suggested by the pattern, it will be knit using up all the yarn. So far I've knit on it for about 5 hours and this is where I am, approximatel

Tuesday, I flew back to greater Vancouver.  The trip was relatively uneventful, except for the two screaming children who sat across the aisle from me.  They took turns being unhappy at the top of their lungs, so the three hours seemed very long. Then there was the wind Tuesday night flying into Vancouver.  It added the stomach-sinking feel of a roller coaster ride to the landing all wrapped into the price of the ticket. There was a big problem with the times of my flights.  I must talk to my travel agent; oh, that would be me.  The flight out of Minneapolis to Seattle left at 4:50 pm.  This is a great time which allows for fully cleaning the condo before departure.  Not a bad idea, if I do say so myself.  I got up at 6 am to start and was comfortably ready to depart the condo to catch the Light Rail train at 2 pm.  Now 6 am Central Day Light Savings time is 4 am Pacific time.  All went well on that flight sans the kids with an on-time arrival of 6:30 pm Pacific time.  Then I s

I know many of you love to see photos of the grand daughters to see how quickly they have grown.  This post will be devoted to that and sharing pictures of a quick trip one of my sons and I took on his day off.  The only knitting reference is that scarf I am wearing below.  It is the same Anisette wrap written about here . Here we all are at Miss A's baptism.  Photo thanks to M. Shaffer. Miss E had a lovely sugar filled morning running around with her cousin and Miss A did fine until someone she didn't know started putting water on her forehead.  That made her angry, but once she was returned to Mom, all was good with the world. Here's a close up of Miss A. Posing on Mom's hip Miss A has grown so much; sitting up on her own, enjoying solid food and rocking on all four soon to be crawling.  She has a big sister to follow around so moving is an imperative.  What has not changed is her contented personality.  This girl loves her life.  It was fun to be a part

We who knit know all about those certain people.  The knitters who seem to create a new sweater every week while we poor mortals finish a wash cloth in the same time frame.  When I was recently at the farm Mom took me to her knitting group and introduced me to the woman there who has some newly completed large item each week.  Mom wondered how this woman did it then complained about how she completed only a baby cap or two a week. So those of us who aren't so prolific may begin to feel inadequate.  If only we used Continental instead of the English technique  to knit, or took our knit everywhere we go to sneak in a few rows or quit the day job and knit full time, maybe then more projects would be completed.  (As for the latter, knitting too much can cause pain, so be careful what you wish for.) Interweave , a magazine for those who knit, crochet, bead and more, recently put out an article called, 10 Ways to Become a More Prolific Knitter  by Sarah Rothberg.   There were a coupl

Finally, we are going to talk about the lovely souvenir I purchased for myself on the trip taken in March.  It is the four skeins of possum yarn shown below.  (Need more info about possum yarn, click here .) Naturally Amuri DK/8 ply in turquoise and charcoal I have simply fallen in love with the feel of this yarn.  To me it is a more affordable cashmere.  The possum is always paired with a wool and my set of four each with 170 yards/155 meters is a 75% NZ merino with 25% possum blend.  It is so soft with such a wonderful halo. The halo is what makes the yarn look so fuzzy I wanted to make a signature piece with this yarn, something that had the potential of being a wardrobe staple.   Stephen West's Groove  with its stripes seemed to me to best showcase my two colours and if I found just the right buttons it could become the scarf I wanted of this yarn. Photo of Stephen West and Groove by westknits The combination of stripes with vertical cables intrigued me so I

Currently there is a trend in yarn of putting together mini skeins in coordinating colours.  A mini skein generally has less than 100 yards/91 meters of yarn, which means several must be put together to generate enough yarn to make anything. Image from Madeline Tosh showing many minis I suspect these little skeins came about to use up the scrap yarn manufacturers create as they make hanks of yarn at a set size.  It is akin to using up the scrap or garbage cake when decorating cakes which lead to the trend of cake pops.  Because the colours are often coordinated, and the amount is small, making them inexpensive, knitters have been snatching them up. Susan gave me a set of mini skeins she was gifted because she was perplexed with what to do with them.  Her set of six in fingering weight was from Space Cadet .  Here's a few that are left. As you can see these minis are variegated which from my POV makes them trickier to use.  Minis have been used to create blankets, baby

On Saturday I ventured to Stillwater's Washington County Fairgrounds to take in Shepherd's Harvest, a sheep and wool festival being held for its 20th year.  Last year Mom, Susan and I investigated this event on a windy and thus really chilly mid-May day.  This year I was alone with Mom celebrating a graduation and Susan in Paris. Photo credit to Shepherd's Harvest FB page The weather on Saturday was warm, like 80 F/23 C degrees warm.  The venue is about a 30 minute drive east from my condo downtown Minneapolis making it located very close to Wisconsin; thus the vendors come from both Minnesota and Wisconsin.  The variety of vendors include those who spin and dye yarn, those who hand paint or hand dye roving, basket and yarn bowl makers, those selling spinning and weaving tools, many of local yarn shops and all the other types of accessories needed to do yarn crafting.  The vendors fill three large fairground buildings. Last year the weather kept us from spending any

It was quite a trip to Australia, New Zealand and Fiji.  There were 11 flights to get from Vancouver and back.  Having said that, there were only two days spent on a bus driving from place to place, a pleasant change from the Ireland/Scotland trip that had us doing 14 days on a bus.  Here are a few photo highlights of that holiday. With a kangaroo statue in the Sydney Wildlife Zoo Viewing point at the Stratosfare Restaurant in Queenstown, NZ overlooking  Lake Wakatipu  A dusky sunset on the beach of the Sofitel Spa and Resort in Nadi, Fiji As you can see by how I am dressed. the temperatures did vary a lot.  If you look closely under that white jacket I am wearing the Waiting for Rain shawl as a scarf.  Of course in Cairns and Sydney, Australia as well as Nadi, Fiji, no wool was needed. I did manage to get through the trip with one carry-on suitcase.  As you can imagine that meant everything taken to wear had to be fully coordinated with layers to add or delete as the

I have been pretty good about busting my stash this year.  The only new yarn purchased in 2017 has been the variegated lace to complete the Waiting for Rain shawl , the souvenir possum yarn purchased in New Zealand (to be revealed soon) and an inexpensive Australian 8 ply weight wool yarn purchased in Wisconsin.  The focus this year in stash busting has been on using up the DK, fingering and lace weight yarns that inexplicably found their way to my homes.  To that end I purchased Stephen West's Shawlscape class from Craftsy to pick up some good ideas, but unlike Stephen, my design skills are less developed so I continue to look for patterns.  Though as you will see alternations can be made to suit my whims. Summer Shawl by STASH Lounge in Ravelry is a simple, asymmetrical scarf/shawl that uses two colours in a rather clever way. Photo credit to STASH Lounge  The blocks of relatively solid colours all done in garter stitch are broken up with stripes.  That scalloped edging

Dear Blog: It is time to write this to you so you better understand the progression of my thinking.  As you know we have had an on-again off-again relationship for months.  There would be times of intensity where we were together daily followed by long stretches when we didn't see each other.  You need to know this state of affairs is all about me and not you.  Let me explain. The idea of spending so much time with self-absorption was becoming a bit repulsive.  Who do I think I am to be putting into the world all this stuff about my own journey in knitting, spinning or beading.  Add to it all the personal adventures away from my hobbies and it appeared to be becoming obsessive attention to self  Then there was the time it takes to come up with something  different to write about and frankly I gave up.  It seemed like a self-indulgent activity that needed to end. But then recently I was thinking about a shawl I knit last fall and donated for a fund raiser to the dog rescue gro