Home dec: not sewing

but an awful lot of staple removal!

My DH is the master of treasure hunts. He brought home a couple of chairs in the last year that needed a little sprucing up.

Unfortunately I didn’t get a shot of the second one before I hit it with the screwdriver –

and the first one didn’t fair much better with DH & I wielding tools

Over the summer I pulled staples. Lots and lots and lots and lots of staples. You know, the “hey, this’ll be easy once we figure out how to take the chair apart” which turns into weekends of skinned knuckles – that game. Which is why I swear off home dec. I just can never remember that when in a furniture showroom and faced with $400 price tags .

But the end?

(six months later even!)

The end almost makes up for it!

The upside of being sick over the holidays…

prime knitting time!

which started from a side trip to Chicago’s Loopy Yarns while waiting for my pizza to be ready – it was a long day at a tech filled conference, I was about ready for some colourful and cushy:

The royal purple, which turned into this shawl, is Cascade Heritage Silk – rich, deep colour with a bit of a sheen from the silk. (The other is Tosh Sock, colourway “Nebula” – had to come home with me too!)

A quick jaunt on Ravelry popped up Emily Ross’ Haruni, who’s border I really liked. But the leaf/candlelight lace pattern for the main shawl didn’t catch my interest, so I started playing.

The alternating angled leaf pattern turned more like trees, and didn’t flow well into the border, so I added flowers – what turned out more like big and little flowers actually, which worked just fine.

I had leftover beads from my Odonata scarf, which are a combination of dark green and purple in a triangular shape. I started adding them to the leaves of the border (once I figured out where the spines were in the lace pattern!!), and just barely managed to squeak them out to the end of the leaves. I think I have about 5 beads left over. Was going to look for other beads to add to the crochet edging, but I think it looks fine the way it is.

Please ignore the safety pins – I ran out of straight pins for blocking, they’re all in the sewing projects. Fingers crossed I’ll have something else to show soon – something else that’s also silk, and will go very nicely with this shawl!

Details:
Yarn: Cascade Yarns Heritage Silk, fingering weight, 1 skein – most of the 437 yards
Pattern: edging from Haruni (linked above), the rest the usual triangular shawl method with added lace patterns
Notions: leftover triangular seed beads – if I ever find the package, I’ll update!
Ravelry link: Chicago Shawl

Almooooost done…

So cushy and warm…

Yes, folks, it really is Winter. When even the Maritimes get buried and frozen, it’s time to pull out the seriously warm stuff.

We’re talking alpaca. Add in a little silk and merino, just for the added luxury (Knit Picks Andean Silk), and you got yourself yarn to drop everything else for. Good thing I did, since I got this number done just in time for the snowstorms!

I knit the cable sideways together with a plain stockinette facing that got folded up inside, then picked up stitches in the round along the top edge and finished the crown. So not only does it have the extra thickness that cables bring, plus a smaller-than-suggested needle size, but a whole ‘nuther layer inside. Through two snowstorms and a cold snap, my ears haven’t felt a thing .

Between this, the alpaca scarf from the last post, and some alpaca fingerless gloves (with my hands kept in my pockets!), I’ve been so toasty I wonder why my cheeks are stinging. Hmmmm – balaclava next?

For anyone interested, I’ve also written up the pattern (up on my website here, or over on Ravelry here and Patternfish here). We can all be toasty together.

Wayfarer – in alpaca!

I’m happy to say I finally got some knitting time. I feel both more relaxed, and more excited – I’ve got materials for some great things waiting in the wings, I can’t wait to get more done!

An unexpected trip to Gaspereau Valley Fibres left me with 2 skeins of “baby alpaca” (that was all that was listed on the hand-drawn shelf label, there were no ball bands). It was fingering weight, likely natural colours (since all they had were various shades of brown), and soooooo soft I couldn’t put it down when it was time to go.

Even though it was much lighter weight than called for, I wanted to try the Wayfarer Scarf by Jared Flood (of Brooklyn Tweed fame). I started by figuring out my gauge on appropriate sized needles and what stitch count would be needed to make a 7-8″ wide scarf. I got about 4″ in when I realized I was going to have a yarn shortage problem. So back to the calculator to figure out what I could manage… which turned out to be 6″ wide, and a stitch count that was… (dramatic pause) exactly what the pattern called for.

Turned out that the relatively loose gauge and alpaca yarn meant the thing stretches hugely long, which means I really could have gone for the wider, shorter scarf, but this way I didn’t need to fiddle with the design.

Even though I did anyway . I added a few more “swoops” once I found out that Jared only had one in there. With the alpaca yarn, blocking wasn’t going to be a problem.

Photographing dark brown in winter though… that’s a constant problem!

It is very cozy, and very warm, and lots of length to wrap around. I think DH and I are going to be fighting over this one!