Adventures with YarnInformation about everything to do with yarn, knitting, fiber arts, sheep…

Above is my current work in progress. I’m calling it the Quad Blanket as it features four colors. The blanket’s pattern is a simple log cabin style, instructions of which I found on this page about a third of the way down. Simply summarized, starting with a center block, you knit an addition, rotate the piece 90 degrees, knit the next addition, and continue till the blanket is the size you want it to be, or you run out of yarn.

The inspiration for this was really just me wanting to use up the various small scraps of yarn I’ve created and dyed during the past half year. One benefit this has is that the blanket has many different textures and yarns, I enjoy the variety. I started by knitting up the blue/grey yarn made in August into a square just to see how it would come out. Then I found the log cabin instructions and decided to use the square for the core. Then I added on these pink scraps, followed by some green I apparently dyed but didn’t photograph.

At this stage I knew my next color was going to be yellow, but I hadn’t made a yellow yarn yet… thus I decided to document my yarn making process via the yarn dyeing tutorial I posted last week. At that time I also dyed up the rest of my handspun stock in blue and pink for the next layers of the blanket.

My next challenge will be the next green segment. I have some dyed already but it’s green/purple, not solid green. I think I want to keep the solid color motif going, so I’ll be taking some time to work on processing the washed fleece into yarn. I guess that will be the next tutorial here!

This shawl is what I made with the alpaca yarn in the previous post. I ended up leaving it as singles. The real life color is much more amber, though not as amber as in the previous post, certainly not as muted as this shot which used my flash.

As this was my first ever shawl, I chose to keep the pattern dead simple. It’s a Josephine shawl, the pattern is pretty much do a yarn over right before the end of each second row, and knit the rest. This forms a right angle triangle, which rotated, becomes the shawl. I appreciated the simplicity of the pattern, it allowed me to take my knitting around and not having to remember what stage I was at in a pattern.

This also allowed me to test out my stitch markers! I used one to mark a few stitches behind the yarn over increase. This allowed me to knit absentmindedly, but to pay attention when it was time to do something. I learned that it’s very important to have stitch markers that are lightweight (or appropriate in weight to the project and needles at least), which may mean using plastic beads or wood beads in lieu of the prettier and more varied glass beads.

These are stitch markers that I have made. You can use them to mark places on your knitting needles, more deluxe versions can be left inside the knitting project and removed later.

You can make your own very easily with a few jewelry making supplies and beads. Here is one tutorial that I used in making my stitch markers.

I will be adding my own tutorial for creating stitch markers once I have experimented more.