Month: April 2012

A 30-Year-Old UFO

Marie Haigh2 Comments

Don’t you just love the 1970’s colors?

Clearly, it’s not my UFO, unfinished object.
1. I don’t crochet.
2. This would be an advanced project to make when one is 6.
No, it belonged to my neighbor, who is about the age of my Grandmother.

During a recent visit, my neighbor saw me knitting on the hexagon blanket. (I just have to shout out that I finished the 4th hexagon! If I can keep this rate up, I’ll have the entire blanket completed by mid May). She mentioned that a friend had taught her how to crochet many years ago, but that she had forgotten and frankly no longer cared for it. Still she had kept a half-finished afghan all these years, unable to throw it out. Would I want it?

I fell in love with the design. It’s not the typical crocheted afghan. It almost looks like it had been knitted.

But now that I have it, I’m uncertain what to do with it.

A. I could complete crocheting the afghan after taking a refresher course on how to crochet. Enough yarn is included to make it several inches longer. However, I’m not a huge fan of the colors and I detest the tassels. Plus, it’s acrylic yarn and not the nice stuff that they have out today.

B. Crochet a few more inches onto the afghan, but don’t include the tassels. Though the thought of weaving in all the current tassels makes me seasick.

C. Regift the afghan to someone who crotchets but not before translating the design into a knitting pattern. Then, knit myself a similar blanket in lovely superwash wool.

D. Hide the project for another 30 years.

What would you do?

Beautiful Noro Featured in the 4th Hexagon

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The beautiful Noro matched with the natural Manos del Uruguay

I just love how the Noro changes color throughout the hexagon.

Serious progress is being made. There aren’t too many cool Spring days left in which I want to be working with warm wool.

I work on it every night. My knitting bag comes along on every trip to the local playgrounds.

Elly has even learned proper etiquette around a knitting project, such as pulling yarn out of a skein currently being knitted from is a no-no. Lol.

A Bigger Dining Room

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In the before shot, you can see the bakers rack.

It was a gift from my father-in-law. It worked great in our old apartment, providing much needed storage in the kitchen.

It has never worked quite so well in our home. For starters, it doesn’t fit in the kitchen. So, I stuck it in the dining room. The dining room is a small room and it is made smaller by the bakers rack.

Though the shelves are full, they are full of stuff that we rarely use. Not being avid wine drinkers and being the proud parents of a very curious daughter, the wine rack is empty and will remain that way.

Yet the driving force behind my desire to relocate the bakers rack to the basement was my upcoming striped paint job. If I’m going to go through all the trouble of measuring out and painting stripes, I want people to see them.

Once I moved the bakers rack, I noticed that the wall adjacent to the kitchen doorway was long enough to house the hutch. So, I moved it. Well, now look at the room.

There is so much space!

The dining table can actually sit underneath the ugly retro chandelier. I can walk around the entire table!

And look, I have the entire long wall to paint stripes on. Oh, I’m a lucky girl!

Baseball Blanket, a new pattern

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With Phillies baseball season officially starting tomorrow, it gives me great pleasure to release a baseball knitting project.

A blanket for the baseball enthusiast!

It is an easy and fun project to work on while watching your favorite baseball team. The blanket is knit entirely in garter stitch so you can keep your eye on the ball. Three sections are knit separately and then seamed together to form the shape of a baseball. Shaping is created through simple yarnover increases, k2tog and ssk decreases, cast on rows and bind off rows. The yarnovers also serve as a visual guide of where to put the baseball stitching.

Knit one to take to the game today!

Price: $5.00 USD

This blanket would fit perfectly in a baseball themed nursery too!

I originally designed and knit this blanket because I needed my firstborn child to have a baseball blanket. Dan and I are huge Phillies fans. Of course, our daughter would be a Phillies fan too. Already, she shows great enthusiasm for the game.

Go Phillies!

More information about the pattern can be found here or on Ravelry.

Thank you to Nihart Photography for the beautiful pictures. More of her work can be seen at nihartphotography.smugmug.com.

3 Down and 13 Inches Left

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The 3rd hexagon was completed on Sunday.

About halfway through the hexagon, I realized I was going to run out of the Taos yarn. Not wanting to switch yarns in the middle of a hexagon, I ripped all the yarn out of the sample hexagon I had knit when making a gauge.

It was barely enough. I was left with only 13 inches.

More luck came my way during the finishing phase. This time the hexagon lay flat. There was no bubble in the middle as there had been with the previous two hexagons.

See the difference?

Perhaps I had seamed them together wrong. Sure enough, too much of the cast on edge was bunched up in the middle causing the bubble. I only had to rip the seam back 3/4 of the way, match the end of the cast on row with the top stitch of final section knit, ease the fullness of the cast on row and reseam. They look so much better.

I’ve already cast on for the 4th hexagon. When I get further along, I’ll post pictures. The Noro yarn is just beautiful.