Finishing

My sister says I've been getting all kinds of things done. She's right. I've been knitting like a fiend. But after the knitting (or whatever), everything tends to sit while I procrastinate over the final step, the finishing.

I wove this rug about three years ago, and we've been getting a lot of use out of it. But the header (the dark navy edge near the fringe) is a cotton that shrank more than the rest of the rug. It was pulling up as if I'd laced a drawstring through the ends.

When I finally figured out why the rug was not laying flat, I decided to try snipping those threads. Voila!

After I'd spun this wool, I Navajo plied it (three ply). I didn't like the way it knitted up, so I had to unspin it. For knitting, it's called a gauge. For weaving, it's called sampling. Either way, if I'd bothered to do this to see how the yarn would behave when knitted up, I wouldn't have ended up knitting three hats and ending up with two. (It's called "frogging". Ripping  out.) Luckily, knitting hats doesn't take much time. Finished!

By the time my LYS closed in the end of January, I'd made some serious inroads into my policy of only buying yarn if I had a project in mind, and a reason for it. I bought Paintbox Knits by Bonnette and Murchland. Then, I purchased the yarn and buttons. This dress is a 2T. I made it just because. Now, I'm building a stash of FOs (as opposed to UFOs---UnFinished Objects).

With the left overs, I made the dress on the left. All of these are 18mos size in Juniper Moon Farm "Neve" (pure Peruvian pima cotton).

And, again with the leftovers, I made this 18 mos size sweater/jacket. All four garments needed to be blocked to be finished.

This sweater sat for about two months before I finally blocked it, along with those baby clothes. I admit to dragging my heels...a lot. But Finally! I'm finished! Of course, now, it'll be too hot to wear the sweater until next winter.

Self soothing to keep calm

With all the goings on going on, I've been self soothing, doing things that make me feel calm.

I finished spinning and plying this 50/50 Silk/Camel blend from Redfish. It is so soft to the touch!

 And the 8oz of fiber I started with is now 800yds of two ply.

After such a long project, it felt good to do a shorter one (and to get something else out of my fiber stash). I spun up 2 oz of Milk fiber, called Casin. I haven't done the math to figure out how many yards it is. 

This pair of socks was from a yarn I picked up at last year's yarn crawl. I taught myself how to do a different kind of heel. It's called a short row heel. I'm definitely going to try it, again!

I'm finally down to just one box of fabric scraps and lengths. Don't ask me how tired I am of these same fabrics. Really. Don't! I went onto Youtube to see how to cut it into continuous strips for weaving.

Right now, I'm using some of it to weave a rug with Sophie. I haven't been completely pleased with my previous rug projects, but practice is how I learn.

When my LYS closed, I picked up a pack of five small skeins of Manos del Uruguay, Fino. It's extrafine merino and silk. I really enjoyed doing the colorwork with this fine yarn.

It was so much fun, that I went ahead and used the other set of colors I'd bought. I ran out of the white with about 10 stitches to go. Can you tell? 

The hat is from a free Ravelry pattern called, "Katie's Kep". Such a lovely crown on this hat!

Puttering

It feels like I've just been puttering, doing small projects.

For starters, some years ago, I wove this yardage for curtains. I don't remember why I took them down, but our old front door curtains needed to be replaced and they did the trick!

I finished the last baby blanket on Sophie.

And I've been playing with more of the crocheted creatures from Edward's Animals. Here's a Lakeland Terrier,

 

a Cocker Spaniel,

and a gray cat.

 

My grandbaby needed a hat for Groundhog Day.

And he definitely needed a Dude sweater!

This may not look like puttering to you, but for whatever reason, this time around, each step to dress Julia has felt like a separate project. This Tencel basketweave will be yardage.

 

This is the first time I've ever knitted up a swatch and actually washed it. My usual is to knit it up, measure to make sure I'm getting the right number of stitches per inch and rip it back out.

I just finished spinning this fiber with Gingie and plying it with Suzie.

And next up is this cotton.

This "wool" was spun up, but not plied, because I didn't know what I wanted to do with it. Typical. Anyway, when I realized I needed a hat, I went ahead and took the singles and Navajo plied it (finger crocheting the spun fiber while spinning it some more). 

Knitting it up took no time, so, here we are!

 

Loose Ends

I've been cleaning up loose ends.

I made a Chanukah hat with pom poms (as requested) for my grandbaby.

While his Mama read a page in her book, he decided to check out his new hat.

I took care of that "loose end" by making tassels. They should be harder to pull apart.

Footnote. I finally got the numbers right for a basic sock pattern that fits.

I wove this color and weave (the weaving is simple "over/under", the design appears in the cloth, because of the color order or the threads), chenille scarf with Julia. It's been sitting unfinished for a while. After a few washings, chenille fringe tends to lose its fluff and look like a rat's tail. So, I decided to go ahead and just hem it.

One of my spare time, knitting projects has been this shawl.

With the left-over yarn, I'm weaving a scarf on Julia.

I didn't realize how long ago I dressed Sophie for these blankets on her drawloom. It was back in December of 2017! Here they are, finally off, December 2018!

When I take cloth off my looms, I almost always use my serger to protect the raw edges before putting the cloth in the washing machine. This is the first time I've ever had that stitching fail to hold. 

But I was able to get them all hemmed and laid out to photograph:

At which point, my daughter's cat promptly walked across them all and sat on...

You guessed it!

I found a lot of the designs I used on Pinterest. I'd post them with links, but unfortunately many of them don't have active links for me to cite where they originated.

the cats

an optical illusion

  transportation

the bees (Craftsy.com)

stars

 and the roses.

The others are just standard designs I've seen or drawn.

zig zag

plaid ish

and shapes.

This one's already found a new home.

More loose ends:

After cutting the blankets off of Sophie and taking down the drawloom pattern heddles (that gave me about 12 inches more of usable warp), I had something like 36-42 inches (I should have measured) of yarn per end left on the loom. I didn't want to just toss it, so by using a weaver's knot, I'm hoping that I'll have extended each warp end enough to squeeze out one more baby blanket.

Let's see how far I get with it.