Knit Meter

Saturday, September 23, 2017

Autumn Equinox

happened at 1.02 p.m. yesterday and I made a decision. I am going to work on the never-ending-shawl. At the beginning of the summer I was hopeful that I would finish it during the summer concert season and then I went and broke my foot so no more concerts. (They are held in various locations and involve park-and-ride and walking which would have been very hard on crutches plus husband would have had to carry everything and most of the fun of these concerts is the outdoor picnic.)

I was so close to finishing; there was always next year. But I was really beginning to believe that this was the never-ending-project. Husband suggested that I work on it on Friday nights but I decided that it would become fall knitting. I was very busy yesterday and I considered picking this up on the winter solstice - winter being the opposite of summer - but I didn't want to be scrambling to finish before the end of the year. This really being my aim - not when I knit on it - to have it finished by the end of the year.

I finally managed to pick it late last night. I didn't sit down to knit until after 9.00 p.m. and I wanted to cast off something first. It was only 32 stitches of a sideways knit border but I did it three times before I was happy and then I sewed in the ends. At last I could work on the shawl. I looked at the row counter; I counted the repeats; I shook my head in disbelief. I am so close. 21 rows of pattern, 12 rows of garter stitch border, bind off and block. This thing is going to be finished before I know it. (And yes I was really tempted to put it away until mid-December.)

Sunday, September 17, 2017

2017 San Diego Yarn Crawl

This weekend (Thursday to Sunday) was the fifth San Diego yarn crawl. I went to the first two but missed the last two years as we had been away.

My plan this year was to get yarn to go with variegated yarn already in my stash and any other yarn I bought had to be project ready – no single skeins. We did our main crawling on Friday but on Thursday we went to the two closest yarn stores and the Yarnover Truck.

My first purchase was two skeins of ArtFil yarn. Three of us bought the same yarn (different colours) so we joked about a knit along.



At Yarning for You I found the tonal yarn to go with my variegateds. I am really excited to start the first combination but I will finish some projects first. Although I had said I wasn’t bothered by the number of projects I had on the needles I do not want to increase the number.



From the Yarnover Truck. I purchased a skein of yarn to go with yarn I had bought earlier in the year. I have a pattern lined up for it – just need the time.

On Friday we went all the way to Yarns at Border Leather. This is a great shop and we wish it was our LYS. A great selection of yarn and very friendly people. I purchased yarn to crochet a cardigan for one of my great nieces. From there we went to South Park Dry Goods. This used to be The Grove but has split into two stores with one concentrating on books and papers and the other having yarn and fabric and clothes. I didn’t buy any fabric although if I ever need any for a quilt I should certainly buy from there. I ended up buying a stitch marker and a skein of sock yarn. Yes I know I said I wasn’t going to buy any single skeins but they had Candy Skein’s colour of the month. I have been really good at resisting Candy Skein’s monthly selections. I joked that at next year’s yarn crawl I would have the skein with me to try to match yarn.



After a bite to eat we decided to check out a couple of yarn stores that weren’t on the crawl. One is very small and unfortunately was closed for lunch so we didn’t get to see inside. The other is a store that has been opened just a couple of months. It was not a part of the crawl as, apparently, a store has to be in business for a year before it can participate. I have to say it was probably a good thing that it wasn’t part of the crawl as stock seemed very limited. I hope this shop is successful but they do really need to get more stock. At the moment it is not a store that I would go to because I specifically wanted to buy yarn.

After that we went to Yarn and Thread Expressions. This is another store that had a variety of yarn and a large number of store samples. I was able to try on a Hitofude. I really liked the back view but despite my friend saying she really liked it on me, it confirmed what I thought from seeing it on Ravelry, the front is designed to hang at the sides and not provide any coverage.

Neither of us bought any yarn at this store; I think we were a bit burned out and tired at this point. We did not go to the two yarn shops we had visited on our recent yarn buying expedition. Additionally we did not go to the yarn stores in Ramona and Julian and three alpaca farms.

This is a picture of everything I purchased.



I love all this yarn and I have plans but I am not going to start anything new until at least two of my existing projects are completely finished. I have updated yarn in but how much has been knitted/crocheted is not correct as I have been having problems with KnitMeter.

Saturday, September 2, 2017

A Tale of Two Yarns and Three Patterns

Oh my gosh I started a post about yarn and then I looked at an older post to see what I had written about a pattern and that post started off almost exactly the same as the post I was writing. So I am just going to refer you to that post for information about the yarn and the first two patterns I tried and now bring you up to date about what happened to the yarns eventually.

In that post I mentioned the yarn was going to become a Clapotis. As soon as I frogged the hairpin lace project I knew I had to start something new with the yarn otherwise it would sit in my stash forever. I had looked on Ravelry at other projects made with this yarn and decided that I could make a Clapotis with both, rather than finding one-skein projects. I also decided to alternate the balls of yarn I had made even though one of the balls was bigger than the others. And decided to make it slightly narrower so that there was enough length in the final project; a wide but short scarf is useless. Also as I was working on it, I knew I was very unlikely to wear this myself so I will save it for a present for my mother.

And then half-way through, I came across a two-colour shawl pattern that I thought would look lovely in this yarn. But I stopped myself. I didn’t know if I had enough yarn for a decent size and I didn’t want another unfinished project with this yarn. I resisted, carried on with Clapotis and finished the knitting at the beginning of August; finally blocking and sewing in ends at the end of August.