June's Achievements in Pictures

Here are the photos of the items I completed in June.

These socks were started at the end of March and finished at the beginning of June.



I used the other yarn hubby purchased in Finland. It is a thick sock yarn but I didn't want to make a plain sock so I was pleased when I found this pattern as it is Finnish. The pattern is for the leg and foot and lets you insert your own heel and toe. As the yarn is thick, I didn't want the standard heel flap and wasn't too sure about a short row heel. I opted for the type of heel used for this pattern and this pattern. I couldn't find anything on the internet to describe this heel so I used the two patterns as a starting point and ended up with this.


I am very pleased with how it came out and it is the right heel for thicker yarn.

The other old pair of socks finished were the pink socks shown at the end of this post. I didn't like the cast off as it was too loose plus I had yarn left and as they were knitted toe up I decided to lengthen them. I unpicked the cuff and knit another pattern repeat, worked the cuff and then cast off in the normal manner with a size larger needle. I still had yarn left but I wasn't going to unpick again. I didn't take another photo as there is not much difference from the original.

The other socks finished in June were the mystery sock, designed by Janel Laidman. The technique for May was texture other than ribbing and she certainly cam up with that for the leg of the sock. Also there are beads added. this is the first time I have knitted with beads that have been pre-thread onto the yarn. I used clear beads that were left over from a long ago crochet project.



The yarn is Aspen by Red Rocks Fiber Works, purchased on my trip to Denver. I loved working with this yarn. It has a "beaded" texture and feels really soft.

And then there were the obligatory dishcloths.

For this one I used yarn left over from another dishcloth Bernat Cotn'Corn. I hated it the first time and don't know why I kept it. So when I finished this cloth I threw away the left overs.



The next cloth was made from Bernat Handicrafter Cotton in Denim. I wonder if it will fade.



I can't post a photo of the last project I completed in June as it is a gift and the recipient might read this blog!

June's Achievements

My goal for June was to finish all the small projects on the needles. How do I end up with so many unfinished projects?

There is the grab and go project. This is a super easy project to take anywhere because you don't really need to look at the pattern and it is small enough to tote. Unfortunately socks don't fit this category any more. Sometimes a project starts off in this category and then becomes too big to easily carry round or the pattern changes.

At the other end of the spectrum is the super concentrate pattern. Lace and colourwork can fall into this category. I don't usually classify a pattern as hard but the attention that is required. How much you have to look at the pattern and the knitting. These projects are on the go for ever as I can't do anything else while knitting them so I don't work on them very often.

Mystery patterns. If I start these on time and the "clue" is short, I have finished knitting before the next "clue". Obviously I am not going to not knit anything else while waiting for more rows.

Not sure about the pattern. I start a project and am not sure if I like it. Maybe the yarn and pattern do not go together or the size is not right. Rather than make a decision straight away I will let the project sit awhile before going back to it and making a decision. As above I have to knit something else while waiting.

Finishing. Most patterns, even the super easy require concentration at finishing. Exception being those where your last row is knit 2 together and thread cut yarn through the last stitch. So now I have to plan time to complete a project.

I am pleased with my achievements in June. I finished two old pairs of socks and the mystery sock started in May. I didn't finish the scarf as I am trying to decide if it is too long. I had reached a length I liked decided to add a few more rows just in case and before I knew it I had finished the ball of yarn.

Cast ons in June were an item made from this yarn (and finished in June); a pair of socks finished on 1 July; and a pair of socks made from the blue and orange yarn in this post. And two mystery dishcloths started and completed in June. Not too bad.

My goals for July? To cast on lots of socks as there is no SKA challenge in August!

Adventure on the High Seas

(OK so we live inland but it was a little bit of an adventure on water.)

Friday 1 July was Canada Day. The weather was very nice all weekend so Sunday we decided to go out on the lake. Hubby and I set out early afternoon in a canoe and rowed up the lake and back. We saw dark clouds coming in over the boathouse and hubby asked if I wanted to go in; not wanting to be the usual nervous nellie and not having had much of a work out I said no. Ha! this turned out to be not the time to change one's nature.

We were roughly in the middle of the lake when the wind started to kick up and we tried to turn the canoe around to head back but the wind really kicked up and we weren't getting anywhere battling the wind and the waves that were surprisingly large. Not that large but bigger than you would have expected on a community lake, almost white caps - large enough to nearly capsize us when we turned the canoe.

I was none too happy being in the middle of the lake at the mercy of the elements so we headed for the shore in the safest way which just so happened to be at the opposite end from the boat house. After hanging on to a (private) dock for a bit to see if the wind would die down, we beached the canoe. We could either portage it through gardens, abandon it and walk back to base, sit it out and hope we weren't in for a long storm.

There were two other boats out, a couple in a kayak who were at right angles to the wind and not far out so were able to return and a pedalo who were not far out but couldn't get back. (It's hard work pedaling those things on a normal day I'd hate to think what it would be like pedaling into the wind.) While we were at the private dock the motor boat set out and towed the pedalo back in. I knew there was little hope they would see us but I also knew I would have been far from happy if we had stayed in the middle of the lake waiting to be picked up.

We had started to carry the canoe so that we could put back in at a more sheltered spot and follow the shore back to the boathouse when a home owner called to us. She had just seen us and was concerned that we had been there a while. She said it happens all the time people getting stuck because of the wind and to just leave the canoe and she'd drive us back. We declined her offer of a lift as we were not far from the boathouse but we did thank her. (The houses on the shore are large and priced accordingly and we would have thought wouldn't have been happy to have the hoi polloi invading their back yard.)

All's well that ends well but the morale is that sometimes being a nervous nellie is a good thing.

Gradient Dying

Gradient dying is where yarn is dyed the same colour but in tones from light to dark. The tutorials I had seen for this involved adding yarn to the dye pot and gradually removing sections. This seemed very messy. I wondered what would happen if I used pots with different amounts of dye in them. I liked the pink that resulted from my first attempts with icing colours. So I bought some more Full O'Sheep to be dyed. Instead of winding into a hank, I divided it into four roughly equal balls in the hope that my end result would shade from light pink to dark pink. These were soaked in vinegar solution while I dissolved the dye in boiling water. Four pots with 1/8 teaspoon, 1/4 teaspoon, 1/2 teaspoon and 1 teaspoon Petal Pink icing colour.



One ball of yarn was placed in each pot, which I had placed in a casserole dish and then zapped in the microwave. This took a while. When I thought the water was clear I left the yarn to cool but when I went back to it the water had taken back the dye. In the end I left the yarn overnight gave it a final zap in the microwave the next morning and left it to cool. This seemed to do the trick.



I like the end result. You can see the section from the least amount of dye and the one with the most amount of dye but the middle two sections do not look much different from each other. I will try this again with a different yarn that is less fuzzy to see if that makes a difference.

The Sun's Out But I'm Still Dying

My first post with my dying attempts explained that it was something to do when it was raining. There was just one thing I didn't realise - dying is addictive. There were three more dying ideas I wanted to try - something to go with the bright colours from the first round of Kool-Aid dying, gradient dying and dying sock yarn. This post will show the results from the first and third of these.

Firstly I needed yarn. So off to Michael's and I bought a ball of Paton's Classic Wool and a ball of Stash Nation Full O' Sheep; the two yarns I had used in my initial attempts. But they didn't have any natural colour sock yarn and then I remembered I had yarn left over from these socks.

The sock yarn. I decided on striping yarn in three colours. Two Kool-Aid and one Wilton's icing so I soaked the yarn in vinegar solution. As Paton's Kroy comes in 50 gram balls I had two small balls left. I wound them together around two trusty chairs to make 1 hank. I should have made a note as I cannot remember how I decided how long to make the hank. After soaking the hank was laid out on cling film. I made up Orange Kool-Aid, Ice Blue (Raspberry Lemonade) Kool-Aid and Teal Wilton's in 1/4 cup of water.



Also I didn't squeeze all the water out of the yarn. This time I didn't want the spread of the colour to be decided by how much water I added after. I aimed for 1/3 of the yarn in each colour but it looks as if there was slightly less of the teal.



The yarn was wrapped in the cling film, put in a dish and microwaved until the water was clear.



The final result after the yarn has been split into two skeins.



While this was going on the Classic Wool was soaking in vinegar solution. What I had originally wanted was not what I ended up with but I am very happy with the end result.

Before soaking the wool had to be wound into a hank. The measurements were easy for this. I roughly measured my kitchen work top and placed the chairs slightly less than that distance apart. I chose Wilton's icing colours in black and copper. I wasn't sure how the black was going to come out as one blog said the colours broke like a bruise; as I did not want a variegated yarn I added a little of Wilton's brown. The dye mix was very green and you can see how green it is in this photo after I've added the dyes to the yarn - roughly half of the hank each. Those lines across? They're left over teal. I wondered how that would come out. Answer not at all.



This is how the yarn came out. Brown with green undertones.



A good example of how you cannot rely on the dye pot or the unheated yarn for your end result.

I Left My Cake Out In The Rain

After the Kool-Aid dying, I tried my hand at dying with icing dyes. This is another food safe practice. i.e You can use normal kitchen utensils etc and do not have to take any special precautions. The one difference between using food colourings and Kool-Aid is that you have to add acid; Kool-Aid contains citric acid.

This was the yarn I used.



Also 100% wool like the last time but this is marked as Peruvian wool and has more loft. In other words the yarn has a slight fuzz.

I bought a box of 4 colours labeled Pastel:- soft colours for soft yarn.



I used 1/8 teaspoon of each colour, dissolved in hot water. The extra step when using food colours is soaking in acid. The tutorials I found differed in the amount of time for soaking from as little as 20 minutes to as much as overnight. I think I ended up soaking the yarn (after winding into a hank) for a couple of hours. I used a 1 to 4 solution of white vinegar and water.

I had wound the yarn into a small hank, squeezed out most of the water and added the dyes. Here is a drawing to try to show how I added the colours. Basically I had the blue and green on the long sides with the hank roughly divided into two and the pink and orange on the short sides again with the hank divided in two. Think of the division as top and bottom.



The yarn was put into a casserole dish and some water added so that the dyes would spread.



This was placed in the microwave and heated for 2 minutes at a time with 2 minute breaks in between.This needed more "zaps" than the Kool-Aid and when it seemed very hot I left it for 5 minutes before reheating. Once all the dye had been taken up I left the yarn to cool before rinsing and hanging to dry.

This is how it turned out.





Although this is not the pastel, Easter shades I was envisioning when I bought the dye. This yarn is full of different colours and more interesting than my initial plan. I have tried to show all the colours in this photo although it is hard to get a close-up.



And the finished skein.

May Round Up

I posted one pair of socks that I completed at the end of May but I also completed a pair at the beginning of the month as well as the obligatory two dishcloths.

The socks I completed were the mystery from March. The pattern is Cadence Socks by Very Busy Monkey and can be found on Ravelry. The yarn is Fleece Artist Trail Socks and was a Christmas present from hubby.I love the colour.



I am not going to post a photo of the first dishcloth of the month. I was disappointed with the pattern and there is nothing special to show. I was late starting the second pattern of the month and realised it would be easy to work in many colours. A great way to use up oddments. I worked 10 rows in each colour.



I finished my second oldest project. (Although my oldest project was started the day before.) I started it on my trip to Texas last year as I wanted something simple that would take a while. The pattern is Citron from Knitty.com. The yarn is Zauberballe by Schoppel-Wolle. it is supposed to be a sock yarn and, although it does contain 25% nylon it felt too soft for socks.

This is a photo of Citron blocking. I don't have a good photo of it being worn as that would involve another member of this house taking a photo or wearing it, neither of which will have a good result.



A few things were cast on in May. Here is a photo of an item that didn't make it very far. Once again the yarn is sock yarn. I wanted something quick and easy to use the yarn by the end of the month so I wouldn't lose points in our challenge. When I knew this pattern wasn't going to work with the yarn I decided it was better to lose points than work madly on something I wasn't going to like.



Do you like that the Boychild had to be in the photo?

Two other items cast on in May were the mystery sock, of which I have one completed; and a scarf with yarn given to me for my birthday, that is nearly finished.

I have decided for June I need to finish all my little projects. So at the end of June all that should be on my needles is the long term lace project and anything I cast on in June. That shouldn't be too hard. I finished one pair of socks at the weekend, so I am left with the previously mentioned scarf, the second of a pair of socks that I was lengthening and the second of May's mystery socks.

Because The Designer Liked Them

Usually I do a monthly round up of the socks and dishcloths I have knitted the previous month but I wanted these socks to have their own post. Two simple reasons:- I love them and the designer said they were the prettiest she'd seen.

One of the challenges for May in the Sock Knitters Group on Ravelry was texture other than ribbing. I found a pattern that was created by one of the members of the group about a year ago and knew I had just the yarn for it. Just before our self-imposed yarn famine, I bought yarn from The Sanguine Gryphone. I purchased three different types, one of which being Skinny Bugga in Adonis Butterfly colourway.

The sock pattern is Quartzonite by RoseHiver. She does not have a blog but you can find her on Ravelry.



Oh and because the designer is from Montreal I had to name these socks after Patrick Roy.

Dying in the Rain

It rained most of last week, so on Friday I tried dying yarn for the first time. Actually, it was my first attempt at dying anything.

When I first got the book, Socks Socks Socks I was interested in the pair which had been made with yarn dyed in Kool_Aid. I kept this in the (very) back of my mind as something to try one day. My interest was rekindled when a local place was offering a class and when the class didn't pan out I decided to go ahead and try on my own. After all there are plenty of tutorials on the web.

I had purchased Kool-Aid when I saw it on sale, one packet of each flavour. But I needed yarn.



Now I was ready to go.

First the yarn had to be wound from a ball into a hank. This wasn't difficult with a chair and a willing helper.





After tying the yarn in a few places with cotton crochet thread, I soaked it in soapy water and rinsed and thought what colour(s) I wanted the yarn to become. Although it was my first attempt, I didn't want one colour, so I dived right in and went for three - Strawberry, Strawberry Kiwi and Grape.



I didn't use much water with the drink mix and I had squeezed most of the water out of the yarn so when I poured the mix onto the yarn it looked like this.



So after putting it in the microwave safe dish I added water which made the Kool-Aid spread through the yarn. The yarn was zapped in the microwave for two minutes with a two minute break in between. I think I did this three times and the water was clear.



Remember I'm doing this because the weather is horrible? I had to hang the hank in my bathroom to dry but I did put it outside on Saturday to finish off and to blow away some of the grape smell.



On Monday I rewound it into a bigger hank and skeined.




This wasn't my only adventure with dying. I also dyed some other wool with Wilton's icing colours. I loved the results of that which I will show another day.

Spring in Calgary

As it has been raining since Monday, a little reminder is needed that it really is spring here in the Rockies.

Although the calendar says spring started on 20 March, here it wanders in sometime around May, maybe the end of April in a good year. Thus bulbs flower later than most other places in the northern hemisphere. The crocuses in the front are first; they don't last very long and I didn't take any photos. Then it seems as if the grape hyacinths in the front and the tulips in the back are coming up at the same time and the rhubarb and raspberries are starting to leaf.





The birds have been collecting the dried material not yet cleared from my garden to build their nests. We are a step away from Fish Creek Provincial Park which is home to many birds especially raptors. I don't have a photo of the peregrine falcon sitting on my back fence holding on to its prey caught in flight but I do have a photo of the next generation of mousers.

This is not the first year that owls have nested in a tree next to one of the paths so it is very easy to spot the babies. Here they are in all their fluffiness.

Off The Needles In April

Each month I aim to work the two mystery dishcloths from the Yahoo group and one sock from the Ravelry group challenge. Things didn't go so well in April. I have already posted the cowl and the blanket completed in April.

As I had a deadline for the baby blanket, I decided not to make the dishcloth for the beginning of April. After all the point is to use up the stash not to make all the dishcloths. (Which is why I have the stash - from making all the dishcloths in 2009.) As I finished the blanket before the end of April, I made the mid-April pattern. This was another pattern using two colours of yarn so I was able to use partial balls.



Although I don't think it shows the two colours as well as the second dishcloth in January it is still a good pattern to use up ends.

I am a bit reluctant to mention socks. I didn't cast on a new pair in April. I was still working on the mystery socks from March and I decided not to add to my list of unfinished projects. The photo of these will have to wait until I post photos of projects completed in May.

Talking about unfinished projects, I seem to have way too many on the go again but they all have a time and a place for when they are worked on, so I am not casting on without thought and I am not procrastinating the finishing of projects. Well, maybe apart from the beaded cast off of a shawl which will take me the rest of my life.

Election, Lacrosse and More Hockey

Last Monday there was a Federal Election in Canada. The election resulted from a vote of no confidence by all the opposition parties in the current government, which at that time was a Conservative minority.

I would really have liked to have known Michael Ignatieff's thought process behind leading this move as polls showed that there would be minimal difference in the way people voted and there was very strong public opinion against an election. Whatever his thoughts, he achieved the one thing he was looking for - change. It just isn't the change he wanted. We now have a Conservative majority government, the New Democrats are the Official Opposition Party and both the Liberal party and the Bloc Québécois lost a significant number of seats. The Liberal party went from 77 seats to 34 seats and the Bloc went from 47 seats to 4. The leaders of both these parties lost their seats. As an independent observer (I can not vote in Canada) I would say that the general population and the inhabitants of the province of Quebec did not like these leaders or their policies or both and resoundingly told them so. Although to listen to friends originally from Ontario you would not think this was the case. They were speaking as if the people really wanted Ignatieff and it was just the Albertan Conservatives that stopped it. (What about the rest of the country who voted NDP as well as Conservative?) It is also interesting listening to my Albertan friends who are fed up with being accused of blindly voting Conservative.

Anyway for me as there has been a minority Conservative government running the country since we have lived here, I am very interested to see if I will notice any difference.

Now for another controversial subject - sport. Last time I posted I said that Calgary's lacrosse team had won their semi-final game. Last night we went to the division final where Calgary Roughnecks met Washington Stealth. Unfortunately, it was not the wanted result for the Roughnecks and they went down 10-8 in a game that was not one of their best. Let's hope that this was not the last tine we see the Roughnecks play. The team is currently up for sale as the owner cannot afford to continue to pump money into it.

Oh, and there's still hockey.

Snow, Royal Wedding,Yarn and Lacrosse - With Some Hockey Thrown In

The title sums up the end of last week.

It snowed last week, not a big deal really after all it was still April but it snowed at the time a friend and I had planed to meet for ice cream. We still went as kids were involved otherwise we'd have gone for coffee.

I have to mention the Royal Wedding as it was the event of the decade or even the century depending on whose hyperbole you listened to. Whether you are a Royalist, Abolitionist or somewhere in between I am sure everyone wishes the couple well.

A new yarn store has opened in Calgary; it is called The Loop and is located in a former embroidery shop in Kensington. A group of us went on opening day - Saturday. They had a very nice selection and it wasn't too crowded when we arrived although another big group turned up as we were considering our final choices. The electronic era was definitely in evidence as patrons were looking at yarn and then using their I-Phone to check Ravelry. I saw a vibrant coloured yarn and bought some for a skirt. Looking at the yarn in the shop I thought the colour would be too much in one item and plan to buy another colour to go with it. (They didn't have anything suitable in the store.) But having looked on line at the other colours available in the same yarn, I'm thinking that I will go with just the one colour.

So if a new yarn store wasn't excitement enough, Saturday evening hubby and I went to the NLL Western Division Semi-Final. Calgary were playing Colorado. Although Calgary won, we could have coped if it had been the other way round.

And the NHL playoffs are going on or on-going depending on your point of view.

Knitting in March

Here we are at the end of April and I am updating you with what went on in March. So how did I do with dishcloths and socks?

I made a pair of socks just not a matching pair and I made both the dishcloths from the Yahoo group.

This is the one from the beginning of the month. I am very pleased that I finished up a ball of Peaches and Creme that had I had used for Halloween dishcloths.



And this is the one from the middle of the month. I gave this to a friend who had just finished their new kitchen.



I finished the second sock of a pair started in February. This started as a mystery in December but I was sensible enough to know that I would not have time to make them then so I saved the clues. The pattern is by Stephanie van der Linden and the yarn is Estelle by Arequipa. Yarn purchased last year just because.



I like the way the heel was worked on this sock. The heel was formed by increases to form a pocket for the heel. There was no picking up of heel stitches and only a few rows of short row shaping for the heel turn. A very neat and easy way to make a heel. I had come across this style of heel when I made this sock but I have not found generic instructions for calculating this heel.

Also I made a pair of mittens for a friend and gave them to her while the weather was still cold. They have a little pocket on the top of each mitten for tissues or poop (clean) bags. I found a little packet of tissues in Michaels with her initial on which fit nicely in the pocket.



The other sock I made was the mystery sock for March. I completed one sock and then decided to concentrate on the baby blanket but I am aiming for the end of this month to have a pair.

Stash Challenge

So the other day I wrote about knitting from the stash as in my stash.

At the end of last year, a member of our knitting group challenged us to knit only from our stash. From there, people made suggestions for incentives and it has turned into a full blown challenge with points awarded for completed items and bonuses for not buying yarn. At the beginning of this month we had a fondue party to celebrate our achievements with prizes for the person with the most points and some acrylic for the person with the least points. Myrna kindly made some project bags for the prizes.

I hope everyone who participated did so just for the fun of the challenge but a couple said it made them more focused to finish projects.

I didn't do too badly for points although most of my projects were one pointers. Would I have bought yarn without this challenge? I don't know. I'm glad I'm using the stash but soon I am going to need a break from socks.

Oh and the original person who started the challenge? She fell off the wagon and was last seen under a pile of fibre.

Another Baby Blanket

Almost getting ahead of myself here. Photos of an item I finished on Thursday - a baby blanket.

A girl I used to work with (neither of us work at the same place anymore) is pregnant and I decided to knit her a blanket. She is not due until July so I thought I had plenty of time except her shower was on Saturday. Yikes I need to get cracking I had less than a month to come up with something. I had an idea of what I was going to make so with this short timescale I just went with my original idea and didn't spend time agonizing over patterns and yarn.

I had 4 1/2 balls of baby 4-ply yarn left over from this blanket and I had bought coloured yarn with an idea for a crocheted blanket which I never made. So I chose to make this blanket. Alternating the colours with the white. As I was short of time, I followed the instructions for the smaller size, then worked 4 rows of each colour, finishing with one row of lilac and then the cast off. I achieved all this, except the cast off by Wednesday. I had time but I didn't want to have to mess around with different cast offs to find a stretchy one. I opted for a picot cast off with three stitches in between each picot, cast off with a Russian cast off. This made for an interesting edge that was not at all tight.

Here's an arty picture of the blanket in progress.



I was in the lounge of a hotel when I took this and cannot remember the settings I used but it shows the colours correctly.

Here is the blanket just off the needles.



And for anyone who thinks you can't block acrylic here is the blanket after a quick block.



I wish I had had more time for a proper blocking (did I hear you say blocking wires?). I pinned it out and then sprayed it with water, covered with towels as cat protectors and left it over night. Ready to drop off on Friday morning.

Using Up The Stash

On reading this post from the end of 2009, it appears that my stash is under control and being used. Things went a bit haywire in 2010. I bought yarn while on holiday, bought more yarn on a local yarn crawl with friends and bought more yarn in an end of year sale. And I have been given yarn.

I would like to set a target of when the yarn has to be used by. For example all the yarn bought on the yarn crawl has to be used by 1st day of summer. I know such a target isn't going to work so I shall set myself a general target of only knitting from the stash. This will present difficulties when/if I want to knit something and I don't have the right yarn in my stash. By that I mean yarn of the correct weight. Although I was very pleased that I was able to use yarn from the stash for the baby blanket I am currently making.

To show how good I am, on Friday we went to Canmore and I didn't even look up the address of the yarn store there.