About Me ColorJoy Home Page Free Stuff About Me Contact Me
ColorJoy Home Page
ColorJoy Home The ColorJoy Blog Buy Patterns, Recipe Books, CDs Patterns Schedule & Potential Classes Recipes & Food Information The LynnH SockTour LynnH Polymer Clay The Fabulous Heftones - Lynn & Brian

Finished Objects

rib tank topWell, I sat on the couch with my ribbed tank and I did a single crochet scoop neck I can live with. Thanks to Linda of Little Red Schoolhouse for taking a lot of time one day and showing me some hints on how to crochet an edge on a knit item.

It is still imperfect, but good enough for me to live with it. I’m glad it was just for me rather than a class. I can just call it good, and move on.

Here’s a picture. It looks shaped, but the shaping is just because of the stretchiness of ribbing, there are no decreases/increases at the sides.

The tank will be quite wearable. I wish the front neckline were a little deeper (it was designed for young things whose curves are a few inches higher than mine, I believe). Yet I think this is something I can wear a lot this summer.

It is from Kelly yarn, cotton/acrylic knitted tube I got at Threadbear. I like how irregular the color repeats are, though that was a major pain when I wanted both straps to look about the same!

I don’t usually like cotton but this is very springy with the acrylic and the construction of the yarn. I tested a swatch for how it would machine wash/dry and it is just perfect, really (it gets a softer finish after washing). My other summer sweater (that is, the other one I knit myself) is a dressy “T” which fits perfectly. However, it needs hand washing and blocking, and thus I almost never wear it (only for weddings in dead-hot summer). This one is far less perfect, but I think I’ll wear it out. I’m definitely pleased with that.

Remind me again how ribs are fussier at the edges, before I try that again. I need to plan better the next time I do a ribbed garment. I followed this pattern fairly closely (other than redesigning the back neckline by making it significantly more modest). Tne pattern had me binding off edges in rib, to create the neck/arm shaping. The armholes and neck just did not look symmetrical when I had to pick up stitches from the edge. I knew there were better ways to do it, but I didn’t know how to apply that to rib and so I just went with the pattern. It cost me time at the end.

Anyway… one finished item while resting on the couch… a very good thing.

drink insulatorsAnd here is another set of finished objects, this time from OfficiallyAKnitter, my private knitting student. She’s learning how to invent things on the needles- I’m proud of her. She has made two headbands, two sets of wristwarmers, and these two bottle/can insulators without any patterns, just some guidance from me at times. Go Grrrl!!! She has hiccups as we all do, with or without a pattern. But she finishes.

These bottle/can insulators were her first projects on double-pointed needles (DPN’s). It took a while for me to convince her she might like using them (they look much harder to use than they are).

She originally thought she wanted to only knit flat, but she didn’t like sewing seams. I taught her how to do a three-needle bindoff and she wasn’t too thrilled about that either. So I let her know that there was much less work with sewing if she worked in the round. She figured she would try. I gave her monster yarn… Burly Spun by Brown Sheep, leftovers from my first Basketweave Rug. Nice stuff. Really fat, springy, slightly-felted single-ply wool. Yum.

I loaned her some pretty large double pointed needles I had for some felted slippers I made a while ago. And off she went, with the bottle first! Second she did the can holder. She added a few rounds of doubled-up Lamb’s Pride worsted in green for interest. Looks nice, and with just a few rows here and there it didn’t mess with the gauge enough to make a difference. It fits the can just fine.

I’d say this was a very fine job of off-the-cuff designing and DPN learning all in one. Don’t you agree?

Comments are closed.