Finished Projects!

This week I decided to actually crochet something! It has been a while since I crocheted a project. And actually, about a year or so ago, I crocheted something and both of my daughters were in shock about it! LOL! They had seen me knitting and crocheting when they were younger, but when I learned how to spin, I decided to mainly knit items. Why? you ask. Welllll......., mainly because I am lazy or I guess we could say smart. Heehee. I had read that it takes more yarn to crochet an item, than to knit it. Since I was planning to use primarily my handspun yarns to make items, I didn't want to have to spin more yarn. The girls apparently took this as a sign, that Mom doesn't crochet anymore. Here you go, a crocheted shawl. I just love it. The pattern came off the Knitting Daily website, as a free pattern from Interweave Press. I had seen some finished pictures of it when I was visiting Ravelry last Sunday. (Ravelry is a large website, of sorts, that knitters and crocheters belong to and can list projects etc, and leave tips.) Ok, back to my story. The gal that had listed the finished shawl picture did leave a hint, "Go and get the corrections, from them when you download the pattern from them." So, I did. It is a good thing I did too, because when I hit print an ENTIRE page of corrections came out for this one shawl. I am serious. I sure am glad that I wasn't the first one making this shawl, I would've probably been in tears and really frustrated. I am glad, though, that the corrections page was there and available. Thank you, Interweave! This pattern was first published by Interweave in their Wrap Style book. If you have that book, there are other corrections listed for it. I know first hand that it is hard to get patterns worded just right and sometimes the directions get messed up. So, it is nice when mistakes happen, that the publishers offer the corrections on their websites. In a perfect world we would never need those pages, but we are not perfect.

My next picture is the great felted mobius basket. I have pictured it before, when showing you the knitting in the magic loop process. It truly was knitted in one piece and notice the twist in the handle. A single twist. When I first saw this basket, at Kate's home, I was truly intrigued. I thought and thought, how could Cat Bordhi have accomplished this? Liking math and being pretty good at it, that is why I like tech editing patterns, I finally bought her book and made one. It was fun to do and now I know. Normally, this basket sits by my computer with my glasses in it. I have a small assignment pad and an old mechanical pencil in the basket, so you can see the size of it. Oh, and so you know, there weren't any corrections needed for this pattern. :)

Knitting in a Magic Loop

I am working on a mobius basket from Cat Bordhi's book, A
Second Treasury of Magical Knitting. For the basket, as opposed to the handle, I decided to use the magic loop knitting process. When I talk about this process, some folks look at me like I am speaking Greek, and I guess to them I am. :) So, I thought I would take some photo's to show you how it is done. First, you will need a long circular needle. The one I am using comes from my Denise Needle set, which I happen to sell on the website. The cord is 52 inches long, it needs to be long enough to leave the loops at each end.

If you look at the top picture you will see, stitches on the left hand needle tip and part of the cord. If you look REAL close you will notice that there are stitches on the cord that lays behind the needles. Those are the second half of the stitches. Using the needle on the right, knit the stitches off the left hand needle and cord.

Picture 2 is the process of that.

Picture 3 shows all of the stitches are knitted onto the right needle.

Notice the left one is free.

The first time I tried this magic loop knitting, I was very skeptical, didn't think I would like it. But, I am sold on it now!

In picture 4, I have pulled the back needle so that the stitches are close to the point. The back needle was the left needle. I have also pulled the front needle, which was the right needle, all the way through, giving me enough room on it to be able to have a loop at that end of the knitting. Notice, I have also kept a loop at the right side end of the knitting.

In the last picture, we have turned the knitting and we are ready to knit the stitches, which were on the back in the previous pictures. Just keep repeating this process. You will need to mark the beginning of the round, so that you can count your rounds and keep the knitting even all the way around. One round is equal to: knitting the stitches on the front, then turning and knitting the stitches that were laying on the back.

This process saves you from having to use double pointed needles, which tend to fall out all over the place. Try it sometime, you may like it.

Weather!

Well, we are never quite sure what our weather, in north Texas will be doing from one moment to another. Wednesday, April 9, we were put under tornado watches and severe thunderstorm warnings, with high wind advisories. Then they added the tornado warnings. It is safe to say that the majority of us were walking around very tired on Thursday morning! The storms went on most of the night and in our neck of the woods, it went on in the early morning, with the worst part about 3 am, Thursday. It was over, though, when it became time to walk, so the gals and I went for our walk. When we turned the corner we saw that there was a problem at the horse barns.

(At 7am, the men were not there, as in the picture. I took the picture later, on the way to the knitting group at Delightful Hands in Celina.) As we walked closer we realized that the roof was blown off of one of the barns. The roof that you see in the tree, was off the barn nearer the truck.

At the time we walked by, we counted 5 horses. They all looked OK, we went up and checked to make sure there weren't any more horses in the barns. Another neighbor came up, they were thinking that there should be 6 horses. Don't know. So, a call was made to the horse owner to check. The good news is, that today there were the 6 horses in the pasture and all looked in good shape. :)

So, I went to Celina, to Delightful Hands and had a great time at the knitting group. We are doing a block of the month afghan. So far, I have January and February done. I have started March and purchased the yarn for April and May. I will catch up, I promise. Oh, and I will get some pics of the squares up here too. If you live around here, north Texas, you would enjoy the knitting group! It meets at 10am on Thursday mornings.

Upon arriving home, as I was going up the front steps, I noticed a green circle in the middle of the step. It was a turtle! A tiny turtle, looking like the kind we would get as kids. If you grew up in the 60's you will remember having turtles as pets. This little guy let me walk past and didn't move. So, I got out the camera and took his picture. Here he is.

I haven't seen him since, I hope he is OK.