First up is a lace shawl I knitted. It’s a one-skein wonder, in that the pattern only calls for a single skein of yarn. The pattern is a little inaccurate, though. Not in the design itself, but in the amount of yarn I personally needed– I could easily have increased the size by another row of the feathery part at the bottom.
Edging detail:
Because I love beads, I used them in this shawl– they look silver, but are actually peach. The contrast with the teal makes them brighten to look silvery.
And I participated in the tatitandsee tat-along. The finished product is a hippo:
Mine is… well, it’s beginner art, yes?
I’ve also been working on a wrist cuff bracelet for a swap. Things were going along pretty well, I thought, and I was about 90% finished, with the swap deadline closing in FAST.
Well, sure enough:
Yep, right there in the middle of the bracelet, my knots came untied and one of my rings came unraveled. I’m going to start over with a more robust design (I was freeforming this one), and hopefully it will come together quickly so I can send it to my swap partner.
In the midst of these projects, I decided to tackle the Queen Kahuna Crazy Toes and Heels toe-up sock method on 2 circular needles. My first pair using this method:
This is using hand-dyed KnitPicks bare sock yarn. I dyed it back in August, and only now got around to knitting with it. I liked the yarn, and am glad I have two more balls of it in different colors. This pair of socks, which only goes partway up my calves, used exactly one half of the yarn I had for it. You know what that means, right? Yep– another pair of socks is in my future. One thing I don’t like about the socks is the heel– it is a bit “pointy.” I understand from the book I’m using that this pointiness can be adjusted for, which is why I cast on yesterday for another pair of socks in the exact same yarn, using the same needles and gauge:
More next time, on our trip to the Kennedy Space Center this weekend, meeting an astronaut, and learning how to drive a 16 ton vehicle.
The bracelet is salvageable with a bit, make that a LOT, of patience. Take a length of thread and put a slip knot close to the end of the thread. Put the loop of the slip knot over the end of thread that came intied. Pull the slip knot closed and it will pull the bit of end into itself. Now you have a length of thread long enough to finger tat with. Re-do the ring. Tie another knot and put a tiny dot of clear nail polish on the knot to keep it from coming untied again. I’ve used this method even when I’ve have no more than 1/8 inch of thread to work with. The slip know may come undone a time or two with all of the pulling on it, but it will work.
I always tie a square knot when I reach the end and leave about 3 inches of thread. When the piece is finished I go back and sew the ends up and down through the caps of the stitches for 4 to 5 stitches before cutting it close to the work.The zig zag effect f going up and down makes the thread less likely to pull out. Always be extremely careful not to actually cut the tatting. It’s real easy to cut through a picot by accident.