Slow Sunday Stitching

As life goes slowly forward while we all keep our distance from one another in order to keep each other safe, those of us with stitching hobbies are keeping ourselves happily occupied.

I finished my Loeanneth sweater last week.



 It has yet to get all the ends sewn in. I am saving that chore for when I can be outside in the warm sunshine. In the meantime I wound up the new yarn that I bought last week and started a new sweater. This one is called Open Skies. The pattern so far has been enough of a challenge that it requires concentration, which is good thing as it keeps my brain focused on something other than what is going on in the world around us. The neck line had a different stitch to it. Most ribbed necks are a knit 2 purl 2 stitch. This one was a knit 4 through the back loop then purl 4. Knitting through the back loop on freshly cast on stitches is not for the faint of heart.



 But it resulted in a very pretty ribbing. There is lace at the front and back of the neckline, which is also very pretty.



Like most people who are avid stitchers of any kind, I am always thinking at least one or two projects ahead of the one I am currently working on. Back at the beginning of the year I took advantage of a discontinued colours sale of Mad Tosh Vintage sock yarns at Eat Sleep Knit. This was before our dollar tanked in comparison to the US dollar. I had in mind to make some more fade type sweaters, so I ordered single skeins of yarn in colours that I thought would work together. One of the sets works quite well going from light to darks with shades of pinks and greys.



But this second  set does not work together well at all. And of course I can't have yarn sitting here that I can’t use because the colours don’t work together, can I? Go ahead, agree with me please......  thank you! So on Friday I went searching for a local store that carries this particular brand of yarn. None in our area carry it.  So I then went searching for a Canadian online store that carries it. I found one in Toronto called Eweknit that had a really good selection of this brand of yarn. I’ve ordered 4 colours that I hope will work with the yarns I already have. Two of the new ones are blue based and the other are yellow based. I will know more when they arrive.

So now that I’ve rambled on long enough, I think I’ll link up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching and check out what all the other slow stitchers are up to.

Slow Sunday Stitching

As I mentioned last week, I was going to run out of royal blue yarn before the sleeves on my sweater were finished and that I needed to figure out a way to transition colours on the sleeves. I took a small portion of the colour work graph and used it to  transition colours.



I’m doing 3/4 length sleeves since I will be running out of the denim blue as well. But as I’m always pushing the sleeves of my sweaters up past my elbows, this makes sense. I have about 3 inches left on the second sleeve and then the ribbing and this sweater will be finished. Other than weaving in all the ends, that is, which is my least favourite thing to do.

I have picked out my next knitting project already. No colour work will be involved in the next one which will be a bit of relief. I’m going to do. It’s called Open Skies. It has some interesting lace work around the neck and hems. I bought some lilac coloured yarn for it. I am deliberately not winding it into balls yet so that I won’t be tempted to start a new project before finishing this one.

I’m linking up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching before putting an audio book and working on some more knitting. I am a natural introvert and home body. I can happily stay at home away from other people outside the family for days on end. I speak with Gail, the Cozy Quilter, via face time most days and talk to other people I know on facebook chats to stay connected. But overall life under social distancing isn’t too much different than usual for us.

Slow Sunday Stitching

Another week staying put at home means lots of time for sewing and knitting. I have finished the
body of the Loeanneth Sweater.

 I have weighed the ball of Royal blue yarn. It came in at 38 grams, which means I can use 19 grams per sleeve before I have to make a decision about what else to do with the sleeves. When I was working on the body of the sweater, I did some math and I figured out that I can get 210 stitches out of a gram of yarn. So, going by that I can get 2 1/2 rows on the sleeves per gram of yarn. Given that each row has 84 stitches, I should be able to get 47 1/2 rows out of the 19 grams. That gives me about 7 inches worth of sleeve, which on me is elbow length. So I will have to do something using another colour again.... perhaps just a strip of the light blue before changing to the denim, rather than adding colour work to the sleeves. I don’t know yet. However, given that the sleeves will work up faster than the body of the sweater,  I will probably have made a decision and have it ready to show by this time next week.
In the meantime, I’m going to take Kathy’s advice. I’m going to link to her Slow Sunday Stitching and then read through the other posts to see what everyone else is up to in Slow Sunday Stitching land.

Slow Sunday Stitching

When I left off last week I was working on my Loeanneth sweater and wondering what I was going to do about the fact that I wasn’t going to have enough of the royal blue to finish the sweater. I looked around to see if any of the local yarn stores sold this type of yarn, which is Cascade Heritage Sock, but they don’t. Then I looked at Canadian online yarn sources to see if they had this type yarn. Some of them did, but not the right colour. With the Canadian dollar tanking the way it has, ordering in from the States was not an option. So I had to get creative with what I have here. I looked at the colour work chart that was done in the yoke to see if there was a section of it that could be adapted to do a colour transition from the royal blue in the main body over to a denim blue. There was a section that looked like it would work so I tried it. And it worked. The royal blue is at the top and the denim blue at the bottom.



It looks like it belongs and was supposed to be this way. It would have looked better if I could have incorporated some of the white into it, but I’m running low on that as well. I’ll continue on with the denim blue for another couple of inches before the hem colour work section.



I’m not sure if I’ll have to do the same thing for the sleeves as well. I’ll figure that out when I get there.
I’m linking up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching.

Slow Sunday Stitching

My slow stitching continues to be done with two needles attached with a cord. I’ve gotten past the colour work chart on my Loeanneth Sweater and will shortly be dividing off for the sleeves.



I might have to get creative with the colours this one. I am going to run out of the royal blue before I run out of sweater to work on. I can either order more yarn and hope that the different dye lots don’t make too much of a difference. Or I can introduce a different design element to use a different colour. Maybe even make up my own colour work chart to transition from one to another. I have a fun skein of denim blue and an almost full skein of navy blue. I suspect I’ll try the easy way first and order more of the royal blue and hope it matches.

I’m linking up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching. We may not be able to visit and stitch and sew and knit in person, but we can keep each other virtual company and share what we are doing. As long as there is yarn to knit and fabric and thread to sew, we’ll never be bored.

Slow Sunday Stitching

I started a new sweater this past week. It’s a design by Cheryl Crow called Loeanneth. It initially caught my eye because of the colour work in it. But when it turned out o be named after a house in one of my  favourite books called The Lake House by Kate Morton, that decided it. I had to make it. I am halfway done the yoke colour work.



 I would have been even further than this except for the fact that I used the wrong colour. where the navy blue currently is. So I had to slowly reverse knit about 6 or seven rows back to where the navy blue starts. Maddening, but necessary and makes the slow stitching aspect go even slower when going backwards. I contemplated leaving in the mistake, which was using the royal blue where the navy is, but decided that I wouldn’t be happy with it that way, hence the slowly going backwards.

I am feeling the effects of the  time change today. I love having the extra hour of day light in the evening, but the change does nasty things to me and it usually takes a few days to get used to it. So today is going to be spent very low key, working on some more knitting and maybe spending some time at the sewing machine working on a new project that I started yesterday,  I’ll show more about that tomorrow. In the meantime, I’m linking up with Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching