Knits: Baby Hue Shift

 

I couldn’t resist creating a quarter-size baby version for a friend due in the fall. It is the perfect size to tuck a little one into their baby seat. All the colors of the rainbow are perfect for a girl or a boy.

Knits: Hue Shift Afghan

 

My favorite local yarn store, Eat Sleep Knit, holds a number of knit-alongs every year. This year they decided to hold a year-long KAL for the Hue Shift Afghan. I instantly fell in love with the color possibilities and looked through all the projects on Ravelry for inspiration. With the help of this wonderful color picking tool created for designing your hue shift, I tried at least a dozen combinations of Cascade 220 superwash (ESK carries the whole line) and decided on sunny shades mixed with neutrals.

I started by ordering my picks online, but found that going to the store was required to tweak a few of the gradient choices to get enough separation and consistent vibrancy of color. I would definitely recommend picking yarn for this project in person.

I made a few modifications to the pattern as written: 1) I knit all of the squares in the same direction. I liked the diagonal running across the whole surface and also liked avoiding any piecing together a the end. Each square is knit on the edge of previous squares. 2) I decided not to add a border. I preferred the squares running to the edge and letting the pattern be the statement without “framing.”

After an extra trip to get more yarn (it takes about 1.3 skeins per color in Cascade 220), it took over 3 months to complete the Afghan. I was able to work on many other small portable projects and leave this one for home knitting in the evenings.

I would highly recommend this project to anyone looking for a blanket project that avoids monotony. Color choice transforms the design and knitting the blanket in small units keeps it from feeling overwhelming. The excitement of seeing how each color combination looks keeps you eager to start the next square.

Knits: Siren Song Shawl

 

My favorite local yarn store, Eat.Sleep.Knit, held a Flash KAL in March featuring the patterns Song of the Sea and Siren Song. I decided to go the extra mile and complete the shawl size of Siren Song.

I decided to use some Madelintosh Eyre Light that I already had on hand in electric rainbow, onyx, and smokestack/optic. I love how the electric rainbow created a mother of pearl effect. I had enough yarn of each color to transition between colors for each pattern size change. On that note, this pattern really eats up the yardage. If you decide to make the shawl, be sure to have plenty of yarn on hand.

Knits: Spinning yarn

 

My neighborhood has a number of fiber artists and a few of us finally got together to share our interests. One of the things I never thought I’d do was spin yarn. I’ve been pleasantly surprised to find that I was able to get started with a minimum investment in both money and space – all I needed was a drop spindle, a niddy noddy, and some fiber.

The result is the collection of small skeins above. There are a bunch of helpful videos on youtube to get a feel of techniques: I found this one from MeganERisk helpful for learning how to park and spin. I also liked this one for understanding how to draft fiber consistently for different thicknesses from Spinning Sara. This one from Megan LaCore was helpful for learning how to ply yarns together.

It’s good to know there is a simple way to get started spinning if you’ve ever been curious. Like knitting, I have a feeling that it just takes time and practice to build skill.