TWO projects finished! A striped shawl, a striped scarf and book recommendations
July 20, 2023
Last week I crossed the finish line of two long term projects. The scarf was scrappy and the shawl below was made from a kit. Both were of course easy as pie, fun to make and will fit nicely into my wardrobe. The scarf will be saved for winter, but the shawl will come in handy tonight. Californios love to dine outdoors throughout summer and fall, but where we live it gets chilly when the sun goes down and I almost always need a wrap. Tonight I'm wearing jeans and a white top and this will be a perfect pop of color.
The beauty above used a free pattern called Stripes Please! I used a good amount of my fingering weight leftovers but did have to purchase one more skein of the charcoal gray as I really wanted at least the gray to be consistent. It wears well and looks great plus the four row stripes are really attractive. I think they look so nice that I'm going to take the last (yes, the very last because there is still more fingering weight leftovers to go through if you can believe it) and knit a big old blanket. A blanket with fingering weight yarn will need a ton of yarn, got it, and a good amount of time, got that too. My Ravelry project page lists the yarns I used and the modifications I made to make a slightly more narrow and shorter scarf. This is knit in the round.
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| The. Last. Of. It. After this, there is no more fingering weight leftovers yarn in my stash. At least I don't think so. |
Now for the next finished project! Here's my lovely version of the Blue Sky Fibers 14 Color Woolstok Light Shawl by Virginia Sattler-Reimer. I followed the pattern exactly but stopped at just short of 80" length. My knitting group said it was quite long enough for moi; the original pattern is very long. It took me about 2 years to make as it was strictly a traveling-in-the-car knit. It was a good pal to me and I'll miss knitting it. I don't often use kits but for something like this it's nice to have someone who is good at putting colors and proportions together do all the work. All I had to do was follow her recipe. It's entirely garter stitch and no weaving in colors as I hid the ends in the knitted-in i-cord. This was meditative and fun and the yarn is gorgeous.
14 Color Woolstok Light Shawl by Virginia Sattler-Reimer, $3 on Ravelry
Purchase the kit from Jimmy Beans
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| hiding the ends in the i-cord |
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| Zinnias |
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| Zinnias and Shasta Daisies |
The garden is blooming away and the veggie garden is very productive making us very busy around here! After I post this I'm off to make a batch of pickles. But before that, here's some books I've recently finished and can highly recommend.
The true story of Virginia Hall, an important WWII American spy whom you've never heard of.
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro (author of Never Let Me Go, When We Were Orphans and Remains of the Day)
Klara is the utterly charming and guileless artificial friend of a little American girl. You will adore Klara.
The unbelievable and heartbreaking Osage Indian murders and the fascinating birth of the FBI. Soon to be a motion picture with Leonardo DeCapprio.
If you like murder mysteries: Local Woman Missing by Mary Kubica
The true and fascinating story of Crow Mary, a Crow Indian who in the mid to late 1800s straddles two worlds, the one of her ancestors and the one of the emerging American West.
This last one is on many summer reading lists and for that reason I added it. I didn't love it as much as others. It maddened me--imagine the Little Women grow up and don't speak to each other, and Marmee moves to Florida and becomes indifferent to her motherly role and talks infrequently to the girls. But--you can find sweetness and caring for sure, and there is redemption at the end.
I always ask, what are you reading? What are you knitting? I'd love to know!
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6 Comments
Kristin, I'd be interested in knowing how you decided your color choices on your stripes. Were they random or did you have a color plan? A book recommendation for you: Trust by Hernan Diaz. From what I can tell about what you like to read, you will love it. Eileen
ReplyDeleteFirst, thank you so much for the book rec! It looks great and I have it on hold on my Libby app and it looks like it will take about a month, which is average for my waits. I've got plenty of books to read while I'm waiting! Thank you! So to answer you question, for the shawl, I followed the pattern exactly and used the designer's row count and color selections so that was very easy. With the scarf I was using scraps. I knew I wanted to ground the scarf with a stash of dark charcoal gray. I knit it for about 8 inches before I realized that it would be too wide and so ripped it out and cast on again with 1/3 fewer stitches. At that time I decided I did not like the look of my bright primary colors and instead preferred the more muted colors and bright pastels. When choosing a color I looked at the scarf and decided if I needed a light, med. or bright and went from there. I hope I was of some help!
DeleteThank you for the book recommendations, Kristen. Our taste has been similar in the past so I am more likely to follow up on some of your suggestions. Mary Crow and the Ishiguro book in particular. For those who read slowly (like just before nodding off to sleep) and don’t want to cope with library due dates for the longer books (although I LOVE my library) there are 2 used book sites I recommend: ABE (American Book Exchange) and Thrift books used b
ReplyDeleteSomething happened…By my millennial daughter. As for knitting - lately not a lot of success but last happy project was The Friend to Friend Shrug. Simple and elegant at the same time. You can shorten or lengthen it by changing the number of decreases/increases which I did. Thanks for the various stripes patterns! Chloe
ReplyDeleteThank you for reminding me of the Friend Shrug. I have the pattern and even bought her yarn recommendation so need to make it! Maybe it will be a good travel knit. Thank you for telling me about ABE and Thriftbooks. I looked into both and love the idea of reusing books over and over. Books are the ultimate recyclables, perfect for passing on and sharing.
DeleteThat’s Thriftbooks.com.
ReplyDeleteYou make my day when you make a comment!