Thursdays Are For Knit Group

Another Thursday, another storm.  Our weatherman appears not to  like Thursdays.   Thankfully, today's  storm gave us  rain, not ice, and the drive to knit group happened without incident.

Nice to be there, because  our snowbirds, have  returned.  Carol and Sandy, are not like me.  They are  real snowbirds,  - the kind that stay in Florida for 6 months.  Today was their first day back at knit group this spring.  It was great to see them and their knitting.  Sandy has two cute, cute, cute little sleeper outfits for her latest, soon-to-arrive grandchild.

A close-up shot to  show  all the buttons - and buttonholes - Sandy put on this sleeper.

Carol worked on  a pair of red socks.  She said she spent much of the winter knitting socks for everyone in her family.  She has a teenage Grandson who won't wear anything but Grandma's hand knit socks.  Imagine!  A teenager, no less!

Speaking of socks, Jean has another pair on the go.  Another pair of two socks on two circs  - Jean's favoured method.

Sharon too is knitting for baby.  Although Sharon has been blessed with  three, ready-made, step- grand kids, her daughter announced at Easter that she is  expecting her first baby.   Sharon's known for a week and look what has been produced already. 

Sharon R is also in a baby knitting mode.  Here she knits on the blanket that has been her in-between project all winter.

She also knit the cute little baby sweater below, but ran out of yarn just before finishing the cuffs.  The only ball she could find was of a different dye lot and sadly too far off to make the knitter happy.  She has decided to rip those cuffs back and knit them in red to match the buttons.  A great solution, I think.

A great afternoon of knitting and as we left, Sharon R spoke about  the dreary, rainy weather.  Her comment was "What a great afternoon to go home and knit."  Exactly!

 

 

Perfectly Perfect.

With spring on the horizon - far-off horizon it seems, as the weather man is predicting another snow storm to come in the next few days - I decided to make a 'fix' to a favourite summer top.

My Cotton Concerto,  I knit last year.  Although it was pretty perfect, I did think another inch of length would make it perfectly perfect.  Since I had a ball of the yarn left over, I thought - "Why not?"

Lengthening a  piece knit top down is easy.  Simply unravel the ribbing and knit more body before re-knitting the ribbing.  Lengthening a piece knit bottom up isn't difficult either, but  does require courage.  You cut off the ribbing, pick up the now-empty stitches of the body and knit down the required extra length before re-knitting the ribbing. So  while most of the piece is knit bottom up, the lower bit is knit top down.  And no, you cannot see the difference.

Following those guidelines, I removed  the ribbing by cutting one stitch and then tediously teasing the yarn from the stitches, one stitch at a time.

 

When the tail of yarn got too long to tease out of the stitches easily, I'd clip it and resume the  tedium.  This took me one entire evening.

Then the body stitches were picked up and I began knitting.  I added about an inch and now am into row 3 of an 8 row ribbing. 

If the snow storm prediciton comes true, my summer top will be lengthened and ready to wear  before we even have spring.

PS.  Blogger's spell check isn't working today.  I did my own.  Sorry for any I've missed.

 

Harris Happenings

What has been going on at the Harris House since I last posted.  W-e-l-l---

We woke up to the 'storm of the century' Thursday morning.  A March ice storm.  Never nice.  I did think to try to get to knit group, but after I heard from both Sharon's that they weren't going to venture out of their homes - and they live mere blocks from the library - I decided to stay home for a  Netflix Knitathon.  Quite enjoyable actually.




Between that afternoon of knitting and a 6 hour round trip to Sis' house for the family Easter Dinner, this is  what my needles accomplished.

A small little cowl, called the Ying Yang Cowl by  Laura Olsavsky.

A  cute and quickly knit little cowl that  folds over nicely in front for a bit of extra warmth.  Mine was knit with  yarn,  long ago re-claimed, from a failure of a  knit. A shawl that made me look more Granny-like than I was -  or am -  prepared for.   Koigu yarn I think.  But I could be wrong about that. Colours are much more true in the lower picture.


After the shorty cowl, I grabbed two balls of complementary stash yarn  and cast on 100 stitches with 8mm needles.  Working garter stitch while  alternating colours every few rounds made for  great car knitting.

Again, the colour is more true in the lower photo.  The variegated yarn is a very soft, loosely spun, roving type of yarn whereas the orange is a  curly mohair that tangled frustratingly often.  Both those yarns I am sure were snatched at one of Sandy's Sister Sue's Great Give-Aways.

   

Both lovely cowls that are inching me forward towards my 2016 goal of stash annihilation.