Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Ready for Winter

Our summer kitchen garden
July 2016
Saturday the weather was beautiful! Taking advantage of the break in the rain, we took down our garden and put our deck furniture in storage for winter.  While some friends in the lower 48 are "planting our fall and winter crops" (is there such a thing?), we are battening down the hatches for winter.

The rains returned with a vengeance along with high winds with gusts in some areas up to 100 mph Sunday, forcing us inside for movies and knitting!

During the week, I dug projects out of my knitting bag.


Darn Good Shawl - yarn  & pattern from Darn Good Yarn as a kit. The yarn is recycled silk, two skeins that didn't really match.  I had knit a large section before noticing the difference in color.  I was going to just switch skeins randomly as shown in the above picture but didn't like how you could see the different yarns so I frogged and restarted.


I have been knitting every two rows switching skeins (carrying yarn not knitting).  


I am so close to finish.  So close.  The two skeins are tiny little brown silk balls.  I hope I have enough!


LazyKaty Shawl is another one that's been on the sticks for far too long!  I bought the yarn at a little yarn shop, Flyin Skein, in Seward, Alaska, while on a trip with my mom and the local Senior Center. I brought the project with me on our cruise during December last winter.  The body is a very easy quick knit that is very rememberable.

When I got to the lace border I was thinking really was too small.  Additionally, I was still on my first skein and I couldn't see the lace border using up 200 yards of yarn!  Despite the size and the large amount of extra yarn, I continued to knit.  The small size continued to bother me, and this week, I looked at the pattern very closely, and I stopped reading when it said size 5mm needles and didn't look further where it states size 8-9 needle!  How did I miss that?!  Too much sun from the cruise?


So the previous LazyKaty Shawl was frogged to a ball!


Here we go again.  My only complaint about the pattern is there isn't a gauge listed, and I'm now second guessing myself with the size 8 needles!  I had to make stitch markers as I didn't have enough for this pattern (I am placing a marker every 10 stitches so I can quickly count stitches to make sure I'm on track).  Okay, I could have used what I had, but........

I'm going on another trip with Mom and the Senior Center next week.  We are driving to Chena Hot Springs (not sure if we're staying at the resort or not) and North Pole, Alaska. LazyKaty Shawl will go with me.  

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