April Showers bring May Socks

Ok, it's a dumb title - but they are finished. They haven't been blocked yet, but since they are late, I just took the picture. My plan of knitting a pair/month is getting behind ...

The next pair will be for me, something apricot - no more dark socks for a while, it's too hard to see the stitches - not that I really need to see sock stitches, but it's more annoying than when I can see them!

Now I can get back to the Tee and the bedspread - at least until I can get more sock yarn ...

The jasmine lives! I was about to give up and toss it yesterday, I had it half out of the pot when I noticed a tiny peek of green down at the base.

33 squares on the bedspread

Encouragement

Thought I'd take a picture of the neverending bedspread to encourage myself a bit - it is getting larger ...

except that I've only done 33/500 - which is about 6.6% of the total, not even counting some edging. Well, it is meant to be a long term project - but doing one square/day is a bit unrealistic ...

Another Bag finished

Another one done! This one was easier as I used an H/5mm hook. I don't like the color as well as Madeline's, but I had to do something with all that green ...

The handles are sewn on in this version - it looks much neater and really wasn't as bad as I anticipated - the sc around the edges really makes it sturdy.

I think when I do another one I'll do it in Tunisian, I can do four strips kinda broken up into squares and then embroider them - this will save me from all those ends I have to weave in. But I'm not doing any more bags soon, it's quite boring!

Acrylic Alert!!!

Yes, I am knitting with this awful stuff - it's a Sport weight acrylic from Wal*Mart ...

I found a pattern for a plain, simple tee! So I am using this crap to get an idea of how it goes - using a 3.75mm 24 inch circular Addi, 6 stitches/inch. I plan to use it a template for future variations - novel idea - knitting stuff I actually need and use on a daily basis! (I do wear my socks, but this is different).

It's easy enough - except this crap is killing my wrist ...

Getting There

I am feeling better about these infuriating little motifs. These are my latest attempts - they are done in size 20 thread with a 1.25 mm hook, the pc is size 10.

The Shamrock - now I know that the leaves need a wide base to look good and lie flat! I think skipping 2 dc around the central picots rather than one helps. I also stopped trying to do the 3 dc & picot every 4th dc - I was losing count and it was too annoying, so I just did a picot after every 3rd dc.

I first attempted the daisy in some long lingering thread I found in a drawer - it may be size 50? I realized it wasn't going to lie flat no matter what I did - so I made a few more petals - I think I ended up with 15! As I went along I discovered that I needed to pull the pc as tight as it would go and the petals looked much better and I could complete the circle. I attached the petals through the ring rather than in the individual stitches on the ring, in the vain hope that I could fiddle them into a circle ...

The second attempt was much better - not perfect - but at least I have the right idea. I was having terrible trouble trying to make the rings for the centers - the wraps were disintegrating when I took them off whatever I wound them on. Last night I had an epiphany - there was a reason the directions called for matches! I wrapped the thread around 3 Brittany Birch dpns I had lying around - and I was able to slide my hook down through the thread and secure it with a ss before slidingthe dpns off. It made the threads hold together and the whole process much easier!

The trefoil was much easier - although I noticed I have only 7 scallops around each section. I think after I get some more practice, I'll redo all of them in a smaller thread - I do like teeny tiny thread ...