Tag Archives: pink

Papaya

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Woo!  I’m free!  I finished all my “work knitting!” (For now, at least.)

It’s weird- it’s like that feeling I got back in college, right after Finals Week.  Every minute has been taken up with studying, or thinking you should study, or worrying that you’re not studying enough.  But they you finish your last exam, and BAM! you’ve got nothing particularly important to do.

It’s both very freeing and a little bit unsettling.

When I have that feeling, I like to go into my closet and see what kind of yarn I have waiting for me.  I’m not a huge “Stash Person.” I generally don’t go out and buy a big bag of yarn “just because.”  At most, I’ll buy a skein or two of sock yarn as a splurge, but that’s about it.

But, hidden deep at the bottom of a pile of yarn in the back of my closet, I found a treasure.

A bag of 11 balls of Knit Picks Wool of the Andes Sport in Papaya Heather!I literally have no idea when I bought this, or what I bought it for.  It must have been years ago.  I almost never wear pink, and I never wear orange.  I don’t know what would have possessed me to buy so much of this shade.  (It really is pretty, but it’s just not a color I normally go for.)  Maybe it was on sale?

I’ve got 11 skeins, though. Which means I can make something cool.  A sweater maybe?  Or a smallish throw blanket?  Or a big shawl?

What do you think I should do with my surprise stash yarn?

Have you ever been surprised by what you found in your stash?

A Swatch Dilemma

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I’ve been knitting away, and have swatched up my Biggo yarn for my Grandma’s Christmas Sweater.  And, well…

I am not pleased.

I give you Figure 1 (Gray Snowflakes with Pink Border):

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAEw!  No!  The contrast between the blue and gray is way to low.  All that work, and you can barely see the snowflake pattern.  (It looks even worse in real life…. ugh!)

I give you Figure 2 (Pink Snowflakes with Gray Border):

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERABetter, but not great.  I think the gray is just too low-contrast.

So, I have three options:

1.  Just deal with it.  Knit up the sweater as shown in Figure 2, and let it go.

2.  Forget about trying to use both gray and pink, and just make the sweater out of pink and blue yarn.

3.  Order more gray yarn from Knit Picks in a lighter shade.

I will sit here and sulk for a while, then, I suppose I’ll make a decision.  (At least I did the swatch first… That would have been so frustrating if I’d already started working on the sweater?  Ugh.)

Grandma, Don’t Read This Post!

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I’m 99.9% sure that my grandma doesn’t have the internet any more.  I believe she got rid of it a couple months ago.

That being said, if I’m wrong: Grandma, stop reading!   Christmas spoilers are ahead!  You have been warned.

OK, it should just be us now.

Remember last January when I made a sweater for my grandfather?  Well, this summer Grandpa asked me to make a sweater for my Grandmother, too.  He asked for something similar, but blue, and well, I can’t say no to a request like that.

I’ve decided to knit up a Norwegian-inspired sweater for Grandma this year.  I’m thinking a top-down, yoked sweater (because I love making top-down, yoked sweaters).  I’ll include a Norwegian star/snowflake pattern across the shoulders.  And, because that’s basically all she wears, it’ll be a cardigan.

Something like this, but simpler, and with buttons:

IMG_3358ny_medium2[1]The next step was to pick out yarn.  I am a big fan of Knit Picks (as a naturally frugal person), so I decided to give their Biggo yarn a try.  I have worked with it before, and it is lovely, soft, super thick, warm, and washable.  (Since there’s only three months until Christmas, having a big gauge is especially important.)  Mom and I talked about colors, and we settled on Sapphire Heather (main color), Dogwood Heather, and Cobblestone Heather.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI think these colors look lovely next to each other.  Unfortunately, there isn’t as much contrast between the Cobblestone and the Sapphire as I would have liked.   But, sometimes colors look different in the skein and knitted up, so I’ll need to work up a swatch to see how the colors play together when they’re knit up, just in case I need to get a different gray color.

I’m itching to get started knitting up this sweater.  I can’t wait to see how it goes.  (But unfortunately, I have to wind up all the skeins into balls, first, or I will spend the next three months fighting with big tangles of yarn.  Woe is me.