Friday Felines Vol. 12 2015

Nikoh

Its been HAAWWWT! here the last few days .... really HAAWWT!

Master Hand Knitting Vol. 14

Guess what?!?!  Here's an excerpt from the letter I received!!!

Spinning in the Sunshine

These are some of my beautiful Mirkwood Hand Crafts spindles. 

Shelob & Nimrodel pictured here.

They are topped with shiny crystals or gems.

I took them outside the other day to spin a bit.  I found some old cigar boxes for $3 ea recently, they are perfect for the spindles.  I put some felt in there for protection, when I have time I plan to actually line them and cut/glue the felt on there.

It was a little windy out, but otherwise very enjoyable.

I just spun up a little bit of sample fiber that came with one of the spindles.  Then wound on to a plying ball.

Then plied it up on one of my mini Turkish spindles.

Here's the finished skein .. very much lace weight.

Traveling Monsters Vol. 3

This is Sophie, she's a half sized hippo from Nashua, NH (not all that far from us).  She did a great job of cheering me on while I finished up the Master Hand Knitting Program.

She enjoyed checking out the yard and the flowers.

And she traveled to the gathering in New Hampshire for Mother's Day and hung out with the moms.

She came to the showing of the 1982 film The Last Unicorn on the big screen.

Stopped by a poster on the way out.

And got to meet the author of the book and get my book signed!!

Master Hand Knitting Vol. 13

These are the resubmits for the Level 1 Master Hand Knitting Program.

The mitten gave me a bit of grief, but I am happy withe the final result and do think it will pass.  The jogless join on the stripe is much better.  Its hard to get a good photo, if I put my other hand in there, then the thumb is in the way.  There is a slight fold from blocking,  but otherwise the stripe is pretty jogless.

Swatch 7 I had to redo because somehow I cast on the wrong number of stitches.  I did think this swatch always looked bigger than the others, but do you think I checked why?!?!

Old Swatch

New Swatch

New .. New Swatch

Because somehow I managed to do it WRONG again ... and figured this out AFTER I mailed in my re submission ...

Swatch 13 needed a little tweaking on the yarn overs.  The original had a visible strand of yarn under the double yarn over at the top and the supporting stitches were loose.  I worked this one paying careful attention to avoid that.

Old Swatch

New Swatch

And swatch 15 was another DUH.  I did the cable completely wrong, I believe I skipped the last row that was on the next page in the instructions.  The worst part, there's a question about this cable and I was looking at one in a stitch dictionary and STILL didn't realize my swatch looked weird ....

Old Swatch

New Swatch

And some written work was revised and tweaked as well.  Off it goes in the mail for review ...

FO: Crocus

Pattern: Crocuses: Knit a spring flower by Alexis Hamann-Nazaroff
Yarn: Knit Picks Wool of the Andes
Needles: US 8 and 5 DPNs
Cast On: 5/11/15
Finish: 5/12/15

Just a little something to get my crafting juju back in order :o)

Bad Crafting Juju

I've got some bad crafting juju going on.  It started with this (back side of work, I neglected to get a photo of the front):

I was merrily crocheting along on Sophie's Universe when I came upon a missing stitch.  I counted and recounted ... still short.  I checked the previous corner ... yup, enough there.  As I was pondering this dilemma, I flipped it over ... ah ha!

Now do you see the problem??  It gets worse ... I am pretty sure this is at the BEGINNING of the round ...  If you don't know how crochet works, that means I have to rip out almost the ENTIRE round.  If it was closer to the end, then I would only have to rip out a bit ...

Then there's this:

Granted, its the beginning of the round, so its going to be off, but I think I pulled the yarn too tight at the join.  I was thinking it would block out, but now I'm not too sure.  Usually this is great to avoid ladders, and even though I was TRYING not to pull to tight at the join, I think instincts kicked in and I did.  I did put this at the back of the sock.  Then I picked up stitches for the gusset and had 17 on one side and 16 on the other, no big deal, but I am still wondering about this cuff ... I am wondering if I should put this one on hold and do the other sock and see if its better ... then maybe redo this one?!?!

I am also wondering if there is a better way to do this so that the round change is not so noticeable.  I'm not a colorwork guru ...

UUuugghhhhh!

A REAL Hulk

Went to see a double feature of Avengers and Avengers 2 at a cinema/pub with my friend last night.  I always giggle on the way there, we usually go to see the Marvel movies ... I pass a REAL Hulk on the way!