Share the Love Artisan

This weeks featured artisan is Phillippa Pinka - Court & Sparks.
Darling Creations that make perfect gifts! You can find Court & Sparks on:

Etsy

Folksy

Dewanda

Blog

The Saga of the Breeze That Wasn't

Back in mid-June, Jane Thornley introduced a new pattern for a simple wrap she called The Breeze, partly because it was a breeze to make; large needles, lightweight yarn, simple stitches. It captured everyone's interest, mine included. I had the perfect yarn for it. 

My first attempt had to be frogged, because it got so wide, with no depth, that it would have been usable only as a long skinny scarf that one winds around the neck multiple times. Armed with some hints from one of the other Ravelers, I started again, and this time it seemed to progress rather smoothly. Until I got about half done. The cable came loose from the needle, and the stitches all started to unravel; the perils of using large needles on thin yarn. I was panicky at first, but decided to try and mend it all, no easy feat with a random lace pattern. Somehow, I pulled it off. 

Finally I added the edging around the top, and bound off. But I didn't cut off the yarn, I used it to picked up stitches around the bottom to add a matching edging When it was finished, I wasn't happy with the way it looked, and decided to redo it. So I frogged back to where I had picked up stitches to start again. Unfortunately, I wasn't paying enough attention, and ended up frogging part of the top edging. Enough of it that the whole thing started to unravel. Because of the nature of the yarn, it was almost impossible to stop the unravelling, and when I finally did, much of the top few inches was lost. I tried running a lifeline at what I thought was the lowermost edge of the unraveling, but it wasn't quite evenly threaded through, so I had to really work at it till I got the cable to go straight through on one row.  Again there were a few spots that I had to repair, actually a large area, but I faked it, and it worked. I just wouldn't want anyone looking too closely at it.

The problem at this point was that all that frogging had released a lot of yarn, which promptly got tangled up. I ended up spending a day and a half untangling and rewinding before I could proceed with finishing the bottom edge, which I decided to crochet instead of knit.

Crochet Edge

 Once it was done, I realized that it was really a little longer/wider than I wanted. So I gathered about half of the neckline edge, and now it's a much better length.

 The Random Lace

Monet's Lily Pond Kimono

I finished my Monet Lily Pond Kimono, but not without a few problems; it just didn't want to be done. Whenever I thought I was through, I found something that needed to be changed, and when I changed that, something else would not be right. I did the bottom of the back 3 times before I got it right, partly because I ran low on the medium green yarn I needed. It was where it was to be seamed to the front, which would really point out the difference. But I did find a good substitute, and got it done.

I originally wanted a short, little kimono, to fit the way it does in Jane Thornley’s Guide. And it started out that way, but it stretched as I worked on it, and ended up full size; as you can see in the photo.  I guess the shorter kimono will have to be another project. Anyway, it’s done. It's ridiculous that it took me so long; I was the first to start mine for the Knit A Masterpiece KAL, but far from the first to finish.

I also finished my Breeze Wrap, but that's a long story to be covered in another post.

I've Finished the FreeRange Vest

Well, I finished the vest. Instead of frogging the tops of the fronts, I frogged the bottoms. This lined up the fronts and the back more proportionately, and released enough yarn to do the sides. It's a little shorter than I first planned, but definitely wearable.

Tucson Sunset FreeRange Vest

Pneumonia is the Pits!

A lot has happened since I last posted, the most significant of which is that, instead of going back home to see friends and family and celebrate my brother's 70th birthday, I ended up in the hospital with a serious case of pneumonia, possibly accompanied by Valley Fever. 

I've always heard that it takes a long time to completely recover from pneumonia; that the fatigue that goes with it is endless. Added to that, the side effects from the anti-fungal medication I'm still on for the Valley Fever make me a little shaky at times. 

So I've been spending the last month or so recuperating, and taking it one day at a time. On the plus side, my husband has been doing the cooking and shopping, and more or less waiting on me hand and foot, which is nice, but after a while, even that gets old. But another plus is that all I can do is read, knit, and nap. At first I couldn't knit for very long, and kept making mistakes, but I'm doing better now.

When last I wrote, I had started my Monet Kimono. It's now almost finished,

  except for the pesky little problem of running out of one of the yarns used at the very bottom. I don't know if it's worth trying to find more of it, or just improvise and use another yarn. I'm still working on that. 

Another project that I've been working on is a FreeRange vest, part of a KAL with the Jane Thornley group. I also ran out of yarn on this one, the main yarn, just before finishing the body of the vest. It's a very unusual color, and I haven't been able to match it. I managed to finish both fronts so they line up evenly, but now the search is on for yarn to finish the sides.

Since I wrote this, I've come to the conclusion that the top part of the fronts of this vest are too long, so I'm going to frog and redo them.  Perhaps that will result in enough yarn to finish. More on that as I proceed.