Wednesday, August 31, 2016

Yarn Along

I'm joining in on this week's Yarn Along hosted by Ginny from Small Things. For this KAL we post what knitting projects we are working on as well as what books we are currently reading. Here is an over-view picture of what I've been up to... 
What I'm reading: I've pretty much given up on Twyla Tharp's 'Creative Habbit' at this point. While it has had some nuggets of wisdom for the creative hobbyist, it really is more centered around the creative professional (artists, musicians or in Ms. Tharp's case choreographers). Which is fine, but it's not been super helpful to me. She is very thorough on this topic, so it might be of interest to you:)

Sweater Quest by Adrienne Martini has been entertaining. I love this type of book that takes you through the process of what a person is trying to accomplish. A few times she gets really wordy on things that a knitter probably has at least general knowledge of (even one like me that is fairly new to knitting), but this has only happened a couple of times, and other wise she is pretty funny and easy to relate to.

I'm not very far in to Things We Wish Were True by Marybeth Mayhew Whalen, but so far it has been really good. Probably good enough to keep me up most of the night if so much hadn't been going on lately to make me so tired;) It's a book about several people who all live in the same neighborhood, many of their families knowing each other for many years, who are all hiding secrets, some even from their own husbands. I'm thinking that some of these secrets are going to inter-connect, but I haven't gotten that far yet.
 And on to knitting. I'm still working on Alicia Plummer's MKAL 'Dockside' (the MKAL can be found on Ravelry). I was starting to catch up to the release dates, but then hit a snag a few days ago and haven't really picked it up again to find out exactly what I did. I have really enjoyed this project though and have learned several new stitches as well as finding out (because of one of those new stitches), that I've been wrapping my yarn wrong?!?!? ACK! Fixing this mistake is what lead to me getting behind because I started over and started wrapping the yarn the correct way, and not only did the dropped stitch (purposeful dropped stitch:), turn out right, but my lacework section was a lot more open too. So that got me thinking that maybe I should start a couple of my other 'in-progress' projects over too and see if it helped them as well.
So I started these Dappled Lace Cafe Curtains by Pick Knit Design Team over. This was a pretty big decision since I already had about 6 inches done on it. I am doing mine with size 5 needles using size 3 cotton crochet thread. Yeah, not super nice on the hands as it has no give to it, but I had also decided that instead of one long panel, I really wanted two panels that I could open when I want. Wrapping the yarn the correct way really opened up the lacework and made the pattern show much better, so I'm happy even though I had to start it over:) I have one other project that is mostly lacework, but it is a lot more complicated and I'm much further into it, so I'm not sure I'll start it over.

So what are you working on? 

1 comment:

  1. Good luck with that size 3 cotton thread - not for these old hands, but it will look lovely when you're done! I read Sweater Quest when it came out, and if I remember correctly I just remember thinking that if she had just tried it on . . . I have the Things We Wish Were True on my Kindle - maybe I'll give it a shot - I think it was free one day so I downloaded it. Good luck with the curtains!

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