Tinking Yet Again

 I tinked another scarf today.  I did not like how it was turning out.  So I combined the original terracotta yarn with a variegated blue yarn which was slightly thicker.  It has a distinct southwestern flair. Then I went from a U.S. size 9 knitting needle to a 13.  I started another Broken Rib scarf.  I am past the point in the terracotta yarn, when I decide to tink it out.  

I am so glad that I made the decision midway through the project to change it.  Even if I have to say so myself. It looks so much better.  The combination of the yarn and the stitch pattern adds so much depth to the scarf.  Even better is that I have 3 more skeins of the blue yarn.  That will be 4 scarfs in total for this color combination.  Since the terracotta is on a 3 pound cone I will have to look for more coordinating yard. I am beginning to wonder just how many scarfs that I will get out of 3 pounds of fingering weight yarn.  

Below is a picture of today’s progress after tinking.  Just in case you were wondering, the scarf is currently 31 inches long.  

That is not all I accomplished today.  I actually got some deep cleaning done too. I did not quite fill a full recycling bag, however John felt it was a good start.  I still have not found my purse gloves. The decision has been made to start a copy of both pairs.  Maybe then I will find them.  

Delivery Day

 Today is one of the best days of the year for me.  It’s delivery day for all the hand knitted scarfs, hats and other warm weather items that I have gathered since January.  There were 6 carrier bags full of warm clothing.  The back of my car was packed to the brim.  

The Flowing Wells School District was pleased with this year’s delivery.  I have also started working on the next delivery.  The scarf that I finished yesterday is the first finished project of the next delivery.

133% of Goal Plus A Free Pattern

 I am now at 133% of my knitting goal for the year.  I just finished a charity scarf with yarn gifted to me by my friend Mary Gavin.  To celebrate, I am giving you the pattern for this scarf for free. The name of the pattern is a broken rib.   It is an easy pattern to make.   

Broken Rib Scarf

Cast on in multiples of 4 plus 1

Row 1 knit 2 Purl 2* repeat until the last stitch. Then knit 1.  

Repeat row 1 until you reach your desired length or run out of yarn.  

Cast off in the pattern. This means knit the knit stitches and purl the purl stitches. 

Spoonie Life

 Even though I am feeling better and have more energy on some days. I can’t attend more than one event per day.   It just leaves me exhausted for a couple of days.  Today was the first day since I over did it on Wednesday that I feel better.  I even did some small chores around the house.  Despite the Sjogren’s flare up and the need for multiple naps per day   

So I am moving some chores to next week.  I just don’t like not being the energizer bunny.  

11 Hats

 I finished my 11th half of the year today. I also spent a good portion of the day cleaning. I have completely filled the bottom portion of the recycling bin today. In my cleaning, I still have not found the silver storage container that I have two pairs of gloves in. It’s been a busy day so I think it’s going to be a short blog.

Blogger is having trouble uploading my photo tonight.  

Pictures

 I finally had time today to take some pictures of my finished projects.  These are my favorite 3 out of the 6 completed projects. The silk scarf and wool mittens are for me. The woolen mittens did shrink, but not felt after a hot bath followed by hanging in a very hot garage.  Who am I kidding, it’s summer in Tucson the garage is always hot this time of year. Yes, I actually make things for myself very occasionally. The cotton scarf is for charity, it going to my favorite children’s clothing bank.

Project Failure

 I am going to plan B with the pattern that I started on July 11th.  There were errors in the pattern that lead to the shawl literally, falling apart, as I was knitting it. I went back and looked at the pattern. There were some errors, but I didn’t feel it was up to me to correct them.

So I ripped out the knitting And designed something totally different. That won’t have so many ends to weave in. It also won’t have a lot of fussy stitches. Adding fussy stitches just to add fussy stitches is just silly.  They would not have been seen from 5 feet away even when blocked. So I’m designing something that’s similar but different. It will be easier to knit.  I have no idea if I’ll release the pattern or just chalk it up to not doing knit along again. This was my first knit along. I was sorely disappointed.  I do however like the yarn and will use it up.  I do see a lot of Russian joins instead of weaving in a ton of ends.  

TTFN 

Knitmas in July

 I do admit that I am knitting a project out of my normal wheelhouse.  I am currently knitting Knitmas in July designed by Becky Beagell with a kit by Nomadic Knits and yarn by Emma’s Yarn. In fingering weight yarn.  Yes, you read this right, fingering weight yarn on U.S. size 6 / 4mm knitting needles, no less.  

I started this project 11 days late. Yes, it has been one of those months.  It’s only July 12th and I am ready for August.  Although I still hope to have the shawl finished by the end of the month. I made better progress yesterday.  Today I only accomplished 5 rows.  If you want a challenge this is it.  The first several rows convinced me that I had an easy pattern to make.  Then I got to the second column of directions.  I have not done today’s twist stitch in over 20 years.  I had to watch the tutorial to get it right.  I also had to tink back a difficult row because I forgot to pay attention to the color change.  I did get it to look okay.  I am taking notes and keeping track with moveable tape.  

There are a lot of color changes.   Oh, the ends to weave in.  I am sure if Dr. Seuss were a knitter he would have written a book about this pattern.  I also can’t be tired when I knit this one.  Wish me luck. 

Oops I Forgot

 With as hectic as this month has been, I forgot that I have a Christmas in July knit along. I started today after lunch and got through the set up rows and 40 other rows. Now Let’s see if I can get it done by the end of the month. Wish me luck. It’s fingering weight Yarn on US size 6 needles. By the way, It seems to be a two row pattern.  The first color change is coming up. No pictures yet. The yarn feels yummy too. 

An update

 Last week has left me physically exhausted and drained.  It has also caused a flare up.  So that equals a lot not getting done.  I hope the flare up ends soon.  

113

 The best thing about summer and really warm days is, that I can wash a pair of mittens at noon.  Put them in the garage to dry.  Then they will be warm and toasty for bed time.  By the way our high in Tucson was 113 F  Or 45 C., today.

Tomorrow will be almost as hot so it is a day for knitting and spinning all day.  

A Travel Hack

 We have all been there.  We have checked into our hotel rooms.  Opened the cute little bar of soap and put it in the little tray provided for the soap. Used the soap and placed it flat on the soap dish only to come back later to the soap glued to the dish.  I stumbled upon this hack quite by accident.  It has worked in 2 different hotels over 10 days, with 2 different soap dishes.  It is even husband approved.

After washing your hands, simple put the soap on its side like in the picture below. The first time you try it you might have to exert some light pressure to make the soap stick.  After that you will be golden for the rest of your trip.  

L.A. Is Fine….

 After being away from L.A. for over 31 years ago.  We found  that the city is fine. Also more crowded and a bit on the run down side.  Everything was so expensive.  We went back for almost a week. My mom died early in the week. There was initially, some misunderstanding on the date of the funeral. So we had a few extra days to hang out. 

We hung out with some family and friends.  We tried a few new places to eat.  Drove around a bit. Most surprising of all is that I did not need to buy any yarn, to do any retail therapy.  We did not stop at one Yarn store. Although we did have a trip to one of the local malls.  Considering the week I handled it very well.  

There was a huge sense of relief when we crossed back into Arizona.   The drive was uneventful.  We did some chores when we got home, but mostly rested.  Tomorrow I will finish unpacking.  Start the laundry. Do some errands.  Life goes on.  

Time to Tink Another Project

 This project will be tinked because I am not liking the way it is turning out.  See where the double pointed knitting needle is, you can see areas where both strands of yarn were not caught in the stitch.  The project consists of 2 strands of lace weight yarn, one is mohair/ silk and the other is wool. Then I am going to spin it into 1 a two ply yarn.  

I am going to try my new plying tool called iPLY from i spin in the United Kingdom.  This should make it easier to ply on bad hand days.  This part may not happen today. All three of my spinning wheels are currently on other projects.  Then I will start the project over because I like the overall design of the shawl.  

A Slow Summer Day

 It’s been one of those days.  I am a lot on the tired side. So spinning did not happen.  A little Tunisian crochet project saw a little action on an oak* shawl, I am working on the center panel right now.  I also found time to work on a pounder scarf in progress, just because I needed some left handed knitting time.  I find alternating between knitting right and left handed takes pressure off my right hand.  

Because I have finished, but sadly not photographed them all yet. I have found space to move some knitting projects from the sewing room to the knitting/ spinning room.  I even found a few UFO’s. Imagine that, me having multiple UFO’s.  I think I will take the basket off the shelf and just stack the projects on the shelf and use the basket elsewhere.  The basket just uses up to much shelf space.

Some time in the far future my plan is to separate the sewing room from all yarn. Wish me luck on that one.

*oak is a one of a kind project that I will be making for myself.  This is usually because the yarn is no longer available or the yarn is too expensive for most knitters.  I like to keep the price of yarn down on most of my patterns.  Fiber arts can tend to get expensive, thus seem too exclusive for many.  Also the more expensive the yarn in a pattern is, the less likely the pattern will sell. 

The Rabbit Hole and more

 My car is now freed from the garage. The garage door was fixed today.  The broken spring was older than the service man who fixed it.  The spring was from the late 1980’s,the original garage door spring from when our house was built.  He had never seen one so old.  The new spring is made of lighter more brittle steel that should last only 10 to 12 years.  How is that good for the environment? We should be making things that last as long as the part it is replacing.  We definitely live in the era of greed by big business.  Make things break sooner and don’t provide replacement parts of the same quality if they break.  

I did a bit of hand carding of an art wool batt that was just so not right for spinning as it was.  The carders worked great.  Now if I can just get a decent rolag off the carders.  I do admit that it has been a few years since I have carded wool by hand.  I am keeping up with spinning one 2 ounce/ 50 grams batt a day.  I can feel the difference already, which means that I am almost hopelessly out of shape.  Maybe by the time I go through all 3 boxes of mini batts, I will be ready for the 4 ounce/ 100 grams a day. If not 2 days is not an unreasonable amount of time to spin a braid.  Even after a major de stash of wool, I still have a closet full of wool. The good news is I kept only what I wanted to spin.  

Then that of course will lead to more weaving and knitting.  It will mostly go to my charity projects.  That is unless I like it a bit too much to let it go.  As I feel better, hopefully more projects will get finished and leave the house.  

They Don’t Make Things Like They Used To

 This was the bane of my existence today.  When the garage door closed this morning, the garage door made a strange thunk. I thought the garage door had came off the rail.  John came home and noticed the broken spring. The space between the spring is not supposed to be there. The spring was the original spring from when the house was built.  Not even 40 years old. The poor thing, the heat must have gotten to it. It could not possibly be metal fatigue. 

I only found this out on the way to the grocery store. Needless to say my car did not make it out of the garage. So until the garage door is fixed, meaning a new spring is installed. My car is stuck in the garage.  Hopefully they can fix it tomorrow.  Until it is fixed I am stuck at home.  

Hopefully this will give me a chance to tweak the numbers on the third piece of the new pattern. Then warp the loom. I have started spinning one, 2 ounce art batt a day to increase my exercise. Eventually I hope to increase my spinning time, on my Louet Victoria.  Which is equivalent to riding a bike or using the sitting elliptical machine. I currently have three boxes of 2 ounce mini art batts. I am spinning them as singles because it is easier to weave with them. Then hopefully I will have more to donate to the children’s clothing bank that I support. I have a feeling that it is going to be a rough year for many families. 

I Found More

 Just as I was seeing the end of the UFO pile. I found more UFO’s on the shelves.  I was just doing a bit of organizing and peaking.  I found several more shawls that were only partially finished.  So my UFO pile just got a little bigger.  I guess I will not be starting any new projects anytime soon.  

If at First You Don’t Succeed.

I just love the color way and feel of this Queensland Collection Perth in Bay of Fires yarn. Please be forewarned that this yarn might not be in your local yarn shop anymore.  The explanation is quite simple really. I tried five different patterns with this yarn. The yarn was not happy with the previous patterns.  It was really saying I know what I want to be. You are not understanding what I want.  So after each failure the whole project bag was put in timeout.  Yes, sometimes yarn does need a time out.  Maybe, I just did not know what to do with the yarn.  

I need to start a different UFO,  I have completed 3 projects in 2 days. I still have to make time to take the pictures. I believe I am up to 5 pictures that need to be taken. It has been crazy busy since we got home from our last family trip. 

Well last night everything changed.  I tried knitting the project that was on the knitting needles.  The yarn said no.  So I frogged the work.  Using U.S. size 10 1/2 knitting needles and not the recommended U.S. size 1 to 3 knitting needles I charged ahead using a slightly different cast on count of My Doodling Shawl pattern, available on Ravelry.  By the third row the yarn was sing, she finally got me.  So I kept knitting until I needed a longer knitting needle.  Believe it or not I did not have a circular knitting needle in 10.5 by 60 inches long.  So out came the LYKKE interchangeable knitting needles to the rescue.  By the way don’t the copper knitting needles look good with the yarn?  

I don’t know how big the shawl will be.  I have 3 skeins of Bay of Fire at 437 yards each. Again I think the shawl will make the decision for me. This should make a great summer weight shawl for those cold places. 

Tuesday

 Meta has changed the rules yet again.  I am only being give the option of one Facebook page. So you will find me on Handmadebysheri on Facebook.  All my posts will go there in the very near future.  

Now that today’s business is taken care of. We go on to the real stuff.   I finally finished a UFO today, with the exception of weaving in the 2 ends. So you will see it tomorrow.

My new gloves shrunk as hoped for with the exception of 2 small areas by my fingers.  Since it supposed to be 110f on Sunday, I will try shrinking them one more time.  The garage should be nice and hot.  Along with the water temperature.

In looking at all my featherweight spindles today I have discovered that they are all between 10 and 29 grams.  I can’t believe that I did not realize that I had a 10 grams drop spindle.  Gee, that is awfully light. 

I Completed My Yearly Knitting Goal

 This has been a very rough year health wise for me.  There are still some days when I don’t have the energy to move let alone knit or even just listen to an audiobook book without falling asleep.  Yet today I managed to log my last 4 knitting projects for the year, charity hats 6-9 which brought me up to 24 completed projects for 2025.  Mostly charity projects.

In January this goal was a stretch for me.  I was dealing with my second bout of Pericarditis in less than a year.  I am on a new medication that seems to be helping.  However, this being said I never heal as fast as I want. The older I get, it also seems to take longer.  This go-go girl is not used to living life in the slow lane at all.  Don’t get me wrong, I am very happy to be alive and to be able to create things for kids whose families normally could not afford the prices for my work.  This beats customers who say that they can get a bespoke hat, scarf or shawl for less money than I pay for my yarn.  Then try to get the item for a loss for me. No way in he double toothpicks. From feed back I get from the Flowing Wells School District staff, all the kids and staff are very happy to get my mostly one of a kind hats and scarfs.  That makes me so happy.  That amount of happiness that I create is better than money.  

So without further ado, here are charity hats #6-9-2025.