It’s amazing how a couple of hours you didn’t expect to have can be so productive. I was able to leave work a little early today (because next week the craziness begins again) and I came home and proceeded to get tons of stuff done.
The Ponchette
I actually finished the Ponchette last night and love it. It came out exactly how I’d hoped it would. What makes this fun is that I used a yarn that was different from what the pattern called for and decided to just keep knitting until the 3 skeins were finished. Finishing the 3 skeins made it exactly the right size. I had an idea about finishing it with some shells but I didn’t like the way it came out so I’ve now taken them off. The changes I made are: (1) I did it in stockinette instead of the garter; (2) I changed the yarn; and (3) I added a mock ribbing at the top by working over the first 5 stitches 2 rows of stockinette and 2 rows of garter, giving that top edge a little definition.
Necklace
I found these crystals and locket at a couple of local craft stores and I finally got the idea of how to put them together using these chain links. I like the muted colors together with the silver.
Pin for Portuguese knitting
I gave a little (rave) review of a video about knitting in the Portuguese style. It showed carrying the yarn either around the back of the neck or through a special pin that gets attached to the top of the left shoulder. I told some folks that I was going to try to make my own pin and that I would post about it once I tried it out. So here goes:
I used a Darice 2¼” Coiless Safety Pin in nickel and a Darice Brass 2” Eye Pin in nickel.
First I used my small needle nose plyers to bend it in half.
Then I began making a loop with the straight end and fed it through the eye and closed the loop.
I used a small dowl to fold the eye pin over. This is where the yarn will feed through. Once I had all the ends tucked in and the eye of the pin perpendicular to the fold, I fed the large coiless safety pin through the eye. Easy peasy, right?
Cool. Now I’m going to use it.
I had my last watercolor class on Tuesday – which ended with us being in the basement of the Hogeland Center for 30 minutes with the rehearsing cast of Hello, Dolly. Very cosy.
But before the tornado sirens started, our teacher brought samples of a new sort of ‘paper’ being used by lots of watercolorists right now. It’s called Yupo and it’s basically like a thin plastic sheet made, I believe, from recycled goods. The thing the artists like about it is because it doesn’t use any tree pieces. Which means it also doesn’t soak up the paint which means the paint just gets sort of pushed around the surface which is a whole new way of working with watercolors.
Here’s the first thing I did with it. One of the fun things is that, if you don’t like what you did, you can just take it over to the sink and wash it right off! Yep, wash it right off with the water and the soap (I believe the Windex worked, too). Can you tell it's supposed to be dark waves crashing on a rock shore?
You certainly can’t do layers very well and you have to work with much less water than you might otherwise do. I liked just being able to go over and over it until you get the interaction of the colors right.
Evidently watercolor painters are doing weird and wonderful things with it. I don’t know if I’d like it for a steady diet but it was certainly fun to play with. It also comes in transparent form which could be very, very interesting, don’t you think?
On the knitterly front, my fingers haven’t fallen off since finishing the Balmoral so I’ve got the border started on the Saltire and Thistle Shawl. I bet you don’t even remember it. Well, it’s back up to the top of the list and the pattern is working out terrific. I’ll soon be starting the little leaf pattern for the corner sections and the thistle leaf border pattern is working out nicely. After I fixed the western side, that is. I started out with 101 stitches on each side, as I should, but somehow by the time I’d gotten to the 3rd round, I’d inherited 3 extra stitches. Don’t have a clue where they came from, just showed up for the party but I dealt with them (after I’d counted 8 times and redone the section 3 times and finally realized that I hadn’t counted the actual total number of stitches – 104. Yeah, that’d be it.) But now it’s working along nicely.
I’m also about 1/3 of the way through my ponchette. I’ll post pictures of that tomorrow but changing the pattern to stockinette stitch created some space I hadn’t anticipated but I couldn’t bear to tear it out again so I’ve just soldiered on. I did decide that I would embroider some beads onto it and I have some shell beads that I think will look fab. I’ll get those out for the pics and show you on the next post.
We had a wonderful program at our fiber art guild last week with Brigitte from Klose Knits in Urbana. She got us started on a very smart, classic in its simplicity, ponchette which we're completing as a sort of guild knitalong. I love the pattern but I’ve just taken my first go off the needles. No, I didn’t mess up the pattern. There were 2 reasons why I took it off the needles. I certainly don’t want to cause any offense to the many hemp yarn knitters out there. I’m sure it 
has its uses – just not on my ponchette. The second reason has to do with the pattern itself. I’ve never been a fan of the garter stitch. Don’t know why, just a person preference. I’ve just never been a fan – even if I’m knitting something that’s going to be felted and all the stitch definition obliterated. Not a fan. Not a fan of the hemp yarn. Not a fan of the garter stitch. Just to prove I gave it the old college try though – I did manage to get through 7 repeats of the pattern.
Now, those who know me know I’m not a fan of the cotton yarn (no give, tends to feel heavy and stiff to me) so it’s not really no surprise that I haven’t gotten into the hemp yarn.
I did, however, start the ponchette over with what I think is a very sound substitute – a middle ground, even. I’m working it with Dale of Norway Tukan which is a 90% cotton/10% alpaca mix that is within my tolerance zone for cotton yarn. I got this is a great sale basket find at Nanncy’s Knits about 3 years ago (I don’t even think they make it anymore). It was a grab bag of about 20 balls of this yarn but in a variety of colors for, if I remember rightly, about $10. Can’t go wrong there. I even had enough of one color to send my Mom for a project. Now I’m redoing the ponchette using the 3 balls of white that were in the bag. I’m also changing it so to avoid the garter thing and working it in a stockinette base. Sigh…much more better!
The Ponchette
Necklace
