Miss Janeen

We finally let Janeen get a texturizer. She looks like such a lovely little lady.

Scarf and Shawl

A LOT has happened. I can't update everything on the blog - a girl has her little secrets you know. But I can update knit and crochet right?
This is a little lace scarf I made to practice knitted lace. It was pretty quick, made with Brown Sheep Cotton Fine. It was super soft to work with, but doesn't hold it's shape really well no matter how much a block it. Probalby would be better in a sweater instead of lace.


And this another lace shawl - made with a cotton/wool sock yarn. I like sock yarns for shawls. Just the right weight and a lot of yardage in the ball. This one took 3 balls - and it's over 60". I got the pattern from Jan Eaton's 200 Ripple Stiches book. I love that book and will definately make more items from it. I love this shawl but I think I am going to give it to someone who is having a rough time right now.

I can make lace!

It almost made me give up - but I just couldn't let that happen. I guess the first step toward victory is understanding I was twisting my stiches. You can't make lace with twisted stiches! I was also twisting my Yarn Overs - same deal. Then the *@$* ssk was driving me crazy. So I stopped doing it! I slip a stitch, knit the next stitch, then slip the slipped stich over the knitted stich, voila - left slanting decrease w/o the headache. The last victory was the easiest - rememer to count! The stiches need to add up - at least in the easy lace I am doing now - so count, and recount. That way - when I ended up w/ 40 stitches instead of 41 - I had only 1 row to frog vs. frogging the whole thing. Which had been my previous lace experiences. So this is a lace bag - made in a dk weight cotton. That is my other tip - cotton is great because you can see everything! It also doesn't felt or tangle the way something fuzzier sometimes does. A good beginning lace yarn. Also something other than lace weight. I had thought - lace knitting, lace weight, right? WRONG! the holes are all so big you can't tell what you are doing at all. So - cotton dk weight on size 2s worked perfectly for my first successful project. I'm going to start a scarf now while I work on my pie shawl (done in stockenette b/c I didn't want to risk lace yet). All of this is just working my way up to using some Helen's Lace my sister and I bought (each of us bought a skein). I don't want to waste it - so I want to master lace and the pi before starting my masterpiece :)