NiseyKnits

Spring is FINALLY showing up in full force over here. I'm seeing flower petals floating along on the (STRONG) winds we've been having here in the Bay Area. To celebrate this change of seasons, here is a free pattern for a scarf that I designed last year. I called it Colliding Stars after my friend Melissa, who owns a calligraphy and design business called...you guessed it - Colliding Stars . She saw the initial sample of this scarf that I knit in some random green yarn I had in my stash. (Funny story - I bought the yarn from a fellow Ravelrer who had dyed it a bright neon green. I took it and overdyed the scarf a dark green, but I think I agitated the yarn too much so it had this sort of semi-felted look to it. Pretty interesting). Anyway, here are a few pictures of the initial Colliding Stars scarf, and the pattern follows. You can download a pdf version of the pattern here or on Ravelry . Colliding Stars Denise A. F. Twum I love simple lace patterns th...

Y'all know how I get when I have deadlines looming. I cast on for a new item! :) So, in that vein, I cast on for the Purl Ridge Scarf by Stephen West, even though I have a lot of deadline knitting to do. I used the KnitPicks Palette yarn that was leftover from knitting the Sunset Moody Kerchief  on a US 10.5 (6.5mm) circular needle. I worked 11 rows in each main color, and about 5-6 rows in the mixed colors for the color changes. The scarf came out very long - it's long enough to wrap around your neck three times!! However since I used fingering weight yarn held doubled, it's very light to touch. Here are some pictures of this lovely infinity scarf. I'll hopefully be back next week with some more pretty finished projects! Enjoy the rest of your week! 

You all know my friend Zeina. She's the lovely lady who has been modeling most of my knits for the past year or so. Sometime last year we went to a yarn shop together so she could choose the yarn she wanted for me to knit something for her. She chose Mirasol Tupa yarn in the Daffodil color (#801)  and we bought 2 skeins. She likes the color yellow, you see. I first made a crochet necklace for her using the Mirasol Tupa yarn, from this Crochet Necklace pattern by Creative Yarn. However the necklace took very little yarn, so I still had almost all the 2 skeins leftover. What to do? I let the skeins languish in my ever expanding yarn stash until last week, when I was home sick with an ear infection. I wanted to knit something I didn't NEED to have done by a certain time, so I decided to knit a present for Zeina.  I chose the Little Shells pattern by Holly Griffin-Weidner, as it required 250 yards and seemed like a quick knit. And it was!! I cast on for the ...

Where was I? Oh, I had just finished my visit with Roxanne of Zen Yarn Gardens. It was now 5:30pm so I had to dash out of the conference center and drive as fast as I legally could to get to my son's daycare before 6pm. I was so happy with my loot, and excited for my Sunday class. I almost forgot! I bumped into a friend from Dartmouth, Katharine Velleman, who is also a knitter, and lives in San Francisco. We are 45mins away from each other and have yet to still meet up. Among the thousands of knitters, crocheters and fiber enthusiasts at Stitches West, we bumped into each other! It was nice to catch up for a few minutes! So come Sunday afternoon, I was a little tired after my weekend schedule and feeling sick with a sore throat, but I knew I had to go for my class. I made it to the conference center at 1pm, and headed straight for the market because I had seen Kauni at one of the booths and just had to have a ball. I've been looking for Kauni Effektgarn in the EU colorway f...

I'm so excited for this week's post. For the past two years since we moved to Santa Clara,  I've never made it to Stitches West. It is held every year in February at the Santa Clara Convention Center, which is 6 miles away from me. The first year I was attending prenatal classes and totally missed it. Last year I don't even remember what happened, but I know that I only realized it had happened after it was over. This year I was determined to make it! However, I am now working and couldn't really take off that many days. My kind supervisor gave me Friday off to go get my knitting on and I was excited! Friday morning, I scoured through the online listing of classes and saw only two that I could take on Sunday afternoon because as usual, I was booked for something this weekend (I had to sing at church). No matter, I soldiered on, looking at the Weaving class and the Short Row Shaping class scheduled for Sunday. I was leaning strongly towards the weaving class, when ...

As a new knitter, I was afraid of anything that asked me to stray from the plain ol' knit and purl. I ventured a bit into yarnovers, knit 2 togethers, and slip slip knit because I was dying to knit lace fabrics, but that was as far as I wanted to go. It took more than 2 years for me to get circular needles and attempt to knit in the round. And after diving in head first into a cardigan project for my friend Kathleen with "interesting" results, I've shied away from knitting actual pieces of clothing that require seaming. I was therefore pleasantly surprised when I tried my hand at the Kitchener stitch and realized it wasn't scary AT ALL! I mean, AT ALL. I love it! It's such a great skill for every knitter to have in their back pocket. My latest project is a custom order that required me to basically design an infinity scarf by looking at a photo. I didn't want to sew a seam because I suck at sewing. You can ask anyone I know. However, the beauty of the Ki...

I've been trying, pretty unsuccessfully I might add, to take photos of the Chunky Dean Street Hat (by Nina Machlin Dayton) that I made for my son a few months ago. The little one would just not sit still long enough for me to get a usable shot. I got him in his high chair, and being held by another friend, and the pictures were still not too pretty. Then this morning I remembered that one of my favorite designers, Alana Dakos of Never Not Knitting , seems to take photos of her knitted items lying flat on a white background when she sends out her newsletter. I thought, "My, I could do that with a hat!" So I set off to take photos of my poopoola's hat. I used Shalimar Yarns Missy Bulky (Blueberry colorway) which I picked up from Bobbin's Nest Studio a while ago, and knit the hat on US 10.5 (6.5mm) needles. Now this was before I realized that my gauge when knitting in the round was pretty loose. So the hat came out a little too big, even for the poopoola'...