A knitting celebration

A few weeks ago at Knit Knite Rosane showed us the Dreambird Shawl Pattern.  I instantly fell in love with it. It has short rows and colors, what's not to love?  Others liked it but no one else was enamored of it but me and Rosane.  We decided to spin yarn for it so it would be totally unique.

I kept vascillating from one colorway to another without actually settling on any one.  Just couldn't make up my mind.  The pattern calls for some mohair blend for the main part, maybe in a tonal, with color in the feathers of the bird.  Jim volunteered to spin some kid mohair for the project.  ummmmm  so soft.
               Meanwhile I still hadn't made up my mind.

Then a couple weeks ago five of us cleaned out Ruth's stash. It took over 3 hours of sorting, sorting, bagging, identifying, sorting, reminiscing and pricing.  We wound up with 7 large tubs of fiber, spun fiber, started projects, unstarted projects, yarn and accoutrements.

The next weekend we displayed it all at the Black Sheep Garage Sale.  We sold quite a bit, reducing the stash by about 2 tubs.  Of course we also had to have some for ourselves, adding to the very nice total going to Hospice.

I came away with some heavily angelina-ed glitzy batts not made by me, some silk, not dyed by me and other neat items, some actually dyed by me.  I just had to start spinning the batts and fell in love with the rich intense coloring.  AHA!  So that's what I've decided to use for my Dreambird.  Such a fun spin.

I've got about half the batt done so am now spinning the silk as there was way less of that.  The yarn on the left was spindle spun by Ruth.  Might need to ply in some purple silk eventually but think it'll look just fine in the feathering.

Becki took home some tussah silk but I've managed to talk her into letting me have it to ply with the kid mohair.

Does this pic look upside down to you?

Still haven't figured out what color to dye the silk/kid but it'll come.

Knitted Flower

The snow is gone from our yard and the woods.  The pond actually has some water showing and one or two brave daffodils have come up about an inch. Oh and some wood ducks are swimming in a vernal pond, poor dears.  I am declaring this winter over (ducking quickly). Mind you it's not really spring either, maybe mud season, but hey…..

So in honor of this day I worked all morning on a knitted flower.  Many of us have seen some beautiful crocheted flowers and Abigail, who is a crocheting goddess, assures me they aren't hard.  But…….

Plus I'm so addicted to Icords right now that I wanted to make one out of them.

Spring Flower   

With about 20 yds of scrap contrasting or project yarn and appropriate dpns:

We'll make two - 2 stitch tubular traditional Icords of 15" & 13”each.

I used DK for the multi and worsted yarn for the pink layer but any yarn will do.

Cast-on 2 sts,

Move/slide stitches to right end of dpn.

The yarn will be on the left, bring it around to the right and knit those two sts. 

Repeat, tugging on the tail after each iteration and making sure the first stitch is relatively tight.

After 15 inches, (Put on some music and the time will fly.)  tie off leaving an 8" tail and make another of 13-14".

Thread a tail into an embroidery needle. Fold the tube back and forth so you have a relatively equal 5 or 6 petal looking object.

Thread the needle through the center folds to hold the petals on each flower in place. 

Do the same with the second tube.

   

Put the smaller flower layer on top of the larger one.

Thread the two together.  Add a nice bead for a center.

and attach it at will.