Appliques

Crocheted appliques are still holding my interest.  We were away to Oregon for about a week, and when we came back, I started right back in with the colored crochet threads.  Today there are two finished sets in addition to the Mexican inspired colors of the last one.  One set is all white for the neckline of a white top, and the other is green and pink tones.

This is like Irish Crochet without the background. 

I just finished this one today.  The central motif is from a Russian magazine, and I made up the rest.

Now all I have to do is actually sew them onto something.

Something Different

It's been on my mind lately to make a sweater that has Mexican peasant blouse embroidery on it.  Not wanting to spend months embroidering, the idea for crocheting the motifs instead of embroidering them seemed like a good one, faster and easier.  While shopping for crochet threads, I noticed that there are many more colors available.  Since Irish crochet is so popular in Eastern Europe, there are many available patterns for crocheted flowers and leaves and there are even YouTube videos to show how they are created.

After trying a few different patterns, I now have a small binder full of patterns and a box full of finished motifs:

Here's a preliminary placement idea:

Today I drafted out a pattern for a yoke-front pullover 3/4-sleeve tunic sweater with crocheted edgings.  This is all part of the plan to have pretty sweaters to wear around the house in cold weather instead of not-very-flattering sweatshirts.

Despite being sidetracked by all this crocheting, the pale plum sweater had been blocked and is read to be sewn together.

A Royal Blue Knit That Worked

Years ago I knitted a Royal Blue cardigan for myself and it just went wrong somewhere.  It looked horrible on me but OK on my daughter so I gave it away.  This week I tried making another Royal Blue cardigan and it went wrong too.  However, this time I was determined not to let the cardigan end up badly.

I made a mistake following my own directions (forgot to read one paragraph about adding extra rows above the sleeve band because the garter-eyelet band was narrower than my usual 2" ribbing) and the sleeves ended up too short for the 3/4-length I wanted.  This made the whole sweater look square and clunky.  I stewed about it for a day or so, then cut the bands off the sleeves, added length by knitting another inch, then grafted the bands back on.  I crocheted a wide border onto the body of the cardigan and a narrower band onto the sleeves and neckline.  Then I tried it on and hooray, it looked fine.

This a a raglan cardigan with waist shaping at the sides.

Here's a closeup of the bottom edging.  I wasn't sure how crochet would look tacked onto the garter border, but it looks quite nice.

The sleeve crochet border is a band of picots from the wider edging pattern. In this photo you can plainly see where I added the length, but it isn't noticeable in real life.

I was wondering if I would have to fudge the spacing to make the border come out even in the center front, but it just worked out by itself.

Now I have a Royal Blue cardigan that I like and that fits correctly, and it should get lots of wear.

Macaw Sweater Finished

Sewed on the buttons and finished up this sweater yesterday.  The yarn is Red Heart Super Saver in the color Macaw.  The sweater took 5 236-yd skeins with a little left over.  As usual, this yarn works very well in the knitting machine (LK 150) with the bands knit by hand.

The sweater has 3/4-length sleeves and waist shaping on the sides.  The bands are 1x1 rib and the buttonhole band is stabilized on the edge with backwards crochet.

Next in line is the royal blue jacket which is a pattern I have made three times before.  I've made a pink one, a navy one, and a green one.  It's a nice change to do garter borders and they give the cardigan a more boxy, jacket look. Several have a garter/eyelet border which I really like.  Here's the green one:

There are plans to make a coral one of these too and the borders are already knitted for that one.

On A Roll

After sewing and sewing for a long time, I finally went to the knitting machine and got it ready to get back to business.  In two weeks I knitted up 4 sweaters whose ribbings have been waiting in the knitting basket for, in some cases, years.  Here's the holder full of the sweater parts:

This session every sweater I knit is a raglan.  In the holder are a pale plum empire cardigan, a royal blue eyelet/garter bordered cardigan, and a variegated plain cardigan.  All of these sweaters have 3/4-length sleeves and all the patterns were self drafted.

I have been sewing together the latest knit which is all finished except for sewing on the buttons.

 I like variegated yarns and this one was one of the prettiest I have ever seen.  It's been a long time since I put together a sweater so I had to remember all my little tricks and methods.  This time I made sure to write down everything I did, like how many rows are in the bands and the spacing of stitches to pick up the bands, etc., so I won't have to reinvent the wheel next time.

There are at least 7 more sets of ribbings ready to be knit into sweaters, so I have lots of pleasant knitting ahead of me.  In addition, lots of ideas for pullovers and tunics are percolating so I may be drafting up new patterns soon.

Lavender Lace

My daughter gave me this knitting pattern book by Hitomi Shida for Christmas and I am finally trying out one of the patterns (#50).  This will be a cardigan with an empire waistline with lace on the lower part and stockinette on rest.  I'm going to knit the lace pattern portion by hand and hang the pieces on the knitting machine for the stockinette portion.  I don't usually hand knit from charts so this is going pretty slowly.  I imagine it will speed up as I get used to reading the large chart and quit losing my place and knitting the wrong row.

Other projects in the works are the oblong mat for the coffee table (really an old handmade trunk with a flat top that my husband's great-grandparents used when they immigrated to this country), another pair of socks, and new for me, crocheting an edging on a fleece afghan that my husband requested. I'll have to get one of those rotary cutter blades that cut slits around the edge to crochet into.  The spouse wants an afghan that is almost 3 yards long so he can nap on the couch in supreme comfort. 

Socks

Didn't feel like knitting for a long time because I was sewing and pattern drafting for months and months.  I made myself 5 shirts and several vests over the summer, then went on a long car trip, then it was the holidays, and now I'm back to knitting socks.

These socks were for my eldest daughter.  The yarn is Sock Ease, color 204 (Lemon Drop) and they are knitted on Size 1 needles.

I've also been crocheting a rectangular mat for the old trunk that serves as another side table to the couch.  It matches the round mat, but I got really tired of crocheting when I was about 2/3 of the way done so it is now languishing in the same bag the round mat languished in before it was finished.  Quite a few of my projects have an obligatory languish session.