FO Fridays

Finally, My lace shawl is finish. I stayed until midnight on Wednesday to finish the lace edgings. It's not perfect but I think I did ok. I took a lot of pictures to get the best one since i have bad lighting in the room. Several things I have learned working on this shawl is to always have a lifeline, a lot of stitch markers, i also learned how to double decrease (DD) and more patience. I will definitely make another one of this shawl maybe in a light pink or white , i have some yarn stash that I can use. By the way the shawl is called 198 Yards of Heaven and the pattern is available in Ravelry. Most of my projects pattern was from the website and there are a lot of free patterns, I actually have only use the free patterns on all of my projects.I joined the 12dozen shawl 2012 group on Ravelry so I will be making 1 shawl for the group every month.I already Cast on the project for February Shawl last night  which is the Garden View, we choose 2 projects every month a beginner and advanced.I've chosen Beginner projects for January and February. Well without further a do here are some photos of my finish lace shawl :) Have a great weekend everyone!

198 yards of heaven

Yarn Finds and more!

Happy new year again to all! Days went flying by and its almost half of January, before we know it another year will pass. This is my first blog of the year 2012. I have been knitting and have finish a sock before 12midnight of 2011 so I was actually wearing it on New year. I also finish a matching hat and scarf, I'm thinking about giving it to a previous co worker as a late Christmas present and a slouchy hat for my daughter, I also managed to knit a mitten for my daughter's friend.. I  also finish baby hats and socks for a niece and the most exciting well at least for me was finding this $1.00 yarn from my local dollar store.Im always on the lookout for bargain yarns.  I bought 9 skein/ball color summer rose,cerulean and thistle.They are made by Caron. I know they are acrylic/nylon,but who cares, watch out yarn-snobs!I love the colors and will probably use the summer rose for KAL i joined on Ravelry for the February project. Yes! I'm still working on the January KAL which is 198yds of heaven, I will definitely finish that before end of January(cross fingers). Enjoy your day and here are some pictures :)

My yarn finds!

A slouchy hat for my daughter

My New years day stripey socks.

Pompom Hat and Scarf

It's MONDAY...

Weekend went by fast, didn't get any knitting done,Saturday morning was nice, it was raining, i love the rain then we went to my brother in laws house to celebrate his birthday and watch the Pacquio Vs Marquez fight, it was not as exciting as their previous fights, oh well both of them made so much money. Sunday was laundry day and did some organizing around the house.We are also trying to replace all the faucets in the house, so much work so little time. Housechores gets in the way of my knitting :)



Oh!I have to post this picture of my new styrofoam head, it came in Thursday, my daughter told me it creeps her out:D , she looks great to me.



 
I also made some progress on my lace shawl, It seems I have been knitting this for a long time and yet it still looks small even for a shawlette, did 3 repeats of the lace pattern already. I will make sure to use lace needles next time since the needles I am using is blunt, it makes it harder and slower to work on the yarn, in fact I decided to stop working on it until I get a lace needle. I have ask some knitting friends on g+ what will be the best knitting lace needles, got several suggestions and I will either order online but  will visit my local yarn store (lys) first to see if they sell any. I normally go to Joann's but they do not sell the lace needles in-store.
Well here are the pics Happy knitting and have a fun Monday!

WIP Wednesday

Happy WIP Wednesday! What do I have on my needle right now? Hmm, lets see a Lace shawl, another shawl, a scarf, a cowl and a helmet liner. What did I get myself into. I'm suppose to have only 3, oh well I guess I have to control  myself casting on another project until I finished one. Speaking of finish project I was able to make me a fingerless mitts yesterday, my hand got so called on MOnday and I could not knit wearing gloves, i'm glad i actually finish it or else it will be the 6th project on my needle. Moving on to my Lace Shawl ,so far so good, I'm on the last row of the lace repeat, I'll probably do one more repeat (oh no!!), since it seems really small, of course I'm still keeping my lifeline, especially now that I have gone that far, probably farther if I just work on this one, good luck on that, I tend to work on other projects when I get too tired of the pattern or gets frustrated, that's why there's always an easy project on my needles to switch into just to get me going. Enough of my babbling, here are some of my pictures. Enjoy your day and keep on knitting, i know I will :)

Here is my progress on the lace shawl that I am working on , the cable needle does not want to cooperate hence the wonky edge, Hopefully next picture will be a finished project.

Finished Fingerless mitts :)

This photo shows folded cuffs!

Lifelines in knitting

Wow it's November already, hope everyone had a safe and fun Halloween, I still have sugar rush just by giving treats to little monsters and also big ones in my neighborhood. I manage to have 3 projects in my needles so far, 2 projects are pretty much the easy shawl and the one row scarf, yes I'm still working on my Christmas presents, hopefully ill get them done by the end of this month. I actually challenge myself by knitting my first lace shawl. I use a pattern that I got from Ravelry, it should be a beginner lace shawl/shawlette but I actually frogged it so many times but I am not going to give it up, so far I am on Row 9 ... 63 more to go :D and I do not want to ripped my project back from the beginning if I make another mistake which I am sure will happen so I decided to try the lifeline which is pretty much a scrap yarn threaded through the live stitches on the project, as you continue knitting,the scrap yarn will stay on the stitches and if for some reason you make or I make a mistake and needs to rip back I only have to rip back up to the lifeline (scrap yarn on your stitches), this makes a lot of sense and it would help prevent frustration from starting all over again especially when working on lace pattern. On the picture below is what i have knitted so far and as you can see there is a white scrap yarn for my lifeline, I will keep going and plan to place lifeline maybe every 5 rows just to be safe. I will try to post more pictures of my progress. Happy Knitting!!

To Block or Not To Block!

Until last night I did not know that I can block Acrylic yarn. I have been using mostly acrylic yarn since it is the least expensive and easily available to me so I can do what I love to do, knitting :) hopefully someday I will be able to afford the fancy yarns. I have always been happy with the way my knitted projects look even if it was not block. If you have seen theEar flap hat I made for my daughter which came out a little too small so I was going to make her another one, however my son requested me to make one for him first which ended up too big I don't know why since i even did a gauge swatch so I knitted another one, And of course it turn out to be a little too small and I am not making another one, I heard and read about blocking but most of them were about other fancy yarns and that acrylic cant be block since it is not a natural fiber but I remember someone had mentioned that we can block acrylic so I did a Google search and lo and behold I found Bead Knitter Gallery, she talk about acrylic can be block, this is the link ( http://beadknitter.blogspot.com/2009/03/you-can-block-acrylic.html?showComment=1319658734282#c2787138813915084037). I followed her instructions and started steam blocking the hat , I was so happy with the result , it fits perfectly and it looks great. I have been steam blocking since this morning and I can say I'm a fan of blocking now.

Below is the example of a before and after for the Earflap Hat

     This is the hat before blocking,edges were uneven and you can see some puckering on the hat.

This is the hat after blocking edges are straight, no puckering and I actually like the texture too.

Happy Friday and have a good weekend!

Recycling Old Sweaters

I spend most of my free time today recycling old sweater by turning them into yarn. I saw some old sweaters that my children no longer like, I remember seeing a video about turning old sweater into yarn, so I tried it and its pretty easy, you just have to find all the seams and once I basically deconstructed them by separating the arms, front and back , all I had to do was wind them into ball of yarn, now I just have to find a project for this yarn, in the meantime it will stay in my yarn stash. Happy knitting...