Dinosaur Colorwork Sweater-Part 2

 Earlier in the week I shared the first bits of my dinosaur colorwork sweater.  This is the most ambitious knitting project I've ever done.  The only other one that comes close was my cabled lace COVID shawl.  But I do feel like I've gotten better at stranded colorwork over the course of the sweater!

Blue and Spooky like to "help" with the knitting when I sit down on the couch.  Sadly their help pretty much prevents any knitting progress, so I either have to put away the kintting and snuggle the pups or go find a different chair.

By the time I was finished with the stegosauruses and triceratops I showed earlier in the week, the sweater was almot but not quite the right length.  But I was 100% in love with the T-rex skulls (another three color pattern) and possibly my favorite of the bunch was the meteors flying to the earth with the volcanos.  Sorry dinosaurs.

I was feeling pretty done with colorwork by the time I got to the sleeves, so they are mostly plain/striped but I did feel like I wanted to include one row of these little dinos hatching out of green eggs.  Unfortunately, the sleeve part of the pattern is the only part I really don't like the fit of.  It was way too big around and didn't decrease enough for my taste.  I tried boiling just the sleeves to make them shrink and it might have helped a little but not that much.

Here it is after I finied the knitting with the stitches picked up for the steek, and the bottom pic after actually doing the steek.  Pretty scary but it worked fine.  I enclosed the two sides of the steek by knittin a garder edge on the front and back side and enclosing the steek edges inside (third picture).  That matched up aesthetically with what I did on the collar and bottom/cuff edges and made a nice finish inside too.

Here it is all blocked out.  I love it so much except the dumb wide sleeves.

And here I am wearing it.  You can tell it's quite long, but I really wanted to get my patterns in.  And it really does fit nice across the bust and shoulders.  It has one button at the top with a crocheted loop closure to help it stay up. 

There are a few pretty loose floats inside but all in all for a first big colorwork project I think it turned out good!  I love the rainbow and blue and dark purple, but it really isn't the best to see all the intricate colorwork.  I think there's a reason fair isle sweaters tend to be super high contrast.  Oh well!  Future projects! Even in fingering weight yarn it's quite dense and warm so after having a friend take this pictures, it got folded away until the weather cools off considerably.

Dinosaur Colorwork Sweater-Part 1

 

At last year's 4 Common Corners retreat (October 2024) several of us who are also knitters decided to do a sweater knit along.  We used the great book "The Knitters Handy Guide to Top Down Sweaters" and most of us used the wonderful doodle design packs from Pacific Knit Co..  I of course got the dinosaur patterns, because, duh.  Anyway, I decided to do a cardigan since that's more wearable where I live (where it is seldom cold enough to wear a pullover sweater all day, and I decided to use stash yarn.  The yarn below is what I pulled from my stash.  The two skeins of hand-dyed rainbow are some I bought at the Houston quilt show a few years ago.  It came with a shawl pattern I liked but never made.  The three dark blue tweedy balls I bought at the SAQA conference in Toronto while on a knitting excursion with my friend Helena, only to arrive home and find those other balls of tweedy blue in the stash of yarn I inherited from Trish.  I thought that might be enough, and in the end it was so much more than enough that I'm currently knitting a shawl with what's leftover from the sweater.

Because it was going to be stranded colorwork (pretty new to me) and because none of the sweater's I've ever knit before fit properly, I decided to swatch.  I think it was a good choice, since the sweater actually fits reasonably well.  In the picture below, I've knit a rainbow dinosaur into the blue background (the dinosaur's head is orange and his body and legs are mostly rainbow).  

The swatch came out fine, but very blendy, which isn't great for colorwork but I steamed ahead anyway.

This was some little dino footprints I knitted along the collar.

And in the tops section I had dinosaur footprints, small stegasaurus, and dinosaur bones in rainbow on a blue background.  Then I was worried it was hard to see, so I switched to small brontosaurses and large brontasauruses in blue on a rainbow background.

I did a round of triceratops in blue on the dark purple background, and didn't want to carry three different threads, so I tried out doing some duplicate stitch for the horn in pink (next pic) and dark green (following pic), but I didn't really like either, so I picked it out and decided to just go with the plain blue on dark blue (bottom pic).  I think it looks ok.  Again blendy, but my duplicate stitch wasn't sitting right or helping.

And of course here you can see that when I did the big stegasauruses (purple and blue and green), I did manage to figure out how to hold three yarns.  It was a giant mess, but I did it.

Here's a weird bathroom selfie mid knit-  I think it fit pretty well!   Come back later in the week to see the finished sweater.

Wheel of the Year Embroidery, Finished!

 For many many years I've been a devoted reader of Carina's Craft Blog, and over the years I've purchased and embroidered several of her patterns, several of which you can see here. At the end of 2021 (yes this has been a long-term WIP) she announced a pattern based on the Celtic wheel of the year.  It features 8 small embroideries for Winter Solstice, Imbolc, Spring Equinox, Beltane, Summer Solstice, Lughnasadh, the Autumn Equinox, and Samhain. 

The patterns were initially released over the course of the year (you can still buy the whole pattern in her shop) and were designed to be stitched in wreath.  I thought they were fantastic and signed up for the stitch along.  I kept up with the embroideries, but since I decided to do them on different rainbow fabric after finishing them, I had 8 separate embroideries and no time to assemble them.  

Over the last several years I've worked on it between projects whenever I had time and finally got to the point where I felt like the hand embroidery was done and it was time to finally finish it up.  I didn't want such fun handwork stuck in a drawer.  

I've shared a couple of snapshots over the years but finally I'm sharing the whole project.  

I transferred the patterns to the fabric using a crayola washable marker, except on the really dark fabric when I used a white pencil.  I like those markers for pattern marking and I have good luck getting them to wash out.

This was Imbolc in progress.  

And here's the winter solstice in progress.  You can see the white pencil in the background.

After finishing the embroideries, I had to applique them down to something and I didn't want to turn the edges, so I stitched them to a backing fabric and turned them inside out.  The round edges didn't turn out very round, but as I was going to applique the curcles down using decorative stitches, I managed to hide most of it.

This one is Samhain after turning it.  You can see the uneven edges.  On the other hand this is my very favorite of the designs.  I love the thistles so much as well as the pinecones and the pumpkin.  Just so delightful.  

I appliqued them down in a wreath to this blue piece of damask fabric I had in my stash, then did a bunch more hand embroidery around the circles and in the corners.  To finish it up I quilted it to batting and backing and then mounted it on stretcher bars.  I decided to turn it into a clock for my studio.

Here you can see on the outer edges I added some little shapes filled with Bottensom embroidery, another technique I learned from Carina's blog.

I love the way this turned out, so bright and colorful and so much fun to stitch.  I also got the 2023 wheel of the year pattern which I haven't even started on, but alas, I have several other partially finished embroidery projects to work on in between my quilting and knitting, so progress on this is slow.  It just makes me happy to walk into my studio and see it hanging on my bright yellow wall.  

2025 SAQA Benefit Auction Quilts

 The SAQA Benefit Auction is here again.  It's always one of the most fun fundraising events of the year and this year is no exception.  The auction runs from September 12-October 5 and you can find more information and browse the almost 400 fantastic pieces availabe by navigating to the SAQA website here: https://www.saqa.com/auction

This year I decided to do another one of my fancy initials and was inspired by all the wonderful wildlife mom and I saw on our trip to Florida for the annual SAQA conference.  I chose A is for Anhinga, a wonderful type of bird I'd never seen until visiting the Everglades.  They were just gorgeous.  Dark but patterned, large and with wonderful curvy necks.

I did some couched yarn on the letter too- that's always a fun way to add texture.

While making the A is for Anhinga for the SAQA Auction, I also decided to make two more of these quilts for wonderful SAQA staffers Martha Sielman and Jennifer Solon.  They do so much for SAQA and I've really enjoyed interacting with them on the board the last five and a half years.  So here's a J for Jennifer

And an M for Martha.  Martha is a big bird person so hers features an M is for Mockingbird.

Definitely check out the SAQA benefit auction, it really is a super way to get a great small art quilt and support a fantastic organization.

New Knit Socks (et al.)

 Some more crafty updates today!  Earlier this year my senior graduate student graduated and she got a taxidermied mouse as a graduation present.  She asked me to make it a lab coat and a knitted shawl.  The lab coat was ok, but I decided to make the shawl crocheted intead of knitted.  No pattern, but I think it came out ok.  Sadly I don't have any pictures of the mouse wearing these items.  Science crafty mice for the win!

Also earler this summer, while at a wonderful cerebrovascular biology conference, I knitted a pair of socks.  I the same general approach I always do but I screwed up the heels twice.  And after un-knitting once, I gave up after the second time.  Somehow the socks are the right length but the heels are gigantic.  The were frankensocks (to use up scrap yarn) and I love all the colors, but I just wish the heels weren't so big.  I guess if I ever have lower extremity edema they'll be great.  Of course I'm wearing them anyway!  I saw a book called "How to knit socks that fit" and I think I need to get it!

Summer Baking

 

I haven't had time to keep up with weekly blogging I like posts, but I wanted to drop in and share some of the things I might normally share in those posts.  This includes things I've been baking and cooking during the last few months, especially with fruit and veggies from the gardens.  I had a really good crabapple crop this year, but didn't have time to deal with all the ones from the tree.  I harvested about half the tree, but then unfortunately a bunch of them fermented while waiting for me to get around to processing them.  It's ok, I still have lots left from 2023. 

In any case, I did make 3 dozen jars of jelly this year along with some fruit leather.  Since I had so many jalapeños in the garden I added a bunch of them to the jelly this year for the first time.  The jelly isn't spicy, it just has a delightful complementary pepper flavor to it.  I think it turned out really tasty!

I had a good blackberry crop in the garden this year as well.  I only have a couple of plants, and of course I had to pick them as soon as they got ripe, so during blackberry season I went out every day and picked.  Usually I got a handful each day and I just put them mostly straight in the freezer.  There were enough for a couple of cobblers by the end of the harvest and they are so good.  

And of course with so many jalapeños there have been several batches of poppers.  They're always a hit,  the danger is they're not really particularly healthy.  But super fun for a game night or ballgame.

And not from the garden, but my friend Brett brought me back a cookbook with Italian baked goods, and I tried this chocolate espresso torte recipe.  It was very delicious and rich, definitely a fun thing to add to the  baked goods rotation.

Squash bugs ate all the squash and pumpkins in the garden, so none of that.  The pepper plants, tomato plants, and green beans are still producing though, so more of that should be coming for summer harvest.  And my flowers are growing ok too.  Right now we're in the really hot time, hopefully I can get the flowers through to september and then they should do better.