Faith CAL, part 5

December 17, 2022December 18, 2022 / Christine Pennylegion / 1 Comment

Previously: part 4, part 3, part 2, part 1

This project has hit a major milestone: now measuring 39 inches across, it’s gotten big enough that I need to turn it corner-on for pictures! Here’s where we left off at the end of part 4, all the way back before Hallowe’en:

And here it is now (with better lighting, to boot):

Even though there were not that many rows in part 5, this section took a while since I stopped several times to complete more urgent projects. But after putting in a solid 2.5 hours yesterday (with apologies to my right wrist) I was happy to come to the end of this section. Not that it was particularly vexing; although I’d heard from others that this was their least favourite part of the CAL, I didn’t find it as finnicky as some others. Mostly I was just glad because finishing a project — or in this case, a discrete part of a project — is very satisfying to me.

Along with the fairly straightforward blue rows, this section features some interesting netting that reminds me sometimes of waves and sometimes of a monster mouth. All it comes down to is a series of stitches that move from shortest -> tallest -> shortest (or vice versa) sitting on top of each other. The varying heights balance out in the end, so that even though there is all that topsy-turviness on the inside, the final row of navy blue is level. (It still looks wavy in these pictures, but as soon as I add the next row it will be pulled quite straight.)

All told, this was a pretty enjoyable section. I needed to make some adjustments here and there because I’d rather fudge after than count before, but there were no major headaches. And since the blanket is now at that weird size where it’s too big for a lap blanket but too small for anything else… I guess I’d better keep going, eh?

In which I do not knit a hat

December 3, 2022December 3, 2022 / Christine Pennylegion

This week I started thinking about winter hats. It’s getting nippy where we live — not cold enough for me to bring out my heavy coat yet, but cold enough that most mornings I get a block or two into our walk to school and think “hmm, maybe I should have put a hat on.” Last year or the year before I made myself a toque from some alpaca yarn, and while it generally fulfills the brief I don’t love it. The winter hat I love the most is actually my mother’s; she left it at my house after a Christmas visit one year, and I wore it for the next winter or two before finally resigning myself to giving it back. That hat is a four-hour drive away now and, yes, technically somebody else’s property. I miss it.

So then I thought, well, maybe I could just knit a hat like it. I’ve got some lovely yarn left over from my last baby blanket; I’ve got needles in the correct size; if I just knit a panel and then sew it up construction will be easy; what could go wrong? So I found my needles and got out my yarn, watched a video to remind myself how to do the long-tail cast-on, and began.

Those of you who have been reading for a while may have questions at this point. “But Christine,” you may ask, “I thought you hated knitting! Didn’t you have a whole post about how much you dislike it? Didn’t you write it less than a year ago?”

Well, yes. All of that is true. All I can say is that the memory of my knitting pain had faded and I was focused on the hat-to-be — perhaps in the same way that a woman will forget the pain of labour in her eagerness to have another child. And much like a woman in labour, there came a point where realization set in, as my text messages with my super-knitter friend Rebecca attest:

So that went well.

Anyway, here is my new hat. Which I crocheted.

Stay tuned for the next time I forget I hate knitting, ETA 8-12 months from now.

Faith CAL, part 2

September 13, 2022 / Christine Pennylegion / 5 Comments

Previously: part 1

In the second part of this crochet-along afghan pattern, we’ve gone from this:

To this!

This section of the pattern involved first squaring-off the centre motif — I wanted to call it a circle, but I guess it’s more of a blobby octagon? Anyway, it magically transforms to a square through using stitches with different heights across each side: triples, then doubles, then half-doubles, then singles, and then reverse it all on the way to the next corner.

After the square came the construction of this funky mesh, which uses both bead and puff stitches for lots of texture. I messed up on my second row of bead stitches; somehow they crossed in my mind with popcorn stitches and I added a slip stitch / chain when finishing each one off. This left me with a lot of extra stitches to account for when I started the next row! Fortunately I noticed before I got too far along, and was able to fudge some adjustments instead of having to frog it. Ordinarily I might have gone back and redone it correctly, but bead stitches are so terribly tedious…

I do have some rippling as a result, but it’s not dire, and I think once I go on to part 3 things will start to even out again. And as this is still just a small centre portion of what will be a much larger blanket… well, nobody’s going to notice once it’s actually in use!

Even the back has its own sort of prettiness, now that I finally bit the bullet and sewed in all of my ends. Note to future self: sew your ends after every section from now on.

Onward and upward!

Faith CAL, part 1

August 30, 2022 / Christine Pennylegion / 3 Comments

Here’s what’s been occupying my crocheting time for the past week or so:

This is the beginning portion of what will be a large afghan when finished — somewhere between double-and queen-sized if my math is correct. It’s the “Faith” crochet-a-long (CAL) pattern from designer Helen Shrimpton, who creates amazingly intricate and beautiful patterns. The section pictured above is part 1 (of 8), complete to row 21 (of 96), and is just about 11″ across.

It’s hard to express how much I’m enjoying this pattern. Every row is different, which is basically like handing my brain a big bag of candy. And it’s really highlighting the architectural potential of crochet for me — look at all that squishy three-dimensionality! The construction is super clever. It’s also been an opportunity to learn some new stitches as well as practice a few that I haven’t used much.

I’m using the suggested yarn for this CAL, which is Stylecraft Special DK (truly a workhorse yarn), but I’ve chosen my own colours instead of following one of Helen’s combinations. The seven I’ve picked are Royal, Aster, Cloud Blue, Cypress, Mustard, White, and Silver, and they’ll carry on through the whole blanket. I’m very excited to see how the whole thing will come out.

Two small blankets

August 29, 2022August 29, 2022 / Christine Pennylegion / 1 Comment

Finally I can blog about these! Both blankets were made as gifts, and both were much delayed in their gifting for various reasons, so I’ve had to sit on them for a while. But here they are!

This first was for my Grandmother, in a German Shells “virus” pattern. It’s sized so that she can use it as-is on her lap, or fold it in half to get a triangular shawl for over her shoulders. I used just about two full skeins of Lion Brand’s Shawl in a Ball Metallic yarn, in the colourway “Namaste Neutral” — or as I tend to think of this palette, in warm coffee-shop colours. The pictures don’t show it very well, but there’s a thin gold metallic thread that runs throughout, which give it a very pleasing sparkle. Using a G (4.25mm) hook kept the shell pattern nice and airy, and it has a beautiful drape.

I finished this in July and was supposed to deliver it by hand, as we were planning to visit my Grandmother on the last leg of a short road trip. On the day we were supposed to head over there, Anselm and Perpetua both had sore throats, and so we had to cancel our visit as they wouldn’t be able to pass the covid-19 screening of the facility where she lives. It was a super bummer… but as it turns out, her facility ended up going into outbreak status & a lock-down later that morning! So at least we found out we couldn’t go in before driving all that way to either be turned away at the door, or be let in and then get exposed. (Grandma is fine, by the way!) So I didn’t give her the blanket in July as planned; it came home, got unpacked, and then sat on my shelf for a month until I finally remembered to mail it.

The second blanket is for someone way on the other end of the age spectrum: my cousin’s daughter, who is about four months old now.

This is yet another iteration of my trusty twelve-point star blanket, which I’ve made… at least six times now? Something like that. Mostly I’ve done it with self-striping yarn, so using a couple of different yarns and manually changing the colours was a fun little twist for me.

This was a stashbuster project, made with Stylecraft Special DK leftovers from my Eastern Jewels blanket in the colours Sage, Duck Egg, Violet, and Buttermilk. (I forget what hook I used; probably an H.) That worked out really well until I ran out of Sage, which meant I needed to order another skein and wait for it to come, which meant I started another project in the meantime, which meant further delays… well, you get the picture. But at last I had all of my supplies at hand, refocused, finished it off, and got it in the mail.

I finished the blanket with a row of crab stitch, a new one for me. Crab stitch is made with a basic single crochet stitch, everything the same except that instead of moving across the fabric from right to left, which is the regular direction for crochet stitching, you go from left to right. It wraps around the edge and makes a beautiful little border. It doesn’t stand out super well in the photo above because it’s the same colour as my final row, but here is a good example of a crab stitch edging on someone else’s work. I have to say, it felt realllllly odd to be working backwards like that. But I love the effect, and I’ll definitely be tucking this stitch away in my toolbox.

And so there you have them. Two smallish projects, finally in or on their way to their new homes. Tomorrow I’ll show you what I’m working on now, which at the moment is also small, but won’t stay that way for for long!

Friendship shawl

June 21, 2022July 17, 2022 / Christine Pennylegion

Today I had the immense pleasure of a day-long visit with a dear friend I hadn’t seen in three years, and to celebrate I made her this shawl! I only picked up the yarn on Thursday, so it was a real race to the finish — I worked on it for 1-3 hours every night, and ended up doing the last three rows in front of her while we chatted. It got done just in the nick of time. My right thumb is feeling cranky and will definitely need a rest, but that’s ok. I’m just glad I managed to pull it off.

The yarn is Lion Brand Shawl in a Ball Metallic, in the colourway “Prism”. It’s got beautiful long transitions between sort of peacock-y colours, and a strand of blue metallic thread carried through the whole thing. Pictures don’t show how nicely it sparkles! The yarn is pretty soft to work with despite the metallic element, and it doesn’t fuzz and fray as much as regular SiaB; I had some of the non-metallic version a few years back and it was a nightmare to work with and impossible to frog. Whether this is a difference between the two related product lines or just a general improvement, I’m not sure.

This is a “virus” pattern — so-called because it expands in every row, and you just let it grow until it’s the right size. This particular one is often just called virus, although technically I think it’s German shells. It’s a simple four-row repeating pattern, and once I reminded myself how to get started it was pleasantly mindless. (I’ve done the same pattern before for another shawl and a baby blanket.) For this I used a size H hook, which gave me a lot of drape.