Neighbourhood Watch

Mr. Canada Post brought in a box from Lynda yesterday. Another great shawl.

Meet Chimera (pattern purchased on Ravelry).

This three-quarter square shawl is worked from the centre out, beginning with a garter tab. Two garter tab options are included in the pattern: Turkish cast-on (my favourite) and the standard. One skein of main colour is worked in one stitch pattern, followed by five gradient mini-skeins worked in a second stitch pattern. Hard blocking is recommended as it opens up the lace and makes this pattern shine. 

Instructions are included for optimizing the amount of yarn in your skeins. 

Both charts and written charted instructions are included for your convenience.

The shawl is knit with a full skein of Cheshire Cat from Frabjous Fibers and a Cheshire Cat Mini Skein kit. The colours that we used will be back in stock at the end of August. There are lots of amazing colour combinations for you to start right away.

I had fun playing with the yarn.

86 Buttercake and 104 Land of Wonders

24 Too Much Pepper and 32 Fuchsia to Turquoise Shadow

94 More Slumber and 18 Jub Jub Bird

Karen came in to show off an amazing scarf. It's the ZickZack Scarf (pattern free on Ravelry)

Karen used one ball of Debbie Bliss Rialto Sock (colour 15) and one skein of Mountain Colors Twizzlefoot in Icicle.

The original pattern calls for two different colours of self-striping yarn. I really like Karen's version using one self-striping and one hand dyed fingering weight.

An impressive yet easy to knit scarf in the style of a great Italian designer.  

The chevrons are worked with single increases and decreases – no knots in your fingers trying to knit complicated double decreases and no double increases where the stitches get tight and hard to work with…

Customers comment that I need to stop posting finished projects and ideas here because they don't have enough time to knit them all. I have the same problem when customers bring in show and tell. I really, really want this scarf. I tried to keep it but Karen put it in her purse.

Lynn accomplished quite a bit of knitting while she was away. She's onto the third colour for her Comfort Fade Cardi. We might end up with matching cardigans. I love the colours.

I'm part way through the first sleeve on mine. The sweater is knit in reverse stocking stitch. For the sleeves I am knitting them inside out on a circular needle. This makes the knit side on the inside and the purl side showing. That's much easier than working every round in purl. The only thing you need to watch when doing this is picking up for the underarms. I'll take some pictures when I do my second sleeve.

This is one of Lucy's favourite spots at our house. From here she can look out the front windows and keep an eye on the neighbourhood.