Yep, Fall Is Here!

This is yesterday's forecast for the rest of Sunday and then what today was suppose to look like.  Yep, the app was right.  Fall is here with Fall temps, which means I should have been knitting on some sweaters before now.

But, the bright side is that I have been working on some gifts for Christmas and this cowl is almost done.  It just needs its 80 stitches in the round grafted together and then I can call it DONE.

Now, that the knitting on the cowl is done, I can concentrate on my Super Simple Summer Sweater for Joji's Fall Knit Along. I am knitting all one color out of Briar Rose Fiberarts Fourth of July base. This yarn is so super soft, softer than I recalled when I knit a cowl out of it last year for my swatch!

 For now, it is just knitting around to the rib. I am not doing any shaping as I usually would do, simply because I want a nice throw on sweater for the Fall and into Winter.  If I love it, I have two yarns that I bought earlier this year to knit another one come Spring 2021.

Episode 47 - Summer KALs Wrap Up

 I did a short episode yesterday and posted to You Tube to talk about my Together Apart Shawl AND to announce the winners in both the Together Apart and Summer of Shawls KALs.

Check it out HERE to see if you won and then send pm me your address on Ravelry so I can get your winnings out in the mail later this week!!

Thank you everyone who participated and tuned in!  🧶😁

Woo Hoo! It's The First Day of Fall

You can tell it is Fall in our neighborhood by the colors --

And at night, the sun goes down much earlier than it has been, and the moon comes out.

But, there is still time to sit on the front porch and enjoy the cooler night temps

And knit!

 

Officially The End of Summer

 The calendar is telling us that  Summer ends today.  

If you have been participating in either of the two KALs I have been hosting this Summer, in the pjknits Ravelry group, Together Apart or Summer of Shawls, you have until midnight tonight to post your finished pictures to be eligible to participate.

I have finished my Together Apart and have it here to share with you as we close out a Summer.

It's a long shawl, I can say that!

I used Cascade Sock for the main color, and it is not the softest yarn, but it was in my stash and I am all about using stash these days.

The contrast was Sun Valley Fibers MCN, gifted from my friend Debbie.

I shared my teal with both Debbie and Anita for their Together Apart Shawls by Melanie Berg.

I had to cut just one row short on the final lace pattern, so more than 800 yards came out of the stash for this one.

It was a pretty decent knit for the Summer of 2020.

Now let's look forward to Fall tomorrow and some sweater knitting!

Episode 46 - Can I Talk Faster

The latest episode of pjknits is up on You Tube.

Find it here

Finally Finished Friday

 It's chilly today in Central Illinois, and I have the last of my Summer Sweaters finished, blocked and I'm hoping to get a wearing out of it before I pack it away.

The final installment for Summer 2020 is the short sleeve version of Ranunculus.  I lengthened mine, added a rib, sleeves plus did some modifications on the body to have a bit more ease as I went towards the hip.

The yarn is from Cake Wool in the Captain Phil color way (of the Deadliest Catch, Captain Phil).  It was my first time using a slub yarn. 

 I had been a bit on the fence with it, because of a couple of spots around the neck cast on that wormed, but I am thinking now it was operator error and not a fault of the yarn.

After wearing it a bit today, I am definitely putting both the slub and the fingering weight yarn back on my future knitting list.  It felt yummy to wear it and I think maybe a long sleeve sweater might be in my future.

Shop Your Local Yarn Shop!

 

I'm shopping 🛍 online today at my local yarn shop, The Fiber Universe in Peoria, Illinois!

Sleuthing Out Your Next Sweater Knit

How to sleuth out your next sweater knit?  

Look in your closet, are there sweaters in there and if so:

• What do I like about them?

• Why do they fit me so well?

• Measure a sweater or a sweatshirt that fits you. I did this years ago, with a red sweatshirt. Look at the schematics of the sweater you are thinking about knitting.  Compare the measurements on your favorite sweater or sweatshirt, and use those  measurements into the knitting of your new sweater.

Get accurate measurements.  Have a good friend measure you.  Keep in mind, these are your true measurements, not your wannabe measurements!

Look at ready-to-wear and  if you feel like you can, go out and shop, or do what I do, use those catalogs you get in the mail:

• Use them as inspiration for your sweaters, not only for the styles, but colors that can be used together in your next knit.  

I do this all the time, cutting out pictures, saving posts in Instagram to folders showing styles and colors.  I have a binder that I keep them in.  I particularly like to use them, for inspiration of styling them!

If you are able to, how about trying them on.  Are they a fit for you?

Take your handy dandy measuring tape out and measure the garment.  Use the measurements in your new knit.

With the cooler temps this week in Central Illinois, I am getting excited about knitting Fall sweaters, are you?

Trends and Direction in Our/My Knitting

 

“Don’t be into trends.  Don’t make fashion own you, but you decide what you are, what you want to express by the way you dress and the way you live” – Gianni Versace

I have been doing a bit of thinking about my knitting and the path that I have been taking lately when choosing patterns and yarn.

In the first half of 2020, so many of the sweaters that I knit and wanted to knit were based on what was hot on Ravelry, I was a sheep, part of the herd and not the shepherd.  It wasn’t until just recently,  my friend, Denise, posted on Instagram, her thoughts and a question, of what most appeals to us in a sweater pattern?  Something trendy or sweater styles that can’t be dated to a specific timeframe?  It was funny, not as in a haha moment, but as in a that was exactly just what I was thinking.  After coming off about 6 months of knitting trendy  and not paying attention to what sweaters were really me, my knitting thoughts had been having the same conversation with me. Is this really my style? Why did I knit that?

 As we turned the calendar into September, I started thinking about where I wanted my knitting to go as I looked forward to Fall starting unofficially, even though there were still three weeks left of Summer.   I was still knitting on two sweaters that I thought I could finish and  wear well into October and I was poopooing that we still had a lot of Summer left! 

Labor Day weekend came, and I had a bit of a conversation with myself about these Summer sweaters.  Yes, I could spend my time knitting on them, get maybe a wear or, at tops two wears out of them, but with Fall on the horizon, but did I really want to be wearing these bright colors into Fall? Or was I over them?  The answer was kind of sort of.  

I packed up Sugar Maple in the bright pinks, along with the pattern and notes as to where I stopped, stowed it away in the Yarn Room, with a mental note to myself to pull it out next February, you know when we are tired of Winter and start looking forward to Spring.

I continued to knit on my Ranunculous since it just need a weekend's worth of knitting left on it.  This was my second Ranunculous, and I loved my first one, but this was a short sleeve version with a slub yarn.  I had never knit with a slub yarn and I thought it would be fun.  But, what I should have asked myself before going down the rabbit hole, is the shorter version really my style?  At this writing, it is not finished and blocked yet,  so stay tuned for Finally Finished Friday.  I am still on the fence...

With all of this thinking about trends and what direction my knitting should go in, I have come up with several questions to start asking myself before I jump off onto knitting something new.  

  Can I wear it?  Should I wear it?  Do I really want to wear it? Or am I just trying to be one of the cool knitters?  

I need to be a smarter knitter, how about you?  Your thoughts?

 

 

 

 

 

Normally

I would have been dancin my way home from work last night, looking forward to a three day weekend, anticipating enjoying it, and planning the next steps in my knitting.

Well, most of that is still the same, the difference is I'm not working, but I am still dancin.  It's a long weekend, and for most the official end to Summer.  Our Summer of Shawls is still going on, but to be perfectly honest, shawls really for me are a year round option.  Just because, come Tuesday, that we shouldn't be wearing white (is that still a thing?), I will still be knitting on some shawls, and I have some Fall options that I want to knit.  I'll share those next week.

This morning, I did a bit of cleanup on three  Summer WIPs, Sugar Maple, the Shadow Shawl and Margate.  I thought about how much of each them still needed to be done and came to the realization that there was no way they would be finished to wear more than once before we transition into real Fall.  So, I packed them each up with a posty note with where I was on the pattern, knit one row on each onto a Knit Picks needle so I would have my Chiagoos back, and made a note on a pad as to where they would be put for next year knitting.  Come Marchish, it is my intention to bring them back out and really get to knitting on them so they are ready for wearing next year.  You know kind of like retail stores, where the Christmas ornaments come out in July.  That is where I would like to be with my knitting for the future, ready for the season when it comes rather than knitting as the season slips away.

I would like that to be what I do in the future, normally.

I hope you are having a great Labor Day weekend and thinking about your next steps in knitting.