So Close...

But...so far!


I only had a few more stitches to go on this shawl to complete the final row but there's just not enough yarn to make it to the end. I had to rip out the row and now I have yet another tiny ball of leftover yarn.


I know...I said I was going to work on finishing my vest and lacey socks. I haven't forgotten. Really! I guess I'm just practicing my avoidance skills. This is only the second shawl I've made in the past couple of weeks. Oh yeah...and then there was a pair of socks...and the sheep bowl. And, now, I need to block my new shawls. Hmmmm?! Maybe I need more practice with focus than avoidance! Ugh! Ok...I'll go get my vest project out. I hope another ball of yarn, a pattern, and a hook or needles don't grab me first! ;-)

Baa Baa Bowl Sheep

I'm on a mission to complete projects that have been sitting in time out. I finished a pair of socks earlier this week. Today, I finished needle felting sheep onto a knitted and felted bowl that I made months ago. I originally blogged about it HERE.

The bowl...


One sheep...


Two sheep...


Three sheep...


It's done and that feels good. However, I can't say that I love it. I really think the green should have been greener (the blue is bluer in real life). And, now that it's done, I'm not sure what I will do with it. But, it's one less thing on my to-do list. Now, it's back to the shawl I blogged about yesterday and deciding what to do with it or the troublesome vest or those started-long-ago Pomatomus socks. Hmmmm?

Help!

I just don't think I can take it anymore! I started knitting the "Gabriel's Wings" shawl over a year ago and it's still not done! HERE is the original post. It's been in time-out many times because it's just NO FUN! I've made silly mistakes on it, gotten confused as to where I was/am, and this project is just plain boring. I'm attempting to finish up projects that have been sitting around. I'm just not sure I can finish this one. I've probably knitted about 2/3 to 3/4 of the yarn ball but that last bit...I just don't know if I can do it! Would it be crazy to rip it all out and use the yarn for a project that's actually FUN?! Have you ever gotten that far on a project and not been able to make yourself finish it? Have you ripped out that much work? I mean...this shawl is pretty...but...

It's a Match!

I recently blogged about a pair of socks I was mindlessly knitting that turned out to be horribly mismatched. The mismatch wouldn't have shown from under my jeans and no one would have cared...except for me. So, I ripped the second sock out and started again. You can read about that HERE.

When I knit socks, I would normally find the start of one of the colors and cast on. That way, I could later find the start of that same color to cast on the second sock and have a matched pair. Since I didn't do that this time, I had to come up with a solution and hope it worked. Luckily, it did. I now own a brand new, perfectly matched pair of socks!


To restart my second sock, I pulled yarn from the ball until I found a brown section like the one near the top of the first sock. From that spot, I wrapped yarn around one of my needles (going backward from the brown) 48 times (the number of stitches I needed to cast on). Next, I took that length of yarn and measured seven lengths (the number of rows above the brown stripe on the first sock and still measuring backward from the brown) and cast on with the seventh length. I felt pretty confident that this would work but I didn't imagine it would work this well. The stripes are perfectly matched!


If I had paid better attention, I could have made longer socks. It turns out that I only used half the ball of yarn. That means I have enough yarn left over to make another short pair.

I really should learn how to knit socks from the toe up! That way, I could divide a ball of sock yarn in half and get the maximum use from it...and longer socks too!