Mr. Laurence's brown basketweave scarf

In the play Little woman" Mr. Laurence is supposed to have a long brown wool scarf.  I started his scarf while waiting for another play to start that my youngest daughter was in this last week.   Below is the pattern I came up with while standing in line pretty simple really just 3 different rows is all.  Free pattern and supplies below.


supplies

• worsted weight brown wool
• size 8 knitting needles

cast on 26 stitches

repeat 1: k all stitches do this row 5 times before going to repeat 2


repeat 2: k9,p4,k4,p4, k5  do this row 5 times before going to repeat 3


repeat 3: k5,p4,k4,p4, k9  do this row 5 times before going to repeat 2

do repeats 2 and 3 till about 3/4 of an inch from desired length then do repeat 1 one more time.  cast off cut and finish thread.

I have not finished mine yet for the play I will add an updated picture of it when all completed.  Mine is 6 inches wide unblocked, length to be determined yet.  You of course can make yours what ever length you want.  Play calls for it to be long what ever that means.

update February 16 2013
updated photos of finished piece sorry I only have female dress forms

**If you like my blog and the free patterns and tutorials and want to say thank you I have a wish list on ravelry of patterns I would like to make.
Thank you in advance for being kind and
saying thank you back.

Love Sunshine But please do not feel like you have to**

Finishing a few wip's

I have had a few wip's for a while.  So Sunday morning when i woke up i thought i would weave in their tails as that is all that needed to be done for months now but never got around to it.

wip's = works in progress

These gloves are a free pattern called Belle Ruffle gloves.   As you can see by the number of projects they are a  popular free pattern.  I was just using up scrapes when I made these.  That is why the color blocking on mine instead of just two colors  But you can use a ton of colors with this pattern and fair isle knitting would work well too.  The buttons where given to me as a gift from a good friend.  She works in a collage dance department and at times people donate supplies they can't use and every now and again I am the beneficiary of some of those supplies and this is one of those.  The yarn used is scraps left over from my dear mother in laws stash.  I started these gauntlets back in November of 2012 i knit them up in about 2 days then they just sat around waiting for buttons and weaving in of tails.  I sewed the buttons on last weekend and finished the tails yesterday it is about time right.  But i guess it is not too bad as I can use them for Valentines day I guess to be sort of festive.

This hat is another long time need to weave in the tails is all project. took about 2 days to knit then it sat for about 6 months. My oldest daughter is in x-country and this was made during that season which is the first few months of school. yes you guessed it that season is long over but I guess it can be used next year during the season.  The pink in this hat is also from my MIL's stash of yarn.  The aqua I purchased to go with it.  Bottom photo closest to true color but in reality it is a little brighter than that too.

little bits of this and that Mitts started

I started to make these mitts yesterday.  I hope to finish them today.  I took a break from the play as my shoulders and arms got hurt the other day shoveling show in our yard.  You know you have a lot of snow in y our yard when you shovel it 5 times in one day .  Then you look at it a few hours later and everywhere you shoveled has a foot of snow again in the yard.  So I shoveled it again the next day and for some reason my right arm went all tingly and numb in some spots like I had pinched a nerve and others had lots of pain like a pulled muscle.
So I did some other things like clean house and spin a little yarn and start a pair of knitted gloves light weight stuff that would not hurt so much.  Which is saying something considering holding the remote control for the TV hurt to the point I could not do it ,  because of its weight go figure.  My arms are almost back to normal and I will go back to sewing on costumes later today.  More info on these gloves I am making them up as I go along ( I am writing it down) they are sock weight yarn that I spun see previous post on that.  And I am using 2 circular knitting needles in size 2 more on the pattern to follow  if you want to knit a pair with sock yarn or your own bits of this and that homespun.  These gloves actually are brighter than they appear in these photos I could not get a good picture today all the natural lighting at the time was a gray morning so not so good.  But I hope you get the idea all the same.  It is interesting to see the different textures the yarn gets because of the different yarns spun into it.

Little bit of this and that make yarn

 I had some sample yarn cards that I purchased at a thrift store a few years
ago.  I had originally thought I would use them in embroidery but that never happened.  I also had this cone of wool in lace weight also from a thrift store a while back. Between the two items I spent about 4 dollars so no big investment to say the least.  I was straightening up my project area and the basket that held the yarn samples tipped over and fell next to some purple roving.

 A thought quickly ran through my head that I could spin the samples the same as I would roving and make 1 long piece of usable yarn that was multicolored and funky with a life of its own just like the rugs in my home that I make.

So I pulled out my spinning wheel found some gray wool lace weight and set to work removing the yarn from the sample cards.  These samples are from the 80's so some of them are day glow colors ( ie neon)  should be interesting when all knit up with a scary color like that here and there.  I just grabbed random pieces of yarn and spun them in where ever they wanted to go.

The yarns are all different weights but when I spun them up they all came out as sock weight.  So I am making a pair of matched yet mismatched gloves out of some of the yarn.  The reason I say match/mismatched.  Because there are no two samples the exact same and because they were fed in randomly to the spinning wheel there is no way they can ever look the same but yet they will be a pair.  I have one mitt done and the other half done.  They will be a hand-wash lay flat item.  For one because of the wool and I do not know if it will shrink.  That is the bad thing about buying things at second hand stores you do not have the care labels intact still most of the time.  I am not worried about the little tuffs that stick out here and there I can work them to the back of the work or just let them hang and add their own personality to the work either way I am happy with the end results.