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The knitting machine. 12pm-6:30pm Saturday April 22, 2006 6 charity blankets complete.

Once again Tracy & I had a knitting machine marathon trying to get rid of all that charity yarn.

Here is the end product. 6 blankets, all they need is a bit of edging, washing and blocking.

I love the one on the end right, Tracy did that one. Rainbow Brite for sure! On the yellow blanket Tracy thought she would try something new, just for the hell of it. Now, the EZ-Knit book says that you can do fair isle, cableing, intarsia, we just didn’t believe them. So we figured the fair isle was going to be the easiest to accomplish & she did! She did 2 rows of fair isle, which is actually 4 rows of knitting, don’t ask.  But overall we decided that it would be something that would be totally feasible on the machines. My wish was that I could do the Kaffe Fassett shawl but our max width is only 160 stitches. That is not nearly wide enough!

We had a bit of a multi-tasking day. Tracy needed 2 colors for her Babette Blanket that we couldn’t get through Knitpicks in Wool of the Andes so we dyed our own! Let me introduce Vicious Green and Sunshine Yellow!

I did a hank of the green for my shawl also. It’s an absolutely gorgeous color! For the Vicious Green we layered the yellow & green dyes and added vinegar at the end to make the green really take hold. Then we cooked it in the microwave to set. It worked perfectly!! The yellow was an entire bottle of lemon yellow dye on the hank just barely covered with water. No vinegar or cooking needed.

I started to chart out the colors for the Kaffe Fassett shawl and found myself with a problem. I will have to use multiple sheets of graph paper side by side to get the whole triangle of the shawl graphed. I think I will just do the color and pattern on one paper, it will be the center of the shawl starting from the bottom cast on point and going to the top of the shawl. I only need to see the colors and not worry about the pattern. After a couple of repeats the pattern will be memorized and I will only have to worry about the colors. I am probably putting way too much thought into this and I should probably just cast on & figure it out as I go. I hate putting a ton of work into planning, coloring charts and then abandoning them after just a few rows of knitting. My gut instinct is to do it free form coloring, just knit with the color that strikes my fancy! Two color knitting isn’t all that difficult to begin with!

I am tempted to cast on today but I really can’t. The Jefferson needs to be finished and Mother’s Day is right around the corner and my mom’s trellis scarf only has 4 rows done. I cast on one night, then put it away. I was happy to even cast on with how many things I had going. So, those are the priorities in knitting right now. Once I finish either of those projects I can cast on the shawl, that is the deal with the devil I have made.