I shared with you back in January about the sweater I knit for my dad and other knitting projects done in the last half of 2018. As I mentioned last week, I also have a lot of spun yarn to use. I have not been idle in the knitting department in 2019. So far I have made three shawls, three bags, and two socks.
The first of the knitting projects is the Papillon Shawl which looks very difficult, but isn’t difficult at all. If you can count and do the purl and knit stitches, you can make this shawl. I used the recommended Uneek fingering weight yarn for the color and added a black fingering weight for the veins. The secret of this pattern is using a long transition colorway. That’s a yarn that changes colors but has a lot of yarn between the color changes. So you only work with two balls of yarn and carry the colors up the edge. Then the shaping is achieved through short rows and one side mirrors the other.
Because the pattern was so interesting, it only took me a month to knit the Papillon Shawl. I knit it for my mom and gave it to her on Mother’s Day. She loves it! It is very soft and a perfect weight for cool spring days or summer evenings.
The second shawl is a prayer shawl. I knitted this using some cotton yarn I had in my stash from a sweater that never got finished. The pattern is Sabbath Shawl and is a very easy four row repeat. I carried this with me as my “to go” project because I didn’t have to pay much attention to it while I was knitting. Seven stitch repeat on the even rows and every other row is purl. The shawl ended up lovely and long but was a little boring. I gave it to my sister who has a friend in need of a prayer shawl.
The third of the knitting projects was a quick and easy prayer shawl made out of Bernat Blanket yarn. I will never buy that yarn again for any reason – I hated it! I couldn’t find the beginning of the yarn and ended up with impossible yarn barf. The yarn left little scraps all over the house. I made the Original Prayer Shawl which is my standard knit three, purl three prayer shawl. It knitted up very fast because the yarn is super bulky. Someone should love it. I gave it to the Wedgewood UMC prayer shawl ministry.
The three bags were the reason I had the Bernat Blanket yarn to begin with. Ranger Ellen at Fort Frederica came to me one day and showed me a picture on Etsy of Yip Yips storage bags. Yip Yips are muppet characters that might look familiar if you watched Sesame Street. Ranger Ellen thought they were the cutest things ever. So I found the pattern, bought the things I would need, and knitted them up. It took me a week to knit each bag. I added eyes and antennae. Another volunteer sewed the lining which I stitched in the bag. Then Tom made the hooks and bar for hanging the bags. Ranger Ellen loved them. She said I made her year when I gave it to her.
The two socks were actually the first of my knitting projects for the year. I started them in January and finished them in January, which is a record for me and socks. I used the Regia Pairfect Design Yarn that is supposed to give you two identical socks without any problem. The yarn and the pattern were very easy to use and I did end up with two identical socks. I gave them to my sister for her birthday and she sent me this thank you picture.
Those are my knitting projects so far this year. I have one more project that I will tell you about next week, but it is ongoing and I won’t be done for a while. In the meantime, another shawl is on the needles.