Great Grandaughter's Sweater and Hat

Finally! Jada is at that age where she does what she wants when she can get away with it so she refused to put her new sweater on for the first few days after Christmas. Finally!!! She posed in it and isn't she cute? These were made on the LK 150. The sweater is my daughter, Natalie's pattern (www.nataliesknitting.com). If you'd like to buy the pattern, go to Machine Knit patterns, she wrote it for the standard gauge machine in size 2 to 14 but I used her figures and recharted it for the LK 150. The yarn was thin, probably a light sports weight. I suspect it would work on a standard gauge machine but sorry, I can't remember what it is, I think it was Caron. I do remember it came from Hobby Lobby and is pink with little purple flecks in it. (duh, CRS has set in).

I tried the Bickford Seaming that Marg Coe has taught us many times on the back
neck because the ribbing goes up one side to the center back and then up the
other side to the center back. There is a rolled edge and it looked awful with
mattress stitch, I couldn't get it not to make a lump so I tried the Bickford
and that worked. There's no big lump in the middle of the back neck. All the edges are rolled, I really, really like the rolled edge, it makes a nice soft edge instead of a fitted rib.

BTW you can see the sweater just after I finished it on the Nov 14, 2008 note below.

Traveling HK Project

This is my "travel" project. Its easy to take out in an airport while I'm waiting for a plane, its easy to drag out when everyone is sitting around watching TV. Perfect Project! When I'm done, I'll have a great looking scarf. The pattern was inspired by the Tiny Toes scarf kit I made last year. I bought Tiny Toes at a yarn show in Asheville and wanted another one but didn't go back this year so I decided to make my own kit. I bought some Bamboo yarn from Hobby Lobby and the beads are an assortment called "Mahogany". Then I decided to buy some purple beads as well, thinking I wasn't sure which ones I wanted to use. When I started stringing the beads on the yarn I found I needed around 4400 of them, 2200 on each side of the scarf so I ended up pouring the purple and mahogany beads in a shallow bowl and started stringing them on the yarn at random. The mahogany beads are all different shades of gold and brown and even a few white and unfortunately even though they were labeled 6mm, they seem to be all different sizes, some didn't fit. Pretty much the purple beads, which are also 6mm seem to all fit on the yarn.

So far I've only strung one ball of yarn. When its finished, I string another ball full and make the other side of the scarf. The idea is to cast on 5 stitches, string on 10 beads, 5 more stitches, 10 beads, across. Next row is the same, then 9 beads, 5 stitches twice, next is 8 beads, 5 stitches, etc....till you're down to 1 bead. I atually cast on 3 stitches on one edge and 2 stitches on the other edge. You knit till you run out of beads and then take off on waste. Knit the other side exactly the same way and then Kitchener stitch the scarf on the center back.

Next project is a scarfvest which is a scarf that looks like a vest in the front. I'm going to weave mine but more about that later.