A new finished project!

This is the cowl I talked about here.  It uses Roll the Dice yarn from Sin City Yarns.  I bought it at Sin City Knit Shop in Las Vegas.  The yarn is 100% merino, and has a little bit of a sheen.  It is dyed so that one end of the skein has whites and blues, and just a little purple while the other end is all purple; in between it graduates from the blue end to the purple end.  

The pattern is for a cowl, and it was free from the yarn shop.  It is designed to use with this yarn.  As you knit the cowl, the color changes from one end to the other.  Also, even though it is a 4 knit / 4 purl pattern, the base rowl is set up so that the knit ridges travel around the cowl in a spiral.  Very cool.

I used one complete skein of yarn with a size 7 needle.  The picture is of the project prior to washing and blocking.

Retreat List

 Back in November, I participated in an Altenew Cozy Comfort Retreat.  It was an all day zoom retreat - one of the retreats where you craft cards along with the teachers of the classes.  It was more expensive (by a lot) than any card retreat I've done.  I decidd to do it because I follow and appreciate all of the teachers - Jennifer McGuire, Kristina Warner, Therese  Calvird, Carisa Wiley, and Kelly Taylor.  

Registration for the class included a shipment of supplies, which was great.

I enjoyed the retreat, although at the end, I was worn out.  A few days later, I created a list in my bullet journal of Five Thoughts about the Retreat:

• There was lots of homework - in fact, that is my biggest advice for you if you ever decide to do one of these.  Do the homework and be very organized in your set up.  I put the supplies for each class in a separate zip storage bag (the ones from Simon Says Stamp)
• The teachers were great - the best part of the retreat
• The Altenew rules were not my favorite - I really appreciate Hero Arts in this area.
• I needed more breaks - I was worn out by the end of the day.  An hour for dinner would have been great as well as an hour for lunch.
• I was lonely even though it was a zoom retreat with lots of people.  I missed my time with Steve for the day.

All that said, the cards were great!

Easter Cards

 Spellbinders has some great monthly kits.  Each month, I look at the kits avilable and choose one or two.  One of the ones I purchased in February was the Large Die of the Month called Floral Bunny Basket.

I had a great time working with it - I made six Easter cards.  Here are the die cuts for five of them:

Many Easter Card Parts

See the bunnies? Here are the bunny pieces:

Bunny cuts

All in all, each card had 52 different die cuts (not counting the sentiment which wasn't die cut).  That's 312 die cuts for six cards.  Whew!

I did a little bit of shading for the tulips, bunnies, and carrots.  The blue background is embossed with the one of the Altenew Sweater Pattern Builder stencils, just to give it some texture.

Happy Easter!

Postage Valentine's Day Cards

 I am really enjoying the Waffle Flower postage dies, stencils, and stamps.  They seem to be releasing different versions seasonally.

I used the Rose Stencil set and the Love stamps for several Valentines Day cards.

Currently

Current View

Current Bullet Journal Palette

Current knitting
Notice how the color is changing? Cool

Reflecting Pool Scarf

 

Another finished scarf.  This one was knit with Malabrigo Rios Yarn in the color Reflecting Pool.  I'm not sure where I bought it. It's very nice! I used about 1.5 skeins.

The needle size was US 7, and it is knit in the Yarn Harlot's one row pattern (cast on a multiple of four +2, knit two, knit one through back loop, purl and repeat until there are two stitches left - knit those.

I finished in January of 2024.  It was mainly knit in movies because it's an easy pattern to knit in the dark. I'm not sure when I started it, but it was after the Quince scarf, which was after the stacking, not stacking cowl.  

Here's the weird thing.  I have two more skeins of this yarn.  Did I buy it twice? I think I must have.  What will I do with the other two skeins?  I don't need another scarf made out of this yarn, as much as I like it.

Another post about this scarf

On my needles

 In this post, I talked about yarn I have that is "in the wings," waiting to be knitted.  This was one of them:

It's Roll the Dice yarn from Sin City  Yarns.  I'm knitting a cowl that the yarn store suggested (free pattern). You cast on 103 stitches on a 24 inch needle (size 7 for me), and then knit 4 and purl 4, repeatedly.  

I'm not sure if you can see it in the image, but the stitch pattern creates diagonal ridges of yarn that swirl around the cowl - cool.  Also, can you see in the first image that the yarn is lighter toward the middle and gets darker on the outside?  The cowl is following that color pattern.

It takes more concentration that I anticipated, but I do like it, and am enjoying the knitting.  I'm anxious to see it when it is finished.