Finished

Pattern: Anne (again, yes I’m a little obsessed)
Source: Download from mk carroll. $5.50 US Dollars and still well worth the price of admission.
Size: N/A
Yarn: Yarn Bee Soft Delights Extremes in EX brown 1 skeins.
Hook size: US H, 5 mm (Worth swatching in an I 5.5 mm or J 6 mm hook)
Pattern Modifications: More repeats of the third motif. I almost used the whole skein.

I finished this last night and the attempt at blocking did help it a bit, at least in person. I wouldn’t call it seriously blocked, or anything like that, but it lays nicely now and should probably be dried flat to keep it that way.

These are not the stitch definition shots you are looking for. Move along. Move along.
It is made of fuzz and only fuzz. I took it outside to try to get good light so some of the detail would show. There is no detail, only fuzz. Plus, the automatic color correction in the camera pulled out all the color because the sun was just too strong.

It looks good hanging on a hook with a jacket.

The camera gods conspired against me. Rosie graciously modeled it for me, but none of the pictures with her wearing it turned out. I only got to snap a few because she got bored and therefore goofy about as quickly as a ten-year-old.

It’s long enough to wear in the fashionable “pulled through” style.
The Rosie one even put it on that way. Too bad the fuzz escaped from the scarf and got all over the picture. If it had turned out, it had the potential of being one of the few good pictures of her around. She gets very stiff in front of the camera and often looks just a little odd because of it. Or she starts goofing off and making strange faces on purpose. It’s a little annoying sometimes. I imagine her mother was very frustrated when chasing her around with a camera.

Next project, a market bag for Aunt Net’s Birthday. I started a pair of arm-warmers for her, but the yarn I was using told me it wanted to be a winter hat instead, so I frogged it and put it away until closer to winter hat season. I’ve had the yarn on hand for the market bag for her for a while now, so it’s a good time to make it up.

The fuzz continues to grow, but more slowly than hoped. After the setback Tuesday night, I hoped to make some real progress last night, but it wasn’t fated to be. We went over to a friends house to watch the Dragonlance Movie. The animation style was a miserably failed attempt to mix CGI and early 1980’s Saturday Morning Cartoon style animation, in a style inspired by the classic Titan AE.

It had some amazing vocal talent, like Kiefer Sutherland and Lucy Lawless, doing nothing. The vocals and sound sounded like it had been churned out of the 1980’s Saturday Morning Cartoon mill, too. The animation continuity is abysmal. There are scenes where Goldmoon has the Blue Crystal staff after it’s been destroyed, and Laurana is shown alternately wearing armor and not wearing armor in the same scene. The drawings could have been lifted directly out of someone’s Lord of the Rings fan art.

About the only nice thing I can say about it was that if you’re a fan of the books, it made a reasonable attempt to follow the first novel. All in all, though, the movie was made of fail. I recommend avoiding it.

Worst of all, the friend who invited us over turned down the lights so low that he might as well have turned them off. The fuzz requires light to grow because it’s too soft and squishy to allow me to feel the stitches to work that way. I managed to get through another color change sequence after we came home, but I’d really wanted to be farther along.

Mother’s day is coming up quickly, as is my Aunt Net’s birthday, so I’m trying to finish gifts for both of them. I started Maman’s project Monday night. I’d planned to finish it last night, but I found out that I was signed up for a raid in World of Warcraft that I hadn’t signed up for (grr!) and so I got nothing useful done.

In Progress

Pattern: Anne (again, yes I’m a little obsessed)
Source: Download from mk carroll. $5.50 US Dollars and still well worth the price of admission.
Size: N/A
Yarn: Yarn Bee Soft Delights Extremes in EX brown 1 skeins.
Hook size: US H, 5 mm (Worth swatching in an I 5.5 mm or J 6 mm hook)
Pattern Modifications: I expect more repeats of the third motif.

Mom’s allergic to wool, so I’m working with an acrylic. It’s fuzzy and soft and reminds me a bit of working with mohair. Crochet that’s too tight is impossible to unravel.

Self striping yarn shades back and forth between light and dark.

It’s thick and plush. The fuzz eats all the stitch details, but the shape remains

It reminds me of some cutwork felt and polar fleece pieces I’ve seen.

Over all, it’s got good drape despite the apparent density of the piece. I wonder if it’s worth trying to “kill” the yarn for better lace definition. I don’t know if it’s laziness or not, but I don’t think I’m going to try it. I like this as it is for it’s plushy, fuzzy self.

Finished

Pattern: Anne
Source: Download from mk carroll. $5.50 US Dollars and still well worth the price of admission.
Size: N/A
Yarn: Bernat Cashmere Natural Blends 1 & 1/2 skeins.
Hook size: US G, 4 mm (I run tighter than most designers gauge, but it’s a scarf, so I just made more motifs.)
Pattern Modifications: Fifty-two repeats of the third motif instead of the forty-two recommended in the pattern.

This was made for my sister, to celebrate how well she’s been doing with her physical therapy after her knee surgery.

Pook wasn’t feeling well, so I modeled it.

We tried a couple of different pictures. Rosie cut off my head, because she’s that way, I guess. The only picture that we got with my face in it had me doing my “model-like look of disdain,” which wasn’t a good look for me, this is what we’re stuck with.

And yes, I did retouch the picture to remove an ugly scratch on my chin. It was taking away from the beauty of my stitch work, so it had to go.

Some stitch detail, as taken by Rosie.

Next time I’ll take my own stitch detail pictures. Rosie doesn’t do anything handcrafted, so she really doesn’t know how to read the motifs to frame the picture. Still, it’s enough to show just how different the motif looks in a solid color rather than a variegated color.

This pattern is still great fun to do and works up quickly. I foresee another Anne or two in the future, because they’re great for gifting.

Pattern: Anne
Source: Download from mk carroll. $5.50 US Dollars and well worth the price of admission.
Size: N/A
Yarn: Aquarium Sereknity Hand Painted Worsted Superwash Merino, 4oz., under a skein, over half a skein.
Hook size: US G, 4 mm (I run tighter than most designers gauge, but it’s a scarf, so I just made more motifs.)
Pattern Modifications: Sixty-one repeats of the third motif instead of the forty-two recommended in the pattern.

I have to admit, since I started knitting, I haven’t had much desire to crochet. This pattern brought back some of my love of crochet. I think it’s a perfect example of why people should be able to do both. I also think it’s a good pattern for a novice crocheter. It’s all done with four of the most basic stitches (US: chain stitch, slip stitch, single crochet, and double crochet. English: chain stitch, single crochet, double crochet, and treble crochet) so you get practice working them all. It works up quickly, so within a few days you have either a nice gift or a little something special for yourself.

Blocking.

I couldn’t wait to share this one and I wanted to block it, because even crochet lace deserves to be blocked, so I took my pictures in my normal blocking spot: On top of the washer and dryer. The designer shows all her examples in solids, but this shows off the beauty of the Aquarium so much better than the socks I made from the other skein, it looks like it was made especially to make this.

It’s about 64 inches long.

Looking at the scarf, you’d think it took forever, but it was mostly done by the time I went to bed last night. I only had to add on nine motif repeats this morning and it was ready to have the ends woven in. Because it’s joined as you go, there were only two ends to weave in at the end. Yay! That’s a design bonus in my book.
(Please pardon the mess in the the background of this picture. Our basement is only semi-finished and the laundry room/work room is in the unfinished part.)

A view of the end.

The design of the scarf is such that both ends look very similar. I love the scalloped edge and all the little flowery picots. I think it’s going to look fabulous against my white denim jacket.

Stitch detail.

This shows just how beautifully the colors blend one into another and it’s very color accurate, at least on my monitor. I imagine that it’s very similar to how the skein looked when Heather from Sereknity.com was actually painting the yarn. Hand dyed yarns look so different between when the artist dyes them, when they reskein them after they dying process, and then when someone actually works with them. It’s like seeing three different yarns. This particular pattern works out perfectly to bring some of the original back.

I love the way it turned out. I loved it so much, I made an LJ icon from one of my photos.