But that doesn't stop me from downloading more patterns... especially if they're FREE!
I really hope I get to this one. I think they could be handy to wear on a coolish morning... (Or in bed on a cold night!)
It's made of a lighter weight yarn than I normally use, so I'm not sure if it will keep me warm at home in winter. Our house is kept cool.
The poncho is made of two equal-sized panels, sewn together, leaving a neck opening on top.
Having tried it on, I realize that the back is a little shorter than the front. If I made another like it, I'd make the back panel about 3 inches longer than the front - to make them sit equally.
My next steps are to weave in the yarn ends and to "block" the poncho. I'm hunting for instructions on how to block synthetic yarn. I don't remember ever learning how.
I'd like to make the edges lie flatter.
During our hot - sometimes rainy - summer... I've been knitting!
Last spring, after Terry and I went to Niagara Falls to see (and hear) Frankie Valli in person, I persuaded Terry to stop in at the Mary Maxim yarn store in Paris, Ontario - to see what interesting projects I could find there.
I came home with a pattern for a poncho - and some yarn, which I've been working on ever since. They didn't have the white, grey and black striped yarn, or I'd have got that.
Instead, i found this - and I liked the colors. I finally finished first of two panels, so I think I'm about a third done. Next the second panel - then two side borders.
I hope I like it when I'm done!
On our last trip to Guelph, Terry and I did NOT drive to Paris, Ontario - so I did NOT buy yarn for a new knitting project!
Instead, I’m looking at finishing some projects I started a while back. I have quite a few that I started with enthusiasm - but ended up abandoning.
Each unfinished project has a story - a reason why I stopped working on it...
Like this abandoned poncho, similar to a red-striped one I made a few years ago, which I wear a lot.
Why did I stop working on it? I remember thinking that the muted blues were less inspiring to work with than the bright reds. Bright colours energize me! I also wondered if I’d run out of variegated yarn before I was done. So I started to knit a plain dark blue stripe with different yarn. I didn’t really like it, so I put the project away, to think about it.
Now, my new plan is to work on it until I run out of the original variegated yarn. Then I’ll decide what to do... Hunt for the same brand of yarn in the same colour? Add a contrasting colour? If I run into problems I may be tempted to put it away again - but I hope not. I hope to finish it this time. I have so many other unfinished projects to tackle!
I finished my latest sweater, just in time to show it to my daughter - the night before we were leaving to visit her.
I know why you rushed to finish it, she said. You want to drive to Paris, Ontario for more yarn...
The girl knows me so well!
I purchased 13 balls of yarn in Paris, Ontario at the Mary Maxim store in spring - and used 10 to make the top red sweater in the picture below.
Would the leftover 3 skeins be enough to make a sleeveless vest? I decided to go ahead and start. If I didn’t have enough red yarn, I could add a stripe or two in a contrasting color. I knew I could find the same brand of yarn in Ottawa, but it would no doubt be a different dye lot - a slightly different shade of colour - which could spoil the look of the vest.
Lying on the bed with the sweater, this is how the vest looked a few days ago…
The time had come to think about getting more yarn… The one skein I had left would likely not be enough.
I brought the sweater to a neighborhood yarn store. I also brought the yarn label so that I could check the dye lot number if I found the same shade of red.
Dye lot numbers are very important when buying yarn. When yarn is dyed, every skein created from the same vat of dye has the same “dye lot” number. Different dye lots can have slight differences in color that are noticeable enough to spoil the look of a garment.
Imagine my amazement when I checked the yarn labels in the store and discovered that the red Patons tweed (in an Ottawa wool shop called Wool-Tyme) had exactly the same dye lot number as the yarn I had purchased in the Mary Maxim store store 500 kilometres away!
What are the chances?!
Of course, I immediately bought the skein… I couldn’t believe my good luck!
