This is my latest knit project. I just made the pattern up ~ knit 1 purl 1, till it looks long enough, and yet leaves you enough yarn leftover to make some fringe. Easy-squeezy. It is a 6 ft shawl that I knitted out of Sensations Rainbow Boucle. Although the color is lovely, the fabric is soft, and the shawl is warm, I have to say, I DETEST this yarn! I probably will never buy it again.
It could be that I am just a very novice knitter, and used too small of needles ~ it could be that my gauge was too tight, and therefore frustrating, or it could just be that this stuff snags on a ANYthing ~ probably right up to and including a bare baby's bottom. All right, all right, I have to admit it, I didn't put it next to any bare baby bottoms, HOWEVER, it snagged on everything else. I thought I might die of frustration. Luckily, for posterity's sake ( I guess, heheh) I barely managed to eek out an existance. In fact, this yarn was so annoying, it gets its very own haiku.
Sensations Rainbow
Boucle yarn snags forever
as I curse once more
And I have also noticed that once it is made up, the purled side snags on everything I wear, picks up the slightest hint of lint, stray hairs, and anything else within a 10 ft radius so that by the end of the day, although you are toasty warm and look quite nice, you seem to have developed an odd lumpiness underneath the shawl. I think it resembles fat rolls in a way, and so I will call it Shawl Cellulose Lumps. Yes. It definitely creates a severe case of SCL.
So I don't really reccomend this yarn for knitting. Or crochet, for that matter. Because the other side of this story is that I tried to crochet this yarn before I knitted it. And ~ ah was like to die!! ~ In fact, this stuff is so grabby that I could barely rip out the snasty crochet sample, and just decided to bag it and chuck the whole thing rather than deal with it.
All right ~ I have gotten a little worked up ~ breeeaaaattthhee ~ hmmmm ~ huuuu ~ uuuhhhh ~ Flushing Water ~ Child pose ~ Stand up ~ reach for the sunshine.
Ok ~ I can go on. ;-D
This is a crochet project I just finished. I mostly used the pattern from a ~ Best Of Terry Kimbrough Baby Afghans ~ book. ( which, by the way, is an absolutely BEAUTIFULLY done book of heirloom quality baby afghans. You'll want to use your nice yarn for these. I only wish she had diagrams!!) I say mostly, because I seem to have a difficult time following a written pattern. I was doing great ( because the picture of the afghan in the book showed the stitches on the body & some of the border well enough) until I hit that last part of the border. I just couldn't tell what the heck they were up too, so I improvised.
I don't like the improv as well as the picture in the book, but I consoled myself with the fact that I don't really like the color scheme that much either, and this was really more of a test to see if I could make a complicated baby afghan without wasting expensive yarn, and I was using leftover materials, so I didn't have enough of any one color for the whole dealio, sooooo ( breathe... just breaaathheee..) I used up a bunch of baby weight scraps.
Perhaps my sister will have a little girl, though, and she will use it as a floor blanky or some such.
As for the yarn, I used Bernat Softee Baby yarn, which, although it is as acrylic as all get-out, is actually not so bad to work with. Although, I will say this, the white seems to have a little more substance than the pink or or the variagate. So it makes up just a little thicker. But for a nice soft, cheap, washable baby yarn ~ not too shabby.
My next project is a pair of socks. I am going to crochet one set & knit another. I think crochet is going to be the easier of the two, but knitting may prove more comfortable to wear. So I am going to try both.
Sadly, I have not yet dyed the final two colors for my Japanese baby granny, so I am still waiting to start that. ( I am trying to decide how to go about dying a very light cream color... if any of you know how to do that, please let me know. I managed all of the other soft colors, but cream is escaping me for the moment.) I DID, however, get all the rest of the yarn for that project balled, which is quite a little chore in itself.
I will use the left-overs from this for a little matching granny square jumper dress, and perhaps some booties & a cap or hat in a solid as well.
