Needlework Tuesday - On Thursday

Needlework Tuesday is an occasional post detailing my needlework and/or crafting projects.

Another week and yet another storm. We just can't catch a break here in southern Manitoba. Many of the highways were closed for most of the day, which means we spent the day at home. The blowing is over now, but we are under a Extreme Cold Warning. It'll be -42C with the wind chill overnight. The good news is that after tomorrow we are going to have a huge upward swing in temperature. By next Thursday, the day time high is supposed to be 0C (-5 with the wind chill). Yay!

Anyway, I have a few finished projects to show you, but first another project from the Mary Maxim's Knit Club of the Month showed up the other day. I like the weave-like pattern on this scarf/hat combo, but I'm not wild about the style of the scarf. However, I don't have one like it, so I figured I'm make it as is.

The colours didn't show up well at all in the photo. From left to right: taupe, coral, and navy blue. At first I thought it was black and got really excited. I love black yarn. On closer inspection, though, I realized it wasn't. Boo. I guess they ran out of grey that's pictured on the pattern.  Another boo.

These next two projects finally got blocked this past week. One I finished in November; the other, I got done between Christmas and New Years. The yarn for both had come from the Mary Maxim's Knit Club of the Month, but I didn't care for either pattern and decided to make something other else out of it.  Too see the original patterns I pass on, check on my post on December 6.

The first one is the Boneyard Shawl, designed by Stephen West.  Unfortunately, this sparkly, variegated yarn doesn't do this pattern justice. It is big, cozy, and super easy to knit, though, so I guess it'll do.

Here's a close up of the "rib texture":

If you like original, funky, colourful knits, check out Westknits or Stephen West on ravelry.com.  I'll definitely be making another one of his creations.

The second one is Offhand Lace by Caitlin ffrench. It's fabulous in the neutral color (shown on ravelry.com), but I like my version, too, which uses two variegated yarns with long repeats.  Here it is:

Because the yarn is chunky and the suggested needles are quite large, it knit up in no time. I think I wore it for a straight week after it was done.

I did start one more project, Hidden Gusset fingerless mitts, in the last few weeks, but I haven't had any luck with it. The first yarn I chose was a lovely plum coloured tweedy wool, but it was breaking at the slightest tug. So I abandoned it and chose a much more sturdy sock yarn. The colours are okay, but the contrast is a bit too high. Anyway, things were going great until I sectioned off the stitches for the thumb and realized that my stitch counts were off by quite a few stitches.  Not sure what happened, but I'm going to have to start again, otherwise, the pair will never match.  

Did I mention that my local yarn store has a sale going on right now? Select yarns are 50% off, while the rest of the yarn in the entire store is 20% off. I swear some of the skeins were jumping right off the table into my basket. What was I supposed to do? Put it back? I had been eyeing some of them at full price before Christmas. There was no way I was going to leave them there unloved for even one more day.  In other news, my husband might be planning an intervention.

This week I'm going to work on the scarf/hat combo as well as figure out the fingerless mitt fiasco.

Needlework Tuesday is hosted by Heather over at Books and Quilts.    If you'd done any crafting this week that you'd like to share with others, please head over to Heather's blog and use the Mr. Linky to link up your post, so others can enjoy your creations.