Needlework Tuesday - Flooding and Summer Tops

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

Has it really been a month since I last posted? It really has been busy around here.

I'll get to the knitting in a minute, but first I wanted to post a brief update on the flooding of 2017. I was going to do some separate posts, but decided against that for various reasons. It was quite an adventure with water level forecasts ranging from "minor inconvenience" to "major flood event" all within 48 hours. It eventually ended up with the peak somewhere in the middle of all of that. Here are a couple of photos of my backyard, before and after:

Backyard before

Backyard after

Normally, the river is about 700 ft from our house, but here it's about 70 ft from the house. It's gone down quite a bit since then, but there's still plenty of water around. Some of the land is lower than the river, so at some point it'll be landlocked and will likely stay around for a couple of weeks.

Now on to the knitting...

First up, the Handmaiden's Bias Shawl. This one turned out okay and works great as a scarf, but it's a little too short to wrap comfortably around my shoulders as a shawl. The fact it's biased makes this even worse. The instructions say that it may stretch a bit when worn, so maybe it'll be okay after awhile. I might try to block it to see what happens. My photographer is busy painting today, so here it is on the back of a chair:

I finished knitting the summer top from Shibui called Interval. It knit up surprisingly quick and it now blocked and ready for assembly. I learned a few new techniques for this piece and am loving how it looks so far.

The next project from the Mary Maxim's Knit Club of the Month showed up in the mail a couple of weeks back. It's a shawl, but not one that thrills me. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to make this one.  If I don't, that'll be three projects in a row that I don't like.  If this trend continues, I may have to cancel my membership.

Finally, I've started another summer top, this one from designer Stephen West. It's called Banaue Breeze. I'm using some yarn I bought for another project that didn't quite work out as planned. The yarn is quite funky, so I was looking for a funky piece that would suit it. I'm hoping this works.

The top is unique in that it's knit in two halves, starting at the arm hole, and seamed in the middle.   I had a really rough go of it so far.   I must have tried the cast on a dozen times before getting it right or somewhat right enough to continue.   I had to learn what provisional stitches were and apply that knowledge to working in the round.  I abandoned the idea of using the magic loop technique at the same time by switching to a smaller circular needle.   I'm so glad I got it figured out.  I didn't want to abandon this one.  

I'm trying to come up with a name for this one.  Since I'll probably never get to the Banaue in the Philippines, I'm thinking closer to home.   The colours remind me of autumn or harvest...Harvest Breeze...Autumn Breeze...or Prairie Winds...or Manitoba Mayhem.  Still thinking.

I have a few other things to report, but I'll leave that until next time. This coming week I'm going to hopefully assemble one summer top while continuing to knit the other.

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.