Shepherds Harvest Festival

I spent my Mother's Day wandering around the Shepherds Harvest Festival in Lake Elmo, Minnesota.  This was my first visit there and it was a lot of fun.  There were many yarn vendors with beautiful yarns and I discovered corn yarn.  A yarn with the look and feel of cotton, but made from corn.  There were sheep sheering demos, spinning demos, stock dog demos (sheep herding), and others that we didn't get to.  We walked around the barns, looking at alpacas, llamas, sheep, goats and rabbits.

One of the fiber rabbits.  This one was huge.

Sheep sheering demo

Fleece skirting

Just one of the spinners

A baby lamb wearing a sweater

Llamas

My daughter riding a llama

On the blocking table

This sweater started out as a shrug I knitted last summer.  I only wore it about 3 times and then put it away, because I really didn't like it.   This winter I decided to frog the shrug and knit something I've been thinking about for a while.  I knit this this pattern for my daughter a couple years ago.  Hers was knit in acrylic for easy care, but this one is 100% highland wool, and has me a little nervous.  I don't usually work with wool and I've never hand washed anything before.  I tried very hard to avoid stretching, but somehow it looks like it's gotten wider.  I'm hoping it will be ok.  I hate to think of all the work I put into it and then not have it fit.  I still have to find a button, I'm thinking of hitting the antique stores for something unique.

~Edited to add that I was able to put it in the dryer for about 20 minutes on delicate and get it shrink back down to size.

No-sew method for adding a decorative edge to your projects

Decorative edge knit onto a blanket.  WIP

I hate seaming… So much so that I avoid it whenever possible. When knitting blankets or something that requires some sort of finished edge, I usually try to incorporate the edging or border into my pattern, but that’s not always possible. This particular blanket it wasn’t possible and I really debated whether or not to but a border on it. I put it away for a while and finally decided it needed something.

First I thought about picking up the stitches all the way around and knitting a simple garter stitch border, but really I wanted something a little fancier than that. I looked through my stitch dictionary and found a border I really liked, but it would need to be seamed on. What I wanted to be able to do, was knit the border and attach it to the blanket at the same time.

I spent the better part of a day searching online for directions on how to do just that, but came up with nothing. I knew there had to be a way and if I couldn’t find it online, I’d have to come up with a solution on my own. I played around with different ideas and finally found one that works.

• Pick your border pattern, and cast on desired number of stitches on a DPN. My border was originally 4 stitches wide, but I added 10 more stitches to make it a little wider. I placed a stitch marker between the 4 edge stitches and the 10 I added so I could keep track of when to start knitting in pattern.
• Remove the last cast on stitch but keep it live, insert needle, from the wrong side of the blanket, into an edge stitch, place live cast on stitch back on needle.

Cast on needle with the picked up blanket stitch

• Pass the blanket stitch over, and knit your first row, away from blanket edge

• Turn your work, blanket and all and knit back towards the blanket until you come to the last stich

• Pick up the next blanket edge stitch, knit the last stitch, pass the blanket stitch over

Picking up next blanket stitch

• Turn your work, knit away and repeat.  

Depending on the size of your blanket, it could take a while to knit the border all the way around, but your omitting the seaming and you’ll know exactly when to stop knitting when the ends meet. The only seaming you’ll need to do is the two ends together with the method of your choice.  Weave in tails.