Spoke too Soon

What do you know! Right after proclaiming it a lost cause, my zucchini plant offered me two gorgeous zucchini the other day, just right for cutting up and tossing in last night's stir fry. Well, one anyway, the other is for another night, and I need to come up with a recipe now. Let me know if you have any brilliant ideas, and I'll plan to try out some new recipes. I still haven't seen any pumpkin progress, but I'll keep an eye on the zucchini for more delicious squash.

My husband insisted on adding the pencil for scale.

In other news, I have finished the  Moderne Log Cabin Blanket  by Kay Gardiner and Ann Shayne.  I liked the look of this blanket, though for the sake of my sanity and to complete this in relatively short order, I turned to the awesome powers of crochet. It worked well. The blanket is very cozy, and drapes very nicely. I only got bored during the last two squares, and at that point, being almost finished kept me going. I used half-double crochets (North American terminology here) for the whole thing, including three rounds of the same for the border.

 

 

 

A quick count of the empty Knit Picks Wool of the Andes yarn ball-bands tells me I've used tells me that the blanket took 5 balls of Cloud, 8 of Coal (and it would have been good to have a 9th ball for insurance here, as I used up every last scrap plus about one yard of another black wool that was close enough for jazz), 7 of Dove Heather, and 7 of Mist. I enjoyed this yarn, and would happily use it again. Actually, I've started planning out a blanket for each of my daughters, though I might play around with some other log-cabin-related layouts.

 

This came out to a not-quite-queen-size blanket, so either a cover for a smaller bed, or a nice big blanket to snuggle up under by the fireside, or perhaps by the eerie glow of the T.V. Either way, it is very warm and snuggly. I can attest to this from sitting under it while crocheting, which is something that I was only able to do in our nice cool basement, as it has been rather hot out (August is like that now and again). I'm quite pleased with this, and hope that the future owners of the blanket will enjoy it.

A Finished Sweater and a Blanket-in-Progress

 My Daughter found a few moments between being busy having fun and enjoying reading to model this sweater I knit for her. She seems to quite like it, which is good, as she picked out the pattern herself. The pattern is Audrey's First Day by Elizabeth Smith, which you can find in the incredibly adorable and also free online magazine Petite Purls.


The Yarn is Bamboo Ewe (Stitch Nation), and we found a few skeins of this colour in the clearance bin, so we picked them up (as they're my eldest's favourite colour), and reunited them with the leftover Periwinkle Bamboo Ewe from my stash for the subtle stripe.

The only change was really in the length (both body and sleeves), and I added more buttons accordingly. Now my daughter has a nifty cardigan to wear when she starts school in the fall!

Now, I must get back to work (football e-mails, baking with the kids, mopping the floor), but I'll leave you with a photo of the blanket-in-progress, with a nectarine for scale. Why a nectarine? I honestly couldn't tell you. What I can tell you though is I'm not getting even remotely bored with this blanket, even though it's all the same stitch, and have started planning to make similar ones (but in different colours) for my daughters.

Off to the Races!

My yarn order arrived on Wednesday, I started swatching immediately, and here's where I'm at this morning. I have a bit of a deadline for this blanket, but I think I can meet it no problem (at least at this rate). I still have to ask for some modelling help for a finished object, and I'll post pictures of that soon, but in the meantime, please enjoy the blanket-in-progress.

Using Open-Source Software to Plan a Moderne Log Cabin

So, I'm planning to make a Moderne Log Cabin Blanket, (only with crochet rather than knitting, it being an easy conversion in this case. While using a tad more yarn, it will be so much quicker that it is worth it), and found a fun and easy way to play around with potential colour combinations.

Having downloaded the pdf in question, I right-clicked and saved a copy of the layout pictures. Now, using GIMP Image Editor, I erased the colours, and saved them as log cabin blanks. Since I'm ordering Knit Picks yarn for this, (I decided to move up a size to worsted weight, going with Wool of the Andes worsted), I could also save copies of the pictures of each colour of yarn that I was considering.

Rather than cutting and pasting bits of these pictures, I instead used a simpler option; I copied the pictures and saved them as new patterns. All I needed to do now was use the fill tool, and play around with all the different combinations. I can't help but think that it would be even cooler if the source photos were of swatches rather than skeins, but it does nonetheless provide the variations in shade and texture that make it look like it's made of yarn rather than flat paint, and makes it much easier to decide between subtly different shades. I'm not sure what other graphics programs will allow for the same ease of use, but I do enjoy tinkering with GIMP Image Editor, and really enjoy finding more knitting and crochet applications for it.

I'm having so much fun with this that I might just design a dozen Log Cabin blankets, whether I crochet (or knit) them, or not.