Tag: Lion Brand

Damn the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy!

There is a reason I don’t finish my yarn projects, and it is this: I get discouraged when I make mistakes. Especially mistakes that I continually repeat, or those I don’t notice until too far along to easily fix.

My boxy t shirt top as it looked last week.
My Boxy T— a few days ago

The additional yarn for my Boxy T Top finally arrived. Yay! 1 So I took a break from the nautical signal flag afghan to finish knitting the sweater. And I did finish knitting it. Now to join the pieces and weave in the ends.

I recently came upon instructions for changing to a new ball of yarn when the current ball runs low. It said to change the yarn at the end of the row. Otherwise, if you change yarn in the middle of the row, you run the risk of creating a hole in your fabric Now, I’ve been knitting for a long time (off and on) and have added a new ball of yarn mid-row many times without ever creating a hole. Sure, I had to take care when weaving in the loose ends, but it wasn’t rocket science.

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What’s on Your Needles?

I’m not a focused person.  I start one project, get bored, then begin something else because it haunts my brain.  So now I have several items in the works.  I have finished a few things, but we’ll talk about those later.  This is about works in progress.  Even more so, those projects that are actually on my needles, not the two or three projects that are awaiting assembly.  More on those later, too.

My favorite yarn right now is Homespun by Lion Brand.  It’s not a fancy hand-dyed boutique yarn.  But it is made in America.  It’s fuzzy and nubby, and even the non-variegated colorways host are multi-hued.  It comes in 2 thicknesses, or weights, bulky and super bulky.  Which means projects finish quickly.  Always a plus for the attention-span challenged like me.

I'm using Homespun and Homespun Thick n Quick to make an afghan.
This afghan is already taking longer than 8 hours!

First up is the “8 Hour Throw.”  I’m not following the pattern exactly.  It calls for size 50 circular needles (needed to hold 40 huge stitches).  I already have a pair of straight size 35 needles and refuse to buy another pair of humongous needles.  Instead, I’m making it in three strips, changing the number of rows to get the same approximate size.  At the rate I’m going (only the first two colors of the first strip are done), I’ll be finished by next winter.  Definitely not 8 hours!

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