Two Tulips, II

And one of the earliest finished is the last to be shared - Two Tulips, II

That's the left two tulips from the Illusion Tulips Pattern by MuseSusan. I took a few rows out of the chart at the bottom and also at the top of the stems so that the finished square would measure 12". Had to reshape the top tips of the leaves just a bit. Didn't realize until I got to that point that because the stem of the left tulip really leaned if I just cut out those last rows of stem the stem on my square wasn't going to connect with the blossom. So a tiny bit more tweaking there. And like the rest of the illusion patterns, the image is visible looking from the top to the bottom.

This was before blocking and in indoor light, and probably well after dark, too. This one was finished at least a week ago, but I only just mailed it in a box today, along with about twice as many as I'd sent before. I really should have split that up and sent the tulips and stars on in advance. Guess I just kept thinking I was almost done with the next square, so it could wait another day. I've enjoyed making squares so much I may move on to making 8" squares to send to South Africa. But that will be after my holiday crafting, and maybe after making some progress (but not necessarily finishing) on projects just for me.

In other news I did have a lot of inspiration for squares left over. I've just run out of time to put off my holiday crafting. One of the things I wanted to do was make a square with a happy family on it. This was something I thought of after seeing decals of stick figure families on the back of the umpteenth minivan. I decided I'd really like the people in my square family to be holding hands, and instead of knitting them on I thought it would be really nice if those were three-dimensional and even interactive. Maybe more on this another time.

Big Ooops! Never posted the finished stars squares here

I don't know how it took me so long to notice that the completed stars squares weren't posted.  Except that as I mentioned earlier this evening that I was focusing on the actual knitting and then crocheting and planned to catch up on the yakking about it later or whenever.

Squares are for the Spreading Love project. The goal is to make comforting blankets for an ill child and her two siblings.

Here's proof of distraction or something. I didn't notice until much later that I consistently was photographing this square upside down. I suppose that's good proof that the illusion works in both directions, though.  Yippee!!!

I really should take some nicer finished photos of these, but they aren't pinned down any more. I tend to run out of blocking pins. Should put them in my wishlist while I'm thinking of it.

More Completed Squares

I've been putting off adding information about more Spreading Love squares because I've been trying to maximize my square making time. I figured I could just mention the progress here when I got around to it. But I find myself suddenly taking a break from square making. My right hand was complaining a bit earlier. I've been crocheting and if I dive right into that suddenly and intensely my right hand is always going to complain a bit. I already can't remember just what it was that was uncomfortable, so that's a good sign already. I know in the past I've related the difference when switching from knit to crochet to having to turn my right hand about a quarter turn more when crocheting to grab the yarn with the hook.

I crocheted a few blocks after finding the Sensational Sampler Afghan/Lapghan pattern. (Ran out of yarn in one block and was discouraged by my color choices in another, so this the only completed one from that source at this time.) Free download on Ravelry; sorry, I don't know where to find it elsewhere. I also seemed to remember that when making the colored part of my Hounds4Homes afghan granny squares I finished at least 4 squares in the same day. Knitting the recent squares seems to take me more than one day. The knit squares probably are a bit larger than those I remembered crocheting for the afghan. They might take less than 24 hours; it's hard to tell because I often finish things up in the early morning hours when it's the next calendar day already.  Above is square 6 from the sampler.  I finished it by continuing the pattern around all four sides, three rounds worth and varied the stitches in the middle round to try to get the final edge straight and the corners pointy.

And this is clearly too much typing.  I'm starting to feel that now, too.  So, bring on the promised photos!

Blue Chrysanthemum

At left is the most recently finished square.  I used the pattern Kata by Penny Davidson.  Thanks for the pattern, Penny! I really enjoyed crocheting this and briefly had the impulse to make many more squares later and create an entire afghan out of them.  I probably won't, but it says something very nice about the pattern and how well I think it turned out that I'd even momentarily consider doing that.

Pink Squares Braided

To the right is a square made from 4 mini granny squares that are joined with an easy flat braiding technique.  Priscilla Hewitt explains the technique in this photo tutorial. It took forever for the images to load the first time.  Otherwise, I had not trouble with the instructions or with easily following them.




Vroom, Vroom; Beep Beep!

I thought the tulip square was the one that I'd started a long post about and left in draft form. Nope, it was the Janus cars instead. And most of that was about finding and fixing a mistake. Also I explained how I reversed the direction of the second car. From there I go on to expound on the benefits of working illusion patterns in two opposite methods.  It got out of hand and was too long and was going to require an additional post explaining a detailed part of that.  So I just abandoned it temporarily to get back to the knitting.  I don't mind typing about knitting, but not at the expense of actually knitting.  Especially when the work is time sensitive. Here's the scarf pattern I was following for the car illusion.


Finally

Not more stars, but tulips!



Ta- Da!  I liked this pattern so much I started it a second time.  It is the Illusion Tulips pattern by MuseSusan at DeviantArt.  Well it's nearly that anyway; I think the designer will still recognize the finished product.  I took a few rows off the bottom of the chart and out of the middle where the stems attach to the blossoms AND only used the first 50 stitches from right to left. This was to make the image fit into a 12" square. In the second one I'm using the left most 50 stitches, so it shows the two left most tulips (out of three total). I'm using lighter and brighter colors in the second try.

More stars, the third time

I'm very happy with how this square for Spreading Love for Marie is turning out so far.  Only about 1.5" left to go before binding off and crocheting the edges.  I switched to size 5 needles, down from size 6 on the second stars block and size 7 on the first one.  They seem to be working out well and the width is about 11.25 - 11.5", which leaves about the right amount of room to single crochet all the way around and finish off nicely with all edges matching.

For this square I started with stitch # 30 from the right edge.  I drew lines on my printed chart to try and prevent me from starting in the wrong place or just reverting to stitch #1 at the beginning of a row.  I did try to do that second thing a few times anyway ;o).  I placed markers where the pattern indicates and also one after the far left edge of the chart to know everything afterward is the stitches that were skipped at the beginning of the row (stitches 1-29 in order from right to left).  The goal was to put the large star on the right side of the small star.  I guess so there'd be something different about the second and third version, besides the colors.  In the second one the two ombre colorways were fabulous together.  With the third, I didn't realize that I was choosing skeins that both faded to nearly white. It seems that would be ok for either the star portion or the background, but not both.  (I think it would be even better if the fade to white was only in the stars color and not in the background.)  The white from each strand would often line up too closely together.  So I added in a plain yellow and a different yellow ombre yarn, too.  Actually, one was the yellow and peach used in the version two.  I briefly used some of the seafoam -oops! that's seaspray- yarn that was used in the first star square and also in the diamond brocade block.  When the original background yarn got to the bluish color I added the seafoam strand at the opposite side and worked a few of the background rows in that before switching back.  I'll have a lot more ends to weave in at the end, but I think using the extra yarns was the right choice here.

At the right the square is shown upside down, with the large star on the left just like version 2.  It looks very different because turning it around doesn't change the way the stars are slanting.  I suppose I've changed it since the first version because I can, I thought to do so, and I like to think I'm improving on something each time.  I didn't want to settle for as many partial stars as I got in the first square when I could change the starting point to shift it all and have more stars and less star pieces.  I'm sure it's just me though ;o).  I hadn't thought about flipping the chart upside down and working it that way.  That doesn't seem like a meaningful change would result, though.

Another square, and only a minor miscalculation

Finished the second stars square this evening.  Squares are for the Spreading Love project.

Progress was going pretty fast, comparatively.  AND, a bonus, I am not making the errors that I was in the first version of this.  I am following with chart and maintaining the "sanity markers" along my needle, adding a 3rd marker that shows where the right side of the chart ends so I know I'm wrapping around to the first 9 sts on the left.


I thought for this one I'd shift the starting point in the stitches and rows so that more complete stars would show up in the final square.  I started on the *10th st in from the right edge* and on row 24 and planned to complete through row 118.  The first star square was 94 rows high.  Using two "ombre" yarns provides plenty of variation in colors and shading with far less loose ends to weave in.

At row 118, with about an inch left to work, I realized I was looking at the wrong numbers on my sheet when I started.  I began with row 24, but had actually planned to start with row 48 and continue through row 142.  Seemed I'd be at 12" around row 128.  So I kept working until I had points on the two mostly whole stars, around row 136.   Then I unraveled up to row 42.  Used a size G crochet hook to draw loops through the active knit stitches and bind off, making slip stitches.

Even after switching to size 6 needles from size 7, with a 54 stitch wide pattern I'm still a little too close to exactly 12" wide to finish off with a nice edge the way I'd like.  Perhaps next time I'll drop down to a size 5...although 5s are notoriously bad luck for me.  The only needles I've broken, three or four total, were all size 5.

*Nov 16, 2010 @ 2:42 AM ET - Edited above to fix the starting point info.  Made the same mistakes here as I did in my Ravelry notes.  I only partly understand why.  I was skipping the first 9 stitches which leaves 9 stitches to work before the sanity marker.  So instead of being clear and saying I started with stitch 10 instead of stitch 1, I guess I had 9 on the brain and kept saying I started 9 sts in, which is sloppy, vague and just wrong, really.  Otherwise, I misidentified the direction from which I was starting.  Clearly typical charts read right to left; I know this, and this is how I was using the chart, too.  Still I said 9 (wrong as just noted) sts in from the left edge.

Completed squares

I think this would definitely make a neat blanket as an all over pattern.  That's the way the actual blanket pattern I was referring to is written.  (For the Spreading Love project I just needed a single panel width worked up into a square.)  I can imagine children tucked in with this blanket and gazing down at it, seeing all the stars popping out.  Perhaps that makes it too interesting to promote relaxation, though.  This won't the the last illusion knitting project I do.  Well, I suppose that's a silly thing to say since I already have a second version of this on my needles and half completed already!

Here are the other completed blocks:

Sure wish I could master altering the layout here...just seems a bit clunky and very limited.  oh well!


To the left is Holding hands, feeding ducks.

If I were doing this brioche pattern again and altering it into a square shape, I might be more particular about the corner that doesn't really have any yellow in it.  That just stands out just a bit.  I also might try to establish the corner/squared shape much earlier in the design.

Here's the M block, just needs blocking.












ETA: the blocked version - what a difference!!!

and also edited to clarify a poorly expressed thought and provide the link for the Star Illusion Blanket pattern.

The long way around; it's inevitable

I thought Bright Navy looked nice with these other colors and planned to work this design with a few more alternating foreground and background colors than the blanket pattern suggests. Yesterday Bright Navy seemed fine when I was working it and when I’d worked past it. For the background I was thinking colors that might be seen in the sky. 

Before, with navy stripes - so stark!

Today, however, it’s overcast outside. As soon as I glimpsed the partial block I thought the navy looked out of place and so very close to black. After a while this bothered me enough to decide the navy was coming out. But since I’d worked 8 stripes past the stripes that included navy I decided instead of ripping all that out I’d pull out the section with the navy stripes and rework those and then re-attach the part of the pattern coming afterward. Shouldn't be too much of a problem.  It's not like I don't have a procession of loose ends hanging off the side from adding new colors.  Just gonna start by yanking on a navy one...

No more navy, anyway...

It’s been an adventure. And by now I’m sure, while less satisfying, it would have been a lot less challenging and time consuming to rip everything back to where the navy started and re-do it all, rather than saving and grafting - especially since the top row of each stripe has specific patterns of knits and purls. Since I  was replacing the bottom row with the grafting (the WS row worked p to last st then k1) that sounded easy enough.  Really just plain stockinette from the RS.  Except once I had it nearly attached I realized I hadn’t accounted for losing the k & p design in the upper row.