Pink blanket for great-grandaughter

This is going to be a Christmas gift for my great-granddaughter Lilliana, who loooves pink! The blanket used less than 4 skeins, so I'm using the last part of the fourth skein to also make a matching pink Mini Dino for her. 💜 This is a great design to give as a gift to any young person because it's easy to crochet, and the infinite pathways contained in the blanket represent the infinite potential in every young person's life. I absolutely love that symbolism and message.

I followed the method shown in this video by Fiber Spider. Blanket is worked with 39 pattern rounds followed by 1 round of solid DC and then edged with a border of RSC (reverse single crochet, also known as crab stitch). So, essentially, 40 rounds plus the edging. Here's the link to my Ravelry project page, which has details about the yarn and hook I used.

I've made this design several times, and I like that the rounds begin/end at a corner, but I think if I ever make another one, I'm going to attempt to do it in turned rounds, where there is no obvious right side/wrong side.

Coboo infinity scarf

Running one entire skein of Coboo through the Addi 46 knitting machine with firm tension resulted in 184 rows, plus a tail that was just long enough to graft the ends together for a child's infinity scarf that is 42 inches long. 

I followed this YouTube tutorial by Calumet Knits for grafting the scarf ends together.

I made this for my great-granddaughter, who loves pink. I originally wanted it to be a pocket scarf, but I would have needed another skein of the Coboo yarn to add enough length to make pockets. But I think the infinity scarf still turned out OK. The yarn fiber is so light that it made it difficult to get my grafting tension just right.

Accessories for Miss Pam's funeral

This post is incredibly difficult for me to write.

My dear, dear friend of nearly 30 years has left this world.

Miss Pam's family asked everyone attending her funeral to wear something purple, because purple is the color of the pancreatic cancer awareness ribbon.

Crocheting the scarf and scrunchie using Red Heart Sassy Lace yarn is very fast and easy. I crocheted the double-wrap infinity scarf in about an hour, and the scrunchie was even faster. I was able to make both items from just one skein of the Sassy lace yarn.

Mikey Sellick of The Crochet Crowd has a video tutorial for how to crochet the Sassy lace scarf. (He also has a knit version for those who prefer to knit it.)

Kinga Erdem of My Hobby Is Crochet has a video tutorial for how to crochet the Sassy lace scruchie. Kinga suggests using about 2.5 meters of the lace for each scrunchie, so I cut off about 10 feet and set that aside for the scrunchie before using the rest of the skein to crochet the scarf.

Miss Pam's family chose a purple butterfly as the symbol to represent Miss Pam's journey. I have another dear friend who is an artist, Artified by Rae, and I commissioned her to create this butterfly for Pam's daughters. If you look closely at the butterfly's wings, you will see Pam's name inscribed there.

Another one of Pam's friends read this about the purple butterfly at her funeral service: "The purple butterfly is a symbol for Pancreatic Cancer. A purple butterfly is one of the rarest of all butterflies to see out in its natural habitat. It is a reminder for you to stay patient and faithful. It urges you to trust in yourself and have courage. Mrs. Pam, you are now and forever our purple butterfly!"

💜💜💜

Light, wide infinity scarf

Another quick and easy machine-knit infinity scarf. Cast on with waste yarn, then switch to project yarn and knit through the entire skein, leaving about a 60-inch tail for grafting the ends together.

I wanted this scarf to be as wide as possible, so I used the Sentro 48 to knit it. I got 252 rows from one full skein of the Lion Brand Mandala Ombre in the Chi colorway. Finished scarf is about 54 inches long.

Although Lion Brand calls this a size 4 yarn on the label, it feels more like a DK (3) weight, and this weight works into a lovely tubular scarf that will keep the wearer plenty cozy and warm despite the fiber's light weight.

You can see how to seamlessly graft the ends of the tube together by watching a tutorial video like this one, although there are many tutorials available for this technique online.

I gifted this scarf to my daughter, LadyU! 

And I made another one for Rose, whose favorite color is orange. It can be difficult to find pretty yarns that include the color orange, so this Lion Brand Mandala Ombre in the Serenity colorway jumped out at me as being a great choice. I hope she likes it!

I also knitted this one on the Sentro 48 and got 267 rows from the skein (not sure why there's such a difference in the number of rows between the different colorways). Finished scarf is also about 54 inches long.

My first machine-knit infinity scarf / cowl

I’m so excited! After lurking for months on various machine knitting Facebook groups and absorbing lots of helpful wisdom and tips, I finally took the plunge and bought my first knitting machine, a Sentro 40. 

I selected the 40-pin machine as my entry point into the machine knitting world because it was affordably priced, and I think its size is a good compromise between the biggest machines and the tiny machines. I’m also glad I spent months studying the experiences of others via the Facebook groups and also YouTube because that knowledge made it possible for me to hit the ground running (or if not running then at least walking) rather than to have to stumble through the learning curve that these machines invariably have.

My Sentro arrived yesterday, so as soon as I got off from work I assembled the pieces (i.e., put the legs on) and started cranking through one of the little sample balls of yarn that came with it. I already knew the trick for how to cast on because of my earlier research. 😊 On that first run-through I wasn’t paying attention to whether stitches were dropping (many of them did); I was just trying it out and having fun.

 

This infinity scarf (or cowl if worn double-wrapped) is the second thing I did with my Sentro. I cast on with the gray yarn, but I decided later that it would have been smarter to have cast on with waste yarn because that would give a neater starting edge. Mental note for next time. 😉 Jojo Juju (one of the goddesses of machine knitting on YouTube) recommends about 4-6 rows of waste yarn at the beginning and end of most projects. 

I was a lot more careful about watching for dropped stitches this time. I don’t have enough experience yet to say for sure whether the Sentro was dropping so many stitches because of the yarn I was using, or because of the way I was cranking it (my tension or whatever), or because that’s just a quirk of the Sentro. Time will tell. But even having to stop several times on just about every row to pick up dropped stitches (this video shows one method for how to correct it), it literally took less than two hours of work TOTAL from start to finish to whip out this entire project, which used all of a 315-yard skein of Caron Simply Soft. TWO. HOURS. Including the finishing work. These machines are basically miraculous.

I finished and joined the edges with the faux turban twist knot join used in all those trendy turban head-wrap patterns, like this one. The full skein of yarn yielded a tubular scarf that’s about 6 inches wide (laid flat) by about 60 inches long. I didn’t count how many rows that is (the 40-pin Sentro doesn't come with a row counter); I just used the full skein of yarn.

Which brings me to another, much more personal point about why I wanted to try working with a knitting machine: Chronic joint pain in my hands and arms has gotten bad enough over time that it has become nearly impossible for me to finish any yarncraft projects anymore. I would start a project, work on it for a couple of days, and then have to set it aside for several weeks while I waited for my hands and arms to recover before I could even think about continuing. As you can imagine, this makes for really slow going. But I think having a tool like this knitting machine will make it possible for me to keep creating, which is what I want to do, despite my disability.