Tag: Jimmy Beans Wool

Posted in knitting

Wednesday WIP and 2025 Knitting projects in the Queue

Posted on by Laura Kate

For all my blogging knitters, this is an update. While I haven’t posted about knitting in some time, my needles have been clicking away, and my project queue is longer than ever. Let’s start with this pull-over/jumper.

I am knitting it for dear daughter, and this week I finished the body. Since she and I are roughly the same size, I knew that if it fit my body, it would fit hers. Ta da! It fits. Those interested, the gold yarn is Malabrigo Rios in colorway Frank Ochre The contrasting yarn in the yoke is from KnitPicks – Hawthorne dk in Foster Powell multi and Swish in Moss. She chose the pattern from a selection of patterns in Ravelry. It’s called Autumn Bloom , designed by Olga Putana.

So last week, I went through my project bags and my yarn closet and discovered that I have Four WIP’s and Five New Projects lined up with pattern and yarn secured. That’s way more than I thought. And yes, I am guilty of buying yarn lately. In my defense, it was All On Sale.

I won’t bore you with the WIPs today (pretty sure that I’ve written about each of them in 2024.) But here is what I am planning to knit this year, once I get WIPs done:

I know this post is light on photographs, sorry friends. It’s late and I am tired. I promise to do a charming photo shoot of all the new yarns in my stash, once the weather improves. In the meantime, remember to stay calm and keep knitting.

Posted in knitting

Cast-on Monday – Crescent Shawl

Posted on by Laura Kate

My new project is in keeping with my desire to work with my stash. I have been wanting to make a shawl with this purple yarn, called Leticia, by Bremont.

It is a singles yarn (for you non-knitters, that means it’s not plied.) Three fibers are blended together: wool, alpaca and silk. I own three skeins. Over the past few years, I have tried unsuccessfully to pair it with another yarn, so that I could make a two-color shawl.

Last week, while wasting a lot of time viewing yarns on the Jimmy Beans site (https://www.jimmybeanswool.com/ ) I discovered the perfect match from Malabrigo.

I ordered two skeins lickety-split and they arrived post-haste within three days. This yarn, also a singles, combines silk and merino wool about 50/50. It’s hard to describe the silky sheen of this yarn, (I was almost swooning while casting it on and knitting the first few rows.)

For my pattern, I re-visited a Craftsy tutorial by Laura Nelkin, in which she explains how to design 14 different shawl shapes. It’s fantastic, if you don’t mind doing a little math. I chose the crescent shape.

https://www.craftsy.com/class/knit-shawls-14-ways-exploring-shape-design/

My two-color shawl inspiration comes from Helen Kennedy’s Pale Moon pattern on Ravelry.

https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/pale-moon

I love the way the mosaic section bridges the two colors of yarn. But instead of making Pale Moon, I would prefer to use Laura Nelkins’ instructions for the shape and design a mosaic chart of my own.

My first attempt at designing a mosaic pattern, unfortunately, was a failure. Apparently, there are some hard and fast rules about sequencing slipped stitches between the two colors. So back I go to my graph paper for a re-do.