White Rose of York

I made this brooch to wear this week in respect for King Richard III, who, over 500 years ago, was the last English king to die on the battlefield.

His bones, once believed lost, were recently found underneath a parking lot. Today he is being re-buried in Leicester Cathedral with proper ceremony and prayers.

There are those who say his remains should have been returned to York. I can understand how they feel, and to some level I agree. It would have been very nice to see him rest, at last, in York. But on the other hand, he was a Christian (Catholic) and any consecrated ground would be appropriate. Beyond that, since Psalm 24 says all the earth is the Lord's, then that kind of renders the whole discussion moot anyway.

But there we have it - my white rose of York brooch.

HAPPY Afghan

OK this is my first attempt at a corner to corner (c2c) afghan. I'm loving these colors and it's making me sing that Happy song in my head as I stitch. I know I'm going to have to get more pink and red yarn for this, but that's ok. It's part of my effort to burn up stash and only buy yarns for projects I've already started, rather than buying random yarn and not knowing what to do with it when I get it home because I had no project in mind for it when I bought it. LOL! I do that entirely too often.

So it's my HAPPY afghan!

Woven Lapghan

OK so I'm working on the white mesh part of this lapghan. When this is done, I'm going to use another yarn to weave into the mesh. I haven't yet decided which one to use. 

In this photo I did the top row with Lion Brand Fettucini, a t shirt yarn that may not be the best choice, because I can't guarantee I can buy enough of it to use for the whole blanket. It's made with scrap t shirt material, so finding more than 2 matching rolls is challenging. The Fettucini yarn is the one with shades of blue, in the top center of the picture.

The second row is woven with Starbella ruffle yarn in Toucan colorway. I think I like this color best, but this yarn can be expensive. At about $5 a roll, I may have to drop about $100 on that yarn by itself to get the whole project complete. Not sure. That's a bit costly. The Starbella yarn is the brilliant rainbow yarn top left in the picture.

The third row is a chain of Lion Brand Homespun in the Barrington colorway. This yarn is very soft and rather bulky, and that would make for a very warm lapghan. Hiding the ends in when I complete the weaving would be very easy too. It's a bit more affordable than the other yarns, and I get more of it for my dollar. Hmmm.

What I originally had planned was to chain some orange and some green and weave the chain into the mesh, and it would look like the Irish tricolor:

But then I thought "oh come on, get CREATIVE woman!" And I came up with the idea of weaving a more novelty type of yarn into the mesh. 

I do need to stash-bust, so I might use my Lion Brand Homespun, doubled, with some lavender sport weight yarn included, which I have. That might be my best bet. I know it doesn't show too well in this photo - the texture of the yarn is lost in my picture, but this is a closeup of the Homespun:

This shows the ripple in the yarn and the beautiful colors in it too. I find it's not easy to just crochet with, but there's plenty of other ways to use this yarn if you think outside the standard knit/crochet boxes. 

Given some of the other shades in this yarn, I bet if I made another mesh in seafoam green and wove this Barrington color yarn in, it would look stunning. Or do a soft rose mesh. 

Food for thought. 

New Chain Stitch Scarf

This is a closeup of the new chain stitch scarf I just made. I unraveled a white & gold ruffle scarf and added that into the mix of yarns, and that just really made the whole thing.

I took a few pictures of different ways to wrap it too...

Since I didn't join the ends, it's not an "infinity scarf" but it can be made into one if one knots the ends together, as seen on my right shoulder in the last picture. 

It's definitely warm, and definitely scratchy! I'm not sure washing it with fabric softener will take care of that either; I think it's the glitter that is making it scratchy. Well, either one lives with it or wears it on the outside of one's other garments and allows as little of it as possible to touch one's skin directly. 

But there ya go. New chain stitch scarf. 

Finger Knit I-Cord Scarf

This is the white i-cord scarf I knit, using my fingers as a knitting loom.

First, a closeup of the weave itself:

Now a pic of the entire scarf:

I didn't make it too long; I only wanted to do a short and lightweight test run of this weave and see how it turned out. I added the whimsical grey flowers to the end of the scarf later.