Ocean Knitting

Edited to add pics: Another ribbed bolero is born at the ocean. Ribbed Lace Bolero, by Kelly Maher. It's a great, free pattern on Ravelry. Knit on size 8 and 10 needles with Cotton Ease, 2 skeins in "stone".

Since I was taking these by myself with a timer, I see I had it on a bit crooked, but you get the idea.

When you see all this sandy beauty and the colors of nature....
it just makes you want to knit something with the name "stone" or "sand" in it.


Knitting on the beach is the ultimate!

It was a lovely getaway in the RV with my folks staying nearby at a Bed 'n Breakfast at Pacific Beach, WA.

Ribbed Bolero!

Ribbed Lace Bolero by Kelly Maher. A free pattern on Ravelry. Used two skeins of Cotton Ease in taupe. Size needles: 8 and 10.

It is done! Not blocked, but done! A few glitches -a boo boo in the lace, I am hoping to be able to tweak on it and then block. And shown hanging on a hanger. Not quite the same as on a real body...

I learned a new technique. The Elizabeth Zimmerman sewn bind off. This is to mirror the cast on edge and to provide a stretchy bind off. I watched a good U-Tube tutorial to get the hang of it. Here is my version. After last row of ribbing, leave 4 x the width of your piece in a tail of yarn and then thread it through a tapestry needle. Insert into the front of first two stitches purlwise and pull your yarn through.

Then insert needle knitwise into first stitch and pull through to the back.

Then slip that first stitch off the left needle.

Voila! You have cast off one. Now continue to do this all the way to the end.

Once you have gotten to the end, you are left with one loop. Just thread through it and weave in the end into your side seam. Your finished piece before seaming:

Mattress stitch the top and bottom ribbed edges together on the side edge for 3 1/4" to make your armholes.

After seaming it looks sort of like this:

Weave in your ends and try on. You can decide which ribbed edge you like the best for your collar. You can wear it either way. Instructions say you may sew down your collar to keep in place. It is cute! I wore it up to Lake Samish and it was nice for the cool evening air.

Summer Ribbed Bolero

Starting out with size 8's for the ribbing using Cotton Ease in taupe. Moving on to size 10.5 needles for the lace pattern, however they were "sticky plastic" and I had to run get some metal circulars to keep from going crazy.

Continuing on with metal circs, that work much better, but happen to be size 10. Size 10.5 is hard to find. I think they will be ok since I am knitting more loosely now that the yarn can move freely.

It's time for some lemonade and working a few more rows on the deck today. I am trying to hold it up here so you can see through it.

A bit scrunched up on the needles, so looks kind of uneven, but you get the idea of the lace. It requires rows of: K2tog, yo, yo, ssk on one row, alternating rows of purling, and purling into the yarnover from front, purling into the yarnover from the back.

Once you get the hang of that it is mostly about knitting the lace pattern for a long stretch until you get to the length you want, and then the next step in the pattern...Time for more lemonade!

On a Lighter Side

I love summer eves when it stays light out later and we do after dinner walks, pick blueberries in the yard...and tonight I could stay out until 9:00 pm knitting on the deck. Heavenly!
Oh, here is my precious homegrown tomato before I ate him! Ahhh, so DELISH! Since it's hot out, I decided to lighten up and knit with some Cotton Ease again. I had one skein of it leftover from another project in Taupe. I went and got another skein for this Ribbed Bolero pattern I found for free. I saw it here on Andipants' Untangling Knots blogsite first. It sounded great! I cast on a few extra for a bigger size as hers was a small. She gives great directions on her blog on what she did.

And another lightening up story: I tried baking with xylitol this week to see if we could make a reduced sugar cookie worth eating, without using Splenda. We have been using Truvia packets alot for sweetener lately (stevia). I tweaked a recipe around and used xylitol for most the sugar called for, only using 1/4 c. of brown sugar. So my smart husband calculated everything out to be 2.5 grams of sugar per cookie instead of a bazillion.

They didn't come out half bad! I ate 7 of them. oops....