knittedlights | PDXKnitterati

I usually have one or two projects at a time; that’s plenty for me. I work better when I’m a bit obsessive. But my two current projects are both stranded colorwork (Dreyma and Katie’s Kep), and that means paying attention to a chart, all the time. Sometimes that’s not possible.

So here we are with brioche again, a perfect multi-tasker project for me. I decided I hadn’t had enough of this color combo yet; Malabrigo Rios in Volcan and Azul Profundo. I gave two friends the previous cowls in this color combo, and I decided I liked it so much I wanted to use it again.

Debbie Braden, one of my Leafy Origami Cowl test knitters, said she was wearing the small cowl as a hat with her ponytail coming out the top. Hmmm. I think I can actually make this close up on top, gracefully. I’ve gone so far as to chart it, and now I have to see if it works in real life. If not, I’ll rip off the top, and finish as a cowl for Mom-in-law. It’s a winner, either way.

Here’s another non-charted project from the weekend. I made a little bow with my other 32 ft strand of fairy lights. US 9 needles, again. I made a stitch holder for the live stitches, using a piece of guitar string. After that I realized that I probably have a stitch holder somewhere that would have worked! Oh well, it’s all good.

I’ve got a lot of food gifts to make in the next few days, which will be a good changeup from knitting. My forearms are still reminding me that I knit too long on Dreyma last week, so it still looks like this:

DH wore the hat over the weekend, so I guess we’ve done our gifts early! (Mine is the board in the leafy hat-to-be picture.)

Are you a mulit-WIP or monogamous knitter? Are you scrambling this week, or completely chill?

The strangest fiber I’ve knit with so far? Candy laces from IKEA. But then I saw knitted fairy lights in my Twitter feed, so I had to try it.

I wanted to knit a ribbon of light for my Christmas wreath. I used an e-loop cast on (too hard to work long tail cast on with wire) and cast on 5 stitches using US size 9 needles. Why size 9? I want the needles to stay in the project, and my straight needles were too long! These are the biggest dpns I have that I don’t care about scratching with wire. I wasn’t ready to sacrifice my ebony needles. Stitches have to be pretty loose on the needle so you can get your other needle into the stitch; wire is not stretchy like wool.

I’d really like a longer ribbon, but the product description online was inaccurate, so I have two strands this length instead of one long one. Here’s the first set! 32 feet/100 LED lights. I may make a little bow with the second set, and see if I can hide a second battery box behind the wreath somehow. You have to decide if you’re casting on from the battery box end, or the far end. I used the far end because I wanted to end with my needles near the battery pack so I could tuck it near the top of the wreath.

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Action shot! The lights are programmable to be steady, twinkle, or six other patterns.

After this bit of fun, I went looking for the original source for this idea, and it’s from @leila_raven on Instagram. She actually has instructions with needle sizes and cast on numbers for a knitted swatch. I didn’t realize there would be instructions, so I just cast on and ran with it. It couldn’t be harder than knitting with candy laces, right?

Happy holidays!