My first true day of “retirement’ started out well enough. I slept in and the morning was very relaxing. I took pictures of my current pillow project slated to be my first #Needleworkmonday post.
With the afternoon came too many diversions. I loaded my car with my old sink, old aluminum foil and some scrap metal from some previous home repair projects, ready to go to the recycling center.
When I put my key in the car, I accidentally hit some of the buttons on the key while simultaneously turning the key in the ignition. That caused the key to lose all of its programming, and it would no longer start the car!
I asked a neighbor to come over to take a look and called the service center to find out what happens next. Then I called my brother to see if I could borrow his second car and see if he could also pick me up on his way home from work. Shortly after I got back home, another neighbor was ringing my doorbell. She accidentally locked herself out of the house!
By the time everything was settled, dogs were walked, dinner was served, garden was watered … Monday was almost done!
But there’s still a bit of time left to show you my pillow project, even though I didn’t get to finish it today!
I’m making samples for teaching upcoming knitting classes. Where I live, the extra-bulky or super bulky yarn is really popular, so I try to keep that in mind when coming up with projects for classes. The trendier your project is, the more folks want to take your class.
The problem is I don’t really like the super bulky yarns. Most of them either shed, pill or are just too hard and don’t drape well! Some of them have a thick thread (more like a cable!) in the center of a lot of fluff, and when your finger (or toe) runs into the cable, it doesn’t feel good!
So, my preference is to combine yarns to get a better end product than you can get by using super bulky yarns. I chose some really soft and fluffy yarn. I cast on 30 stitches on size 17 needles with two strands of yarn, which made the pillow 20 inches wide. All you have to do is knit in garter stitch until the piece measures 40 inches long.
To make it more interesting after the piece measured twenty inches I started using the really fluffy yarn - Luvy Amourette. I will alternate between using two strands of Homespun and one strand of Luvy Amourette with one strand of the Homespun. This way the pillow will have a different look on either side.
The Homespun is self-striping:
The Luvy Amourette is super soft with no hard center thread or cable.
Once the piece is actually finished, I will fold it in half around a pre-made 20-inch pillow form, and sew the three sides together.
Knitting with thick yarn and large needles goes pretty quick, so expect to see a finished pillow from me very soon! Thank you for checking it out!
I took all of the pictures shown in this post!
