So Thanksgiving has come and gone... How was your day yesterday? My family and I watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade and the Purina Dog Show like we always do every year. You probably know this if you watched it also but it was Macy's 90th Anniversary of the Thanksgiving Parade... Which means I've actually lived through 20 years of a pretty awesome tradition.Today is Black Friday so some of you are probably rushing around looking for great deals on gifts and such. Normally it gets pretty hectic and I usually avoid shopping on this day. If you don't want to shop in store Cyber Monday (Okay really it's more like Cyber Weekend, deals are already happening) is also a thing.
I finally got around to balling up my Knit Picks Imagination yarn (Which I talked about on Monday and Wednesday).
As this was my first time doing this I got the honor of holding the yarn taut between my hands as Mum balled the yarn into, well a ball. This is what Mum calls the newbie position, haha. I wasn't clever enough have it on my hand and ball it at the same time. Maybe I can wrap the yarn around my legs and do it myself. My arms actually got pretty tired after a while and it took around 15-20 minutes to get it all balled up.
This is the end product, a well balled ball of yarn.
I still have one more skein to ball up but I'm not in any urgent rush until later in the project I'm using this for... Which about that I couldn't resist; the moment I balled the yarn up I immediately started my brand new and very first shawl!
As I stated last Wednesday I was using the Traveling Woman pattern for this shawl. I casted on 3 stitches using the crochet hook provisional cast on, that my Mum and I taught ourselves, using some cotton scrap yarn. (I talked about this on my Knitting Cast On Nightmares blog.) Then I made myself a little garter tab using my project yarn, which is basically doing a straight stitch on the 3 scrap yarn cast on stitches for around 6 or 7 rows. After making my garter tab I picked up the little bumps on the side of the garter tab, knitting them as I went down, and picking up the three bottom stitches while pulling out the scrap yarn as I picked them up. Okay so I'm still having issues undoing the scrap yarn on this cast on but we got it done. Basically now I have 9 stitches which I'll increase using yarn overs through the course of this pattern.
This is about as far as I got on the pattern before things got really complicated... I really thought this pattern would be an easy first shawlette for me to make but it seems it's far from it. I kept making mistakes constantly. Now you're probably wondering why I'm talking in past tense.. Well I frogged it... Yeah I am giving up on this pattern. I'm sorry, this pattern looks like such a fantastic shawl and it's not a bad pattern by any means but I just can't wrap my head around it. So sorry Traveling Woman but this man has to go the opposite direction. Maybe one day I'll come back and try again but for my first shawlette this is a no go.
I did not give up on my shawlette though! I have decided to team up with Mum and come up with our own pattern for my shawlette. I will basically be doing a simple shawlette pattern to start off with, which means I'll have two yarn overs on either side of the spine going all the way down. At the end of my shawl I'll be making a really cool end edging pattern that Mum and I will be coming up with to finish it off. It's going to be a lot easier this way in my opinion and I've already gotten so far on my shawlette. It'll be our own awesome custom shawlette in the end so I'm even more excited for this shawlette then I was in the beginning.
I did get farther then this but I actually had to undo it back to this. Apparently I accidentally purled the last three stitches instead of knitting them like I was supposed to on each row, whoops. Anyway yeah the pattern is going to be custom made, I'm going off of Mum's instructions and they've proved to be a lot easier to wrap my head around then the other pattern. I'm still using the same yarn and the same knitting needles as before.
I mentioned on Wednesday that Mum has made quite a few shawls in the past and she's allowed me to show off some of them on the blog for you guys!
This is Mum's Rainbow Shawlette she made a while back. My shawlette will probably be most similar to this one. This is a plain shawlette with a Feather and Fan kind of edging.
On this Shawl Mum got a little crazier and added this awesome Yarn Over then Knit Two Together kind of ridge rows that repeat every so often down the shawl. This shawl was made for my little sister and Mum actually has this project up on her Ravelry.
This is a much more drastic shawl Mum made for Annie (My little sister.) I don't think I could do anything like this on my first shawl or two. You can also check out this pattern project on Mum's Ravelry.
I never realized how customizable a shawl can be. There's so much I can do and so many different patterns I can put into this. So Mum and I are putting our heads together and lets see how how cool we can make this first shawlette of mine! I'll be keeping you all updated on my journey in future blog posts!
I think I've turned into a giant beach ball or something after all the food I ate on Thanksgiving. For breakfast we had Eggs, Bacon, Sausage and Hashbrowns with HP Sauce. I never realized how HP Sauce goes so perfectly with all of this I have seen the light and I'm never turning back.
For our big Thanksgiving meal, after cooking it all day, we had some Chicken Breasts, Thighs and Legs with some awesome roasted potatoes, cornbread stuffing with veggies such as carrots, Brussel Sprouts(Eat your brussels kids, they're really good.) and green beans. We also had some Yorkshire Pudding, Mum made this all from scratch and the Yorkshire puddings were really fluffy and yummy. Oh yeah of course we had a chicken gravy poured over top. Now I know people normally eat Turkey on Thanksgiving but hey we spared a Turkey for Thanksgiving because we're not super big on Turkey in this house.
Of course the awesome food didn't stop there. For dessert later we had Rocky Road Ice Cream with some Chocolate Cake... I know that's a lot of Chocolate but I wouldn't have it any other way. Though the Rocky Road seemed to be a bit over nutty, is that possible? Finally we had some potato chips to end off the day. I ate a lot apparently but it was good and made for a pretty awesome Thanksgiving.
So hope you all enjoyed your Thanksgiving and your Friday! Whether you're out doing shopping, sitting at home, or in the middle of the chaos working hope you're enjoying yourself. We're about to jump into December on the blog so the countdown for Christmas is happening! Also the Countdown for when I finally get my mitts on Pokemon Sun and Moon... Mum is still teasing me. We're down to 30 days away! A whole month to go. I got all sorts of cool blogs planned for December so stay tuned!
Don't forget to check me out on Instagram as ZAKManK I've been trying to get into using it more often and it's the website I'm most active on other then Facebook. I post updates on my knitting and other cool stuff related to me on there. Also don't forget to check me out on Ravelry as ZAKMan!
With that all said and done...
See you on the next blog!
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