Almost a complete school

Looks like I am finally reaching the end of my tessellating fish project. As of today I have 13 rows of fish...that's a total of 104 fish. Originally I had thought I would need 20 rows of fish to complete the blanket, but now I'm not sure what do do? Should I stop at 15 or keep going? I have enough yarn. The blanket is on top of our queen sized bed. Any thoughts or ideas would be appreciated. Thanks in advance :)

I really love how they all fit so nicely together. The braided crochet seaming works great!
Click on the photo for a close-up.

I'm using Knitting Arrow's pattern. The original tessellating fish (with the bobble eye and smile) pattern came from an Knitter's Magazine issue 51 (Summer 1998) which is difficult to find. I have since learned that the pattern has been reproduced in Babies & Toddlers: A Knitter's Dozen. This pattern is written as a chart. So if you like knitting with charts I would recommend giving this book a try. Personally though I am very pleased with the way my blanket has come together so nicely. I'm even thinking that my next one will be made with odds and end of cotton. I think it would make a beautiful beach towel.

Today my youngest and I had to do an errand, so we checked out Joann's and Michaels in North Attleboro. I usually frequent the Joann's in Milford because it's close, but I just have to say that the Joann's in North Attleboro is just fabulous and is definitely worth the trip. It's a super big store. The yarn department has all the new Bernat yarns including the organic cottons and wools. This is the best display of yarn I've seen recently. My son got the modeling supplies that he wanted, but I scored in the clearance bin 7 more skeins of Modea Cartwheel in the blue/greys (haize) for 97 cents each. This usually goes for $5.99 a skein. It really felts well. I used the same yarn in my felted tote . I was happy :)

Then we checked out Michaels...they had a clearance bin there, too. Here I scored five skeins of the big Sugar and Cream. Two white and two natural (14 oz. each) and one variegated patio pinks (12 oz.). They were only $2.00 each. I sure wish I had been there when they had more colors. Isn't that a great deal? I figure that after I knit all the cloths and towels I want...I'll have plenty yarn for a cotton fish blanket or towel. You can't have too much yarn...can you?

Well, guess I'll leave you with that thought! Happy knitting :)

hakucho is back!

We returned home from the Cape yesterday! One thing I learned on this vacation is that time does go MUCH slower away from the distractions of the internet and TV! If feels like we have been away for at least a month and it was only two weeks. It feels so good to get away from the rat race! I doubt we will ever try a vacation of this length again though. The boys were bored, very bored. They did work hard helping us as 75% of our vacation was a working one with quite a bit of painting and repair work, but they did get to do some fun stuff, too. We visited the Sandwich glass museum and they really loved seeing the glass blowing demonstrations. We went out on our very first whale watch which was interesting, but the conditions were not the best. Although it was a sunny day when we started out from Barnstable Harbor, by the time we reached the waters off of Provincetown it was extremely foggy. Once in awhile another whale watching boat would pop out of the fog. That was a bit frightening, but the captains of the boats talk to each other and always have the situation under control.

My son was able to get a few pictures...
This one tail shot was the best of the lot. We only saw humpback whales. One even had her baby swimming along with her. It was a long trip of 4 hours and it sure did get cold and windy. If we ever go again we have to make sure there is absolutely no rain or showers in the forecast and it has to be very hot weather.
The boys also enjoyed miniature golf and the Cape Cod Baseball League games. I won't go to watch the games...I would rather stay home (mosquito-free) and work on my knitting. Here's my fishy blanket (tessellated fish) :
Eleven rows of fish completed...that's a grand total of 88 fish. Feels good to have surpassed the halfway mark by a tiny bit :)

Did I make any yarn purchases? Well, yes I did. AC Moore in Hyannis had cotton mill ends on sale and I was lucky to get 3 different colors :)

Now that I'm back I'll be trying very hard to play catch up. We did manage to go grocery shopping this morning. We were totally out of everything. The boys are excited ... we picked up the newest Harry Potter book. We bought the book in the grocery store, but Amazon has a much better price. We also bought Breaking Through. My soon to be tenth grader needed it for summer reading and were not able to find it in our library or anywhere on the cape. Sure wish we had the books for them to read on vacation...oh, well!

Between housework, laundry and getting everything back to normal and under control, email, sail mail, bills and on and on and on... I'll be anxious to visit everyone. At least I'm back and hopefully I can sneak in some time for blogging now and then :) Looking at the calendar it's hard to believe the almost half of the summer has gone by. We'll be shopping for school stuff soon enough!

Hope everyone is enjoying their summer! Happy Knitting :)

A prayer shawl with a ruffle

We will be leaving Friday for a 2 week vacation to Cape Cod, so I had to hurry up and finish the prayer shawl (pattern) that I have been working on. I wanted to start a brand new prayer shawl project to work on during the car rides. For this one I thought I would try a ruffle instead of fringe. I have never liked fringing anything and usually try to find an alternative without much success. I saw a ruffle prayer shawl on this blog (picture in the side bar) and it inspired me to give it a try. The ruffle I saw was crocheted, but mine is a knitted ruffle. It was hard to photograph, but I hope you can get the idea. I really love this one and I think it will be hard to give up. I'm tempted to keep this one for myself. I love the color and the ruffle. The yarn I used was Joann's Rainbow boucle and Lion Brand Pound of Love. For the ruffle I just used the boucle alone.Busy, busy now getting ready to go away. I must decide on what to bring to knit besides the new prayer shawl. I'm thinking of bring my fish blanket project...just hope everything fits in the car!

Happy Fourth of July and happy knitting everyone :)

Edited 7/23/07: (in response to a question by Lady S.)
How to knit a ruffled edge?

Well, I'm not sure if this is the correct or best method, but I will tell you what I did.

When I reached the length of the prayer shawl that I desired I knit in the front and back of every stitch (an increase) instead of binding off. I used just the boucle, not both strands of yarn. I did the same thing for 3 more rows and then I bound off. Depending on how big a ruffle you wanted you could continue in this manner until you liked it. I think you could also stop the increases and just keep knitting. I couldn't make mine larger because I knew I would run out of yarn.

Then on the other side I picked up 2 stitches for each stitch along the edge and kept on doing the increases as I did on the first side. Whatever was done to one side I did on the other.

Hope this makes sense. Please let me know if you have questions.