Birthday Gifrt from my Hubby finaly came in!

 I finaly got my birthday gift from Wayne in, he gave me a gift card to Knit Picks and I bought some of the items that have been sitting in my 'wish list'.

I got their Turkish spindle, I am slightly disappointed by it, the whorl and bead are both solid wood but the spindle feels like some sort of compressed faux wood that reminds me of those cheap chopsticks.  It was probably done for the weight balancing I will just have to wait till I use it to see how it works, its heavier then the spindle I made out of chopsticks.          

That is 100g Sapphire Heather Wool of the Andy's Roving under the spindle.  I cant wait to get my hands into it, but I want to work on my drafting some more so I dont ruin this beautifully soft wool.

As for this lot of yarn, from top left to bottom right:
Eggplant 
Cobblestone Heather (also in the3rd row 3rd ball)
Celestial (also in the 3rd row 4th ball)
Grass
Solstice Heather
Lady Slipper
Cornflower
Asphalt Heather
Indigo Healther Tweed
Wellies Heather Tweed

I didnt realize that the two Tweeds where only 50g balls.  They are very small -.-  I had planned on making the Dirk the Dragon Pattern I also got for my birthday in the Indigo but I know there is not enough to even complete the body so I will have to come up with something else.   The other colors will be going into the other pattern I got for my birthday the African Flower Hippo, I plan on cobblestone being my joining round color, outside of that I am not sure which of these other colors I will use, or if I will pull from my stash and save these for something else.


BUT making things for myself will be put on a back burnner because the yarn for a commissioned mixed granny square scarf has come in and I should work on it first. 

Never ending granny spiral

I was asked to make a blanket with rainbow colors, I suggested a granny throw and they came back at me with this pattern Rainbow Special by Michael Sellick.  There are a few things missing from the pattern, and a few typos in it so if anyone wants to make one, you need an odd number of colors. The pattern implies you need 6 colors (two balls of each) but really you need 7 because of the spiral you need an odd number of rows or your granny wont be able to turn the last corner. Why you might ask, well simply because granny's work in groups of stitches and chains, if you used and even number you will not have a chain on the turning corner when you start your next spiral round.  Also I found on the blue and green round directions there is an error and since these are to rows they tell you to repeat, it will effect your whole blanket if you don't catch it early.  It tells you to '3dc ch2 2dc in chain space' at the corner, you DON'T want to do that it will make the blanket lopsided.  Every time you get to a corner you want to do '3dc ch2 3dc in chain space' its how the diagram shows the corners done.  My last sugestion is for your hook, this pattern works best if you used the right hook for your yarn, normaly the lable of your yarn will tell you what size to use, in my case my yarn called for a size K (10 1/2 or 6.50mm) hook.   So working with a K means my blanket will come out a bit larger then the pattern says because it calls for a J hook, likewise if I went down a hook size instead of up it would turn out smaller.

Once I got started, and got all the colors going it has been pretty easy.  Even fallowing the directiosn he has for how to set up your yarn work well but I some how managed to get my red and white tangled..

Finished!!

First round of all colors complete.