More Completed Knitting Projects

I've finished a couple more knitting projects before the end of April, but just got them washed and blocked last week, so here are the pictures. Here's the Northern Lights Bohus cap again, but this time in shades of purple and pink. I really like this pattern and I'm looking forward to trying lots of different color combinations.

BTW, remember this original Northern Lights hat that I knitted and then donated as a silent auction item for the Master Naturalists conference? I got a nice e-mail 'thank you' Sunday evening from Karen, the woman who had the winning auction bid on this hat. It's always gratifying for me to know that one of my knitting projects is going to a good home! And with the cold and crappy days Mother Nature has been randomly giving us this spring, Karen will probably still have a chance to wear this hat before next winter!

I also finished the Snow Forest Lace Stole and here's how I had to block it on the living room floor. I usually block my shawls on the bed, but this one was too long: 24 X 66 inches.

I ordered a set of blocking wires from Knitpicks. I've been wanting some of these for a long time and figured trying to block out all the little points on this shawl edge would be a lot easier with blocking wires and it sure was! It was also much easier to get the measurements accurate and get the edges and corners nice and straight.

Here's another close-up picture so you can see how the pattern looks and how the blocking wires go through the knitted edge. It was so nice not to have to stick a pin in every single one of those points on the edging!

This entire shawl was worked from a chart, so I was able to easily calculate the total number of stitches: 61,008! (48,048 for the main part and 12,960 for the edging). I think I started this project either in October of November of last year. I'm glad it's finally done and I've already started another project.

Bohus Stickning (Knitting)

OK, so normally I don't post knitting projects this frequently, but I wanted to show you this hat I finished yesterday. This is the Northern Lights Bohus Hat from the book Homespun Handknit (published by Interweave Press).

I was looking at the Minnesota Knitter's Guild website on Sunday afternoon and I saw some information there about a recent bohus knitting exhibit at the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis (unfortunately, the exhibit ended on Sunday!) Anyway, I was intrigued as I continued to read the story and clicked on some of their other links for bohus knitting.

A little bit of history here: Bohus knitting was pioneered in Sweden in the 1940's by Emma Jacobsson and the Bohus Knitting Cooperative. The bohus style of pattern knitting uses purl and slip stitches along with color stranded patterns to give the effect of more than two colors in a row. In the close-up photo below you can see how this effect is achieved.

Like the other stranded knitting projects I do, the designs are worked from a chart and there are never more than two colors used in a row. This hat is my first attempt at bohus knitting and I'm really pleased with the results. I'm planning to try this pattern again with some different color combinations and the first one will be taking these same colors and using them in reverse order (starting with the yellow and ending with royal blue).

I'm going to donate the hat in this post to the silent auction being held at the Minnesota Master Naturalists conference in May. The silent auction raises scholarship funds to help people who want to attend this conference but might not be able to afford the full registration fee. I was fortunate to be a recipient of one of these scholarships which will enable me to attend the conference this year, so I'm going to "pay it forward" by donating several of my knitted items to help raise money for next year's scholarship fund.

If you're interested in seeing more examples of bohus knitting, please check out Solveig Gustafsson's website for some inspiring and amazingly beautiful designs. (I believe all of the designs are available as kits, but I like them all so much it would be hard for me to pick just one that I wanted to knit.)