Heavily Modified Celtic Keynot Pillow

Here is my heavily modified version of the Celtic Keyknot pillow using the beautiful Hebridean yarns. This experience taught me not to leave projects unfinished for years. Initially when I bought the kit I found the recommended needle size was a really tight gauge for me. Simultaneously the pillow was turning out large. Fast forward to this summer and I realized I had lost one of the colors.

I decide to add the turquoise Shetland; I know the turquoise is a bit gaudy but here in New Mexico you can get away with wilder color choices. I went up a needle size and reduced some stitches. This was fitting a 16" pillow form well. Then in the middle of the knitting I ran out of one of the other colors - I must have used it for another project. Look at the top row of the top thin green motif and you can see I switched to a different yarn. I did extra plain color knitting to get the right length. DH loves it and I'm trying to live with the asymmetry. I don't use Shetland yarns that often but I think they block out more beautifully than any other yarn I've tried. I am planning on buying the Hebridean hat kit soon.

I really liked that after a few rows of stockinette the pattern has you purling one row. Then you fold the edges under and seam - I like the way this looks and will use this on all my knit pillows.

Another pillow tip I've learned - buy a larger size pillow form than the original pillow. This is a pillow cover I bought from Pottery Barn Teen ($9.99 plus free shipping!). The cover was 16" and I bought a 16" pillow form from Joann. As you can see it is too small so I ended up filling it with an 18" pillow form. I think ribbon embroidery looks like such fun - I plan on getting a kit someday and trying it out.

Same goes for my snowflake candlewicking pillow - it needs a larger pillow form. I think maybe I'll get some ribbon and edge it as well.

As soon as I have time I plan to do a blog post showing you four different ways to deal with very long floats in stranded projects. First I have to knit the swatches.

Starting Up Again

I've recently come back to several projects and hobbies. I decided to work on some embroidery projects for summer. (I usually struggle to get a lot of knitting done in the warm weather.) I just started this crewel Pomegranate Pillow and am about 1/4 done. I'm glad I picked a less expensive project to begin with because I was doing the Long and Short Stitch (the main stitch used) wrong initially. sigh Once I get back up to speed I'm going to choose one of these gorgeous projects. (Check out the Kaffe Fassett needlepoint projects at that site as well.)

On the knitting front, I'm back working on this Virtual Yarns Celtic Keyknot pillow. I bought the kit probably close to 10 years ago (it was less expensive then) and I started it a long time ago. The reason I stopped was that it was turning out way too wide while simultaneously requiring an uncomfortably tight knitting to get gauge. When I came back to it I'd lost one of the colors so I am subbing the bright turquoise Shetland yarn which gives it a completely different feel. I also went up a needle size and chopped 100 sts off the original st count so it is already much different than the original design. It should fit a 14" pillow form with my modifications. I plan to add some big chunky tassels on each corner.

Also, I've decided to finish the step-by-step photo glove knitting booklet. I'm only going to show how to knit gloves on dpns though; that will allow me to keep the size (and price in print) down. I have several other knitting design projects to do before that but it will be done by fall.

Lastly, I've re-started my veg. cooking blog, Cooking in Color. I noticed I simply cannot stop talking about food on Facebook. Originally I was looking at the blog as more of a professional obligation and I wanted to post twice a week with 4 new recipes a month but that was too much. Now I'm just going to do it for myself and post less frequently.