Month: September 2025

Retreating and Knitting

Last weekend I went to a knitting retreat I have been going to since 2008 (I think that date is right?). Except for the missing covid years, I have only miss it two other times. One of the missing years was last year and I can’t tell you how happy I was to go this year and see all my friends. Even though I only see them once a year it is a joy to be back knitting, chatting, laughing and eating like there was no break at all.

That’s not much of a photo but you get the idea. Imagine all the seats taken with women telling funny stories and knitting or crocheting.

We were in a new location. If you’ve been following me over the last summer you know this sort of place makes me very happy. Knitting, water, trees and friends. Perfect.

Have you been to a knitting retreat? Did you love it? If you haven’t I would highly recommend them.

I got quite a bit of knitting done on my Build a Better V, the re-do of the Build A V baby/child pattern. You may notice that it’s a different colour than the last post. I knit the back panel and half the front panel in blue, thinking the whole time that it was a little stiff and thick. It didn’t occur to me for quite a long time that I was working with worsted weight yarn and I meant to be using DK. Ooops. Duh. There was some mix up of yarn weights in my stash I guess. I should know better than depend on my organizational skills.

So here is the new one. The back panel is green and you can see how working the centre increases further and further apart from each other is creating a flat centre section which will make the bottom edge fairly flat when finished.

The two front panels are red, obviously, with the same increase set up, and the sides are navy. These are all left over balls of yarn.

With the navy I picked up stiches along one of the fronts and down the back. Then I knit the side to the width I will need for the finished cardigan. I have started the sleeve too.

Once it’s folded at the shoulder it will look more like this.

The other side should be finished by next week. Oh my, the pleasure of knitting something tiny!!!

Cheers, Deb

Any Gauge and Gauge-Free patterns by Deb

Cabin Fever patterns by Deb & Lyn and the Cabin Fever crew

Debgemmell 435 on youtube

deb.gemmell on instagram

Build a NEW V

I’m taking another look at one of my older patterns. My daughter’s friend has had a baby and I thought I would knit a Build a V baby sweater. It’s a garter stitch Gauge-Free pattern so you can dive into your stash and start knitting.

But my daughter didn’t like the V at the bottom. I’m not sure I do either.

This is the back view.

If you just look at that back centre panel, you can see the V shape of the garter stitch. The V is formed by increasing 1 stitch on either side of a centre marker, every other row, and working a corresponding decrease at the beginning and end of the same row as you work down the back.

I changed how I did these centre panels when I wrote the adult version: Build a Bigger V.

You can see that it’s slightly rounded at the bottom. At least there is no very deep V at the centre bottom.

So I am going to smash these two patterns together and hopefully come up with a better baby/child version.

Here is the beginning. This is the back panel. It started with an increase on either side of the centre yellow marker. Then as I progress down the back I am working the increases worked before and after the centre marker further and further apart.

You can already see that it’s rounding at the bottom. I am knitting with my fingers crossed (difficult), hoping this is going to work out.

Taking bits and pieces from the adult version and adding it to the baby version is a bit of a trick but I think it will be make a better cardigan in the end.

Meanwhile I am still on sleeve island on two adult sweaters and not enjoying it much. Maybe I will knit vests from now on!!!

Cheers, Deb

Cabin Fever patterns by Deb & Lyn If you are also looking for baby/children patterns, we did a lot of them. Check them out.

Gauge-Free and Any Gauge patterns by Deb

deb.gemmell on instagram (not much happening there)

Debgemmell 435 on youtube

Resting after vacation

Does anyone else have to do this? I’m just back from an 11 day bus tour of Newfoundland, with 3 days of driving on either side. We travelled across 5 provinces, wow. It was a whirlwind tour around most of the NFL province. When I got home and let my daughter know, she sent the message “will you be in bed for the rest of the week?”. Ha, Ha. She’s not wrong. My husband knows I won’t even go out of the apartment for several days. There are people out there and I can’t talk to another person, except you guys, of course.

So I am knitting, knitting, knitting. My comfort place. I’m finishing up a Musselburgh hat for my grandson. It will be done today.

Timberyarns

I knit on the trip. Not as much as I had thought but that’s always the case. My Reversible Ribbon Wrap/Scarf was easy knitting on the bus. Please excuse the wrinkles. I had it stuffed into a small project bag. It’s probably a little bit larger than a travel project should be but easy to work on.

I added the second Contrast Colour and am really happy with it. I wish I had thought of it sooner. My winter coat is that green colour but I felt the wrap needed a little lift and the celery coloured stripe does that. I’m going to make the celery colour wider and the dark green narrow as I progress. You can see I’ve started triangle #4 (bottom right). This will be good TV knitting.

On the trip I finished a pair of socks for my grandson.

Timberyarns

As you can see Stripey the Sock went on an adventure. My grandson is 5 and reading so I sent him a Stripey story every day. Stripey saw the ocean. Look at all the rocks on the beach. Stripey though a beach had sand but not here.

Stripey went on a couple of boat rides. The sun was shining and the ocean was calm. A great ride.

Stripey liked all the fishing boats, especially this one.

Stripey accompanied me on a little walk in the woods.

When travelling in an new place it is comforting to be somewhere that is somewhat familiar. I took a big breath and enjoyed a woods walk, even though it’s not quite the same as home.

And I went to a wool store in St. John’s. This is Pam of Windswept Fibre and Designs.

It’s great to go away but it’s wonderful to be home again.

Cheers, Deb

Cabin Fever patterns by Deb & Lyn and the Cabin Fever crew

Any Gauge and Gauge-Free patterns by Deb

deb.gemmell on instagram

debgemmell 435 on youtube

On Vacation, Reversible Ribbon Wrap

This was a good take-along project. Not too much to keep track of and lots of garter stitch.

Reversible Ribbon Wrap/Scarf. Free pattern on ravelry.

Just finishing my third triangle and added another colour. You can use as many colours as you like, just work the Eyelet Row as the first row with the new colour. That maintains the reversibility.

I also got 1 1/2 little socks done.

But today seems like a good hat knitting day.

We are over the half way day of our bus tour of Newfoundland. There have been some long travel days, good for wrap knitting, but now we’re in St.John’s for little jaunts, so the hat it is.

A project for every circumstance, right?!

Cheers, Deb

Any Gauge and Gauge-free patterns by Deb.

Deb.Gemmell on instagram

Debgemmell 435 on YouTube

On The Road

We came home for 10 days and now we are off again. I’m testing out several projects to see what works in the car and on our tour of Newfoundland.

I cast on a sock for my grandson who loves rainbows and all things colurful. I think these hit the mark.

This is Timberyarns wool and the colours are so wonderful. I’m using double pointed needles and knitting these in the Irish knitting method that Yarnharlot uses. I figure it’s good to mix up different knitting methods but as a car knit? We’ll see.

The other project for the car will be my Reversible Ribbon Wrap/Scarf (which is a free pattern on my ravelry site). It’s a backup project since it will work anywhere I go. I’m not any further along than last time since I was setting up the other projects. It should get some love over the next couple of weeks. I snuck another colour into the project bag since I thought this needed a bit of a colour lift. I’ll keep you posted.

I have one more project, because can two projects be enough? It’s a matching Musselburgh Hat for my little guy. This I can pull out any time and do a little bit.

I, of course, spent way more time thinking about what knitting projects to take and very little on clothes, priorities, right? Off we go. It should be great.

Hope your autumn plans are fun too. Cheers, Deb

Any Gauge and Gauge-Free patterns by Deb

Deb.gemmell on instagram

debgemmell435 on youtube