Shawls for Grandma Tina

A couple of months ago, I briefly put up a request on Instagram: handmade shawls for my grandma.

The adorable sweet lady in these photos is my grandmother, grandma Tina. She’s 93 years old and lives in Brazil, my home country.

My gran is a super talented seamstress, knitter, and crocheter (among many other skills), and over the decades, she created beautiful heirlooms for the entire family. In the last few years she’s had to stop crafting because of arthritis in her hands and declining eyesight. A couple of years ago, I decided it was her turn to be on the receiving end, and started knitting shawls for her. She’s been so appreciative! I truly believe that only another knitter or crocheter can truly appreciate the effort that goes into a piece,

This amazing lady has had a very difficult couple of years. We lost my father in 2020, and my gran lost her youngest son, which has been incredibly heartbreaking for her. I wanted to shower her with love, so I put out a call: who wanted to knit a shawl for me to bring home to my gran?

After an 11-month delay in my promise to go back and visit her ASAP, I finally made it back in late November, with 10 handknit shawls for my gran. My endless gratitude to those of you who helped me bring her so many smiles. She even wrote a thank you note, which you can hear about in our latest podcast episode!

Rebel knit by Erin Pararas

Be Simple Variations knit by Alex Wechsler

The Age of Brass and Steam knit by Michelle Yanofsky

Reverb Shawl knit by Sarah Boci

The Girl from the Grocery Store by Kat @kefknits

Hitchhiker knit by Sarah Boci

? knit by Lisa Hutchinson

Free Your Fade knit by Tessa Belkin

A Girl's Best Friend knit by Aimee Gilles of La Bien Aimee

Close to You knit by Jennifer Goldenberg

Light and Shadow KAL: Make a Nevasca Shawl!

We are kicking off our next Knit-Along on Thursday, November 4th! If you want to cast on live with us, we’ll be casting on at our Virtual Stitch Night!

Join us and come make your new favorite shawl! Nevasca is super cozy and perfect for wearing over a tshirt in the fall, and for layering up in the winter. It’s also a fun, intuitive knit that you won’t want to put down.

We are officially kicking off on November 4th! Ana will be casting on with Nightshades at our Virtual Stitch Night. The KAL will run until December 15th! If you would like to knit live with us, you can join us every Thursday night at Virtual Stitch night, we will be working on our shawls!

What do you need?

A copy of the Nevasca shawl pattern, and 3 skeins of either Harrisville Daylights or Nightshades!

Why are we calling it the Light and Shadow KAL?

Nevasca was designed to be knit in Harrisville Daylights or Nightshades. Harrisville yarns are spun in an old, family-owned and operated mill right here in New England. Nick, the current Colony family member operating the mill, personally developed both of these beautiful yarn lines.

Nightshades comes in twelve delicate shades of black, and Daylights comes in six delicate shades of ecru. These gorgeous neutral palettes were created for every mood and marbled with just a dusting of color.

Prize:

Our KAL winner will get 3 skeins of Harrisville Daylights or Nightshades! If you make your shawl in Daylights, you will will 3 skeins of Nightshades so you can make the “shadow” to your “light” and vice-versa!

For a chance to win, start your project on or after November 4th and finish by December 15th!

Want extra chances to win? For an extra entry, share your project on Instagram and tag it with #NevascaShawl and #lightandshadowKAL

Snapshots from Rhinebeck!

Rachel Price of Spincycle Yarns

Lindsay Vega, Five Boroughs Yarn

Jocelyn Tunney of O-Wool

Cecilia Nelson-Hurt and Louis Boria, fellow Latine members of Vogue Knitting’s DAC

Aimee Gilles of La Bien Aimee

Annmarie from Harrisville Designs in her new Nevasca Shawl!

Sheep!

Melanie, Ana, and Annie!

Toe-Up Socks!

My finished pair of toe-up socks, not blocked and ends not woven in yet…

I am new to knitting socks. I only started knitting them this past January. So back in February, Ana offered a Crash Course on Toe-Up Socks through Vogue Knitting Live. I decided to take it, and I have fallen in love with knitting toe-up socks. Since taking her class, I decided to knit a pair using Crazy Zauberball in Indisch Rosa.

The pattern I used to knit my socks was provided by Ana with the class she taught. I thought this would work perfectly with my self striping yarn. I’ll let you all be the judge of that! The one thing I really contemplated was how close I wanted the pair to match. With luck, they turned out pretty close. It wouldn’t be a hand knit by me without a mistake! I noticed that I was short a stitch when I got to the ribbing of my second sock. To fix it, I just added an increase in that round to even it out so the ribbing would work out. I had knit the second sock in a day, and didn’t have the heart to rip it out and restart it. In all, this pair of socks took me about 4 days to knit.

The start of my toe up socks after I just finished the toe shaping.

The other slight issue with my socks is that there’s a hole right where the heel meets the rest of the sock. When I weave in my ends, I’ll take some of the scrap yarn and fill in the hole.

The main benefit of knitting toe-up: as soon as the heel is finished, the sock can end whenever you like! I have found that 6 inches after the heel is the perfect height for me. I personally prefer magic loop over double pointed needles for socks, but toe-up can accommodate both methods!

Want to learn how to knit socks? Join Ana’s Toe Up workshop next month!

The second sock after I had finished the short row heel.

My practice sock from Ana’s Vogue Knitting Live Toe Up Course back in February.

Making a Deck Your Own: Part 2: Re-Naming

Last time I introduced you to the idea of modifying a tarot deck, and showed you three was to trim a deck. This time I’m going to show you how I renamed the court cards in the Wayhome Tarot. 

There’s so much I love about the Wayhome Tarot. I love the table setting in the 10 of Pentacles. the circus horses of The Devil, and the heart and brain of the Empress and Emperor. I love that it’s a non-human deck, showing the natural world. This deck made so much sense to me.  The creators, Bakara Wintner and Autumn Whitehurst, write  that “each image could reasonably be found on a single, winding walk through upstate New York.” I used to live in Western New York, and these images seemed like home.  

I bought this deck because I love how the court cards were imagined: human silhouettes containing the essence of the card. I absolutely loved the King of Swords as a modern windmill/wind farm. But I absolutely hated that it was called Father of Swords.  I bought the deck anyway, thinking that I could work with Father/Mother/Son/Daughter rather than King/Queen/Knight/Page. I couldn’t. I kept seeing my father’s face whenever I drew a king card. I couldn’t work that way. Court cards are already some of the trickiest cards to interpret, and I couldn’t deal with the associations this naming convention was bringing up. I knew I had to do something about them. 

I thought about trimming, but there was no way for me to do it evenly across all the cards. The Majors and Minors had the name of the card written across the bottom, while the court cards had the names on the top. If I couldn’t cut out the names, then I had to cover them. I thought about just writing a new name and sticking it on, but I couldn’t get my handwriting even enough. I asked for advice from Tarot with Scissors, and dredged up my grad school notes on archival preservation materials, and got to work. 

I found a close enough font match in Papyrus 12 point. I used Avery 5260 address labels that I had on hand, and printed off a sheet containing the new names.

I trimmed them to size using an X-Acto knife.

I colored them in with an alcohol-based marker (Art Alternatives Illustration Marker in  E2 Sand) so that it wasn’t bright stationery white. It isn’t an exact match but it’s consistent across all court cards, so I’m OK with that.  

I sealed everything with 2 coats of satin Mod Podge, to prevent the edges of the labels from lifting. 

I am so very happy with how this modification turned out. I’m using it for my daily draws this month. Depending on the humidity, the Mod Podge gets a little sticky, but it’s no big deal. I can do an overhand shuffle and a riffle shuffle and the labels aren’t lifting. And while there is a thickness to the court cards that isn’t present in the rest of the deck, I can’t feel it enough to “cheat” in my readings. 

This modification, while drastic, has changed the Wayhome tarot from something that I wanted to love but couldn’t, into one of my favorite decks.