Queen Bee Knits

Knitting, Living, Loving, Baking, Teaching,Tips, Tools and Idle Chatter

WIP Wednesday and one FO

Posted on October 7, 2026 by Queen Bee Knits

It was a bee-utiful morning albeit a bit chilly for sitting on the porch … 38 degrees! We have pulled out the plants in the veggie gardens, cut back our wild rose (It’s grown way too big for it’s spot), and we are pretty well ready for whatever the weather brings. We’ll keep the cushions outside for a bit longer just in case there is a good sunny morning but daylight is shorter on both sides of the day and my SAD is starting to kick in. Time to get out my sun lamp!

I have an FO that I promised in a prior post to show you and to talk about my mods. I have finished and am wearing my Make Mine a Double by Milli from Tribe Yarns. The pattern was included with the kit I ordered and this was my backup colorway. I really wanted the bright pink that she was wearing when I first saw the sweater but it’s been sold out and I was too eager to make it to wait. Typical knittier. I ordered two hanks of the ArtYarns Double Mohair Ombre yarn and the pattern came with. The yarn is exquisite on it’s own. Softer than I had imagined and the color is magnificent fading from a deep chocolate brown to blues to beigy-taupes to peachy cream.

Make Mine a Double … at least this shows the color changes!

I had planned to make the medium-large but after getting most of the yoke finished and connecting the body/separating the sleeves, I was afraid it would be too tight so I frogged back to where the sleeves were separated and added another increase round so I was at the XL size. (After finishing the entire sweater I still have ample yarn left over.) The result is a boxy fit but I think it’s good and the sleeves are a little long but I’ll be wearing this as a “dress” sweater to work, etc. so I’m happy with it (and I can always frog back a bit and shorten them if I change my mind. Frogging mohair isn’t always a fun thought.

I cast on a new project. I signed up to do the Sweater Weather Gnome KAL with Sarah Schira. The first two pieces are mystery pieces and I got them done to the last bit without problems … but jeez! Picking up the 48 stitches around the edge was quite a process. I pulled my stitches out more than once in part and in full but I finally got them all done and I’m ready for clue #3. I won’t show any photos because it’s a mystery KAL and I don’t want to ruin the surprise for anybody who might be knitting along, too.

I’ve been working on my daughter’s Levitate Wrap and it’s coming along. I did frog the entire front edge when I got to the end of it because I missed one sentence of the pattern originally. That was that it should be a provisional cast on of the 11 sts. Oops. I couldn’t figure out any way to unknit the cast on edge of double knitting to make it work and decided that time-wise, it’s easier to just frog it and reknit it. So, I’ve done that and I’m working my way back around the front right edge/neck/left edge … and then I’ll be on to sleeve island before I do the bottom edge. I can see the forest through the trees at this point. I’ve worried that it’s too cropped but I measured 18″ from my neck and I think it’s going to be find once the bottom edge is added. (Cross your fingers.) Interestingly, one of our sort-of-local yarn shops here in Maine is making this sweater as a knit along. They’re all using much heavier yarns which is interesting. I’m not sure how they’re getting gauge but it’ll be interesting to watch their progress, too.

My socks are also coming along. This is the second pair of Reverie Socks by Summer Lee that I am knitting and this time in stashed gray sock yarn. It’s still an enjoyable lace pattern with a little bit of columns of twisted stitches and it’s easy to memorize for the most part. I recommend this pattern! I am also a shorter leg convert. At least for these shoulder seasons where it’s not super cold or hot and some skin can be exposed to the elements. I’m knitting the 72 sts. size and the fit is perfection. I’ve got the first heel turned and I’m ready to pick up the gusset stitches next.

I’ve got four hats to knit as a commission for a repeat customer. I picked up the yarn at the shop earlier this week and applied it to the credit that I have after returning unused yarn from previous projects that I wasn’t going to use. If nothing else, this was a good reason to go through my yarn stash and clean it up and clean it out. I found quite a bit of yarn that didn’t have any friends left over! I’m requiring myself to get the Levitate Wrap close to or done before we head to NYC for our granddaughter’s 4th birthday party. It’ll be a very (too?) quick trip and I’m already struggling with having not enough time to eat up my little love bug. I may have to take a bus home and let my dear hubby drive home alone so he can go to work … TBD.

Gone knitting.

Sunday Update – an FO and almost another

Posted on September 20, 2026 by Queen Bee Knits

Saturday, September 19, 2026 … Yesterday

I was up early yesterday because I had to be at a meeting in Palermo, Maine by 9:00am which is early to get going on a Saturday unless I have to open the store. Even then, the store opens at 9:30 and is 20 minutes away. Palermo is 45 minutes away. This morning, Sunday, I didn’t even get outside to take a photo because it was quite cool and we stayed inside (I got my afghan out of the basket this morning.) We have already run an errand which entailed new slippers for me and some organizing of my yarn bins because I was looking for new gnome knitting yarn and I need some sport weight for part of the project. I think I found what I need … we’ll see when I start knitting the project on September 3 (or 4 because I’ll be out of town the 2 & 3 without much knitting time.)

Anyway, a knitting update. I have a FO! I finished my teeny tiny sock earrings, Los Lobe Hose, knitted up in fingering weight yarn with 0000 DPNs. The needles are smaller than toothpicks and I’m not sure I really enjoyed the knitting but they’re awfully cute to wear.

Los Lobe Hose in On the Round scrappy leftovers

I’m going to be forced to make another pair of these with Christmas yarn and maybe a Halloween/Fall pair, too. Stinking cute!

I’m making good progress, too, with my daughter’s Levitate Wrap. I have reached the bottom of the body of the sweater and next will be picking up sleeve stitches and knitting sleeves. I love the fabric of this sweater and it’s knitting up relatively quickly on US 10 needles. My daughter chose the medium size because she wants it boxy and I’m eager to see how the rest of the knitting goes. Right now the measurement from the middle of the back to the bottom is eighteen inches which seems very cropped to me. I will need to review the pattern before I finish off the bottom of the body. It’s always interesting knitting a sweater for someone whose full body measurements you don’t have … and ask me why when I had my daughter at the beach I didn’t measure the length of her arms, for example or ask her how long she wants the sweater to be? Yeah, well I don’t have an answer but now I’m thinking I missed an opportunity for sure.

I’m also working on my Make Mine a Double sweater. I have reached the bottom of the body and knitted the ribbing and now I’ll go back and knit the sleeves. I had begun the sleeves (I think I may have mentioned this on my last post) but realized too late that I was knitting with a US 9 rather than the required US 10. Good grief! So, I’ve frogged most of the two sleeves and will likely frog back a little bit more and reknit with the correct size needle. I thought I had the US 10 in my project bag. I was wrong. Thank goodness knitting is forgiving.

I am super close to another FO. My vanilla socks (photo below was taken a couple of days ago) in the self-striping yarn are getting really close to the toe. I have really enjoyed knitting these socks and I do love Must Stash yarn’s self-striping sock yarns. The base yarn is lovely to work with and the stripes, well, they’re fabulous!

I love that the yarn comes in two parts and each is the same so your socks match pertectly. Most of the time I don’t really mind if patterns don’t match up. I just don’t want a lot of extra yarn left over … but these days I’m knitting shorter legs (from the cuff to the heel flap) and I am finding I do have leftovers. I think I may be knitting some scrappy socks again soon.

We have been working at putting our gardens to bed for the winter. Yesterday when I was at my meeting the hubby chopped the living daylights out of one of our Hydrangeas. I hope it comes back. In his defense, we’d let it get HUGE and it was blocking our kitchen window which we like to see out of and it was rubbing against the house. The garden at the side of the house was put in ten years ago and some of the bushes have been really happy here and have grown too big for their spots. We have some work to do and neither one of us really loves to garden nor are we particularly knowledgeable. We’ll figure it out in good time. We also have a porch floor that needs restaining and a few window screens that need washing along with our big front windows that are always dirty … thanks to my mother for making me very attuned to dirty windows. LOL

I have holiday knitting on the mind lately. I spoke yesterday with the granddaughter who knows what she wants and asked her about a Santa hat (or an elf hat) and she doesn’t want red and white … she wants pink and purple stripes! In my reorganizing I found some purple Cascade 220 Superwash and I’ll get some pink in the same yarn when I go to work on Thursday and make that for her. I’ve always knitted a Christmas sweater for her as well … maybe this year’s will be a pink and purple striped elf sweater? I’ve found a couple of cute sweaters but she much prefers cardigans because she can put them on herself.

I made three dozen muffins this week (for my meeting yesterday and for my hubby, too). I found a new pumpkin muffin recipe to try and made my old stand-by blueberry and banana nut, too. I took a dozen and a half with me and left the same in the freezer. They were all good.

Tonight we’re heading to the Opera House to see Graham Nash in concert. We have a lot of shows in our little town and it’s time we start paying attention … it’s fun to get out now and again!

Gone knitting!

Walk Around

Posted on September 7, 2026 by Queen Bee Knits

Today is Labor Day and we’re having a quiet day at home with no picnics or barbeques. It’s just enough to be here at home and celebrate the workers. I want to particularly celebrate the migrant workers who pick our food when nobody else wants to. I am so grateful to them. In Maine our blueberry barrens have been battling drought conditions and a lack of rakers (it’s backbreaking work when harvesting by hand) and I love those little berries! So, thank you to the farmers and rakers for our blueberries!

I took a walk around the yard this morning and found this big cicada on the garden post. Our vegetable garden has suffered from the lack of rain and we’ve stopped watering to conserve our well water. We have some tomatoes still on the vine and that’s about it. Soon we will pull out the plants and ammend the soil and get ready to plant our garlic. (I got smart and ordered it early this year!)

The daisy is the last one to bloom and then they’ll be ready to cut back and I want to transplant some (the bunch has gotten HUGE and is getting in the way of some iris) to my “new” garden that the kids made when they were here in July. I’ll be putting daisies and some wildflower seeds up there and we’ll see what grows! We still have plentiful black-eyed susans and the wild roses are needing a big cut … they really are invasive if they grow so well here on our lake shore. I’ve got to move the remaining blueberry plant, too … we’ll see if it will actually grow if it has some space.

I stopped knitting the body and have wound off the chocolate brown colors in the second hank of yarn. I really wanted to see what it would look like on the sleeves if I made them more “consistent” by going back and forth with the blue/brown/beige part of the yarn. Because sleeves are a much smaller circumference than the body of the garment, the colors change much more slowly but I am pleased with the results so far. I have been knitting 14 or so rounds (it’s a seven round repeat) on one sleeve then I break my yarn and knit 14 rounds on the second sleeve to keep the colors sort of the same. I may have to wind off some of the blue/brown to get to the brown/cream to end the sleeves. I’ve even thought about knitting the ribbing in the chocolate brown but I haven’t decided for sure (yet.) I will be trying it on this morning before I get dressed to see how it’s fitting and how much longer the body needs to be. The pattern calls for two inches of ribbing on the hem and the sleeves. I’m getting close!!!

Yesterday I worked on my Jaunty again for a bit. I’m about half-way through the third ball of yarn and the decreases are happening pretty quickly! I am excited to finish this shawl/scarf and get it blocked – I think it’s going to be even more squishy than it already is once the yarn relaxes in its bath. I also machine washed my cream colored Lane’s Island sweater for the first time. I’ve always washed my hand-knits by hand but this one really needed a good wash and the yarn, Berroco Remix Light, says it’s machine washable. I’m impressed at how well it washed up on the gentle cycle. This is a sweatshirt-y sweater and I love wearing it on the cooler days between seasons. I may have to wash the pink one as well.

Gone knitting!

Flexibility is Key

Posted on August 29, 2026 by Queen Bee Knits

All of a sudden the yard is covered in these little yellow flowers. I don’t remember having them ever before and I can’t say that I’m unhappy about them. I love yellow and a perfect lawn is impractical here at the lake because no chemicals can be applied. So, we just accept whatever we get … it’s a good life lesson, frankly. Acceptance.

In knitting this week, however, acceptance wasn’t the thing. Not at all. I’ve written about my impulse buy of some lovely Artyarns degrade silk mohair hand-dyed yarn that I bought because I couldn’t get the sweater out of my mind. Well, I am waiting for my daughter to try on her sweater and in the meantime I cast on the Make Mine a Double pullover in the Artyarns Double Mohair Ombre yarn. It’s luxurious, 2-ply silk mohair and the colors are incredible. I chose to make the Medium because I didn’t want a lot of ease (12+ inches). However, when I got to separate the sleeves and just knit the body stitches in the round, I tried it on and I didn’t think I had enough ease. SO … I frogged back to before I separated the sleeves and added one round of increases to get to the number of stitches I needed for the Large size and now I’m knitting down the body again.

I am so pleased with the yarn colors and this neutral-ish colorway will go with so many things! I now have to decide how long to make the sweater. The designer wears a lot of cropped garments but she’s young and has a cute figure. I’m not young (at least chronologically) and my figure, well, let’s think about acceptance again … I am truly working on it! My best guess is that I will wear something under this sweater because I think it will be too see-through for my liking and so I am thinking to make it a “normal” pullover length but I will keep trying it on with my jeans and see what I think. So far I’m still using the first hank of the yarn and I will have both sleeves to knit. Again, the designer used one hank of the yarn so she knitted the sleeves first (to her prefered length) and then finished the body. I am going to go ahead with the body and then knit the sleeves. ALTHOUGH, now that I’m looking at it, I might like to have the body be more of the blue and chocolate brown and the sleeves be lighter … hmmm. I may have to cake up the second hank before I continue.

Truth be told, this is a lot of fun. I’m enjoying the challenge of creating the sweater that I will like to wear and be comfortable in partly because I spent a lot of money on the yarn and partly because I love to wear comfy clothing! It’ll be interesting to see where it ends up … and I am not afraid of frogging another couple of inches of mohair if I really need to. It’s a booger to frog but it’s worth it to make a garment that I really love. Stay tuned!

I’m making progress on my Jaunty this week, too. I’ve got it to about 30 inches and have started the second ball of yarn. I have three … the pattern suggests using 45% of the yarn before you begin the decreases and I suspect that I’ll follow her advice so I don’t run out of yarn at the very end. I’m not a big risk taker. *shrugs shoulders

I love the squishy fabric that this scarf is made of and I can hardly wait to block it because I suspect it’ll be even softer and squishier! I chose two different colorways because I wanted a big scarf that I can wrap around my neck a bunch of times and I like the two together so far. The first ball is more purple and the second one is more blue … we’ll see how the third one works in (or doesn’t). We do have another hank of the blue colorway that I may have to put away just in case and I can use the purple one in another project if needed. The stitch pattern is fun and easy to memorize which makes this a good evening project or a good one for when I’m teaching (and with that said, I did un-knit two rows yesterday because I lost track of my pattern).

I’ve completed the first sock and last night I turned the heel on the second sock. What good progress I’m making! I have really enjoyed this pattern and I still love the Socks Yeah! yarn. It’s wonderful to knit with; not at all splitty and so soft but wears well, too. I’m liking the pink colorway and the lace! Again, the pattern is easy to memorize so it’s not bad to knit when I am watching TV with the hubby at night or teaching on Friday or riding in the car. I’ll enjoy wearing these soon when the weather cools a little bit.

And that’s all she wrote for today. I may be headed into the shop this afternoon because we think it may be busy as it’s the last Saturday of the summer yarn sale. It’ll be good to get back to “normal” at work. (If any of you know the store I work for, you’ll know we aren’t like your normal yarn store. LOL)

Gone knittng!

Mistakes

Posted on August 22, 2026 by Queen Bee Knits

It’s another beautiful day at the lake. I have to admit to having headed up to my atelier before I took a photo this morning so this is one from yesterday. We’ve had a lot of hummingbird activity this week and the little needle-nosed darlings are creating quite a stir at the feeder. They must be fueling up for their big flight south. I have grown to really, intensely, dislike when they leave. I miss the sounds of their wings and their tiny squawks that we barely notice when they’re here. And, of course, it means the beginning of the end of the porch-sitting weather when mornings get cooler or cold and we begin to move inside again.

This week’s knitting has been a lot of fun because I have three projects that I’m focused on and they’re all ones that I am enjoying! This morning, though, I’m going to talk about one in particular and a mistake that I made yesterday. I try to share my mistakes for two reasons: one, because even “expert” knitters make them all the time and two, so that other knitters may not make the same ones!

I’m working on the pullover called Make Mine a Double by Tribe Yarns. This pattern was made specifically for this yarn – Artyarns Double Mohair Ombre – and it caught my eye on Instagram when Millie wore it on one of her weekly videos. I was attracted to the bright colors and she looked really great. As you’ve heard here before, I loved it so much but I thought that I could find a yarn in the LYS where I work that would work just as well. I looked around the store when I was next there and didn’t find what I thought would even be close to what Millie was wearing. So, a week or more later, I announced to my hubby that i was going to pay an obscene amount for two hanks of yarn to make this sweater and I pushed the ApplePay button to confirm my purchase. The original color had been sold out and I bought a color that I thought was different for me but one that i could wear with jeans or skirts or whatever. This is my color.

In the photo above, I haven’t quite made it to the peachy-creamy color but it’s coming. I promise. I have, however, reached the point that I am going to separate the sleeves from the body. Or so I thought. Yesterday afternoon in my class, while my students were knitting away, I began the separation …. and ran into a problem … not enough stitches.

I swore that I had counted the stitches and had the right number before I put the knitting down the night before. Ha! Silly me. I had done that BUT I had missed a row of increases, the final increase row, that would have given me the right number of stitches to do what I wanted to do.

If any of you have knitted with silk mohair you know that it’s not easy to frog. Those little fuzzy bits that keep you warm despite being open and airy are also nasty grabby little bits that make going backwards very frustrating (and messy). But I had no choice other than to go back a round and a half in order to move forward.

Ta! Da! Success! I have divided the sleeves (One on the purple cord and one on the green cord and now will continue to knit down the body of the sweater until I am happy with the length. Millie wears her Make Mine a Double cropped. I will likely wear it a little bit cropped. BUT it needs to cover my belly even when I will be wearing it over a tank or tee. I am loving the colors and looking forward to getting to the place where the colors change again … this is one of the things that keep me knitting on this project … watching the colors change! Eventually the sweater becomes the creamy-peachy color which will be interesting. I almost wish that I’d started with the lighter color near my face but it’s too late for that now. I have a lot of yarn left in the first hank/skein/cake and a second one in the wings. I imagine that I’ll use the second one for the sleeves primarily. So I can probably cake it up and use some of the darker colors if the bright light bottom doesn’t suit me. (I’m also considering making the sleeves bell-shaped at the end.)

So, there you have it! My mistakes shared. The biggest one may be that I have decided to make the medium size rather than the large because I don’t like to have 10+ inches of ease in my sweaters. I hope that works out the way I hope. Time will tell.

Gone knitting.