Scarf Progress

I finally took some time during the last couple of days to put my new scarf project on the loom. Then, since the hard part was done, I started weaving it. As one would expect, the changing colours do encourage me to keep at it, and I am well past the part shown in this photo (taken during the first repeat of the design.) I'm actually about at the halfway point for the project, now.

It shows great promise on the loom, but once it's off and finished, the little coloured squares should be more like circles, and the woven colours should be smoother. Another day or two, and we'll know for sure.

Rosebud

No longer just a clever reference to Citizen Kane, Rosebud is also a lovely wooly hat designed by Jared Flood for his Fall 2011 collection. (Making that link just reminded me how many other lovely pieces were in that collection. As if I didn't have enough projects queued.)


I knit this hat in a day, back in November. I don't have any of Jared's lovely Shelter yarn, so I used some wool/mohair Peace Fleece I had buried in the stash. This was a skein of Kamchatka Sea Moss, which is a really nice spearminty green with flecks of white and a brighter lime green. This colourway is so beautiful in the sun, and never ceases to make me smile. As for the style, I love it - the cable isn't my favourite for some reason, but it really works, especially with the slouchy garter-stitch body.

I've been wearing this hat pretty much all winter long, and it has kept me warm and smiling, although in recent days I made a couple of new hats, so I have a bit more selection, now.

Ombre Cardigan

Part of the reason that I posted so little throughout January was because I was participating in the Tanis Fiber Arts January knitalong. I ended up being pretty monogamous with it, since I chose such an ambitious project. Toward the end of the month, I was starting to worry I might not finish it before the deadline, but fortunately I had the 31st off from work, so I had time to knit the last of it, weave in ends, and block it, just in time.


Tanis' Ombre cardigan is lovely and featherlight. Being made from two strands of laceweight yarn means the fabric is barely there. Being made from Tanis' Pink Label laceweight means it is also soft and warm and beautiful. The hardest part might have been choosing which of her two colourways to use.

I ended up going with two shades of grey: Shadow and Stormy. Turns out that the Stormy is actually teal as much as it is grey, which of course works for me, since varying shades of teal are mainstays of my wardrobe. The two yarns work well together and have a lot of contrast, which was of course my intention.


The first thing I did when I started knitting the cardi was to widen the seed stitch button band - in the original pattern it is only six stitches wide, which I thought would be a bit too narrow for my cardi. I decided to widen it a bit, in proportion with the increased bust measurement, and ended up doing ten stitches instead of six. The knitting was simple and meditative until I joined at the underarm and realized that the armholes were about 6 inches too big. I ripped it back and rethought the math and ended up with a better size. Once I'd made one modification, well... I decided to do a bit of shaping in the body and made four darts beneath the bust to give it some definition. Then I did some increases beneath the waist for my hips. Finally, I did a few more increases before the ribbing at the hem, since I like ribbing that isn't all stretched out.

The sleeves were easy after that, and then with a quick blocking and some perfect buttons, I have a lovely light cardi. Now I'm just waiting for the weather to warm up a bit so I can start wearing it more.

Warm Plaid Blanket

I've put off blogging this finished object for a while, until I could come to terms with it.


I finished the weaving and sewed the panels together - it was huge and wooly and lovely. Then I took a couple of days to twist the fringe at either end, which took a while since there are so many ends. Having done that, I was left with the question of how to finish it. Back when I made my series of Kindergarten Scarves, I would wash each one by hand as I finished it, using friction to lightly full them. Well, this blanket is far too big for that sort of thing, so I decided to use technology to aid me. I soaked and washed it in the bathtub, and then put it in the dryer.


I know, I know - the dryer?! Well, to be honest, I've had a couple of felting projects that I've tried to felt in the washer/dryer in my building, and have had little success with it, even when running the item through the machine two or three times, so I was quite confident that it wouldn't be a problem. Well, okay, only confident enough to leave it for a few minutes before checking on it. Fifteen minutes in, I opened the dryer, and was disheartened to see that it had already felted further than I'd intended. Sigh. Lesson learned. So it ended up a bit narrower and a bit thicker and a bit fuzzier than was my intention. I was pretty upset about it, but friends and family have reassured me that it isn't actually a total failure on my part (as I had initially worried) so I am learning to enjoy it. By the time I use it on some bright spring mornings on the balcony, I think I'll even learn to love it.

On the Needles

Although time may pass by without me posting, it is usually because I am working on so many projects that I don't take the time to blog. In January, I was pretty monogamous with my TFA knitalong project, the Ombre cardigan (pics soon) but once I finished that, I was anxious to get back to everything I'd put on hold while I worked on it.


First of all, I've been slowly plugging away on this alpaca cardigan for a long time - I've knit a plain brown stockingette body, and finally got to the more exciting bit, at the sleeves. The stranded work turned out pretty well, and I'm sure it will tidy up more with a good blocking. One more sleeve to go and I can knit the matching yoke and finish this up. Doesn't the colour combination make you think of Neapolitan ice cream?


Also in the pink vein (it must've been Valentine's Day) I have started a complicated pair of socks (i.e. my usual) with a lovely soft pink from Tanis Fiber Arts. Well, I started and restarted (and restarted) them, really. It took a few tries to get the fit right. I also finally got a better sense of the pattern by the third try, so now I can knit it without painstakingly following the chart, stitch by stitch. This is still the first sock, so I have a way to go with this pair.


Then there's a hat - not much to see yet, but just look at that fantastic yarn from Madelinetosh. So perfect and round and soft... and what a colourway! It looks so grey in some lighting, and so blue in other lighting. As my eyes also shift a bit from blue to grey, I think it will be a good hat for me. Because I need another hat.


Lastly, not really on the needles, but soon to be on the loom, another scarf. Because I also need another scarf. As you can see, it's going to be all rainbows, offset by navy (because one can't always go with black.) You can't really tell from the warp how complex and awesome the finished scarf will be, but it's going to be pretty cool, once I actually get to it.

Also, I just realized that I also have another cardi and a blanket that I didn't take photos of... so you'll have to imagine those, for now.

In the meantime, photos of finished projects coming!

Queen Alice Socks

The sweater problem that was plaguing me the last few days has been resolved, and after ripping back a few inches and redoing, I am heading back in the right direction, now. I'm pretty sure the hard part is over (famous last words?) and while I do intend to take a photo of the Work in Progress soon, I don't have one today, so in lieu of that, here's a pair of socks.


The first moment I laid eyes on the pattern for Queen Alice socks, I was enchanted: little daisies in the cuff and delicate twisty cables along the length of them, and that one big ol' cable filled with seed stitch, tumbling down the rabbit hole. I envisioned it in a bright vibrant colour, and dug a skein of Sweet Georgia's superwash sock out of my stash.

Funny story - when I saw this colour (called Dutch) online, I thought it was a bright golden yellow, with a tinge of orange to it. Of course, you never know whether a colour is accurate on your computer monitor, right?

When it arrived at my house, I was happy to see that it was precisely the vibrant hot yellow I had hoped it would be. So imagine my surprise when I pulled it out of my stash and wound it, a month ago, and realized that it's actually orange! It's super duper orange, and I don't know how I thought it was yellow, before. Seriously, like it's almost identical to the Hazel Knits orange I used for my Jubal Early socks, and if you recall, I totally made a huge deal out of how orange that yarn was. I swear this one was actually yellow, once. Or else I'm going crazy.

But I digress.


I did have a bit of an argument with these socks at the beginning. It was trial and error until I got the gauge right, and then having a good portion of the leg done, I decided that they were too tight at the right gauge, so I went up a needle size and then realized that the stitch pattern in the cuff was actually pulling in too much so I just did that part in plain ribbing instead. It all went smoothly after that, and all I had to do was switch back down to the right size needle at the heel flap. I also changed the decreases at the toe, but that's nothing major.

They actually knit up fairly quickly, considering the complex stitch pattern. At the beginning, I thought I'd never memorize it (like I always do) but somewhere past the halfway point of the first sock, I had it memorized (like I always do) and it was smooth sailing.

Great pattern + great yarn = awesome socks.

Cabled Blanket

I decided to participate in a loosely-defined knitalong with TFA yarns this month, to start off the new year right. However, I just hit a bump in the road and may have to rip back a ways on said project, so why don't we just talk about something else today, instead?


Last spring, my HLM was bragging to his family about how crafty I am, and he suggested that I make them a quilt or something, to give to them as a gift. I suggested an knitted blanket, instead, since it'd been a while since I made one and I had a hankering. I gave him a few options, and he chose this free pattern from Bernat. I hemmed and hawed a bit about what to knit it with, but ultimately decided on Knit Picks Swish Bulky, so that it would be machine-washable. He also picked the yarn colour, a now-defunct Douglas Fir.


I started knitting it in the spring, but of course the weather eventually got the better of me, as it got too hot to knit with a growing bulky-weight blanket on my lap, so it got set aside for a few months and then picked up again in the fall. I ended up ordering a few more skeins, as well (this was during a particularly difficult time when I had three projects on the go for which I seemed to have underestimated my yarn needs.) I ended up using 14 skeins in total, before I was happy with the length of it.


In the end, the blanket seems somewhat narrow, but it's because of the way the cables and the purl columns between them make it draw in like ribbing. If you actually sit under it, it will spread quite wide and really curls around you for a comfy couch experience. The cables are really squishy and luscious, which is why I loved the look of this blanket, initially. It will be a super warm and cozy blanket for naps on the couch.

A Bevy of Shawls: Cladonia

The final installment of This Year In Shawls Draped over My Sofa is a bright and colourful Cladonia.


Back in my self-striping sock yarn phase, I picked up a few balls of Knit Picks Chroma fingering weight. I knit one pair of socks with one ball, and had planned to do another variation of my Zauberball socks with the other two balls, alternating colours. When I was at this summer's Sock Summit, however, I attended a lecture by Clara Parkes on the properties of different types of yarns, wherein she mentioned how singularly unsuitable a single-ply yarn is for socks, as it won't tend to perform well under pressure and friction (i.e. exactly what a sock undergoes day after day.) So what to do with these two lovely balls of fingering weight single-ply yarn? Obviously a Cladonia shawl.


It knit up very quickly, partly because I was enjoying the colour changes so much. There are a few places where the changing colours clashed with each other, so by the end of the shawl, I was splicing sections out, to make some colours predominate while eliminating others.

I think it ended up pretty cute, though I have to admit that I haven't worn it a lot, yet. It takes a certain joie de vivre to pull this one off, n'est-ce pas?

A Bevy of Shawls: Not Your Granny's Shawl

Having completed the complicated Bridgewater shawl, last April, I was certainly ready for something quicker and easier. When I saw the release of the eBook What Would Madame Defarge Knit?, nothing would do but to make one of the Flatland crocheted triangle shawls. I thought it would be nicest if I used a self-striping yarn with long repeats, so I found some Wisdom Yarns Poems Sock on sale at Webs, and ordered two balls, with the intention of making a large dramatic shawl.


I decided that updating to a more contemporary colourway with the yarn, as well as using a glossier single ply yarn, would update the design and keep it from looking like a huge granny square shawl, like your own granny would have made.

Of course we all know how quick crochet is, so despite restarting a couple of times and completely changing the stitch employed in the pattern, I was still done the first ball of yarn by the fourth day, and ultimately decided not to use the second ball, as it seemed to be large enough for my plan, which was a cute little crocheted neck scarf.


In the end, it still sort of looks like a huge granny square, but I still like it. After a severe blocking, the fabric is quite crisp, and I've worn it a fair bit. I like how it looks, sort of retro, sort of not. And for only four days' work, who could complain?

A Bevy of Shawls: Bridgewater

This beauty is one that I worked on throughout last winter, and finished last April. I suppose I was waiting to blog it until I could get some photos of me wearing it, but seeing as that hasn't happened, the sofa will have to be my surrogate.

Turns out that the last time I showed this off, I hadn't even started knitting it, but was still experimenting with kool aid overdying. Once I finally cast on, there was a long and enjoyable period of garter stitch, to create the square center panel of the shawl, followed by a stint of lace in the round, a long hibernation, eventually coming back to it and finishing the lace, and finally a long and drawn out slog through the knitted-on edging. This type of edging takes forever, but it always worth it, in the end.


After all was said and done, I took a big plunge and dunked my finished masterpiece into a bowl of grape kool aid. The end result is a bit patchy and not quite as dark a colour as I'd intended (I used 5 packets of grape kool aid, but perhaps twice or even three times that many would have been closer to the result I was after.) I pinned it out and decided that the patchiness added some visual interest and depth to the shawl, and opted to leave it as is. Someday, when I need to wash and reblock it, I might grab some more grape kool aid and redo the dye job, but right now I love it.


The overall texture is super light and floaty (it's once again Jaggerspun Wool/Silk, in case you didn't remember) and I usually fold the square into a triangle and wear it that way, as a neck scarf or a shawl. Added bonus: a subtle fragrance of grape whenever I wear it.