Things I've been meaning to blog about but haven't

You know how you'll be going along, happily finished objects and writing up little synopses with pretty pictures, and everything will be fine and dandy until...

...you realize that there are five finished objects that haven't been blogged in final form, nor even mentioned since you cast them on. Oooops!

For the very first time ever Once again, I find myself in said situation. Here is the quick and dirty rundown.

Neglected FO Number the first: my gorgeous, lovely Cadence pullover.

Sorry for craptastic nighttime photo, but it's almost December and it's the UK. It's dark at 4:30 pm.

I knit this up in nine days out of Artful Yarns Serenade (a cotton/angora blend). I was a bit dubious about the shaping of this sweater - to be more precise, the lack of shaping. As someone who bears a striking resemblance to either a pear or a warped board (slightly curvy) depending on the angle, I wasn't sure that a silhouette that tapered toward the bottom hem was going to be anything even remotely resembling good. Imagine my surprise when I found that with a bit of negative ease, it actually works quite well.

My only complaint about this project has nothing to do with the pattern and everything to do with the yarn. The yarn is soft and lovely, and seems to have a bit of resilience not normally found in cotton yarns, which is a very good thing. However, this particular yarn is extremely friendly, and prone to leaving bits of itself everywhere. And I mean everywhere - I need to lint brush myself a couple of times a day when I've got this thing on. Never again with the angora!

Not-quite-so-negelcted FO Number the second: Devil's scarf.

Yarns were recycled from some ancient Goodwill treasures, and I vaguely followed the pattern for Marty. I ended up knitting a big tube for this, because I didn't want it to curl and I wanted to knit her name on the back to hopefully prevent it's being lost within the first two weeks of use. It's nice and thick and warm and soft, and she's been quite pleased with it - blue to match her school uniform, but a softer, paler blue which she seems to like.

I've also got an Aran Necklace camisole to talk about, but that one requires some surgery to become wearable-without-being-arrested, so I'll save that process for another post. Ta ta!

Yummy distraction

Dear Lion and Lamb,

We need to talk. Because I've got this List I'm working on, right? But last Friday I took the girls down to the stash to find some yarn for scarves, since it's really starting to get chilly in the mornings. While we were digging out blue and pink yarn for them, I found you buried in the bottom of a bin. And in pawing through the bins, I came across you again. I looked at you fondly, remembering that day almost a year ago when I found you all by your lonesome in the sale bin at Stash, and brought you home with me.

However, the problem lies in what happened next. Even after going back up to the house through the rain you kept calling out to me. And boy were you persistent! You promised me the coziness of wool, the sheen of silk, and you were just the same exact color as the lining of the winter coat I'm working on.

So I did something dumb. I listned to your siren call, pushed the IM Aran sleeves under the couch cushions and wound you up. Then I cast on for a cowl. A few obsessive hours and a couple of bad movies later (Men in Black, The Legend of Baggar Vance - a fine illustration of the extremes of Will Smith's acting career), there it was.

One Darkside Cowl, with gorgeous cushy stitches and brilliant colors,

and a good third of a skein of leftovers, maybe for some matching mitts?

I apologize for ever doubting that your high price wouldn't be worth it, and I now understand why a Clapotis knit out of you might be just the most luxurious thing ever. I have to say, I don't think you're cut out for sweater-dom, but if I ever come across more of you - even at full price! - I'm going to be taking some of your cousins home with me.

Much love forever and ever,
porpoise

Nana cheated

She opened her birthday present early. Of course, we were talking on Skype, and she did ask me if it was ok. After ascertaining that it was cold enough in the mornings to need some hand covering when she walks the dog, I said it was ok.

Pattern: Triskele Mittens by Violet Green
Yarn: Knit Picks Palette in Rainforest Heather and some unknown color of Jamesons Spindrift taken off of knitlet's hands in a stash swap back in Houston. Maybe 1/3 of a ball of the Palette and 25 gr of Spindrift? Not sure, but not much yarn at all.
Needles: US 2/2.75 mm bamboo dpns
Start/finish: 5 Sept - 13 Sept 2010
Comments/mods: A really nice pattern - reasonably quick for colorwork, and interesting enough to take some attention. I could work on them while watching TV as long as I didn't need to pay attention to every second of whatever was on (or even most seconds). I used fingering weight yarn instead of the DK weight indicated in the pattern. But Mom has small hands, so that worked out ok - I could get them on, but there wasn't any extra room in there.

I love the wavy palms, and the mirroring of the pattern in the left and right mittens.

Now that these are done, I'm ready to jump in to another pair of colorwork mittens, only this time with handspun. Yee haw!

FF: One week, two sweaters

Sweater #1:

Sweater #2:

Not surprisingly, Devil was uninterested in modeling her sweater, although I have managed to get her into it voluntarily. But Boo was happy to put her's on for our grey and drizzly Sunday visit to HMS Belfast.

Both sweaters: top down raglans a la Barbara Walker.
Needles: US 10/6.0 mm for bodies, US 8/5.0 mm for ribbing on the Technicolor Dreamsweater
Yarn: handspun from girl-dyed top (colorways Mermaid and Clown Barf). I used all of the Mermaid yarn and 95% of the Clown Barf.

These were great fun to knit, and have only increased my conviction that I will be much happier when I do most of my knitting from handspun rather then commercial yarn. It's so satisfying. I am also pleased that Boo's dye job ended up as a very bright, but perfectly 3-year-old-appropriate sweater. She loves it, and it makes it really easy to keep track of her in a crowd!

I've got to go back and fix the collar I think - add ribbing all the way around instead of doing a little Peter Pan deal - but then it will be time to move on to the next project. Spinning seems to be falling by the wayside these days, in favor of actually using up some of the stash. I think the next sweater should be the IM Aran, but a new Knitty (and a new Norah Gaughan pattern) is very tempting!

Summertime, and the blogging is absent

Sorry about my unplanned hiatus. I've spent the last two weeks in the US with family, and the last two days trying to shake the jetlag before I get on yet another plane (this time for work). But I do have lots of finished objets to share with you.

First off: I did manage to spin up my yarn in those few days at home between trips. I ended up with 96 yds of bulky/superbulky superwash merino,

and about 175 yds of somewhat overplied Targhee.

About 91 yards of the merino became this,

and 170 yards of the Targhee became this,

which still needs the ribbing redone on smaller needles so it doesn't fall off quite so easily. The patterns are written and off to my wonderful test knitters, and I hope to have them available for release soon. Along with some better pictures!

I also managed to finish 99.9% of the mind-numbing stockinette on the Aran Necklace camisole. And then I ran out of yarn. Thankfully I was in the hidden section of the hem, and I had some DK weight random cotton lying around.

Last night's bout of jet lag-induced insomnia meant that this baby has it's hem sewn down and is blocked and drying on the guest bed as we speak. Hooray! Of course, autumn has arrived here in the UK (unlike in New England where it was ludicrously hot) (ok, it wasn't Texas hot, but it was hotter then England!), and it's not likely that it will be warm enough to wear on it's own, but that's ok. Especially since the armholes dip down below bra line on the side. Hmmm...

Finally, I finished my first pair of socks in a couple of months. I kind of lost my sock mojo at the start of the summer holidays in July, but 7 hour plane rides do allow for some concentrated sock time. I can only show part of these, since they're a design that I'm submitting, but they were great fun to knit. I liked the yarn alot too - Cherry Tree Hill Supersock merino. I think the colorway was "Blueberry Hill", which I liked. US 1.5/2.5 mm needles, 8.5 stitches per inch.

I wrote this up and sent it off to Sock Madness for next year, so the picture is deliberately obscured. Just in case you thought I was doing some drunken knitware photography.

So, two weeks vacation and no blogging means three completed original designs, and one summer tank I can't wear until next June. But there's a lot going on this fall - the iKnit Weekender is in a couple of weeks, and yesterday on my bike ride I hatched out a great and completely insane plan to knit sweaters for six people in my family (including me to be fair), four handspun, one cabled, one colorwork, by next March. Methinks that any Christmas knitting to be gifted has already been knit this year...