FO: Ivy

Sorry for the crappy photo - my photographer is on an expedition with the kidlets

(boy do I need to clean the bathroom mirror!)

Pattern: Ivy by Glenna C.
Yarn: Elsbeth Lavold Silky Wool, color 23, just over 7 skeins
Needles: US size 3
Started/finished: Jan 2007/Feb 2008
Comments/mods: First off, I love this sweater. And I am beyond thrilled to finally have it finished. I started this when I was still pregnant with Boo, and it was going to be my celebratory no-longer-pregnant sweater for this winter. Hopefully, there will still be a few chilly mornings so I can justify wearing it a few times before it gets put away for the summer.

I knit this according to the pattern, but in retrospect there are some changes I would have made. I'm not a big seaming fan, and I think I would have knit this in the round. The only complication is the hole for the waist ties. It would be easy enough to knit in a hole as you were going and continue in the round. The other thing I would have done, and which I highly recommend for anyone contemplating this sweater, is to write out the waist and neck shaping for the fronts line by line. There's a lot of shaping going on, and every time I put this down, I spent a lot of time trying to count the number of neckline decreases I'd done to try and remember where I was in the pattern. I'd also take some time to figure out how to knit the neckband and attach it to the neckline without seaming, just to get rid of that one extra step.

I love this yarn - it's nice to work with, with a fairly soft hand (particularly when knitted up), but has a little bit of crunch from the silk that makes the twisted stitches stand out nicely. I wet blocked the pieces before seaming, and the fabric evened out nicely.

I'm glad it's done, if only to get one project off the plate. Now, given that it's a balmy 70 degrees out, it's time for some summer sweaters.

Irons in the fire

I'm home today with a (not so) sick Boo and decided to take advantage of the lovely weather to get some photos of the current works in progress. There are many.

A new blanket for Devil, to replace the one lost a few weeks ago. I'm through the first border and staring down the barrel of 120+ rows of mindless blue and white intarsia. I'm already pretty certain that I hate intarsia. This is not going to be pretty.

Ivy, 90% seamed, ties done (note: I did not knit the required 52" because then they would be dragging on the ground), neckband left to be knit. The pattern calls for the neckband to be knit separately and then sewn in, but I'd rather knit it to the sweater as I go. Need to think about that a bit more.

The rest of Cricket, my first installment of the Hello Yarn Fiber Club almost a year ago (May 2007). I'm halfway through the hunk I had left over.

Socks for Devil from the Rainbow sock leftovers (there were lots of leftovers, 30+ grams). I started these while waiting for my Blue Moon package, but they are now on hold for a while. There are also the StR socks, of which I've managed to knit and rip most of the foot. Hmmm...hopefully I'll have something finished soon!

Toxic finally finished

Fiber: Superwash corriedale top
Colorway: "Toxic", Hello Yarn Fiber Club November fiber
Specs: 3-ply, 14 wpi, fingering weight, 515 yds in this skein, not sure of the weight
Spinning: singles spun with short forward draw, worsted style, at 10:1. Plied at 5:1 (this was my first "real" 3-ply (i.e. not chain plied), so I did it slowly.

I actually had a plan when I started spinning this fiber (more details here). I wanted to end up with a yarn that had two plies more or less the same color, and one ply of a varying color throughout. I'm not at all convinced that it worked out terribly well, but I like the finished product.

A couple of notes about the plying: usually I end up over-plying to some degree. I don't mind overplied yarn, and it's never bad enough to be an issue, but this time I decided to do something a bit more technical. I counted treadles for each length of yarn, putting in the same amount of twist for each length. I think the end result is a bit underplied - it doesn't obviously twist in the skein, but the plies look a little loose to me. It also doesn't seem as round as the chain plied yarns I've done previously, but that may just be due to there being less plying twist. While I didn't mind the treadle counting (much), next time around I will use a higher ratio so I can get more twist with less treadling.

I've still got some singles left, which I'm going to chain ply in sequence for a little mini-skein. No idea what yardage I'll get, but it will make a fun stripey something. The intensities of the colors are just amazing!

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I stumbled across Deb's blog recently, while looking for sock patterns, and I've been inspired by her monthly tallies. Well, it's more like I've been amazed by her monthly tallies - talk about production! - but it struck me as a good way to keep track of what's in progress and what's actually been finished. So here are my stats for January:

Finished:
Rainbow socks for the gift pile
Toxic superwash sock yarn

In progress:
Ivy - I started seaming this up last night, hoping to finish it in January (and completely forgetting about the whole knitting the neckband issue...), so it's going to be done soon. I only hope it's done before it warms up to 75 degrees for good.

Started:
Blanket for Devil - to replace the precious blanket lost at the Houston Marathon Expo
(planning stages) Sock submission for summer Knitty - waiting for the Blue Moon fiber goddesses to ship out my goodies.

Christmas loot

I'm home enjoying some alone time on the holiday, and I was unpacking some boxes that got sent back from New England after Christmas - there's a bunch of stuff that I haven't shared yet.

Although I put a bunch of yarny stuff on a list for Santa, somehow he never got it (hmmm...next time I'll make sure I send that list to Santa myself, rather then relying on Ironman to do it). The only yarn present I got was some lovely brown handspun alpaca from Hampden Hills Alpacas.

There's 148 yds of sportweight, and 414 yds worsted weight, all in a gorgeous rosy greyish brown color. I have no idea what it's going to become yet - maybe a nice cozy hat and scarf combo. Or some mitts - it's a cold wet day today and I could use a pair.

I also had the opportunity to visit Halcyon Yarns in Bath, ME right after New Year's. What an amazing place! I walked in and thought I'd died and gone to yarny heaven. It's a big fiber warehouse, brightly lit and cozy warm. I was accompanied by my mom and my brother, who were very accomodating of my enthusiasm as I wandered aimless, mouth agape in awe. There were aisles and aisles of yarn, for both knitting and weaving, wheels, piles of fiber, patterns, everything you could possibly ask for (as long as you weren't looking for lots of sock yarn). I was especially stuck by the number of local products they stocked - lots of yarns I'd never heard of that were made in Maine, locally made swifts and other such things. They had a separate room full of needles and notions. I managed to restrain myself and only got the following:

a bag of handdyed wool of unknown variety - about a 5 in staple and quite crimpy, maybe Romney?

4 oz of superwash merino and 4 oz of merino-tencel, to play around with dyeing once Boo is weaned,

and one small cone of Jaggerspun Zephyr Wool-Silk laceweight in the most gorgeous color ever, for a small lacy scarf somewhere down the road.

It really was a fabulous place. As I was heading to the register, I came across the display of Noro Kureyon sock yarn. I practically fell over from color overload, and grabbed a skein to take home with me. But it's not exactly soft in the skein, so I asked the lady at the register (who might have been Halcyon herself, but I don't know) if she'd used it yet, and whether or not it softened up much after washing. She allowed as how she hadn't made socks with it yet, but another customer had used it. The socks had softened up some with washing, but she was not particularly enthusiastic about it. I've read elsewhere that it does soften up considerably after washing and (gasp!) drying, but she more or less said she wouldn't use it for socks. And it was another $20 I wasn't sure I wanted to spend just then. So I didn't get any. How many yarn store owners/employees would be that honest about their products? Now I'm pretty sure I'll get some, based on what I've read about others experiences, and I'll be getting it from Halcyon.

One last bit of news to update:

Ivy is now done (except for two 52 inch ribbed ties - crap!) and is soaking before being blocked. I love the smell of Eucalan! And I'm looking forward to a new sweater as soon as I knit up 87" of ties.

ETA: Here are some pictures from Halcyon Yarn at Deb's blog - sounds like she had the same reaction I did!

Ivy

Last Friday night, I found myself alone in my living room with all the other inhabitants of my house fast asleep. IronBro and Walrus were visiting for the weekend, and Ironman and IronBro were preparing for a big race the next morning. I decided, in a sudden bizarre fit of neatnik-ness to clean out the WIP cupboard, aka our massive corner cabinet that houses the TV and piles and piles of my crap, I mean knitting.

And I found a whole bunch of stuff that I had forgotten about, including my two thirds finished Ivy. I started this sweater back in January, when I was about eight months pregnant with Boo, feeling approximately the size of a New England barn, and basically just tired of being an incubator. It was going to be the sweater that I wore this winter when I finally got my body back from being pregnant. I managed to get through one sleeve (which started off as a gauge swatch), the back, and was 10 rows away from being done with both fronts when I just stopped. Put it down, waddled away, and moved on to other projects. I don't remember why, but I suspect it had something to do with the arrival of Tin Tin and the loss of any spare moments or energy for the next few months.

Anyway, Friday night I was digging away in the back of the Cupboard o' Doom, and I pulled out a large bag containing some really pretty dark red yarn. And four pieces of a sweater. I pulled out the pieces and spread them out on the floor to see what I thought.

And my thoughts were pretty positive: I love the color, the twisted stitches show up pretty well, and, most importantly, I think it's going to fit well. This is the part I wasn't really able to pin down when I started the thing - how do you know what size to make when you've got a massive hormonally-induced rack, plus the baby bump and a good 30 extra pounds? You guess, that's what you do, and this time I think I managed to guess right. So instead of trying to burn my way through a Mr. Greenjeans in time for Christmas, I think I'll take this with me and finish it off when the List is done.

Note I said "when", not "if". Unfortunately, there's no good reason for that optimism.