The last day of school

And the teacher gifts are finished. Blocked even. I have got to start doing this earlier next year!

Patterns: Lacy Karius, Lacy Baktus, Mezquita Shawl (from left to right)
Yarn: Malabrigo Sock in Aguas (which is mostly green), Cote d'Azure and Playa (again left to right), less then a full skein for each
Needles: US: 3/3.25 mm, US 2/2.75 mm and US 5/3.75 mm.
Start/finish: 6 June - 27 June, 5 June - 1 July, and 2 July - 4 July
Comments/mods: I started off with the middle scarf, but then thought the variegation of the yarn might look better in the stockinette version (Karius), so I started the left hand scarf and finished it first.

I worked the first and last stitch of every row in garter, hoping to keep it from curling too much, and after blocking it seemed ok. I love the drape of the yarn in stockinette at a larger gauge. I also love this colorway - I'm desperate for a sweater in this yarn, but as the rotational speed of the Earth has not yet slowed, I'm kind of out of luck for the immediate future.

When I went back to the garter stitch version (Baktus), I had more done then I remembered, so I kept on in garter stitch. And it works quite well too, although next time I think I would use a US 3/3.25 mm needle instead of the US 2/2.75 that I started with.

By scarf 3, I was tired of the Baktus/Karius deal, so I found a lovely shawl pattern with a construction similar to the pattern I used for last year's teacher gifts. I cast on with a needle 3 sizes smaller then called for, and the scarf was still going to be monstrous (and take forever!), so I cut the number of repeats almost in half - from 36 down to 20. I should have done something in the middle - maybe 27 - because this mini version is really mini. Blocked out, it sits very nicely over my shoulders, but there isn't really enough extra to wrap loosely. I'm hoping the fact that the recipient is smaller then me will help that problem.

Right, now that the pesky deadline knitting is done with, it's back to the spinning wheel! WIth assistance from my little buddy of course...

Admitting defeat in the face of ridiculous odds

Not surprisingly, after the amount of time I spent not knitting this month, my June socks are not going to be done. Sad day. In fact, as of June 21st, they looked like this:

Which is not all that different from how they looked on June 10th, on my way to John O'Groats.

Oh well, such is life. Recent knitting time has been taken up with teacher gifties - numero uno (which is actually the second one I started) will be finished tonight,

which will let me get back to numero dos, which is about one third done. I'm hoping that garter stitch goes faster then stockinette on this one. The socks will just have to wait for July, and having one sock almost done will hopefully make up for the fact that the Tour de Fleece starts (gulp) this weekend!

Deadline knitting begun

I've started the first school scarf of the year - this one is for Dev's Year 1 teacher. After some debate, I chose Lacy Baktus as this year's semi-mindless project. It's a great pattern, but I'm not totally sold on Malabrigo Sock in garter stitch. Or maybe its that I think the garter stitch isn't quite drapey enough for what I had in mind. In any event, the next one might have to be the stockinette version. Onward!

Another Christmas FO: Baktus

It's been all-handspun knitting, all the time here in the Porpoise household. The next lovely holiday item to show you is my first Baktus.

Pattern: Baktus scarf by Strikkelise
Yarn: handspun 18 micron merino from Hello Yarn, colorway Maldives, details on the spinning here and here. Guess it didn't end up as Girl Mittens after all...
Needles: US 5/3.75 mm
Start/finish: 5 Dec-8 Dec 2010
Comments/mods: There are some patterns that are perfect for handspun yarn, and I'm beginning to suspect that anything in garter stitch is a good candidate. This incredibly easy scarf/shawlette is designed so you can use every last inch of yarn - my Inner Puritan (TM) approves of such efficiency and thriftiness. You weigh the yarn when you start, begin increasing and keep going until the scarf is the width/size you want or you've used up half the yarn (by weight). Then you decrease, ideally ending up by casting off with only a few inches left over.

However, utilizing handspun throws a bit of a monkey wrench into the works, particularly if you are using two skeins that were spun at different times, with different grists. Like me. Ooops!

 

Skein 1, spun first, 886 ypp, 155 yds. Skein 2, spun several months later, 1427 ypp, 214 yds. Riiiiiiiiight... Apparently I split the top in half lengthwise, because the color sequences more or less matched. Both were chain plied. I started with the lighter weight yarn (Skein 2), and merrily knit my way along for 184 yds (155+214/2=184.5) and then started with Skein 1. I was probably halfway through the decrease section when I realized that a) I was going to have leftover yarn and b) the stripes weren't matching very well.

Dilemma...if I knit more increases with Skein 2, I would use up more yarn, but not know when I needed to start decreasing. But...if I started knitting with Skein 1 from the beginning again, I would end up with two pieces that would mostly match stripe-wise that I could then graft together in the middle.

Garter stitch grafting requires cider

I knit up all 155 yds of Skein 1, counted the number of stitches I had, ripped back on the first piece (Skein 2) and increased to the same number of stitches - I then worked straight in garter stitch without increasing until I had a couple of yards left. I grafted in garter stitch using the directions from this article on Knitty.com. The result?

Tiny amounts of leftovers that even I can't justify holding on to. Saweet. I was hoping the difference in grist wasn't going to be very noticeable, but it is. Thankfully one side is nice and drapey, and the other is cushy and cuddly. So one side can go up against the face/neck, and the other can drape tastefully over a coat. That's my story and I'm sticking to it...

This beauty started off as a gift for my Dad, but then I thought that maybe our recent late night back porch visitor might like it. It is now destined for someone else in the States (sorry Dad, but it was calling someone else's name). I think I'm going to end up spending a metric crapton at the post office next week, with at least three parcels of knitted goodness to fling westward. I hope Royal Mail is up to the challenge!

Current Xmas 2010 list countdown:
Presents to be knit (total): 13 (two of which aren't due until January), so 11 by 25 December.
Presents now finished: 5, with 2 more about to be finished this weekend.
Total remaining in the next 15 days: 4-6, two of which need to be mailed to the USA. One of the others definitely won't be done (my husband's lovely Aran sweater. Hopefully he'll forgive me). The rest? I'm crossing my fingers...

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!