Soggy feet and disappointment

So I have two hat design prototypes left to knit for this hat ebook release due in November. And, despite the size of my stash, I don't have any suitable yarn for these (the mind boggles!). Actually, it's not that I don't have suitable yarn: it's more that I have specific yarns in mind for these two designs (Cascade 220 and Madtosh) that is not in my stash, so yesterday I took a trip up to the Yarn Store (Not Local Except That Technically It's In The Same City).

There I was, trooping through the rain that suddenly arrived on Sunday after a couple of weeks of glorious fall weather, with no umbrella, having dropped one child at the bus, and one child at school. I emerged from the Tube station to find that the rain was pissing down. Waded through the puddles to the door of the shop, my mind full of the rainbow of incredible colors that are Madtosh, wondering what color is going to work best, only to find that...

...they aren't open on Mondays. Talk about a buzzkill. Not only was it raining, it was cold. And truly London-in-Autumn, which is to say, icky. And I had no lovely yarn to lift my spirits!

I've come upon the only possible solution however: clearly I need two skeins of Madtosh, one for the new design, and one to reknit a previous design (originally done in angora-blend, waaaaay too halo-y). Makes good sense, right?

Commuting knitting

I went back to work yesterday, and noticed a serious shortfall - I have no commuting knitting. There I was, on the train to Waterloo, with no mindless or small knitting project in my bag.

You'll be glad to know that this shortfall has since been remedied. I've had a couple of skeins of Malabrigo Lace marinating in the stash for about three years now, and it's time to convert them into a Whisper Cardigan.

This is one of the few instances when I've bought the yarn with a project in mind and actually ended up casting it on. True to form, I am modifying the every-living Bejeebus out of this pattern. After looking at the schematics, I decided that I wanted to have the option to make the body and the sleeves a bit longer. I've only got 2 skeins, so I've decided to start from the middle of the back and knit outward to the sleeves (instead of starting at one cuff and knitting across). I'll put the stitches for the sleeves on holders, and knit the rest of the body as long as suits me, then go back and finish the sleeves off.

That's the plan at least. But knitting laceweight on US 7/4.5 mm needles makes for quite the change from 3-ply handspun on 6s!

FF: The first of the unfinished TdF yarns

Et voila! My second spindle-spun Tour de Fleece yarn is finally finished.

Fiber: Corriedale from Hello Yarn, colorway "Seasick"
Spun/plied: on my Wildcraft spindle
Final stats: total yardage is 170 yds/4 oz (680 ypp), ~7-9 wpi, bulky weight.
Comments: I had two bumps of this Corriedale from the Hello Yarn Fiber Club, and when I needed something to take with me to France, one of these seemed like a good bet.

I split the fiber into three different color groups: yellows, browns (with a bit of yellow) and blues (with a bit of yellow). Then I split each piece of top in half lengthwise and spun up two balls of singles to ply together.

I managed to get through the yellow and half of the brown singles before the Tour ended. Over the last couple of weeks, I've spun up the others. And then there was much plying.

72 yds yellow,

27 yds brown,

and 71 yds blue. I have no idea what this yarn will become though, but I like the colors split up like this.

There's always that other bump to play with I suppose...

FO: Mini-oak cardigan

Pattern: Little Oak Cardigan, by Alana Dakos, from the Coastal Kids collection
Yarn: iKnit or Dye Superwash Merino sock, 366 m/100 gr, 1 skein in "Bachelorette". I ended up using about 3/4 of the skein, so maybe 280 meters total? I'll have to weigh the remainder to be sure.
Needles: US 3/3.25 mm circulars, for a gauge of 28 sts/~40 rows per 4 inches.
Start/finish: 17 July - 2 August 2012 -- gotta love the baby sweaters for (mostly) instant gratification!
Comments/mods: This was a really nice pattern. Worked from the bottom up, easy stockinette body, fun yoke pattern at the top. I like the development of the oak leaf pattern at the top - it wasn't clear to my mind's eye how that was going to end up looking, but I really like it.

The pattern was pretty straightforward, but I did run in to one minor issue (mostly of my own making): the pattern is laid out with the chart on the second page. What isn't clear however, unless you read ahead (which you should always do, and I didn't, so it's my own damn fault), is that there are some shaping instructions for the body before you start the chart. What I did was knit the body and the sleeves, start working the chart, and then discovered the shaping instructions and started doing those. We'll ignore, for the moment, the fact that I didn't actually need to do any shaping for the size I was knitting (6 months) and just say that this is a pattern for which it would behoove you to read ahead and make sure you understand what supposed to happen when.

Yesterday, the girls and I went out on a button-mission. I'm happy to say, I am once again living close to a yarn store, and this one happens to have a fabulous selection of buttons stashed away in the back. They helped me pick out some lovely silvery buttons with red edges, which work really well with the yarn.

The yarn: this was one of my long-neglected club yarns for the iKnit Sock club that I've mentioned before. It ended up as a lovely subtly variegated fabric, nice and soft and cozy, but hopefully washing-machine friendly. I will be recommending the delicate or wool cycle to the New Mum, but I think this is going to be a great sweater for the wee lad-to-be. Who now has full permission to arrive at any moment, because his sweater is done. His blanket, on the other hand, is a big plastic bag of yarn in the attic, but he can't wait until I get that finished, or poor N will explode!

Distraction by recycling

Despite big horse pills and a wrist brace, knitting is not really on my agenda at the moment. However, I have been un-knitting at a furious rate. Behold:

This is a sweater I knit when we lived in Tucson/Houston, back around 2002, when I really got back into knitting in a obsessive-compulsive serious way. It was the first sweater I'd made for myself in a long time.

I had great fun knitting it, with all those cables, but there were some issues. Number 1: the drop shoulder look is not a good one for anyone with shoulders wider then about 18 inches.

Number 2: nary a whiff of shaping in sight. Nada. Which was great when I was pregnant, but now that I'm past that stage of life, it is not such a flattering look.

Number 3: a finished chest measurement that resulted in about 5 inches of positive ease. I've learned a lot about what type of sweaters look good on me, and it's simplest to say that zero or negative ease is definitely my friend.

Finally number 4: this was clearly before my discovery of the greatest finishing technique ever, aka mattress stitch. Oy...

So, I took some scissors, and after a little while I had this.

And then I took the spinning wheel and ended up with this,

and this.

So now I have a large pile of 75% acrylic/25% wool (that will actually felt!), and no definite plans for it. Some of it will probably become a baby sweater or twelve. And maybe Angostura for me. Not that I can knit at the moment. Not that I'm bitter about that. In the meantime, I can think of two more sweaters hiding in the warddrobe upstairs that could use a trip to the frog pond. Ahhhh, recycling!