A week in sweaters, part III

Subtitle: The Unfinished.

One of my goals for the past week while Himself has been away was to finish the body of the River Run Pullover. I'm happy to say that I reached that fantastic point last night:

There it is, complete with front and back neck steeks. I started the three needle bind off at the shoulders, but it was 10:30, my silly movie was done, and I needed to go to bed early. I'll finish the bind offs tonight, then put it away while we go back to H-town. The plan is to do the neck ribbing next (just in case so when I have to spin and dye more, it will be in the sleeves), then get going on the sleeves. I'm hoping for a 23 December finish for this (so it has time to be blocked and dried).

I also had a bit of startitis this week and did this:

Started a Tappan Zee for Devil out of the handspun I did earlier this summer. The yarn is quite a bit lighter then that called for in the pattern, but I managed to pull together a nifty little spread sheet that converted the numbers in the original pattern to actual measurements using my new gauge - turns out that instead of re-jiggering the whole thing with new numbers, I can knit the second size and have it fit her perfectly.

I am beyond obsessed with how this is turning out. I can't manage to get a good picture of the really bright greens in this yarn - it's electric! - but I am enjoying the knitting immensely.

So, we're off for half-term tomorrow. I am busily planning my travel knitting list which includes this sweater, some long neglected mittens I should have finished and published last winter, and a new design idea involving orange worsted weight yarn and short-row shaped scarves. Hmmm...

Travelling

Tomorrow we hop on a plane and head westward for a couple of weeks, so today I have been dealing with the age-old question of which projects to bring. This is a serious consideration - you want to bring a good number and variety of projects so that you don't get bored, but also don't run out of things to do. Running out of knitting might resort to a panic-driven yarn buying spree the likes of which Himself could not forgive! So, I've spent some time thinking about what to bring with me. And here's the pile:

Not actually all the bad, given the circumstances. There's the self-designed sweater that needs only a sleeve to be finished (and the pattern needs to go out to testers by Friday, but that's a different problem). This is the key project for tomorrow's7.5 hr flight, and I'm hoping to land in Boston with a mostly finished sleeve.

There's the August socks, which are lagging woefully behind. I was making good progress, but had to rip everything out and start on smaller needles to get something that might vaguely fit my foot. However, that means they're now being knit on US 0/2.0 mm needles. Metal needles. I know they're technically allowed, but given that my last trip with metal pointy sticks resulted in my being held up at security for a while, I think these will be going in the hold instead.

Third up is my guilty project: the Dahlia Cardigan from the latest issue of Interweave Knits. I couldn't help casting on this weekend, but I've finished the interesting bit (the lace panel on the back). I predict that this one is going to languish now that I've hit the stockinette stage, but maybe it will be good car knitting. This one is also on metal needles, so it will get packed in the checked bags. Hopefully TSA is a bit more understanding/less paranoid about metal needles then the Brits, so I can work on it on the way home.

Lastly, I've packed a spinning project: My oldest remaining Hello Yarn Fiber Club stash, from June 2009. This is Shetland in the colorway "Sour Fig". And my trusty Golding spindle. I haven't tried a spindling project on a trip before, and I'm looking forward to it. I think I'm going to try a 6 strand cable with this fiber - three 2-ply yarns plied together. Means I need to split up the fiber by weight before we leave though. Another item for this evening's list.

I'm looking forward to some quality family time, both with the girls and Himself, as well as with various (grand)parents, brothers/sisters (aunts/uncles) and friends. Happy August!

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...

Travel knitting

So, tomorrow we go haring off to the Continent for ten days, and I'm trying to figure out what to take to knit. The plane trip isn't all that long, but I'll be in a car touring Bavaria and Austria for a while, so I need some small projects to work on.

Thankfully, I've got a couple of design ideas that need some work, so I'm packing up bits of yarn and lots of different needle sizes, a bunch of Xeroxed pages from Barbara Walker Vol I and II, and I'm hoping for the best. Here's what's on the docket:

A new sock pattern, (maybe) for Sock Madness 2011.

Some swatching for the 4! Ounce! Challenge!.

My Aran Necklace Tank (wait, that's not my design...). This baby is now joined for the body, and it's just mindless knitting in the round from now until I run out of yarn. So I'm packing the last of the splittier-then-all-get-out Jo Sharp Soho DK and hoping for the best.

I'm afraid blogging will be spotty for the next little while - I've got one post in reserve that I'll schedule for next week, but other then that, things will be quiet. And since the Wollmeise shop is closed when we'll be in Munich, I don't even have the lure of serious yarn pr0n to tease you with. And no one is sorrier then me, believe me...

Home again, home again...

We arrived back in London at 7:00 am Saturday morning, and managed to keep ourselves more or less awake for much of the day. The girls did take three hour naps, as did IM, and Devil didn't then go to sleep til 11:00, but hey, who's keeping track? We're all sad to leave family behind, but glad to be back at home. We went out that night (in an attempt to keep everyone conscious) and came back with this:

7 lbs of wild blackberries. Most of these are in the freezer while I attempt to find canning jars, but some ended up in blackberry pancakes at 10:30 the next morning when we were finally all awake...

I also busted in to some of my new fiber stash after the girls were in bed (if not actually asleep). This braid of BFL

is well on it's way to being a poofy 2-ply for a hat or some mittens.

It's getting to be the time of year when the holiday season rears its ugly head. I've recently decided not to wait to give people handknits - hence gifting my MIL with her Mermaid socks immediately instead of holding out until Christmas. Isis also has a new home in mind, so now that I'm back I'll get some more yarn and finish that off (only 23 rows to go! And about 250 beads. And something more then 14,000 stitches. Yikes!). But that doesn't mean I don't have Christmas presents in mind too. So this will become a giftie for someone I think.

August was good on the sock front:

Knitting
Pomatomus
Glynis
Haiku

Spinning
Thrive (and much of Aestlight too!)