Boo!!!

Happy Halloween!

I recently took a break from my everyday knitting projects to use up some of my leftover yarn to make this adorable little Fall pumpkin. I'm still not a very fast knitter, so it took me an entire evening to make him, but the finished product was definitely worth the time to me.

My First Sweater

The February Lady Sweater pattern is hugely popular on Ravelry - a viral knit, of sorts, that's known for being flattering to a lot of body shapes and of simple construction. In fact we saw many, many incarnations of it being worn at Stitches Midwest. So, when I bought my first sweater quantity of yarn I tried to make sure I had enough yarn to try this popular cardigan. It seemed like a good place to start for someone like me who knows next to nothing about knitting sweaters.

Now it's knit from the top down, and from the moment I started I was unsure if it would fit me. I went through many stages of taking it off the needles to try it on to try to decide if it was too small and where the garter stitch yoke section should end and whether or not it was almost meeting under the arms like the pattern said or needed to be closer to almost meeting. (Of course, if I bought a cord that was longer than the 32" circular I've been using I wouldn't have to take it off the needles, but I couldn't bring myself to place an order for just one cord for a sweater that might or might not succeed anyway.)


Fortunately, Ravelry is a good place for reassurance and having read through many other people's February Lady project notes I discovered that I unwittingly made a pretty good choice of yarn - at least if I want it to be bigger instead of smaller. Apparently Dream in Color Classy has quite a reputation for blooming into a much more stretched out version of itself when washed, so while a lot of people report freaking out at how much their sweater had grown when wet, I was reassured to think that at worst it was going to get bigger and I could work on shaping it to fit me if I was a bit off on my guess of which size to knit.

So after a few months of off-and-on knitting I've finished the body of the sweater and the first of the sleeves. It's a snug fit so far, but given a certain amount of blocking I think it should be about right. The biggest issue that makes me question whether I'll end up wearing it in public or not is the extra material that bunches near the armpits (which you can see a hint of in the picture below). When following the pattern, I ended up knitting a lot of plain rows past the raglan shaping to get the right size for the sleeve, but apparently this causes too much build-up of fabric near the arms. As an admitted sweater-knitting newbie, I don't actually know what I should have done to fix that, so I'll live with it and keep an eye out for that on future patterns. I'm certainly not going to rip out the whole sweater to fix it and there's probably little that can be done once it's all knit. If anything, I'm kind of hoping it's one of those things that becomes less noticeable when washed or worn.


Now for the last sleeve and some buttons and then we'll see how it works as an actual garment. I have to say, I love the color and the subtle variation of the yarn, so if it fits well enough it could easily become a favorite. And since I have some yarn from Stitches Midwest in sweater quantities I really need to get some decent sweater-knitting skills going here sometime soon!

Emerald City - Sock One

Even though my Woolgirl Oz - Emerald City kit arrived nearly two weeks ago there are apparently still some people waiting on theirs even within the US. That hasn't kept me from working on my socks, of course, but it means I'll leave the photos behind the spoiler links just so I don't ruin it for someone else. (ETA: spoiler safety removed 5-Nov-2009)

So here's a little detail shot of the toe of the first sock:

This is the first thing I've ever knit on needles this small (US1 aka 2.25mm) and although it's been slow, it wasn't as bad as I expected it might be. Of course, after the first night without much progress I think I had convinced myself it would take me at least 3 months to knit these so finishing one in just a couple of weeks was a pleasant surprise!

Last night I finally finished the toe decreases and wove in the ends to get this:

Now I like the pattern and it fits me really well (I went with the middle size with a cast on of 70 stitches), but I have to say that I'm not sure it really pops with the yarn. Even though the yarn is essentially semisolid it just doesn't show the pattern very well, at least in my case. But the fabric at this gauge is really nice and the yarn is twisty and feels like it will be comfortably soft when washed and the twisted ribbing really pops, so I'm still happy with it overall.

I did cast on for the second sock as soon as I finished the first one, but I think I need to switch back to more dedicated work on my classy sweater soon. We got a bit of Indian Summer weather, but I'm still hoping to be able to finish it before Thanksgiving. It's about time to get out my gorgeous new swift and put it to work winding the last skein of my In Vino Veritas and hope that it's enough yarn to finish the sweater. It looks like it should be, but I don't have much experience with sweaters just yet, so the fingers are still crossed for now.

Woolgirl Oz Sock Club - Emerald City

The next kit in my Woolgirl Oz sock club has arrived, this time themed for the Emerald City. It also marks the start of a new Oz kit every month! Most of the year the club is on an every other month basis, but starting with this kit there will be one every month from September (this one was late and shipped in Oct., but was listed as a Sept. kit) through January. I seriously need to learn to knit a lot faster!

************ Spoilers from this point on! ************

So here it is all wrapped up like a gift:

And here it is unpacked:

The green corduroy fabric is a zippered bag from Sheila D - a bit small to hold an entire ball/cake of sock yarn, but large enough for the rest of what came with the kit. There's also another nice pen, this time with an appropriate green highlighter on top. The little Emerald City stitch marker is adorably detailed and was obviously a labor of love, and the Emerald City tin is going to be great for keeping track of little knitting accessories.

Although I held out the first night, I was anxious to try the Madelinetosh tosh sock yarn and cast on the next night (although this photo includes progress from a few nights):

I was also looking forward to trying my new Kollage square metal sock needles. I bought a set of US size 1 in anticipation of needing them for one of the Oz kits since some of the fingering weight sock yarn seems to require tiny needles. I already like working with them, but this pattern has been going really slowly for me. I think it's partly the tiny needles and partly the fact that I've acquired so much yarn in my stash and feel like I'm not knitting nearly fast enough.

But I'm trying to avoid burning myself out so I've been working on my first adult-sized sweater, too. It's nice to be able to switch to bigger needles and an easy pattern that doesn't require a lot of concentration on charts. I don't think these socks will be all that complicated, just a long labor of love. Plus, there's the possibility of some fall knits that might steal my attention, too, so we'll see.

Socks and a sweet gift

Since I've been keeping my sock club socks to myself I felt like it had been a long time since I'd made some for my husband, so I was determined to squeeze in a pair for him before starting the next club shipment. I let him pick the yarn, and even though it promised to be flashy, he chose Yarn Love's Marianne Dashwood in the Mr. Wonderful colorway. He is my Mr. Wonderful, after all!

So I worked up some Mr. Wonderful socks two at a time using Magic Loop on my new 40” Addi Lace Turbos. The yarn didn't disappoint on the flashy front - it pooled even more brightly than I expected. So I stuck with a tiny cable pattern and let the yarn do all of the talking this time since it obviously had so much to say! They ended up a little long, but otherwise seem to fit him well and they've already seen a lot of use keeping his feet warm in the house.

Two at a time on the same circular needle and yet they still pooled rather differently!

And of course with socks this bright I'll know that if he loses one or both it's because he was really trying to get rid of them! (I'm kidding - no, he doesn't have a history of losing socks anyway.)

Now I don't have updated photos of some of the other projects yet, but I do have a photo of this:


An awesome birthday present from Mr. Wonderful himself - a beautiful, hand made swift from a nearby woodworker! I love it! It spins so smoothly and silently and the best part is that both the arms and legs of it quickly fold together for storage and it came with a small storage bag for the movable pegs. It's a major knitting accessory, so I definitely have to keep knitting now!

Too Quiet

It might be noticeable that although I did manage to get through all of my Stitches recap, things have since stalled and it seems that none of us have anything to blog about. But it's not true.

There hasn't been a complete lack of knitting - I've finished a new pair of socks and started the second sock of a pair that has been waiting in the wings too long - there's just been a lack of photographic proof. I've been traveling on the weekend and much busier after work than usual and by the time I have a little spare time before bed I sit down for a quick bit of knitting instead of snapping photos of said knitting.

But, there is the promise of a little more spare time on the horizon, so I predict new knitting photos soon...ish. After all, there are more Woolgirl sock kits (both in hand and on their way) and even the start of my very first sweater attempt, just waiting at home for me to have time to pose them and give them their proper photo shoots. In the meantime, here's a random yarn photo and a reminder of ambitions to keep working through the stash!