November » 2010 » Untangling Knots

Birthday Yarn!

Today is my birthday and I received an awesome package from my family with cards and presents. The card from my sister gave me a laugh. It said “The Good News: You’re 21! The Bad News: (she scratched out what it actually said and wrote in) You’re in England! No One Cares!” Some how I think I’ll manage to survive without a stereotypical 21st. I actually don’t know what I will be doing. My flatmates just cryptically said to be ready at 5:30.

Baby alpaca! One of my favorites. It’s insanely soft. I wish you could feel it through the screen. It’s buttery and delightful! There are 500 yards there. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it. Maybe I’ll make a hat with matching gloves? Or just really long gloves? Feel free to make fun of me for how often I allege that I’m going to knit myself gloves. Some day it will finally happen!!!

So soft and lovely. It’s a nice rich cream color. I actually already have a hat that matches this yarn. I used it for the ribbing and the body was a matching brushed alpaca.

Underneath the yarn and cards was candy and a massive amount of Scharffen Berger chocolate. Yarn and candy. You just can’t beat that.

Necessity Knitting

I love my drapey lacey alpaca cowls. They’re perfect to keep my neck and chest warm and dry in drizzly Tacoma rain. Unfortunately when it comes to Lancaster wind, they’re sort of useless. I was in dire need of new neck wear.

I was a bit envious of the bulky long cowl I made for my sister so I ordered some Rowan Big Wool and made myself one! The yarn came in the mail and the same day that I picked it up, I knit up this cowl. I love one day knits. I made mine a bit shorter and a bit wider than Britta’s.

It’s long enough to wrap around my neck twice, but it doesn’t hang as low as Britta’s. I bought extra yarn because I knew that I wanted mine to be wider, but I didn’t end up needing it because making the cowl a little bit shorted saved me A LOT of yardage. I think my cowl ended up being 8.5 inches wide and 50 inches around and I only used two balls.

I was watching A Very Long Engagement the other night and started studying this long mustard colored cardigan that Mathilde wears for most of the movie. The stitch pattern looked like it was reversible because the collar folded back and looked really similar to the cardigan front. I paused the movie and studied the stitches and this is what I decided the stitch pattern is. It seemed like a good choice for this cowl because it looks good on both sides. I quite like it.

I’m pretty pleased with my cowl. It’s not buttery soft like my alpaca ones, but it is really warm and cozy and protects me from the wind.

In other news, I’m going to York tomorrow to celebrate Thanksgiving (It’s one of my favorite holidays.) at my Aunt’s house. I can’t decide which sweater to bring to work on during the train ride. Audrey in Unst or that other one? What do you think?

A Teeny Tiny Hat

Here’s another little Christmas ornament. My flat mates bought a fake tree, but we’re holding out on putting it up until it is closer to Christmas.

I crocheted the white bits using a 2.2mm crochet hook. The hook was a bit too small and made a really dense fabric that forces the hat to keep its shape when it’s hanging. For some reason I don’t have any sizes of crochet hooks in between 4.5mm and 2.25mm. I decreased three stitches randomly every other row on the red part. The random decreases made it sort of crooked and imperfect. I like it. It reminds me of The Grinch and claymation Christmas specials.

A sleeve!

Look! A sleeve! After my last post about this sweater, I tried to give it a sleeve and it worked out well, but the more I looked at that post, the more I was bothered by the fit of the body. There seemed to be too much negative ease for what my math said there should be. I measured and lo and behold! It was teeny tiny. I either lost gauge when I was knitting or I swatched on 5mm needles and I worked the body in 4.5mm. I’m not sure what happened.

I decided to start over with the gauge I got for the above version of the sweater. I recalculated everything, got cracking, and I think I have like four inches of the body left to knit at the moment. I wasn’t super upset about having to start over because despite how awesome the back is, the lace placement on the front wasn’t doing it for me. There also was one lace panel that was 10 rows long and all of the other panels are increments of 4 so it was a bit confusing to keep track of that. I got rid of it completely which makes the sweater a thousand times easier to knit.

In conclusion, hooray for my first seamless set in sleeve! Boo for having to start over.

My First Sock!

As some of you might know, I’m not a sock knitter so this is my first sock. Well, sort of. It only measures 2″ from cuff to heel. It’s a Christmas ornament. My flat mates want to get a tree for our kitchen so I decided to knit up a few ornaments. I’m going to make a few more because I can hang them in our kitchen (or on my bulletin board where they are right now) until I go home and then I can put them on my family’s tree. Plus, I managed to get sick again so little knits are perfect at the moment.

I knit it using cheap DK acrylic on 3.75mm needles. I had to use the DPNs from my last post for their intended purpose because all of my appropriately sized circs are occupied. I knit this toe up with a short row heel. I just winged it from what I’ve learned about socks by reading knitting blogs so thank you to all of those sock knitters out there who write detailed posts. The loop for hanging it is just a crocheted chain.

Expect more knits soon! I have this week off for some weird reason. The English department calls it “Reading Week”. We’re meant to catch up on our reading and start our essays, but I find our reading load to be ridiculously light compared to University of Puget Sound and I don’t have any essays that I can start on yet. I’m calling it “Laze about and be sick/work on knitting week”.

ETA: My spam filter keeps eating my comments, but don’t worry if yours doesn’t show up right away. I’ve been fishing them back out.

I think my cardigan might be a vest

I might have mentioned before that I am working on two cardigans. My Audrey in Unst is the first and this was meant to be the second. I decided to try knitting a top down cardigan with after thought set in sleeves without a pattern one day, despite the fact that I’ve only ever knit a sweater with set in sleeves once in my life.

I think I might have knit a vest instead. The arm holes are really deep and the shoulders are really narrow. Those features aren’t so great on a cardigan, but they work well on a vest.

Unfortunately, when it is in the 40s out, a vest isn’t as useful as a cardigan. I’m going to try knitting a sleeve and see what happens. I’m not sure if the shoulder is really too narrow or if it is just folding in on itself because there is nothing to keep the 3×1 ribbing from doing that.

This is my primary use for DPNs now. Haha! Ever since I learned how to magic loop, I only use my DPNs to hold shut cardigans that don’t have button bands yet.

Anyways, I’m hoping to get it to work out as a cardigan, but if I can’t, it’s not a total failure. I’ll just slap some edgings on and have a vest.

Sorry for the sweater on sweater look here. I took these pictures a few minutes before I ran to class when I realized that it would be dark by the time I got back. For those of you that are curious, that is my only sweater that I’ve knit with set in sleeves.

ETA: Thanks for all the recommendations in my last post! I found loads of good blogs to start reading.

Recommend Some Blogs to Me!

I have a small favor to ask of you. I’m a voracious blog reader and I’ve been finishing up my blog feed with blog reading time to spare. Can you recommend some blogs that you like? I’m open to anything. Feel free to plug yourself if you’re not sure if I’ve seen your blog.

I also have a question for my UK readers. If you buy yarn online, where do you buy it from? I need yarn, but I’ve been too busy to go take a trip to the not-so-local yarn store.

Halfway There

I managed to get sick again. I never seem to knit much when I’m sick. I might get a row or two done in a couple hours and I can’t work on the same project for very long because sick-Andi likes instant gratification and loses interest in long term projects. That doesn’t really make for successful knitting. I started feeling a bit better and decided to do a small quick project to brighten up my room. It suits my sicky attention span because it is made up of small individual pieces. Here is a sneak peek. I’m half finished and feeling significantly better.