I graduated college on Sunday. I packed up all of my stuff, stored some of it away in Washington, and I’m temporarily back in California for a few weeks. I have to pack up my old bedroom at my parents’ house because they’re remodeling. Things are going to be pretty bizarre for the next couple of months as I hunt for a job and move around a lot, but I’ve finally had time to calculate the sleeves for my current WIP so hopefully there will be a bit of knitting to share here soon!

Not knitting, unfortunately.

When I went away to college I left my sewing machine at home. I couldn’t sew myself clothes so I became more interested in other ways of making garments. There weren’t many crocheted garments that appealed to me and so I focused on knitting. You can probably guess what happened based on my blog content. My knitting skills improved rapidly and it started to be the only craft I really spent much time on.

I still dabble in sewing and crochet, but my skills have sort of degraded. I’d really like to be equally skillful across all three crafts once again, and I’m making plans to get that to happen. I’ve ordered yarn to crochet myself a sweater, and I’ll be able to reunite with my sewing machine once I settle in to living somewhere more permanently which will hopefully happen this year.

Once upon a time, I used to be a seasonal knitter. I’d knit in the fall and the winter, but when warm weather came around I’d leave my needles to sew. As I became more and more interested in knitting, it started to creep into my spring and summer craft time. I’d work on small portable projects like a hat or a headband in between sewing projects.

And then I started to design and I pretty much stopped sewing. Summer time became design time. While I design and knit my samples during all seasons, I do most of my editing and formatting work in the summer. It feels too much like school work so I tend to put it off until after the end of spring semester.

Despite my craft time becoming work time as summer comes around, I still try to squeeze in the occasional warm weather project. I like being able to wear my knits year round, even if my token knit is just a narrow belt. This summer is going to be my first summer in Washington state and I’m actually going to be able to wear sweaters during the summer. I’m weirdly excited about that.

I’m talking about my knitting and crochet heroes. For more posts on this topic google 3kcbwday3 or click here.

I decided at the last minute to participate in the 3rd Knitting and Crochet Blog Week. For more details click the little graphic up there! Today’s topic is color.

I’m a bit of a color fanatic. I have a very colorful wardrobe, but I used to avoid equally colorful knits because I was afraid that I wouldn’t get as much wear out of them.

I spend so much time knitting my sweaters that I wanted them to be sophisticated subdued colors that I could wear forever. This completely ignored the fact that loud colors make me happiest and are what I generally end up wearing.

I managed to shake the habit of buying yarn in colors I don’t wear last year and I’ve knit these colorful sweaters. I’m hoping to keep knitting loud bright sweaters this year because they fit nicely in my wardrobe and get worn all the time. If I ever decide that I need more sophisticated colored sweaters I can always knit more, right?

These are some more old pictures that I found while making room on my memory card. Finals are approaching, I’m starting to develop a pile of papers that need to be written, and then there’s graduation. It’s a little overwhelming. I wish I could be as carefree as Bean is in these pictures.

It’s finally done! I took a break from working on this sweater to work on some more weather appropriate projects, but I managed to finish in perfect time. The weather has been ideal for wearing short sleeved wool sweaters.

And here is one of the giant puff sleeves! The layout of the increases are pretty chaotic, but I resisted my temptation to change that. The only modifications I made was to add selvage stitches to make seaming a bit easier and to convert the body to be knit in the round.

I used Jamieson’s Shetland Spindrift in the Sherbet colorway. I was a little worried that it would be too scratchy, but it’s surprisingly comfortable to wear. I enjoyed how sticky and cripsy it was to work with. It’s definitely worth using again.

I’m happy with the way my sweater turned out. I’ve been daydreaming about what I can wear with it, but I do wish I had added a bit more length so I had more options. It’s a few inches too short to work with my high rise jeans, but luckily it works with most of my skirts. I want to wear my sweater all the time!