Crafting Firsts: I Published A Pattern!!!

I debated whether to consider this post a crafting first or a finished object, as it's technically both, but since technology prevented me from actually publishing on Friday (and since I have work travel next week so I don't know if I'll get to writing my Monday post where I'd ordinarily cover the crafting firsts segment) I thought I'd just publish today and sort of consider it both? That's unimportant, really.

What is important is what crafting first I've completed.

​

 

Just now (like, 15 minutes ago) I published my first ever knitting pattern on Ravelry. Now, I never really thought I'd be the sort of person who would be a pattern designer of any sort. Too much to think about with fitting and moving parts. Plus I'm not one to think "I have this stitch pattern in my brain," it's just not how my brain works. But yet...

Here's how these mitts came about. I've spent the past four months listening to (and LOVING) Maggie Stiefvater's book series "The Raven Cycle." As part of that I dyed some colourways to honour some of the characters of the book, and one of them "Blue Lily" has rapidly turned into one of my absolute favourite colourways. Inspired by this, I wanted to dye the Knit Picks Capra that Jonas bought me for Christmas a few years back that I'd been saving until I found exactly the right colour for it to be. This was that colour. It needed to be this. So I dyed the yarn and found myself with 100g of DK weight merino/cashmere that needed to be knit into something Blue Sargent would approve of. As a short aside, I'm not one for fingerless mitts. Where I live, if it's cold enough to need something on your wrists/hands, it's cold enough to need your fingers covered. That said, I did think a few times last winter while I was working from home and my house was frigid that I could perhaps see the utility of the fingerless mitts. Plus, fingerless mitts are TOTALLY something Blue would wear regularly, probably even in the heat of the Virginia summer. 

Add to all of this that the Knerd Girl Knits podcasts's ongoing bad-ass women KAL was focusing on women in books during July and August and one of the challenges was to knit something inspired by a women in a poem or a poem by a woman. Since I'm not usually one for poetry, I didn't have any ideas...until I remembered that book three had a song (about Blue) running through it, thus making that bit a poem both about a woman and written by a woman. So it qualified. The problem was, there wasn't anything at all inspired by Blue that I could find on Ravelry. Or, at least nothing that would work with my yarn or would match up well with the poem. It was then that I pulled out my big book of cables, started browsing Ravelry to see what some other people were doing with fingerless mitts, and started thinking.

The ideas actually all came together really quickly. I browsed the books, found two cable patterns that matched up with the images that I wanted, drew a sword/knife pattern onto some graph paper and made a chart. I still didn't know how to put it together, but I did a bunch of swatching and then a bit of math and then started trying to do it.

I made myself the goal of designing the whole thing during the course of the summer Olympics as part of the Ravellenic Games. I thought that was appropriately ambitious, as the mitts knit up really quickly, but also I would have to push myself to do the calculations and math needed to put it all together. There were, as with all pattern designs, a few stumbles as I changed my mind, ripped back, and once ripped out an entire mitten because I needed to change the position of the thumb, but they knit so quickly that I accomplished it easily within the timeframe. Honestly, I think actually writing the charts and doing the layout took me more time than actually designing the mitts!

So, at long last, after much ado and explanation. I present to you, my first (and quite possibly only) knitting pattern, Lily Blue Mitts.

 

WIP Wednesday: Socks and Hats

Well... part of a sock and one hat. Still, I know it's a bit weird to see me with more than one WIP. It happens on occasion.

The sock is yarn that I dyed inspired by one of my favourite football teams (Real Madrid) and their amazing pink/black/white kits they've been wearing all season. They were (until today...) competing for a second straight European championship, and I dyed the yarn while watching them beat their in-town rivals and cast on the sock during their match last Wednesday then knit some more rows on it today. They lost, but I'll still wear my socks proudly.

The colourway is "Real Fans Wear Pink" and the base is my superwash sock base, which is 75% Superwash wool and 25% nylon in a fingering weight.

The sock pattern is from Socks a la Carte by Jonelle Raffino and Katherine Cade. It's a pretty cool book that gives you a bunch of different cuff options, a bunch of different leg options, and a bunch of different foot/toe/heel options that you can combine together to make your own unique socks and hopefully will inspire you to design your own. There's even a cool flip book part in the back that lets you see how the cuff/leg/foot combo you choose will look together.

Since Real means "Royal" and the Real Madrid logo has a crown in it, I went with the top that looks a bit like a crown. Since they're one of the most high profile teams in the world, I chose the cuff called "eyes on you" since I thought it was only appropriate. I still haven't decided on a foot/toe/heel, but I'll let you know when I get there.

Second...return of the stochastic hat. I first posted about this two weeks ago and then subsequently finished the hat. However! It was way too small even for my tiny head, so I knew it wouldn't fit a regular-sized adult. I left it alone, figuring I'd finished what I needed to for the challenge, but over the weekend I found myself project-less and having just completed another Turn-A-Square to use up some acrylic I bought for a different project (more on that when I talk FOs), I ripped back and re-started this hat. This time I changed some things.

For one thing, I'd run out of the red yarn when I got to the crown shaping, so all of a sudden there was a hard grey line against the red. It didn't look as bad as I thought it would, but it still wasn't what I wanted. For another I knew I needed to be sure to control the floats. So, what I did was rip back to where I'd joined the ribbing together, then knit 10 rows straight in grey before jumping in to the stochastic pattern at row 11. I've now knit 11-25 in the stochastic pattern and will begin the crown decreases in straight red. Hopefully I have enough. I'm playing yarn chicken right now. I'm hoping to wrap up the crown decreases tonight or tomorrow.

FOs: House Stark Fingerless Mitts and Fifth Doctor Socks!

It's still not Friday (but it's kinda close) and these have been finished for two weeks now, but better late than never, right.

In my post about my resolutions for March, I alluded to these finished objects, so I should probably show them to you. Plus they're pretty awesome.

First: T.A.R.D.I.Socks by Anna Richardson (round 2)

It's really hard to photograph your own feet.

So... I mentioned above that this is round 2 of these particular socks. I also mentioned in my resolutions post that these socks resulted in a net gain of yarn. Here's the story.

You can first start here with the story of how I decided to knit myself knee-high socks for my Fifth Doctor (Doctor Who) costume even though I had never knit a single sock before in my life and previously had no desire to do so. So I knit myself knee high socks out of a cotton/bamboo/spandex blend yarn (because the costume was originally for summer) following a pattern that's lovely and beautifully charted, but presumes you've actually done some moderate amount of sock knitting and are using wool and know how to adjust socks to fit your feet. Needless to say, I was setting myself up for failure before I even started. So I knit them over the course of 6-weeks desperately trying to finish them in time for the convention I needed my costume for (the only time in my life I've ever knit more than one thing at a time. I will never do it again.), and I was pretty proud of myself. For one thing, I've heard many people who attempted these socks either don't finish or take forever to finish since there's a lot of purling and cabling and charting and they're REALLY LONG, so I was pretty impressed that I not only managed to make socks that look like socks, but that they were also socks that experienced sock knitters don't even finish. So I put them on for the convention and they were HUGE. Four inches too long, too big in the gusset, bunchy in my shoes and didn't stay up if I took more than 10 steps. So...they were socks, but they weren't socks that fit.

Fast forward to now. I needed to re-wear the costume for a Doctor Who panel at a convention in April, and I knew I needed to re-make the socks. I'd been trying to knit my way through the basic sock patterns in Wendy Johnson's Socks from the Toe Up book so that I could have some knowledge of how to make socks fit my feet, and I'd also knit the (still don't fit) butterfly knee-highs to try to figure out the calf sizing. Armed with this knowledge, I ripped out the socks (3.5 balls of RIDICULOUSLY SPLITTY YARN), re-wound, and started again with a modified pattern. I dropped a needle size so I didn't have to modify the width, but I took out a portion of the chart and recalculated the row count so I could shorten the socks and still keep the calf shaping. I managed to use about 55 fewer yards (50 fewer meters)/15 fewer grams of yarn this time, which is where the net gain came in. But the socks are the right height and fit better around my calf (though still not perfect, but I devised a solution with a ribbon that holds them up just fine) and I'm much happier with them. They are a bit of a slog though, so I can definitely see how people who don't need them for a specific purpose on a deadline would get tired of doing it. The only reason I made it through without quitting was that I knew I needed them for the costume.

In addition, this yarn is terrible. I won't mention what it is here (although you can see it if you look on my project page), but I don't think I'll ever knit with it again. I chose it because I wanted lighter weight and hopefully cooler socks to wear with the costume in the summer, but the cotton and bamboo don't have the memory to hold the socks up and the spandex makes the yarn INCREDIBLY splitty, making it very difficult to work with, especially when you're knitting and purling and cabling with yarnovers. I'm not impressed and it definitely wasn't fun to knit it twice.


Second: Game of Thrones House Stark Fingerless Mitts

These are for the Game of Thrones swap package I put together (which I'll tell you about as soon as a package actually arrives for me and I can do a sent/received post like I did for the Downton Abbey swap). These are my own design, modified from a very basic fingerless mitts pattern. I've done the same sigil on a hat and on an eReader case, so it was just a matter of modifying the stitch count and re-charting it. The grey main colour is Knit Picks Palette in Ash and the sigil colour is Knit Picks Imagination Hand-Painted in the Castle Walls colourway, which screamed Winterfell to me from the moment I saw it.

These were super quick and easy to knit up and my recipient loved them. I'm not really into fingerless mitts (I find them hugely impractical) but I'm thinking about modifying the other designs I have (Targaryen, Lannister, and Night's Watch) into the fingerless mitts too. Someday I'll write up the patterns for actual. I started writing up the hat pattern, but I never finished it. These are super fun and a great way to show your support for various houses. If you're interested, I sometimes list the hats (and may eventually list the eReaders and the fingerless mitts) on my Etsy page. Let me know.

Downton Abbey Swap 2015: Received!

If you've been following over the past month or so, you'll know that I was involved in a Downton Abbey swap via the Subway Knits podcast. I've shown you all some of the items I've made, though not all, but now that I've gotten my swap package and my partner has received their swap package, I thought I'd take you through what I received (I'll talk more about the package I put together in a later post). It was an awesome swap and super fun and I definitely plan on participating if Maria decides to run it in future years.

First--Here's what I received from my swap partner:

Intrigued? You should be! Let's talk about all of this below.

FO(s): High Tea Cuffs and Jabot

Hi all,

I have one totally finished object today (blocked and the ends woven in) and one that is completed, but hasn't been blocked or had the ends woven in, so I figured I'd talk about them together. They are a set, after all.

If you've been following along, you know I've been working on the High Tea Cuffs and Jabot by Andrea Jurgrau from the Unofficial Downton Abbey Knits 2013 for my swap partner for the Subway Knits Downton Abbey swap. Well...they are done. 

The jabot was easy and basically took the lace motif from the knits, applied a second panel of the lace motif that you attached over the top, then knit the scarf in the twisted ribbing for a desired length, then repeated the lace motif. It's a nice construction and very straightforward. Again, I was using the Knit Picks Imagination Hand-Painted Sock Yarn in the Ruby Slippers colourway, and I am no less enamoured with it than I was at the start. It's beautiful yarn and has a really nice hand and just the littlest bit of the alpaca halo. The hand-painting is gorgeous and I think it made a really beautiful end product.

The cuffs were also easy, but because the Imagination yarn (never stops being funny) is fingering weight instead of lace weight, it did require me to do a bit of math and chart fudging. I knit both the mitts and the scarf on a size 3 needle instead of the size 1 called for by the pattern, which meant I got the row gauge right, but not the stitch gauge. I thought I'd calculated my gauge right, but apparently I hadn't because the first time I made the mitts they were far too small to fit any adult-sized hand, so I re-knit them. Thankfully they're a very quick knit and once you're out of the lace section it's just 20 or so rows of the twisted stitch ribbing with a few decrease rows and check points and they go pretty fast. So I re-knit them with 3 pattern repeats instead of the 2 I started with and the 4 called for by the pattern, and they are slightly large on my very tiny hands pre-blocking, so I think they will fit just fine. Here's hoping. The scarf is probably skinnier than it's supposed to be because of the gauge things, but it's working out okay for me so I'm going to leave it. It's a scarf, it doesn't exactly have to "fit" a particular size as long as it's long enough.

So, this part of the swap package is done. Still much to do, but it feels good to have the knitting over with. The added bonus of this project is that I can count it toward the Stitch Red KAL that Geknitics and Knotty Knerd at Knerd Girl Knits are running! Hooray for one project serving two purposes! I love it when things come together like that.

WIP(again): High Tea Cuffs

As anticipated, even after blocking the High Tea Cuffs by Andrea Jurgrau that I recently finished are FAR too small, even for my delicate little wrists, which means they 100% will not fit an adult human being, so I am re-knitting them.

I'm still using the Knit Picks Imagination Hand Painted yarn in the Ruby Slippers colourway and still using the 3.25mm DPNs, I just decided to cast on more stitches. The pattern repeat is 18 stitches and the last time I'd cast on 36. This time, I decided to cast on 54 stitches, although I worry this will make them too big this time around. My swap partner has gotten back to me with their wrist size (which is bigger than mine, but not a LOT bigger than mine), so I 'm going to just knit one of these (they go fast) and see how big it ends up. If it's more than 3cm too big for me then I'm either going to have to scrap the idea of making the matching cuffs and scarf set or I'm going to have to hope that if I knit this on a 2.75mm needle, I can just make up the difference in row gauge by adding rows to the ribbing and that it will still work out okay.

The cuff on the left is the original one I knit with 2 pattern repeats and the one on the right is the new one, just for comparison.

I'm hoping to have these done by the end of the weekend, so here's hoping you'll get a good FO post by next week. Unless it's all too large and has to be re-done yet again and then I finally decide to scrap the project.

FO(ish): Downton Abbey High Tea Cuffs

So, once again, it becomes clear to me that although I keep saying FO Friday, it's really more like FO Saturday or Sunday, or even Monday. We do what we can around here. Anyway, here are the High Tea Cuffs from the Unofficial Downton Abbey Knits 2013 out of Knit Picks Imagination Hand-Painted in Ruby Slippers in their more finished form.

These are only finished in the sense that they're done being knitted the first time. By which I mean these are waaaaaaay too small for my tiny little wrists so there is no way they will fit an actual human being and I'll have to reknit them. I'm unsure if I have to go up another needle size and re-knit the whole thing, or if it's just the part of the ribbing where I listened to the pattern and went down a needle size that screwed it all up. These are the perils of knitting something designed for laceweight yarn on fingering weight yarn and thinking you're good enough to figure out this math.

It doesn't help that the bind off the pattern tells me to use has absolutely no give whatsoever. I mean, right now I can't tell which one I bound off in pattern and which one I used my regular bind off on, so that's hardly the only thing I've got going on here, but it certainly isn't helping.

So...these are done and they're a quick knit and I love them and probably if you're the sort of person who knits with laceweight yarn they're even easier. The pattern is clear and easy to understand. It only gives you charted instructions for the lace pattern though, so if you're the sort of person who prefers to have things written out rather than reading them from a chart, know that you might have to create the written instructions yourself. That and the fact that I'm skeptical about the bindoff are the only issues I have with this.

You'll probably be seeing these again soon when I re-knit them. I'll let you all know if it was the full pattern that I needed to fix or just not dropping a needle size on the ribbing.

WIP Wednesday: High Tea Cuffs

Let me start out here by saying...these are so close to done it hurts! I can almost promise you that pending epic disasters you'll be seeing these again for FO Friday. I know I said that with the sweater and then it didn't happen, but if I can get the few internet things done that I need to do relatively quickly, I may even be able to finish knitting these tonight and get them blocking. Plus they should block much faster than a full worsted weight sweater.

I'm knitting the High Tea Cuffs (and eventually the matching Jabot) for my swap partner in the Subway Knits Downton Abbey swap (shh...don't tell!). The pattern is from the Unofficial Downton Abbey Knits 2013 and actually calls for laceweight (which I do not have and will never have), but I spent the better part of a week and a half swatching and am confident that my new adjusted gauge math works out just fine. I chose to knit them out of the Knit Picks Imagination Hand-Paints in the Ruby Slippers colourway that I had in my stash for a number of reasons. First...I thought the hand-painted nature of the yarn would add interest while still showing off the lace pattern. Second, my swap partner said they like royal colours and I figured Ruby was pretty royal! Third, it's fingering weight, which is a reasonable substitute for a laceweight. Plus the little bit of alpaca in the yarn makes them soft and gives them just a little of the halo. I really like how they're turning out and I hope my swap partner will too.

The only complaint/problem I have so far is that I did the bind-off as instructed in the pattern and it's WAY too tight. If it doesn't fix itself after blocking I'm going to rip it out and re-do the bind off with a stretchier one. I don't want it too stretchy because it should grip the wrist a little bit, but at the same time I can barely get it over my hand and I have tiny little hands/wrists so I figure that's a good sign I should make it bigger.

Stay tuned for more on Friday, I imagine.

Finished Object: Fourth Doctor Scarf the Fourth

Near the beginning of August, just as I was thinking I was going to let the listing expire without getting an order to knit a Fourth Doctor scarf, another order came in. This one was my first overseas Etsy order (Germany!) and came with the (totally valid) request to change the purple colour I traditionally use from a less red purple to a more purple purple. Which is valid. The colour I use isn’t actually the best and I think I might like the purple I used for this scarf better. The buyer was lovely in looking on the Knit Picks site and picking out the colour she wanted and the whole process was very painless and yielded a lovely scarf.

Because I’m not the sort of person who likes having a ton of random scrap yarns around, I dug out all the Knit Picks WoTA worsted (fortunately I keep it all in one bag) from the previous full WoTA worsted scarf, took out my trusty yarn scale, weighed what I had, and then adjusted the ratio of how much to purchase.The one concern I had was that I had no idea how close KP matches colours between dye lots, as I was clearly using yarn I’d purchased a year ago and expected the dye lots to be drastically different. Good news…they weren’t. Even in the sections of the scarf where I *know* I joined a ball of the old colour to a ball of the new colour mid-section, I cannot even tell the slightest colour difference. I wouldn’t put 100% faith on this working all the time, but it worked out this time and I’ll probably take this gamble again.

The only real problem is that even though I made sure that when I ordered, the total amount of each colour I ended up with was greater than what was recommended on the pattern, but I still ran out of red, grey, and tan just before the end of the scarf. This put me a little bit behind schedule because I was on vacation when this happened and even though I ordered more yarn (from Ravelry destash and some from Knit Picks), I had to wait until I got back home to get to finishing the last quarter of the scarf. Fortunately, the buyer is a knitter as well, so they were very understanding about the slight delay and were perfectly lovely about everything, even when the package got stuck in customs in Berlin for a week and they had to call and take care of all of those problems.

Overall, this is the scarf I’m the most happy with since the first WoTA scarf  (which I got to see “in the wild” at the end of August, as I saw the person I made it for and she was wearing it. It’s wearing well and looked great even a year later!) I made, thus reinforcing my new policy of only making scarves in WoTA (or Cascade 220 if a person wants superwash) because it is the best yarn I’ve used for this process. Plus, because I have a new yarn scale and did a better job of monitoring how much yarn I had at the start and end, I have a WAY better estimate of how much of each colour I actually need for the scarf, so maybe the next time I open the listing up (might be a while…I knit this and then immediately knit a stockinette scarf in the round, so I have garter stitch burnout right now), I might not actually have to reorder yarn two times to get to the end.

Here’s a photo of the finished scarf. It’s pretty beautiful. Almost all credit to Knit Picks Wool of the Andes for being such a great yarn for this project.

Finished Object: Summer Aran Tank

This summer, the host of one of the podcasts I’ve recently started listening to, Subway Knits, was holding a summer “Armchair Knit Along” while she was in Greece for 5 weeks over summer vacation. The premise was that we should knit patterns inspired by Greece or photos of Greece or use yarn inspired by the same. At first, I wasn’t going to participate because I had absolutely no ideas and no yarn that I thought would work and even less time for adding another project to my days, but inspiration struck me and the prizes were SO AMAZING that I just couldn’t say no.

This was my first KAL experience and while I’m glad I got such a great FO out of it, I’m not sure I got anything much out of the actual social aspects of the KAL. I’m new to the group and I admit that I’m not sure exactly how one becomes part of the inner sanctums on Ravelry forums anyway, so maybe that had something to do with it, but in this particular KAL there wasn’t a ton of participation and I feel like the only chatter that was going on was by the moderator of the group and some incidental posting by a few others. On the other hand, I’ve seen groups with 4000 people participating in a KAL and I feel like it’s easy for your posts and what you’re doing to get lost and it’s even more impossible to keep up, so perhaps it’s better to have something smallish to start with.

The tank I knit for the KAL was the Aran Necklace Camisole by Caroline Bautista out of Interweave Knits Spring 2010. About halfway through the KAL, while not at all searching for inspiration but somewhat lusting after all the amazing prizes, I stumbled upon an idea. In my stash I had a few remnant skeins of Knit Picks CotLin from SO’s cardigan that I knit back in May, and one of the colours is a beautiful deep blue colour called Planetarium. This made me think about the night sky and how much reference to Greek mythology is (or used to be) in astronomy/astrology, which then felt to me like a pretty great tie-in to the KAL. I knew I didn’t have enough of the Planetarium colourway to make a full sweater, but when I found this pattern and saw that the yoke part was knit separately from the body, I knew I could supplement with the remaining Cashew colourway (a rich tan) to make sure I had enough yardage. Added bonus, the cashew colour could be reminiscent of the sandy beaches of Greece to fully round out the theme.



I’m really happy with this tank overall, and it was easy to knit and fairly straightforward, My only issue with the pattern is that a portion of the gauge swatch was done over the cable pattern so swatching for the yoke part of the sweater was overly complex and meant a bit of adjusting. It all worked out in the end, although I had to knit the yoke 3-4 times (some of this was my own fault for not counting rows correctly and trying to knit while I was in meetings and other social settings and losing track of where I was.) The only major mod I had to make to the pattern was that I needed to rip back the strap portions because of gauge and because I didn’t want the back to droop as low as it would have if I stayed with the pattern directions.

This was also my first foray into airplane knitting. I had finished the final iteration of the yoke while waiting in the airport (first time taking knitting through security in a carry on. Zero problems, but I was also flying out of the smaller terminal), and since I had a very short flight to get across the border to see my family I thought I’d see about knitting on the plane. For long flights, I don’t think I could do it because I get terrible pressure headaches on planes and I’m sure that hunching up in my seat to knit would cause more damage to me than good. Perhaps not. Perhaps I’ve now become an airplane knitter. Regardless, I managed to pick up for the back and get a significant portion of the back (down to the armhole joins) done on the plane with no problem whatsoever. My Knitters Pride Cubics traveled brilliantly and no one seemed shocked or annoyed by my knitting and all I had to do at that point was miles of stockinette, so I consider my first airplane knitting experience a success.

I Return (Mostly) Victorious, with Finished Objects!

I feel like I’ve been neglecting you all lately. I promise it’s not intentional, I was just mired in my first true foray into non-monogamous knitting (I hated it) and was waiting until I had anything finished (or even remotely finished) to make an update. Consequently, I have about 5 posts in a row that I’m going to need to make as I’ve been doing ALL THE THINGS. I’ll try to space them out a bit so you don’t get them all at once.

The first thing I want to talk about is something I think I mentioned once before, the Men’s Striped Cardigan that I made for my SO for our anniversary. It’s out of Knit Picks CotLin (because I really wanted to knit with Knit Picks CotLin) and it turned out pretty well, despite me having a lot of struggles with the pattern (part my fault, part the pattern’s fault) and having to rip out the sleeve THREE TIMES (though it turns out that the third time I ripped it out, I didn’t actually have to rip it out, the pattern was just confusing). I also learned that although I don’t usually mind finishing/seaming, I DO hate seaming things with stripes because making the sleeve stripes line up with the yoke stripes was an exercise in madness. Because of the sleeve setbacks, I was worried I wouldn’t finish it by our anniversary, so I dropped all the other projects I had in progress (monogamy ftw) and basically did nothing with my free time but knit that sweater for about a week and a half. I finished weaving in all the ends at around 10:30pm on May 14 (the day before our anniversary). So, technically it was finished on time, but the seams were so horridly bunched up that I knew I needed to block it, so he couldn’t wear it right away. He did wear it to the fibre festival we attended this Sunday (more on that in a later post) and it fits him well and he likes it well enough that I think he’ll actually wear it, so I’m counting it a win. That means that I have successfully knit him THREE sweaters now and I have successfully knit myself two. Yep.

Sadly, I don’t have any pictures of him wearing the cardigan (despite the fact that I was with him all day yesterday when he had it on), so here’s a photo of it blocking.



I was really excited to use the CotLin yarn after listening to the Knit Picks podcast where they were talking about the yarn. I’d never knit with cotton yarn at all before, so it was a new experience for me to knit with yarn that didn’t have much elasticity to it and had a lot of stretch. I think I already mentioned that I had to switch to bamboo needles because the cotton yarn and the aluminum needles were not agreeing with one another. Once I switched to the bamboo, all went well. I didn’t LOVE the CotLin as much as I hoped I would, but I think it’s a pretty great yarn to knit with. It helps that the pattern I chose was designed with a cotton yarn, so I didn’t have to worry too much about how it would stretch with gravity (although I don’t know yet since SO has only worn it once), but the linen seems to help it keep a bit of integrity. The stitch definition is nice and it definitely wasn’t hard on my hands while I was knitting (something else I’ve heard about cotton yarns). I LOVE the colours that SO picked (Cashew – a lovely toasty tan colour, and Planetarium – a rich navy blue with the slightest bit of a greenish hue and almost a little sheen that’s basically the colour of the midnight sky) and I have quite a bit of yarn leftover (especially in the blue) so I’m thinking about other things I can make (perhaps for ME) in the yarn. I wish I had more of the tan left because I think it would be a great neutral for me to make another short-sleeved layering cardigan with, but I definitely don’t have enough of the tan for a sweater. The blue however …

The only thing I’d caution about when knitting this is that when I made it (in XL, not sure if smaller sizes also have this problem) according to the pattern dimensions, the armpit shaping starts a bit low, unless you’re planning on wearing a dress shirt or bigger shirt underneath it, and the sleeve lengths (at least on my SO) were about 3” too long if you made the sweater as written (see: why I had to rip back the sleeve the second time), so you might want to measure and adjust as needed.

I might knit this again, but not for a while and definitely not in stripes. Also, I forgot how much longer it takes me to make sweaters for SO because he is so much bigger than me! Yet somehow, he is the one that has all the sweaters that fit and I am the one with a bunch of sweaters in the “things that need to be re-knit” pile. Whatever.

Yarn Review: Knit Picks CotLin

PSA: This also gets into a bit of a “needle review”, which is to say I might say some unpopular things about knitting needle brands and people who feel like if I’m not knitting with $400 needles I’m not doing it right. You have been warned.

Start Post

SO has been really into cardigans lately and since it is allegedly going to be summer soon, I thought that making wool cardigans for someone seemed a bit silly. Thanks to my binge listening to the KnitPicks podcast, I’d been seriously itching to knit with their cotton/linen yarn blend “CotLin”. I don’t really know why, but the podcast made it sound like such an amazing and exciting yarn and since I was thinking about summer knitting (who are we kidding here, I made a worsted weight, all wool, 4th Doctor scarf during the duration of last July/August…summer knitting isn’t a thing I think about) and I was thinking I should make some things out of cotton yarn (which I’ve never used before) and CotLin seemed fun.
I had to wait for the backordered black Palette to come in (Night’s Watch hat!), but as soon as it was ready I pulled SO in and we sat down and picked out colours for the cardigan. There was no question that a navy blue was going to be involved, but we spent a fair bit of time going over the various greys and brown colours and finally settled on “Cashew” and “Planetarium” (the cardigan is done with wide stripes—12 rows high with a gauge of 6 rows per inch). I waited for the yarn to come and then I got swatching.

The first thing I noticed while knitting the swatch was that although this yarn claims to be a DK weight, it’s very thin. I think it’s just spun very tightly, but when I put it up next to a strand of Palette, the CotLin strand is just about bigger than the Palette strand. That said, the pattern (which is written for DK weight yarn, although not cotton DK weight yarn…more on that when I talk about the cardigan) called for 4.5sts = 1” and 6 rows = 1” over stockinette stitch using US 7 needle and after washing and blocking the swatch, that’s what I got, so I’m rolling with it.

The second thing I noticed is that cotton yarn is strange. Or, rather, it’s strange compared to anything else I’ve ever knit with (which is basically acrylic and various wools). It feels like knitting with macrame thread (for all I know it basically *is* like knitting with macrame thread) as it slides through my hands. I’ve gotten used to it after knitting about a quarter of a cardigan, but for a while, especially since I’ve been switching between that, Malabrigo Rios (which is ridiculously soft superwash merino), KnitPicks Brava acrylic, and Knit Picks Palette, the CotLin just felt bizarre in my hands. Once it’s knitted, it’s actually rather soft, but it feels very stiff as I knit it and the fact that it has next to no memory (it doesn’t spring around or squish or anything) is still odd for me.

The third thing I noticed is that this yarn is terrible when knitted on aluminum needles. I was dropping stitches all over the place. The cotton yarn is slicker than wool and because it doesn’t have the fibre memory, it doesn’t grip the needles the way I’m used to. I have a Boye interchangeable needle set (this is where my potentially unpopular opinions on needles start…you have been warned) that I use almost exclusively to knit things. If I don’t use those, it’s because the cables disconnect from the needle tips and on certain projects (Palette on size 3) that means the yarn gets stuck in the connectors, so I’ve purchased a stand-alone Boye circular needle for that. In many cases, I also own the straight needles. Problem is, I somehow managed to lose ONE US7 straight needle (which was the reason I was gifted the Boye set in the first place because I was knitting a lot of things on US7 and I had ONE NEEDLE and no circulars). I do own wood DPNs (mainly Clovers) and I own them in a US7, but this cardigan called for me to cast on 150+ stitches and it’s not knit in the round (because it’s a cardigan), so I wasn’t going to use DPNs.

Here are my needle thoughts. Yes. I just admitted to you that I literally knit everything on US$8 aluminum needles from the craft store. Everything. Unless it needs to be on a DPN and then I knit it on US$10 bamboo DPNs unless I have caved to pressures of ergodynamics and bought myself square Knitter’s Pride Cubics rosewood US3 DPNs (which, lbr, were also $10 DPNs) because all the hats I make are finished on US3 DPNs and I own NO US3 DPNs at all (been finishing them on US5s. I’m lazy and cheap, what?). I’ve been using those to knit my Evenstar Gloves, and I like them, but really can’t tell much of a difference between them and the Clovers I usually use. So, okay, let’s discuss this.

Whenever I hear someone saying that one needs to buy only Hiya Hiya or only ChiaoGoo or ABSOLUTELY ONLY Signature needles, I sort of stop listening to them. I admit that the cables on my Boye circular set are pretty stiff, and if I use anything other than the two biggest sizes I basically can’t use them because the cables are too stiff to bend properly. I admit that the junctions routinely come unspun and I have to respin the tips on at the end of rows. But you know what, I’m actually okay with that. A friend gifted me the set for free and it has all the things I need and I’ve knitted some truly amazing things with so-called “worthless needles”. I once heard someone say that if you paid so little for a needle that you feel no remorse giving it away, it wasn’t worth knitting on in the first place. I’m calling bullshit on that. I knit on “worthless” Boye aluminum needles and I knit with a bunch of “horrible” acrylic yarn and I do some really fucking fantastic work. So there.

Anyway, the point of this is that I was dropping stitches all over the place and quickly realized I needed bamboo circulars. I’d been at JoAnn to buy fabric (I needed the Marvel licensed fabric and they routinely carry it), but I didn’t have the swatch done for the CotLin, so I didn’t yet know what size needles I would need, so I didn’t purchase any. Thankfully, the same friend who gifted me the Boye set also has bamboo circs in just about every size. So, I started the ribbing on my US6 Boye aluminums and then moved to the size 7 for the rows and just dealt with it until she came by on Sunday and saved me with the bamboo. You can definitely tell that the first stripe had a lot more fixes done to it if you look at it closely, but SO is okay with it and I’m hoping after a wash/block you won’t even be able to tell.

In summary: It’s too soon for me to tell what exactly I think about the CotLin, but now that I have the proper needles I’m finding it much easier to knit. I’m worried about proper drape on the cardigan once it’s finished, and I’m not convinced it’s going to hold shaping well through the sleeves, but I’ll be certain to keep you all posted through the process.
Sorry this got long. I will leave you with a quick photo of the CotLin cardigan as it currently stands.

Finished Object: VERY EXCITING FINISHED OBJECTS!!!

I just finished the second in a series (currently there are only 3 designs, but that’s just because I haven’t created the 4th one I have planned) of Game of Thrones/Song of Ice and Fire inspired sigil hats!

They look like this!





I completed the Stark hat on Monday (this is the aforementioned hat that I knit on a US5 instead of a US3…it’s comically large and was almost a bit tragic, but I think it's all going to work out) and yesterday I did the final seaming on the Lannister hat. Next up (the yarn came this morning as I was on my way out the door and I didn’t have time to snuggle it) will be a Targaryen hat and then Night’s Watch. Potentially I will also create a Greyjoy hat and maybe Tully or Martell (probably Martell, given the content of the upcoming season of the show). All the hats are created with a base of Knit Picks Palette and the sigils are done in this AMAZING yarn that Knit Picks stopped making (but I snapped up all of it that I could and still look for the sales on Ravelry) called Imagination Hand Painted. It’s a fingering weight and has the most amazing tonality. It’s this yarn that inspired the sigil projects in the first place. I saw what they referred to as the “Castle Walls” colourway and thought to myself that I needed to find a fantasy theme to use it for. The more I thought about it and the “Treasure” colourway, the more I realised they needed to turn into Game of Thrones somethings. This yarn is BEAUTIFUL and the variegations are coming through wonderfully and I am in absolute love and I hope you all like them, too!

I have hopes that they can turn into things besides hats, but for now I want to make a bunch of hats before the premiere of season 4.

I’ll keep you updated on how things are going, and I’ll get them listed on my commissions page as soon as I’m ready to say these are good to go.

Future Project: Swatching Up Some Acrylic

Swatching up a new yarn for a new project. This might be my new favorite of all acrylics. It’s soft and squishy and doesn’t squeak at all. And, of course, it’s from Knit Picks.

More to come on this new project as things progress!

 

WIP: Exciting New Projects

If you read a few of my posts a few weeks ago while I was on hiatus from the sport weight 4th Doctor scarf, you may have heard me allude to a new exciting project.

Well, it’s done enough that I can share it with you!

Inspired by my recent Frostfangs hat, the AMAZING Knit Picks Imagination Hand Painted Fingering Yarn in all manner of colourways with exciting fantasy names (Castle Walls, Ruby Slippers, Treasure), and my supreme love of all things A Song of Ice And Fire, I have created…..

Game of Thrones House Sigil Hats!

I got the pattern drafting done a few weeks ago for the Stark, Lannister, and Targaryen sigils (I plan on making the set of patterns available for purchase as soon as I’ve knitted up a hat for each of them just to make sure the pattern is right), and I was waiting to finish both the Frostfangs Hat and the 4th Doctor scarf before I got started. The background yarn (MC) is Knit Picks Palette since I had such fun working with it in the Frostfangs hat and since I knew the weights and gauge would match up well. Plus, it’s great for colourwork, and even though these are knit in intarsia and not stranded, I thought the Palette would be the best choice just because of colours and yarn weight matching. Plus, you all should know by now how much I love Knit Picks. I began with the Stark hat (since I always begin with the Starks, and since it’s winter, and since I had a skein of Palette in Ash that was just sitting around). The ribbing takes forever, as it did with the Frostfangs hat, but at least I opted not to do the extra 40 rows of stockinette as a liner on this hat. I may need to line it with fleece or something just to keep them warm enough, though for anyone who doesn’t live in the frigid north like myself, these will probably be okay, as the Palette is a 100% wool yarn and the Imagination is mostly wool with a bit of nylon, just like the Chroma. I will evaluate that later. I learned the hard way that I have to work the piece flat and then seam it, since I hear rumours that there are ways to work intarsia in the round, but I am unable to captivate the mystical energies that allow this to work out. I’m working on size 3 circulars with a CO of 180 stitches. I marked of 61 on each side and have the pattern centered with the remaining 58 stitches. The Imagination yarn (that statement never stops being funny to me) I chose for the Stark sigil is the “Castle Walls” colourway. Unfortunately, Knit Picks is clearing out this yarn and all you can get is the "Treasure" colourway at this time. It’s absolutely beautiful and from the moment I saw it I knew it needed to become the direwolf symbol of House Stark.

Over the weekend, I completed the sigil portion of the hat and I wanted to share the photo with you. I think it turned out well, especially for something I drafted myself, and I hope to make some gloves and possibly scarves (though, scarves in Palette will take me about 40 years, so I’ll either have to find some comparable yarns in worsted or sport/DK weight to work with or just not make scarves). I also plan to make these hats for some of the other houses. It’s my hope that I can have several completed in time for the Game of Thrones season 4 premiere coming up at the end of April, but 5 rows of the sigil (10 rows of the straight stockinette) take me about an hour. I’ve completed the ribbing and 51 rows (up to the decrease) thus far, and I’m 15 hours in. It’s not quite shaking out to be the almost 40 hour investment that the Frostfangs hat was, but my confidence that I’ll be able to just knock out 15 - 20 hats in the next month and a half (especially with a lot of RL business going on) is starting to dwindle.

For now, I leave you with some photos of the sigil. I hope you can get a sense of the gorgeousness of the Imagination yarn (still laughing) from these.




Remember, if you want one, or if you think you want to purchase the pattern at a later date, please check my Etsy store, my commissions page, and my Ravelry page in a few months and you should be able to place an order.

4th Doctor Scarf 4 - Sport Weight Wool and the Glaring Imperfection

First…sorry this post is long overdue. Life, you know?

If you’ve been keeping up, you know about the great yarn saga of 2014 and all that went into the second of my “Two 4th Doctor scarves in two months” plan, so I won’t get into it too much. I will say that this was my first time using multiple yarn sources to make a scarf, and I don’t much like it.

Some thoughts:

• I still adore Knit Picks Wool of the Andes above all other yarns for this scarf. In the future (after this next custom order…I’ll get into that later) I think that I will explicitly state that all scarves will be made in Knit Picks Wool of the Andes worsted, Cascade 220 Superwash (yes, I’ll use it. I don’t like it as much, but I’ll use it since I know people want washable items), or Lion Brand Wool Ease (my favorite of all acrylics…though I just knitted up a swatch of Knit Picks Brava Sport and it’s certainly giving the Wool Ease a run for its money). I realize that some people have wool allergies and that Wool Ease won’t work for them and that I’m always harping on the need for people to be accommodating of allergies, but until I find a colour combo and a yarn combo that doesn’t make me want to never knit the scarf again, those people will just have to make do with those out there offering the scarf in acrylic (at frankly atrocious prices, if you ask me).


• Jamieson and Smith Shetland Double Knitting is the worst non Lion Brand Homespun yarn I’ve ever worked with. It’s scratchy and awful. I like to think that I can tolerate a fair amount of rustic scratchiness in my wool, and maybe it was just that it was VERY rough compared to all the other yarn sources, but every time I came to the brown colour I sort of cringed at the idea of having to knit with the Shetland. I didn’t like the feel of it in my hand while I was knitting it at all. I definitely don't think I'd knit something like a hat or a garment out of it. It knits up alright, but it was truly horrible to run my hand along.


• Absolutely no one in the world other than Knit Picks holds true to yardage in this scarf. I was using three yarns from Knit Picks WotA Sport (Thyme, Turmeric, and Currant). According to Knit Picks, there are 137 yards on a skein. I needed 195, 113, and 137 respectively, according to the pattern estimates. What I ended up using was a skein and roughly a half of the Thyme, slightly less than a skein in the Turmeric, and slightly more than a skein in the Currant. This, to me, is accurate, as the yardage is approximate and I’m not sure it includes tassels, plus my gauge didn’t exactly match the pattern gauge. In the other yarns…well…in the Dalegarn Falk, which I used for the grey, the pattern noted I would need 184 yards. I had 2 skeins, which totaled 232 yards and I had to cut the pattern short to ensure I had enough yarn for tassels. I know this is because Falk is measured in weight, not yards, but the pattern was in yards and matching this up was a challenge. To me, 48+ yards over what I was expecting to use is a little unacceptable, and I did have to leave rows off. That said, had I ordered a third skein, I would have had too much yarn left over. For the Jamieson Shetland DK, I also had to cut rows in order to make sure i had enough yarn for the tassels. The pattern called for 153 yards and I used 2 skeins, for a total of 164 yards. I ended up having to cut 8 total rows, and I was still a bit short on tasseling. This isn’t terrible and, again, if I had to order a third skein, I would have had way too much yarn, but it is disappointing to me. The worst offender, however, is the Rowan Pure Wool DK, which I used for the tan colour. According to the pattern, I needed 263 yards. I ordered 2 balls of this, which should have given me 274 yards. Cutting it close, but should have been ultimately fine. With 40 rows of tan still left in the scarf, I ran out of yarn. With my very rough estimate of 1.4 yards of yarn per row (that’s on the high end by a lot, I rounded significantly), this meant that I would need around 55 more yards of yarn. This meant that I used a rough total of 330 yards in a pattern that called for 263. I’m not sure if this is something with the pattern or something with Rowan really not getting their yardages correct on the labels, but it’s something to note if you’re going to undertake this project with this yarn in the future. I’ve been estimating total yardage needs for this scarf at between 1400 and 1500 total yards, whereas the pattern recommends a total of 1222 yards. My advice is to overestimate how much you need and figure on using about 1.4 - 1.5 yards of yarn per row of knitting.


• Mixed sources don’t knit up the same width. This should be obvious, and I was able to fix it with very careful blocking, but it’s not really something I’d like to have to do again. I’d rather I just use all one yarn source and have nice, crisp edges in the first place.


• I’m not going to talk any more about the orange/red problem and the Cascade 220, but it basically ruined what was an otherwise flawless scarf and I regret not holding out until I could get the yarn I actually wanted. The customer was disappointed (but understanding) and I was disappointed in myself. I will never again make this mistake.

Here are photos of the finished product, if you are interested.



 
I’m pretty much done doing these scarves for a while. I did promise this customer (because basically my executive decision to use this orange completely ruined a scarf that they ultimately otherwise loved), that after I get a break to recover and not hate these scarves and get some other projects done (and after the Knit Picks Saffron is back in stock at the end of April) that I would make them another one. I will let them custom it and they will order all the yarn to make sure it is what they want. And that will be the last mixed-source scarf I make. It may, in fact, be the last scarf I make for anyone who is not a close friend, and it will more than likely be the last scarf I make in 2014. I have a lot of projects I’d like to get done and if I keep making these scarves, I will never achieve even half of them. I don’t hate doing them, they’re easy, but they take time, and time is a thing that I don’t possess in great excess.

Finished Object: Frostfangs Hat in Knit Picks Chroma (Midwinter)

As my birthday gift to myself, I wrapped up the Frostfangs hat on Monday morning. The entire hat took me ~30 hours to knit total, which is, in my opinion, a rather long time for a hat. However, the Knit Picks Chroma remained a delight to work with and the Palette did it’s job as a phenomenal yarn for stranding (as advertised).

I did cut the pattern a bit short (though not much), as I thought the hat was getting a bit long. Turned out to be just the right length. Also, with the addition of my 40 extra rows of Palette to add an extra layer of warmth, I did *almost* run out of the contrast colour yarn (I made it though). I definitely have enough Chroma left over to make at least one, if not two, if not possibly three hats, so it’s a pretty good deal if you can buy 1 ball of $10 yarn and get 3 hats out of it.

The best part, I think, is that while the pattern wasn’t written with Chroma in mind, it might as well have been. It was the perfect length to go through exactly one cycle of the colour gradation in the Chroma yarn and I think it looks absolutely stunning. A bit like the northern lights.



I took it for a test drive the past few days here in the -10F (-23C) Minnesota windchill, and with the double layer of Palette plus the stranding across the back, it kept me pretty warm (at least in combination with my hood). I’m not sure I’d trust it at much colder temps than that, but there comes a point where pretty much no hat is going to help you out. If you live in less extreme conditions, this is probably a really great hat all winter long. My only gripe with my decision to use Palette as the foldover colour is that because it is 100% wool, it’s very itchy against my forehead. I have hope that with time and a little wool wash (I didn’t block it because I couldn’t wait to just get it on my head and out into the world) it may soften up and my itching will be minimized.

I leave you with a final shot of the hat in action as it accompanied me on my adventures:

Head Over Heels in LOVE with Knit Picks Chroma

WIP: Frostfangs Hat - Knitting Therapy (or, Tiny Yarn is Maddening)

After a bit of a saga involving the second Who scarf (which, again, I was already tired of dealing with) I got a bit of a break on the insane deadline of end of January, and I decided to make proper use of it by doing fun things.

Back in June, I saw a post on Tumblr about a super fantastic pseudo-Song of Ice and Fire inspired hat, the Frostfangs hat, and decided I must have it. I paid the very modest $3 fee to download the pattern…and I haven’t touched it since.


The problem is that the background variegated yarn used in the pattern is a hand-dyed Tri’Coterie Sock MCN in Glacial (gradient from white to dark blue) that I can’t get anymore. For many people this wouldn’t be a problem, but as I don’t make socks, I don’t work with fingering weight yarn, and I don’t work with anything self-striping, I didn’t really know where to go about finding alternatives. I did round up the required Knit Picks Palette yarn that I needed (it’s been sitting in my stash bin since sometime in July), but I didn’t have the main colour I needed for the hat, so I had sort of abandoned it.

Until the Knit Picks sale in November…

While browsing the sale yarns to see if anything caught my fancy (boy howdy, did it), I came across the Knit Picks Chroma fingering yarn in a colourway called Midwinter.



Midwinter! I thought to myself. Why, midwinter seems perfect for a North inspired ASOIF hat! And while you can see that it is not nearly as blue as the yarn used in the original, I do believe that the striping this is producing is going to be an absolute beauty.

So, I ordered it. Two skeins, in fact. Despite the fact that I won’t need more than half a skein for a hat. I figured, this deal is pretty good, and what if I want to put them on Etsy? So I bought two. (I have since bought a similar colourway (Wildwood) at yet another Knit Picks sale…bless those people.) And then it sat. Because I was busy making these 4th Doctor scarves and all that business.

While I was waiting for yarn to arrive as part of my great yarn saga of 2014 (which seems to have ended a bit more poorly than I hoped it would), I needed an interim project. I had cast on and done 2/3 of another Elvhen Triangle scarf, just to have one around since the other one I have belongs to me and I’m offering them for sale, so I should probably have a stash. The Lion Brand Homespun I’m using for them (what the pattern called for) is making me ANGRY though (knitting with that yarn is a wholly frustrating experience) so I might try to find an equivalent yarn that doesn’t make me want to throw it across the room. That’s a tangent though. Regardless, I had 2/3 of one done and I took a break to cast on for the second scarf before I finished it, so I put it on hiatus in the ottoman.

And then I didn’t have the red yarn for the Who scarf.

I knew that I needed to start something else while I was waiting because Minneapolis was embroiled in something called a “Polar Vortex” and I was basically housebound for five days without the yarn I needed. But, instead of doing the responsible thing and going back and finishing the ETS, I did the fun thing and looked at my stash and said, “Frostfangs!” So I pulled out the Chroma and I pulled out the Palette and I pulled out my circular needle kit and I set down to get to work.

…four hours later I had attempted knitting approximately 8 swatches, decided that I hated tiny needles, reinforced my hatred of this circular needle kit where the needles *unscrew* as you are knitting and then the yarn gets snagged on them (which is, I learned, 4000 times bigger of a problem with tiny yarn), went to the store to get proper circular needles because the damned kit needles made me actually have to cut the yarn off of them, finally cast on and knitted like 20 rows (which is an unsatisfying length of hat when you’re using fingering weight yarn!) realized it was moebiused, tried again, worked very hard not to moebius, moebiused anyway, took a break for the night, started over AGAIN the next day, and managed to make it through the 40 rows of stockinette grey for the lining and a bit of the way into the actual pattern (over the course of 12 hours of knitting…TINY YARNS) before my new red yarn arrived and I had to take a break.

But! Despite the setbacks and despite the fact that usually when I think “knit this hat” I’m figuring a one or two evening adventure at most, I couldn’t stop thinking about this project the whole time I was working on the scarf. I just really wanted to finish this thing.

Then, yesterday, when there was a lot of fallout and a bit of frustration, all of which ended in me saying I needed to not knit this scarf for a while, I made the decision to take a break on the scarf until I finish my Frostfangs hat. Three more hours of work yesterday and today, and it’s looking pretty fantastic. I just really can’t wait until I get it done. I’m in LOVE with this chroma yarn (it’s making me want to actually knit socks), and the Palette really is the greatest for stranding and fair isle work. The only problems I’ve got are that it sort of takes FOREVER to make a hat out of fingering weight yarn, I feel like I might run out of Palette (despite the fact that the pattern says I shouldn’t even need a whole skein)—that’s my fault, really. I did add quite a bit of extra at the beginning to the bits where you need to fold under to the inside though. I live in Minnesota. One layer of fingering weight wool/nylon between me and the outside world is a bit of a joke—and the NEAR CONSTANT ENTANGLEMENT of my yarn balls. If anyone has any good methods of working Fair Isle without constantly needing to stop and get your yarn balls out of their tangled up knots, please send them my way.

Best yet, though…this pattern has inspired me to draft some of my own patterns (alluded to previously). Also in the Knit Picks sales I picked up a bunch of different colorways of Imagination Hand Painted, and I can’t wait to start putting some logos on some hats/scarves/gloves. Problem is, I might need to use a yarn that’s NOT Palette as the base, since Palette takes FOREVER to knit up.

Anyway, here’s the WIP as of this morning. Can’t wait to share the finished product with you all!