WIP Wednesday: Continuation of the Giant Orange Stockinette Sweater

This week's WIP is the same as last week's WIP, which is to be expected when you're knitting a size XL men's sweater for someone who's 6'1" tall on 3.75mm needles.

As a reminder, this is Joukahainen by Kristel Nyberg and I'm knitting it out of Berocco Ultra Alpaca in colourway 6268, which is a lovely burnt orange colour with a bit of depth to it.

That said, progress has been made! Noticeable progress! Much thanks to me working a 4-day convention that left me with hour-long chunks of time to sit and knit, the entire sweater being stockinette, and sleeves having SO MANY FEWER STITCHES than the body of the sweater.

So... since you saw it last I finished the main body section, finished one sleeve, and have started the next sleeve. I had to make the slightest of modifications to account for Jonas having dainty wrists compared to the size of the rest of him, so basically I dropped down to 3.5mm needles and cast on 4 fewer stitches (the amount for the size L), did the ribbing, then switched back to the 3.75mm needles and increased until I had the amount of stitches for the XL, then knit to the length of the L. It's based on the Elizabeth Zimmerman percentage formula so it's pretty easy to make changes like this on the fly, especially since the whole sweater is just stockinette in the round.

Still loving this yarn. It's super easy to knit and has a really nice hand even before washing. The biggest thing I have to remember is that when he tries things on they need to be slightly on the small side (fitting, but with slightly less ease than he might like) because it will stretch out when blocked.

I'm hoping to wrap up the sleeves before the weekend and then maybe get the yoke done over the weekend or early next week. I'm currently dyeing some yarn so I can use it for a sock test knit I agreed to do, so hopefully the next time you all see this sweater it will be in an FO photo.

Stash Confessional: Minnesota Yarns

This week’s (month’s???) stash confessional is very different than most. Not that it doesn’t mean I didn’t acquire some stash, because I definitely did. Just that I lost significantly more stash than I acquired. Which, you know, is the goal. Still, it puts me decidedly ahead in the plan to be 24,000m lighter by the end of the year. That said, I’m pretty sure I’ll never again get rid of this much yarn at one time, so I suppose I should preface this with a “results not typical” sort of statement.

A bit of background for anyone who might be a new reader. As part of my “own less in 2015” goals, I made a commitment to knit or otherwise rid myself of 2000m of yarn per month. Which . . . considering a worsted weight sweater takes ~900m of yarn is pretty lofty if I were just knitting it all, but it includes knit AND destash. That said, I don’t have THAT MUCH yarn I’m willing to part with as destash, and after Sunday I have even less.

Sunday. I took a birthday trip north (halfway to Canada, as I like to phrase it) and made it a point to stop in to the LYS in town (home of Three Irish Girls) both because I had heard good things about the store (all correct) and because I wanted to get myself some TIG from the source, as it were. While investigating the store, I found out they’re a drop-off location for the charity knitting group F.L.O.C.K. (For Love of Charity Knitting). F.L.O.C.K. will basically take whatever yarn you want to give them and distribute it to various group members who want to charity knit for someone, which I think is great. I would love to do more charity knitting myself, but I also like knitting things FOR myself, so I don’t get around to charity knitting as much as I do in my dreams. I figured this was a good way to go through my stash, figure out what I would have probably designated into charity knitting projects once I got to it anyway, put it all in two giant plastic bags, drive it 2.5 hours north, and drop it off for other people to play with.

All told, I dropped off 4457.65m (2580g) of yarn from my stash. That puts me TWO MONTHS ahead on my stashdown goals, provided I don’t actually purchase more yarn. But you know where this is going, right?

As I said, my primary goal in hitting up the LYS was to PURCHASE yarn, and purchase yarn I did, though I’m incredibly proud of my ability to make decisions, especially in the face of a wall of Kauni and a front-and-centre display of ALL THE THREE IRISH GIRLS with the best colourway names and things I had never seen before. So I came home with 5 new skeins of yarn, all of them local to my area, some of them handspun by lovely people I would like to meet someday so I can praise them for providing me with handspun Border Leicester, for a total of 1453.6m (581g) of new yarn, which evens my destash to acquisition total for this trip to 30004.5m (1999g). Not bad. I count that a mega win! I’m still well ahead for the month of January and still knitting away on a project and swatching for the next.

This probably won’t be the final acquisition post for the month since my mother gave me a $50 US gift card to my LYS with the instruction to “Knit something beautiful” for myself, so I’m betting I’ll be back again next week with more stash confessions.

Which brings us to the moment we’ve all been waiting for. Stash confessional #1 for the year:

1 skein of Three Irish Girls Adorn sock in the “Cooler Bythe Lake” colourway. I actually had this and a “Land of the Loon” colourway that were SUPER similar, but Jonas and I rationalised that although both were awesome, the blue makes this one better. Plus, “Cooler By the Lake” was the tagline of my childhood hometown for a while in the 80’s/90;s so even though I know this meant a different lake, I still felt like it was made just for my home.

 

1 skein of Three Irish Girls Adorn sock in the “Cair Paravel”colourway. And okay . . . it’s named after the castle in Narnia. Do I need to rationalise it beyond that?

1 skein of Three Irish Girls Glenhaven Cashmerino Worsted inthe “Observation Hill” colourway. Which is pretty. And is named after a place in the city we were visiting (which is where TIG dye out of). But also there was a place in the city I went to University in (my second home) called Observatory Hill and I spent a LOT of time on that hill and I felt like this colour could also represent that place. Plus did I mention it’s pretty?

1 skein of super awesome amazing hand spun Border Leicesteryarn in the “Natural Dark” colourway from a local spinner. It’s 225m in a beautiful chocolate brown and I’m SO EXCITED to work with Border Leicester. No idea what it will become, but whatever it is will almost certainly be warm and happy and made with love from start to finish.

1 skein of super awesome amazing hand spun BLF/Silk in the “LanikaiHike” colourway (presumably inspired by Hawai’i) from a spinner that’s evenmore local to me. It’s beautiful barberpoled brown and blue (you know how much I love brown and blue together!) and is 240m of DK weight. Again, no idea what it will become, but it is sure to be made with love.

Note that despite a WALL OF KAUNI I did not purchase any. This doesn’t mean I didn’t have three different colourways in my hand at one time, it does mean that I decided that Kauni skeins have a LOT of yardage and I still haven’t decided what the three skeins of Kauni I purchased back in May are going to be, so I reluctantly returned them from whence they came because although I love Denmark and Danish yarns/knitting something fierce, 2015 is all about making good decisions with stash and I could walk away feeling comfortable with what I purchased.

WIP Wednesday: Tauriel by Bonne Marie Burns

So, I'm trying to start a new feature here, we'll say if I can keep up with it.

Every Wednesday, both so I can measure my progress and keep myself accountable (though the latter is less important since I'm mainly a monogamous crafter), I plan to post a photo of my current work in progress. I figure at the very least this will make sure I post once a week and perhaps a nice end result will that I can do a bit of a "year in photos" post once we reach the end of 2015. Plus I thought it would be fun.

Here's my current WIP, Tauriel by Bonne Marie Burns from Chic Knits. I'm at least 95% positive it has nothing to do with the new character in the Hobbit movies, but I won't say I don't think this looks like it could have been inspired by her.

I'm knitting it out of Berocco Ultra Alpaca that I bought back on Small Business Saturday of 2013 because that's the yarn selected by the Random Number Generator. Not that I don't love knitting with that yarn and not that I'm not super happy about all things involving this sweater, just that I asked RNG what yarn I should use and it chose this. I bought another sweater quantity in orange to knit something for Jonas and I most certainly won't regret that decision whenever it comes around to making it. The yarn is soft and fluffy and not at all splitty and very lovely.

I actually had this pattern in my queue (though not for that long) after hearing the Knitmore Girls sing the praises of the Chic Knits patterns and then going through and queuing basically all of them, so once the yarn was selected I used the magic of the Ravelry pattern browser to match it up with a pattern in my queue and it was a match made in heaven.

The pattern is somewhat brilliantly written (especially if you hate seaming) and the cable pattern is incredibly easy to memorise. At most points (until I got to the bottom and actually had to knit ALL THE WAY AROUND the cardigan) this was pretty much flying off the needles. Right now I have about 10 rows of stockinette and then 10 rows of ribbing to knit on the second sleeve and it will be done. I started this on December 27. Now, I've had more knitting time than usual since then, but not bad for a full size sweater.

On that note, I really, really, really hope that my washed swatch didn't lie to me and that the characteristic alpaca drape and stretchiness isn't going to let me down. Otherwise I better add some length to the sleeves at the very least...they're, well, noticeably short. If they were pants people would ask me if I were expecting a flood. We shall see after blocking.

I'm betting you'll meet up with this sweater again in all it's finished and blocked glory on FO Friday. I have a mind to finish these sleeves as soon as I sign off here. Which is now.