WIP Wednesday: IT'S SO CLOSE TO DONE!!!

I promise you that this will be the last week you see this before it gets moved to the FO slot. If I'd actually purchased blocking wires you might actually see it in the FO slot this Friday, but I think if I'm going to get blocking wires at all it will be when I go to knit night at my lys tomorrow at the earliest, so I wouldn't count on an FO post just yet. It might be done, but it's sure not ready to show off until I make it look like more than a tangled up pile of string.

The "Big Damn Heroes" (I keep wanting to call it a shawl, but really it's a poncho, let's be real here) is officially off the needles. All it needs is an applied I-cord edging and a seriously aggressive blocking (using my newly learned blocking skills!) and then it will be ready to wear. With what, I don't know. I'm not exactly a poncho sort of girl, but I guess I'll see if I can't figure it out.

Currently, it looks like this:

It's going to be pretty cool once it's blocked, I think. The larger opening in the centre is the wide shoulder opening and the smaller one is for an arm to go through. Right now it's about half the length the pattern says it should be, so I hope a good block will set it right. I hope I am the sort of person who can give it a good block.

Reminders:

Pattern is "Big Damn Heroes" by Kimberly Golynskiy

Yarn is Wild Hare Fiber Studio Pinnacle Sock in the "Browncoat" colourway from the Nerd Alert Yarns series from Steven Be.

Meanwhile, I've cast on for another thing. It's not a WIP (it's not even technically "in progress" at all), but here's a teaser photo for you.

​​SM

WIP Wednesday: Knitting Polygamy

You read that right, everyone...I have more than one thing in progress! It doesn't happen that often (and honestly I wish it weren't happening right now), so you might want to take a moment to commemorate this day with me. I want to tell you that I hope I won't still have two things in progress next week, but unless something changes with my schedule and I get an unexpected run on knitting time, I'm pretty sure you'll be seeing these both again next week. That's the problem with knitting two things at once...it takes so much longer to finish anything.

Okay. So. First up is the Queen of the Waves shawl I had started two weeks ago out of some Kauni I had. I took photos last week with the intention of updating you on where things stood, but school/work won out and the post never got written. As of now I'm probably slightly less than a quarter of the way into ball 2 (finished ball 1 last Thursday) and am in the part of the shawl that is mostly garter stitch with only a few pattern rows, so hopefully that plus the rapid decreasing will help it go faster than it looks like it's going to go on paper when you think to yourself that you have more than 100 rows to go and you've only completed 70 rows in two weeks WITHOUT working on a second project. (Trying to get these both done by the end of February. I might be killing my chances of even finishing one by undertaking both. The tragic irony of me trying to become a polygamous knitter when faced with deadlines. It's the real reason I only knit one thing at a time.)

Here's where the shawl was last week (for reference and since I have the photos):

​​SML

 

And here's where it is this week:

​​SML

 

So, yeah. Some progress, but not a lot considering how far I managed to get between week 1 and week 2. The Kauni is really growing on me (I thought it might be slightly too scratchy, but it's not at all). It does have a lot of random veg matter in it though, so if that's a thing that bothers you, steer clear. I'm a bit surprised at the way the colours are striping in it since I honestly thought this was going to be a true gradient from dark to light. It's a bit of a pleasant surprise.

Before I leave this WIP, here's a closeup of the pattern stitches so you can perhaps get a better idea of what's going on with it. It's slightly bothersome to actually create because you have uneven stitch counts and lots of yarnovers that you need to drop which get hung up on the needles, but really it's only a few rows and it's not that bad. The pattern is easy to memorize/follow. I keep ending up with the wrong stitch counts, but it's a shawl so I'm rolling with it.

​​SML

 

Okay. Wow. Posts get long when you haven't updated for two weeks AND you have a second WIP. Yikes. I'll try to make this quick.

Also for the Knerd Girl Knits 2016 Bad-ass Women Craft Along round 1, one of the challenges is to knit from an historic knitting pattern. I desperately tried to find something that would be roughly the era of Outlander so I could double-dip into the Subway Knits Outlander KAL, but the earliest patterns I could find were Victorian era. One of the sites we were directed to was the Knitting Reference Library at University of Southampton, and I have a soft spot for Southampton, so I basically didn't consider looking anywhere else once I couldn't find pre-Victorian patterns. So, after going through a lot of books of doilies and all manner of impractical things I had no desire to knit, I came across "Weldon's Practical Needlework" which has patterns for all sort of things, but most specifically for my needs, a pattern for fold-over "Club Stockings" with a Union Jack, which basically means a regular sock with a fold-over section that has a Union Jack intarsia on it. And if you've been around the blog for a while you know how I can't resist putting a good logo on something.

Problem was, I didn't have the yarn I needed. I could have produced all the colours I needed (save white) in Knit Picks Palette, which does very well with colourwork, but because it's for socks, it needs to have nylon in it, which Palette does not. I had the grey and the red in Imagination, but not white or blue. And since I'm on a limited purchases plan, I was a bit stuck as to what I should do. And then it came to me. I pulled three balls of the heavier weight superwash wool sock yarn from my undyed yarn stash (yeah, I'm using business yarn for personal purposes. People do that all the time and it's not like anyone was buying it in a hurry lately) and dyed some up. 2 balls grey (which has now become the Lonely Mountain colourway thanks to fortuitous circumstances) and one ball half blue, a quarter red, and a quarter undyed. I was trying to estimate based on weights needed in the pattern, but the pattern is truly for knee-highs for men, so the stitch counts are very different than mine. I'll probaby have yarn left over, but there was no real sense in not just using the full skein.

So here's where it is now:

​​SLXL

(and here is the intarsia disaster mess I need to weave in at some point but have been putting off):

​​SLX

 

The knitting is going fast, but I'm still skeptical that I'll be able to finish this sock and knit another sock by the end of February, even if it were the only thing I was working on. Also I pulled the floats too tight so it's puckering weird in the straight red column. It looks a bit too "homemade" for me. Odds are good I'll end up redoing this or doing it in a different way. But I do love the idea of the foldover sock! I think I'll make them for all my footy clubs someday.

So that brings us to the end of this very long post. I can almost guarantee you that I won't have a finished object for FO Friday, so I will hopefully see you back here next Wednesday with progress updates.

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.

WIP and Project Reconsideration: Prairie Butterfly Socks

About half an hour ago I was going to sit down to write a short post to give you a quick check in on the sock I cast on (and then promptly knit the whole foot of over the course of the weekend) on Saturday. But now things are different.

As I was just rounding 3" of the cuff after finishing a toe after figuring out a heel turn I'd never done before (having to knit back about 3 times in order to get it right) I decided that I wasn't enamoured with this sock. It's not the pattern, per se. It's more that my stitch count is such that the pattern repeats aren't working out the 100% best and I don't think the pattern is coming through the way I want it to. It's working, but it's not working like the socks in the pattern photo and that's making me love them less. Ordinarily I might not care, but this yarn is special to me and I want to be sure I absolutely adore the socks,

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.

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.