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: 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.

FO Friday: Do Not Speak to Me of Dragon Fire Socks

I know I said I was hoping to have these done by last Friday so I could show them off, but (1) it takes a longer time to knit the feet portion of socks than I think it does and (2) I was taking a class at the local fibre festival that specifically said I needed a project to knit and it occurred to me that if I finished the second sock on Friday night then I wouldn't have anything to knit during class, so I stopped working on them and swatched for the hat I posted about on Wednesday instead.

Anyway, they're done now. I wore them the other day and I LOVE them. They fit so incredibly well and were absolutely lovely to have on my feet all day. Fantastic pattern. I highly recommend it.

 

It remains difficult to take a picture of my own feet, but I tried to give you a sense of the chain mail cable pattern on the front, the unique foot detail that's actually a really cool alternative gusset placement, and the leaf detail on the back of the leg. 

They look complicated, but the patterns are all super easy to memorize and they knit up really fast. The yarn does hide the pattern more than I wanted it  to, but it striped up in a fortuitous way and I feel like you can see the pattern well enough.I'll probably knit another pair with a more solid yarn sometime because it's such a great pattern, but I'm happier with these socks than any of the other handful of socks I've knit.

To recap:

Pattern: Do Not Speak to Me of Dragon Fire by KnottyKnerd (I was test knitting, but will link the pattern as soon as it becomes available.)

Yarn: My own custom dye that I made just to knit these socks "Elvenking", but is now available in my Etsy store.

My review... buy this pattern as soon as it's available. These socks are awesome. (And the yarn's not so bad either!)

FO-ish: The Great Knee-High Sock Saga of 2015

I alluded in my last post to not having made very much progress on my resolutions because I spent pretty much all of February that I wasn't in the dye lab or doing freelance design work knitting the same 400yds of BFL into socks. Which still don't entirely fit, by the way. I don't regret my decision to rip out what I had and re-knit the socks, and I learned a lot of valuable things about sizing knee-highs to fit that are coming in handy on my current project, but still... I just took a month to knit pretty much nothing but a pair of socks and I kinda feel like I've let my overly ambitious self down.

So here's how it went:

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.

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.

Stash Enhancement: Doctor Who Yarns!

Shortly after arriving home from my summer of travel, which should probably also be known as the “summer of buy all the yarn while you’re on vacation”, I was browsing around LYS’s website (for some reason…probably they sent me an email) and saw that they had a new yarn in their "Nerd Alert Yarn" series. Many (most) of these are Doctor Who themed (because the staff at my LYS are my kind of people) and this one was no exception. They’d actually added quite a few new Doctor Who/Torchwood themed colourways to the series, but I knew there was only one of them that NEEDED to come home with me.

"A Centurion is Faithful 100%"

Now, since most of you don’t know me in real life and haven’t heard me gush for hours about how much I ADORED the Ponds (basically because that IS my relationship…I’m not making that up), you don’t know how much this yarn needed to come to me and be something amazing in my life, but trust me…there was no option.

One major problem is that I don’t knit socks. I don’t WANT to knit socks. Which means I needed to buy more than one skein so that I could potentially make something substantial that is NOT socks. So, before heading to the store I did a bit of research and queued up a few patterns that I thought I could manage with two skeins. All of them were sweaters, but they were short sleeved and should be feasible with the yardage of two skeins.

Then I went to the store, bent on buying this yarn and only this yarn, and the shop staff, being the terrible enablers they are, showed me ALL of the new Doctor Who yarns they had. Which led to me ALSO purchasing two skeins of Three Irish Girls Adorn Sock in the “Exterminate” colourway. And still feeling proud of myself because I only bought TWO yarns instead of all ten that Jeremy showed me!

Fortunately, I had a groupon, so I only paid about half as much as I would have, but when you keep saying you’re not going to purchase more yarn because you are out of room, buying four more skeins isn’t the way to accomplish things. Especially when you get home and have to literally CRAM these four skeins in your yarn drawers (meaning you’re somewhat damaging the skeins/labels every time you open the drawer). That, combined with the lingering thought that you might be moving soon and the idea that you will soon need a goodly sum of extra money (for various reasons) meant…

It’s time for a yarn intervention…

Stay tuned. There will be photos of my stash. All of it.

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.

Lessons Learned: Knitting Needle Sizes

Sometimes you do a thing where you knit an entire fingering weight hat on US5 needles because you don’t label your circular needles, you misplace your gauge checker 5 minutes after each time you locate it, and you were convinced you were knitting with a US3.

Or maybe that’s just me.

More on that story later.

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.

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!