A sweater in less than a month

The sweater is ALMOST finished. Today I finished basting the neck hem and weaving in all the ends. I gave it a soak with Soak and blocked it. Blocking is magic, it really evened out all my weird stitches and made the fabric lie really flat. Certain aspects of my sweater are a bit scary though.

• The sleeves are too long. Which, isn't too bad, I suppose.
  
• The bottom edge is flaring out. Even though I put in decreases in the hem it's still flaring out a bit, I think I'll have to run some elastic through the bottom to keep it in check.
  
• I'm not fond of the shoulders. They're a bit big and oddly shaped. Maybe now that everything is blocked it'll fit me better.
  

So, now I'm just waiting for it to be dry. I definitely plan to give the hems a good pressing with a hot iron. They're a bit thick and could use some flattening out. I can't wait to start my next one.

Speaking of next one... I hit up Loopy on Thursday with prodigy student Danielle and my cousin Ryan (who I recently taught the basics of knitting). My birthday was September 3rd and my friend Kevin generously gave me a $50 gift certificate to Loopy. It was time to spend it. My first grab was a pair of Lantern Moon needles. I love them. And after more searching there were no yarns that were calling out to me. I decided I'd just grab a hank of Malabrigo (my usual go-to purchase) ... and then I thought to myself, "I have $50 to spend solely on yarn..."
I ended up ditching the needles and buying 7 beautiful skeins of Malabrigo in the Olive colorway. Sweater number two, coming up! =) Pictures of my mountain of Mmm soon. I'm still deliberating on a pattern.

I've been craving the Malabrigo lace. Danielle got a free mini-hank of it from the Malabrigo booth at Stitches Midwest and I've been coveting ever since. I never bought it though because I really have no desire to knit lace... but, I ran into this awesome fan bookmark pattern for crochet a while ago... I decided this would be the perfect project for some lacey Malabrigo. I drove 20 minutes to Wool & Co. Got myself some lace and a tiny crochet hook and I was on my way.





It's in the Polar Morn color way. So soft and delicious. The fan pattern is pretty easy too. I'm totally cranking them out now. Pictures of these will be up soon as well.





Had my first yarn dyeing experience the other day. After the trip to Loopy, Danielle and I spent a few hours knitting. I was working on a bookmark and my Coach knock-off scarf (see below) and she decided to knit a cupcake. She chose yellow for the cake part and white for the frosting. The pattern included a cherry on top but she had no red yarn, so, we decided to dye a bit of the white yarn with food coloring.
Overall it worked. We based it on some of the theory I picked up through reading about knitting. Our process was putting water in a pot and boiling it. Adding plenty of red food coloring and a drop of blue... and then cooking the yarn. After a quick check on-line we realized vinegar was an essential ingredient so we added a splash during cool down. After a good rinse we hung it to dry for like... 10 minutes... Danielle couldn't wait so we ended up taking a blowdryer to it. In another 10 minutes it was completely dry.
Good times.

Here's my Coach knock-off scarf, btw.




The Alpaca is SO soft and great to work with. Sadly, though, the colors just aren't doing it for me. I really wanted the middle brown to be more of a tan or camel color. I guess it works though, and, who can really argue with Misti Alpaca Chunky. SO SOFT!

I'll have to stop myself from starting my 2nd sweater and get to work on Christmas gifts. I've already been getting requests. x_X
I'll have pictures next time of my completed Seamless Hybrid Sweater and the really cool fan bookmarks.

Blocking is magic.
Knit hard!