sweater, why must you be so difficult? play nice!

Oh, sweater. I finished the shoulders and the neck back on Saturday. I tried it on and it fit pretty well. Since then I've been working on all of the finishing. So far I've put in EZ's phony seams on the arms and grafted the under arms to the body. I added a hem on one wrist and started on the other.


^{orange hems!}

I decided I'd just go with st st and a hem for the neck, I basted it down last night when I realized I didn't decrease after the turn. o_O Now it flares out so I'm definitely going to have to rip back a few rows and re-knit.


^{neck! fix yourself!}

I hope to be done in a few more days.

On Saturday I went to the Renegade street fair with Danielle and Moy. Right when we got in I saw two huge knitting needles in the window of a store. It was Nina. I've read a few reviews from local knitters about Nina and they turned out to be pretty accurate. The store is definitely not your grandmother's knitting shop. It's very clean and modern. They yarn is well laid out and organized. It's small, but, uses its space well. A few reviews mentioned that staff was a bit snobby but I had fine service. As a guy, when I'm in a new yarn store I usually hear, "Are you purchasing a gift?" or "Who are you buying yarn for?" But, here at Nina I was asked, "What will you be knitting?" Good stuff.
I ended up buying two balls of Rowan's Little Big Wool. It was on sale. =)





I think I'll be knitting a better Anthropologie-inspired Capelet.
The fair was cool, not really what I expected. I was thinking the crowd would be similar to the crowd at the Midwest Fiber and Folk Fair... or even Stitches Midwest, but, the shoppers here were younger, more diverse, and in equal amounts of men and women. Very cool. Sadly, my only purchases were a few pins/buttons made of cloth.

The rest of Saturday consisted of hours upon hours of knitting with Danielle and Moy. I was finishing up my shoulders and neck, Danielle was working on a test mitten, and Moy was working on an adult-sized baby booty for herself. ^_^ I love yarn.

So, last week I mentioned my hunt for Hand Maiden Sea Silk. I brought Kevin along with me to Knitche, the yarn store/coffee shop, and I found it... sadly, this beautiful, unique sea silk was almost $40! Definitely out of my budget at the moment. I did end up getting my hands on some Malabrigo.




That color is Shocking Pink, soon to be a DS Lite case for Anne and Lora.





This one is actually Malabrigo Gruesa. A thick and thin yarn. I have mixed feelings towards thick and thin yarn but for some reason this one called out to me. It said, "We can make cables look really funky!" Because it actually spoke words I decided to buy it. Soon it will be a DS Lite case for Sunmi. ^_^ Hmm, I think I'll have to publish my pattern somewhere.




Mmm, this was an impulse buy. I can't resist the colors! This one is Mariposa. It's mainly spring and sea greens mixed with yellow-ish greens and dashes of light blue, purples and browns. I think Mariposa will be sitting in my stash for now until I come up with something awesome to knit her into.

Now it's back to my sweater.
Knit hard!