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The Right Front of my cardigan is looking pretty awesome. Didn't get a chance to snap any pictures but I'm really digging the construction. It's very different from anything else I've knitted. But, who knows, maybe all cardigans are built similarly?
The "cool" parts are the button band and the pocket. When I first read through the pattern I was bit surprised at how tedious all of it sounded, but, now I'm glad I'll be able to learn new techniques.
So, with the button band... I knit about an inch at the bottom of the Right Front (and even made a button hole!) and then they had me put 12 stitches onto a holder and continue knitting the body. Once it's finished you'll pick up the live stitches and knit the button band while sewing it to the body. CrAzY! ... but awesome. The button band becomes the collar so I'll be knitting it up and attaching it around the neckline. Is that insane or what? ... I guess the "or what" would be that most cardigans are constructed the same way.
The pocket is another nifty little trick. Basically they had me knit a flat stockinette square. Once I got to the pocket hole on the Right Front I put 32 stitches from the RF onto a holder and knit the 32 stitches of the St st square in their place. Once I finish the RF I'll pick up those stitches and do a few rows of color, bind off, flip it over, and sew down the 3 remaining sides of the pocket. Tedious but AWESOME! =)
Enough of this cardigan construction excitement... how about a nice, simple, cotton dishcloth:
I keep feeling like I blogged about this already. Hmm.
Well, during the whole Log Cabin Blanket there was a point when it became to heavy and ungainly to carry around to my knitting groups so one day I showed up to Monday night with nothing. I had been wanting to do a wash cloth for a while so I picked up some cotton (forgot what it was called, but it's really nice) and a pair of needles and cranked out a wash cloth.
It's just some seed stitch and stockinette. I love seed stitch.
Knit hard. =)
I gained 6 lbs over the weekend. Yikes. I was surprised 'cause I kept pretty active all weekend... I did, however, indulge a bit on the eating side on Saturday and Sunday. Oops.
Well, I have more pictures for you. =)
I mentioned before that Deb @ Fishbed was having a Summer sale which mainly consisted of cotton yarns. I really don't use much cotton in my knitting. I did that one Coachella top in cotton but that was the only thing. .... actually... now that I think of it... those crochet bookmarks could be cotton. Hmm. I'll have to check.
Anyway, I was at her store for hours trying to decide what to buy. I could have skipped out on buying anything since I had no pattern or project ideas in mind but it was a sale! ... It wasn't just a sale it was a damn good sale. The yarn was 40% off!
I spent my whole afternoon there. I got in around 10:30 and stayed until 4:15 (with a lunchbreak in between).
I ended up buying this awesome cotton from Araucania.
I originally was drawn to the variegated. The colors looked so smooth. So, I grabbed a couple skeins and pondered for a while and decided on a granny square afghan. I figured I'd throw in a few other colors so my first instinct was to grab some browns or blues. Unfortunately none of the browns and blues in the Ulmo worked with the yarn I had. On a whim, I grabbed a skein of the purple and it just worked.
I played around with colors a bit more and decided I needed a 3rd... so, picked up a skein of red and it balanced everything out.
I still haven't decided on the exact squares I'm going to use. I 'swatched' the variegated in the traditional granny square and I'm kinda digging it. There's another square I want to try out where the only open spaces are the corners of each 'round' so you create an X of open spaces rather than a checkery-grid thing. I'd rather have the variegated be the more.. dominant color so I think the more solid X square would work best and then I'd use the traditional granny square for the solids. We'll see. =)
Knit (and crochet) hard!
I haven't had a chance to take pictures but I have some new projects and yarns going on. I thought I'd share.
On the needles:
I have this awesome cardigan from Knitting for Him. It's mainly grey with a dull lime-green edge. I ended up using an eggplant-ish color for the edge. Totally digging it. I'm about 3/4 finished with the back.
Did I mention my insane idea to attempt a sweater a month? So far it's looking pretty doable. Actually... I still have 2 fronts and 2 sleeves to go. Hmm... and of course the whole putting together of. Yikes. I think I'll try to finish the back tonight so I can get started on the rest.
The sleeves are done flat and then seamed... but I'm thinking of doing them in the round... 2 at a time. Is that crazy? I'd imagine the pattern wouldn't be too hard to adjust, and I have about 20 rows of 2 round things at one time (on one circ!) under my belt. Hmmm... although... 2 flat pieces at the same time would be super easy... I'd just have to seam later. Well, I'll look into it and let you know what I decide.
I have yarn for...
I bought a bunch of chunky wool for my October sweater... which will be the sweater-a-long I'm doing with Nina, Ivi, and Amy7. The pattern for that is from this little pamphlet I bought from Wool & Co. It has an awesome collar.
Deb @ Fishbed had a big cotton sale... so I bought a ton of Arucania cotton in 2 solids and 1 variegated to crochet an afghan. I'm gonna be doing two or three types of really basic granny squares and putting them together. I still have to work out exactly how this will be assembled (e.g. can I connect a square to another as I'm working on it? ... can you do a square from outside in? etc).
For November, I found a cool Fair Isle sweater in a magazine... I think I might do it... just to be able to conquer Fair Isle and stranding... I have a feeling that it might actually take me more than a month to do a sweater like that though. We'll see.
Last night at knitting Deb got in this knitting magazine from Europe. It had about 8 sweater patterns for men (and 2 scarves!). So, I think one of the cabled sweaters will be for December.
So.. yeah, those are my projects right now. I also need to finish Amy7's grass, my double knit mittens, and an Irish Hiking Scarf. I think my enormous pile of hibernating UFO's will be frogged before the end of the year so I can move on with my life and not feel any project guilt. =) I actually have a Malabrigo sweater in that group that might end up being my January sweater.
Hopefully I'll have pictures for my next update!
Knit hard!
I haven't blogged in FOREVER!
I'm still alive and still knitting. Definitely not to the capacity that I used to. I was cranking out projects like there was no tomorrow... but, now I have a job and not a whole bunch of free time.
So, my project of the summer was the Modern Log Cabin Blanket from Mason Dixon Knitting. It was calling to me and I answered. It seriously took me all summer.
These pictures are before the blanket was completely finished. I was half-way through the red block on the right. I actually ran out of yarn before finishing the red. I think I got 40 ridges instead of 66.
The blanket is gonna be for my bedroom and I actually don't have any red so I wanted to keep red to a minimum and ... running out of yarn ended up being a good thing.
The final block would be at the bottom of the blanket. You'll have to imagine it for now until I get pictures. =)
It's actually a 2 color block so you work a bit of Intarsia. The final block took 5 whole seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer to complete. Granted, I wasn't knitting 100% through each episode... and I'll admit that sometimes I'd knit 1 row and quit... but, I worked through 5 whole seasons of DVDs to knit that last block.
Similar to the red block I ran out of yarn less than halfway through. I needed 99 ridges but ended up with like... 45. o_O The size of the resulting blocks is kinda distracting to me... it doesn't really balance out, but, overall it still looks nice. I can't wait to start using it for my bed.
I'll try to get a picture of the completed blanket ASAP. I even gave it a single crochet border!
In other news, I'm in this baking phase of my life. I'd like to expand this blog beyond knitting and incorporate baking and possibly the social aspects of my life.
Knit hard? =)
The prizes for Malabrigo March came in last week. Tobias and I had agreed on 20 skeins of their soon-to-be new Superwash Merino wool and 10 skeins of their fairly new Silky Merino. Aren't they generous? They seemed willing to donate more but 30 skeins is about all I can handle at the moment in terms of organizing and mailing. Plus, many of the Junkies were donating prizes as well. =)
20 skeins of Superwash yarn! Isn't that insane? I've never even knit a complete pair of socks yet... but, having Malabrigo sock yarn is definitely inspiring me to do it. Here are a few closeups as well:
The yarn is so new that the colors aren't even named yet!
Want some Silky Merino action too?
Yum!
The 30 skeins were not all that I found in the bag however...
They included 4 skeins of their limited edition Organic Cotton! I love the natural colors they used for this yarn. I haven't done much cotton knitting, but, of course, since Malabrigo has cotton yarn I might as well start. ^_^
A few days after receiving my package I found another notice on my door left by DHL. The tag said that the package couldn't be delivered w/o my signature... and that it was from Uruguay. I figured they were confused but the notice came again the next day, so, I called and it turned out that there was another box waiting for me. I went to pick it up after work and it definitely was from Uruguay.
I could already sense Malabrigo as I opened the box. It was packed with more skeins of yarn! Another batch of sock yarn, 5 3-skein packs of unnamed worsted yarn (which I later found out was from a new dyeing technique), and 3 full packages of their Merino Worsted in 3 colors... Hongos, Purple-Lime, and one I don't remember.
The first thing I did when I got home was send a message to Tobias to see if it was a mistake... but, it wasn't. He said that Antonio actually 'smuggled' the extra skeins of yarn for me to do what I choose. I decided that I'll be saving these for future Malabrigo celebrations. =)
I'll take pictures of this new batch of yarn soon!
For now, enjoy a bit more yarn pr0n:
Yum. =)
I changed out the light bulbs in my bedroom today.
A few months ago I was listening to this guy talk about going green and one of his ideas that really hit me was switching out the typical incandescent bulbs for florescent. Mainly the idea was that they save energy and many of them are made now to mimic actual daylight. So, the next day I bought bulbs, and, me being me didn't actually change them until months later... two days ago actually. The result is tRiPpY. It's almost a very cold, stark, padded room in a hospital feel.
During the day though, when the sun is at the right point I'll flip on my lights and it'll get brighter but I won't notice any change in color... it's almost like the bulbs add to the sun. But, yeah, at night, which is when I mainly use the lights, it's weiiiiird. I feel good about saving energy though, AND the bulbs are supposedly able to last 5 years. Definitely a good thing.
This is my Koolhaas. I cast on for Malabrigo March in Paris Night. The pattern is easy, and quite easy to memorize, but, I've had to purchase whole new sets of needles. My Clovers were just too blunt to work the tight cable stitches and to constantly knit into the back. Luckily Wool & Co had great 16" Addi Naturas available so I first bought a set of 4's... and then after realizing my Clover 6 wasn't sharp enough bought a set of 6's in Addi. Hopefully my DPNs will cut it once I start decreasing.
Sorry about the blurriness in the picture too. The sun was going down when I took this and I just couldn't get enough light to make my camera focus on the dark color of the yarn. So.. yeah, don't look too closely and don't blow it up. ^_^
