NaKniSweMo – Buttons

The owls have taken shape.  Time to find them some eyes!

I went down to Colchester Mill Fabrics, my favorite source of buttons, zippers and similar items. Look at their button selection!

That’s not even all of it. They also have a ton of zippers.

I had considered doing all of the eyes in white, but I settled on an assortment of colors.

There is white, pink, purple, and three shades of blue. I think the owls deserve their own personalities!

NaKniSweMo – Joining Up

This weekend I finished the sleeves of my OWLS sweater and joined them to the body.

As I’ve discussed, I’m using worsted weight yarn so I’ve have to make some adjustments. Since I have to do my own math anyway, I decided that I might as well correct a couple of things that I don’t like so much about the (otherwise lovely and well-written) pattern. First, I don’t like how the owls start immediately after the join. It sort of looks like the owls are being sucked into the armpits (oh how I wish I could link to examples, but that would be mean, no?). Second, my size was supposed to have 21 owls. I insist upon symmetry in most of my knitting (see rant about Wicked) and there is no way to divide 21 owls in such a way that they are symmetrical and all line up the same way with the armpit joins.

So, here is my solution.  The body of my sweater had 200 stitches, and each sleeve had 64.  I cast off eight stitches for each part of the underarm join, which brought the total number of stitches down to 296.  Then, I joined and worked four sets of raglan decreases at the underarms.

This brought the total number of stitches to 264, and gives the owls a little breathing room so they don’t get sucked into the armpits. The owl motif is 20 rows tall, and in 20 rows a sweater should decrease roughly 80 stitches (four per round, or the more typical eight every other round). I started doing some math, and came upon what I think is a lovely solution. 264 is divisible by six, so I decreased by 44 (264/6) evenly spaced around the yoke.  I can get rid of the extra 36 stitches after the owls, as the pattern was originally written.  Now, I have 220 stitches, 70 each across the front and back areas and 40 across the sleeve areas. Each owl is ten stitches wide, so I can fit exactly seven owls across the front and back and exactly four across each of the sleeve areas, and it will all be symmetrical. Huzzah!

You can all tease me now

NaKniSweMo – Sleeves

I’m about done with the body and chugging along on the sleeves.

I am SO looking forward to getting to the owls chart. I’ve had about enough stockinette!

I’ve had a pleasant little diversion lately, doing some knitting for an auction to benefit the public interest program at my law school

Here is a child size Foliage, knit out of Blue Sky Organic Cotton. This is the softest cotton I’ve ever used! The matching Mom version is coming soon!

NaKniSweMo – Body

As it turns out, a sweater with miles and miles of brown stockinette is not so good for the blog.

It’s coming along though! I have about 13 inches of the body done.

Before

What is that, a hat?

No, it’s the Dotty Cat Bed pre-felting.

Fiona doesn’t seem impressed so far. I hope she likes it after a trip through the washing machine!

Coming out of hiding

Last night I mentioned that my first trip to Rhinebeck is coming up.  As I was writing that I realized that, indeed, Rhinebeck is only two weeks away!  What should I wear?  It seems that everyone who’s anyone is making a Rhinebeck sweater (as those in the know have for years, of course).

I haven’t started (or finished) any new sweaters recently, so I was thinking hard about what I could whip up in two weeks. Then I remembered this:

It’s my Pinstripe Pullover that I put in storage back in March.

I have about two inches left of the body to do before I start the sleeves. Think I can finish it in time?

Look Ma, both hands!

Huzzah!  I can knit with two colors!

Let me explain.

I finished the knitting on my Knucks, and the plan was to embroider them. But embroider them with what? So I decided to knit a matching hat, because I had plenty of extra yarn, and so the hat could inspire the theme for the embroidery.  I’m a sucker for botanical patterns, so I chose Flora. I was nervous about doing stranded knitting, because my last attempt was a year and a half ago with Blue Light Special. I’d done it before, very slowly, with some Icelandic sweaters in college. But I’ve really been meaning to get better at doing it with one color in each hand so it goes faster. Might as well give it another try!

It’s working! Huzzah! I’m finding it a LOT easier to hold the yarn in my left hand now that I know how to crochet. What stranded project should I try next?

Poor Planning

I’m only about 18 rows from the end of Seraphim, but each row now has approximately eleventy-thousand stitches.  I’ve hit the wall.

Last night, on a whim, I decided to start knucks.  “What a fun, fast project!” I thought. And yeah, the knitting is fun.

I think the weaving in of 20+ ends will be less fun. D’oh!

Too hot for wool

After a wet and cool June and July, it is finally hot here.  Too hot for wool.

I’m just about to start the lace charts on Seraphim, so this is a good time to put it down for a little bit. I’m going on a trip with my mom and my sister, so I need to pack SOMETHING good to knit.

So I finally started Orangina. I’ve been meaning to make this top for years. I think I can finish while it’s still hot out!

Blue Streak

Exams are approaching fast, so I’ve felt very scattered and unsettled lately.  I’m very close to finishing both Serrano and Cathode, and despite my best efforts to finish projects I found the lure of new projects to be irresistible.  I couldn’t help but notice that they share a common color scheme with Cathode. 

While my love of the color green is well-documented in these pages, blue is my real favorite and I really appreciate a good purple.  I’m not sure I’ll wear Cathode much (more on that in the upcoming FO post) but the colors have worked their way into my brain, and I just want to look at blue and purple all day.

That and my anniversary is coming up, so maybe I’m just especially drawn to blue because of the time of year.

I started Ishbel in that wonderful tosh sock I mentioned the other day.  This is perfect project for soothing myself with mindless knitting.  I’ll run out of the stockinette portion soon enough though.

I also started Wisteria in Cascade Sierra. I wasn’t sure what I would do with this yarn, but it’s such a nice Wisteria-like color! I’m also pleased with the definition of the cables so far. This is the perfect project for when I want to focus on something other than law. Soon enough I’ll be done with the cabled yoke, and it will be zombie knitting, so it can take Ishbel’s place in that regard once I get to the lace portion of Ishbel.

I also have some dark blue cotton fine for Orangina, but I haven’t cast on for that yet. I probably won’t be able to help myself though.

The blog may be be rather quiet for the next month or so, but I have the feeling I’ll have plenty to show for it on the other side of all this.