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

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!

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.

As you may recall, I bought a giant green ball of fiber at Rhinebeck. I’m pretty sure it was the Hand Dyed Crazy Balls wool blend from Spinners Hill (#2 if you follow the link) but I was so overwhelmed at Rhinebeck I can’t be certain.

I got the whole remaining ball of green, a full pound of it, for two reasons:
- if it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing
- the colors varied pretty significantly within the ball, and I wanted all of them

When I unwound the ball, I found that it was a strip of roving about 55 feet long. As you can see, the segments on the bottom (which had been towards the core of the ball) are bluer than the stuff on top.

The first thing I did was break the giant strip in half, so I had a warmer-green rope and a cooler-green rope. Then I split each of those lengthwise into six segments of comperable (though not equal) size.

I don’t like to use flash photos, but you can really see the color difference here between the warmer-green and cooler-green.

I decided to call the warmer stuff type A and the cooler stuff type B, and labeled it and packed it up.

The plan is to spin all the A, then all the B, and ply it together (following the guidance here). It should be enough for a vest, I think.

I’ve been making progress.

I think I’ve spun up about a quarter of it so far. I’m still in the park-and-draft stage so it’s slow-ish going, but I’m finding spinning to be even more relaxing that knitting. Curses. I’ve clearly been bitten by another species of fiber bug.

Pattern: Inga Hat by Sheila MacDonald. It is true that following the pattern as written produces an awfully long hat, but I like awfully long hats.
Yarn: Cascade 220 in dark purple and light blue, a scrap of Ella Rae Classic in bright purple left over from my first crochet scarf

The top of this pattern is quite pointy, so I decided to celebrate the pointiness with a tassel. I think it pulls it all together.

This was the most complicated colorwork chart I’ve ever followed, and I was proud of myself for doing that. My issue was not with following the chart, it was maintaining even tension while holding the light blue in my left hand.

As you can see in this pre-blocking photo, my tension was somewhat uneven. I definitely think I’m improving though, and I am quite happy with how this turned out. I don’t think people are really going to get close enough to my head to notice the few wonky stitches.

As you know, I always fail these knitblogging challenges. No matter. I’ve decided to sign up for NaKniSweMo. I can totally knit a sweater, start to finish, in a month. After all, that’s what I did for DPP and that was done on #4s. This time around will be a bit happier and easier.

I’ve chosen to do the famous-for-a-reason O W L S sweater by Kate Davies. I chose this sweater because it was EVERYWHERE at Rhinebeck, so I got to see how cute it is in person. Second, I have yarn that’s the perfect color for November, and for owls.

Around here, the oranges and scarlets of October fade to the rust and tawny brown of November.

So this Lambs Pride Worsted in my stash, in “wild oak” is the perfect color.

Look, I did a swatch and everything!

I had a really great time doing these round-up posts earlier this year, but got busy and got out of the habit.  Time to start up again!  Here is the October edition of a random assortment of my favorite posts from elsewhere in knitblog land.

Best beach photos

Most magnificent multicolor project

Most helpful technical post

Yummiest natural fiber photo

Best pairing of a knitting photo with a travel photo

Cutest baby item

I realized that while I happened to knit some blue stuff lately, I hadn’t done anything specifically for the blue phase of Project Spectrum.  Then I noticed that now that the leaves are off the tree in the front yard, the sunlight does awesome things to my blue glass collection.  Perfect.

I got so caught up in the fiber fest frenzy of the last couple of weeks that I forgot to show you the Flora Hat I finished before Rhinebeck.

Pattern:  Flora Hat from tentenknits/Margaux Pena
Yarn:  Jo Sharp Silk Road DK Tweed, about half a skein of blue and half a skein of green.

I knit this to match my knucks and it worked perfectly!

Mods:  I decided to to a square top to the hat, I forget why.  I ran out of the blue, so the very top is green.  I didn’t like having a random green square up there, so I made little tendrils like I did on the knucks.  It’s a design element!  ;)

I enjoyed the pattern, and it inspired me to make some more stranded hats to practice the technique.  Currently on the needles: Inga.

I don’t have any photos of Stitches East because they didn’t allow photography. Argh! How out-of-touch with the knitting community can you get?! Is there anything we like more than pretty pictures of pretty yarn? Well, the yarn itself, I guess. But you get what I’m saying. I hear the rationale was that they didn’t want people taking secret pictures of patterns and copying them. Is that seriously such a big issue? Wouldn’t it just be easier for the pattern poachers to buy the pattern once and make copies? I’m frustrated because I saw SO MANY people wearing their gorgeous knits, and it would have made a really pretty blog post.

Anyway.

I did find some great stuff at Stitches.

I finally got to meet Gale Zucker of She Shoots Sheep Shots and bought a copy of her book Shear Spirit.  It’s so beautiful, I highly recommend it.  She was at the booth with one of the fiber folk the book profiles, Nan Kennedy of Seacolors.   Nan had a ton of different colors at the booth, but I was drawn to this misty grayish-pinky-purple.

Yeah, that’s a big ball of yarn. I’m not usually one to do the super trendy patterns, but I think this is destined to be a February Lady.  First of all, the pattern is popular for a reason. Second, this colorway very much reminds me of a misty February morning.

I also got a beautiful pewter shawl pin from The Elegant Ewe.

After we were done with the market, we went on a pub crawl that my friend Allison organized. We had a blast!

Me and Allison in our green sweaters. Hers is a February Lady, one of about eleventy-billion I saw this weekend. Resistance is futile…

Here I am in my Serrano, loving my big purple yarn-baby.  That ball of yarn is seriously the same size as my cat.

Woo party!

Allison and spinning superstar Jacie in her Apres Surf Hoodie.

Maura, Allison, Jacie, and Kris of The Painted Sheep.  Kris lives in our neck of the woods, but doesn’t come out with us often, so this was a special treat.

We also made great new friends from New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and DC.  Here’s to an even bigger crowd next year!