Needles & hooks

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Almost FO

I assembled the Matinee Coat last night. Isn’t it pretty?

I still have to insert the ribbon belt and knit the bottom edging. I’ll do that tonight.

And here are some catch-up photos from the last few days.

This is the first of my holiday ornaments. It still needs the bead buttons. I didn’t realize until I saw the shot on my computer screen that it was so out of focus. But you get the idea. The little sweater is about the size of my palm. It’s really nifty that it’s made exactly like a large sweater (so a doll could actually wear it), but the problem is you still have just as many ends to weave in!

Here’s the progress I made the other night on the Squiggles sweater. This one’s a little different from your average cardigan. It’s knit in one piece that wraps around the body vertically (90 degrees rotated from most sweaters), so you’re seeing the left front.

And these are the sock gloves in progress. So far, cuffs on each. They need about another inch before I hit the palm.

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A row here and there

I only had about an hour on Monday night, so I got maybe 2 rows done on Marcel’s sweater.

And last night I worked on the Sqiggles sweater. I had a lot more time, so I got about 20 rows added to that one.

The Matinee Coat is all dry, so I really will assemble it tonight.

And I need totally better lighting so that I’ll be more inclined to take progress photos at the end of the night. I guess an Ott-Lite goes on the Wish List.

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How many laps is a mile?

I made almost a complete circuit of my WIPs this weekend.

Yesterday I finished one of my holiday ornaments, save for attaching bead buttons. The ones that came with the kit are hard to find, so I need to find a completely new bead to make all of them. But the principal stitching and assembling is finished. I also have to think about how I’m going to add a date and my initials to it.

I determined that the pieces on the blocking board were dry. So those came up and I blocked the last piece of the matinee coat. I also fixed the snag that Mough made.

And then I pulled out my TKGA Masters Level 1 work to see what needed to be done. I decided I want to redo swatches 1 and 2, but that 3, 4, and 5 were submit-able. So I wove in the ends and blocked them. I would have continued to block these, but I ran out of T pins and the quilt pins I got were just too flimsy. So I’m limited in how much I can block at one time until I get more T pins. I need a lot more T pins because this blocking thing is fun.

Finally, after making so much progress, and what with the recent chill in the air, I started the gloves I’ve been planning. They use Opal Mosaic sock yarn (in a purple/white colorway) and I’m following the basic glove instructions in an older issue of Interweave Knits (no real pattern, just formulas). I’m making a basic gusset which I’ll work while I’m knitting the hand, so I think that, with a few bobbins, I can do the whole thing all at once using the magic loop method. I cast on for both and I’ve got a solid 2 inches of 2×2 ribbed cuff. I’ll probably work another inch or so of cuff before I stop the ribbing and start on the hand area.

Tonight I’ll try to catch up with some photos. And if the last piece of the Matinee Coat is try, I’ll start assembling.

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Cat-astrophe!

The Matinee Coat was innocently blocking on the SpaceBoard. The SpaceBoard was on the floor of my bedroom. I left the bedroom door open and unattended for 2 minutes in the bathroom and I return to find Mough on the Matinee Coat! I yelled, he ran, but not before snagging a stitch on a sleeve. It’s near the edge and I think I can fix it, but BAD KITTY!

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Catch up

I have indeed gotten lots of knitting done so far this weekend. And there was a reasonable amount of light in my apartment, so I took photos.

One thing I didn’t really mention was that when I was in San Francisco, I was in a wedding. I made my skirt and I made chiffon wraps for the 4 women in the bridal party. And while I was in San Francisco, the bride and I sewed beaded fringe on all the wraps. The skirt was an unremarkable a-line in green satin, so I won’t show full photos. But here’s a closeup of the end of a wrap (laying on the skirt):

It was notoriously hard to photograph because I don’t have good lighting at home and the satin and beads reflected too much in the flash.

Also catching up is the beginning of the Squiggles sweater. It’s just green seed stitch for quite a long time. It’s not that exciting until I start adding the embellishment after the principal knitting is done.

Yesterday I blocked most of the Matinee Coat (I ran out of T pins). Here it is on my SpaceBoard.

Adhering to my intent to cycle through some of my WIPs, I added about a dozen rows to the Rugby Romper. (Now I probably won’t touch it for months!)

I also started my Holiday project. I didn’t quite finish the first one, so my plans for today are to finish that. Then I’ll block the last piece of Matinee and continue on through my projects. I also need to go get a needle for my sock yarn gloves and photocopy some patterns. My friend Jen is coming over this afternoon and we’ll work on our knitting in someway.

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Fun Utility

I’ve been slowly making my way through the Knitting Blogs membership list. Today I found a link to a cable pattern grapher. You type in the alphabet soup that describes your cable pattern, click the button, and it returns a chart of the pattern. So if you knit better with a chart to follow, you can print out all the charts you need. Have fun!

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I’m really gonna knit one of these days

After my exhausting trip to the wedding and the red-eye flight home, I took a few days to recover. I needed sleep, the cats needed attention, and the house needed cleaning.

Yesterday I finally picked up the needles again. I finished one sleeve of the Matinee Coat and tonight I finished the other one. It needs to be blocked before finishing. I’ll do that this weekend on my new SpaceBoard.

The rest of the yarn came in for my Mom’s Squiggle sweater, so I grabbed a ball of it to swatch and it came out so well after a dozen rows that I didn’t think I needed to go any further, so I just cast on.

I also need to start my x-mas ornaments and assess my other projects. So I think that I’m just gonna spend most of the weekend knitting. It will be so nice.

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