Needles & hooks

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Finished in February

Here’s the list of things I had to finish at the beginning of February:

Squiggles Sweater: Finished it last week. Still need to take a final picture or two before I mail it to my mom. I’m waiting for a day with natural light for that. Hopefully this coming weekend.

Marcel’s Sweater: I finished the primary knitting on the front earlier tonight. Now that piece needs to be blocked before I sew the shoulder seams and work the collar. So, I’m back to where I was with it at the end of November. The frogged yarn that I’ll use for the collar is currently drying after being washed to be unkinked.

Sock Yarn Gloves: These are so done! They’re in my coat pockets. I wear them every day.

Master Knitting Level 1: I’ve knitted all the swatches (although I need to take a photos of the last two). I’ve finished all the questions. I still need to write the report on blocking. But I have my references in a pile and I know what I’m going to say. I just need to sit down and do it. Again probably over the weekend. But the knitting part is finished, so I’m not letting it stop me from something new.

Zig Zag Sweater: This I didn’t touch all month. Too busy finishing up all the other projects. So I’ll be picking it up soon, probably tonight. Last I worked on it, I had about 10 more rows to do on the body section before dividing for the front and back yoke.

Blog Move: I’ve moved into this space quite nicely. All the Project Notes have been updated.

So, I think this month was a rousing success. My active projects list (at right) has never been so short! Quite frankly, that feels a little weird. But never fear, March Madness starts tomorrow. And I’ve already ordered the yarn…

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Squiggles Postmortem

The last seam stitch was made at 11:05pm, Wednesday, February 23. The last end was woven in at 11:07pm. It’s done. Done is good. I know I should be more excited about having a finished object, but I didn’t pick this one and I never really warmed to it. Anyway, because it was late and flash photos play games with the depth of color, I’ll wait for some natural lighting before I take a final photo to post.

I’ve made great progress on Marcel’s sweater. I’m in the middle of the armhole shaping. I think I’ll take it with me down to Philly for the weekend. And maybe I’ll toss in some Koigu to do some swatching if I actually finish Marcel to the point where I have to join it to the back. Because the only other thing I have on the needles at this point is Zig Zag. I want to get back to it, but it’s too much to pack in addition to the Marcel front.

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Itchy Fingers

I want to start new projects. I really want to start new projects. Please, please, please, I want to start new projects.

Okay, hopefully that will help. Tonight, I attach the second sleeve to Squiggles, tomorrow I sew the sleeve seam. Then it will be finished, finished, finished. Done. In the remaining time, I will work on Marcel. I’m almost to the armhole shaping. The rest of the front can’t be too far behind.

I’m heading to Philly for the weekend, surely I can bring something new to start on the plane. I mean I’ve been good all month. Right? Please? March starts on Tuesday, so I guess I can do something new then.

*sigh*

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One-armed Sweater

Today was a holiday. It has also been snowing all day. So I stayed in and spent the day attaching one arm to Squiggles. It’s tedious, all the seed stitch. I could probably press on and finish attaching the other one tonight. But I think I’ll work on Marcel for a while.

Take a look:

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Attempts at Mastery

Over the past week, I spent some time finishing my swatches for Level 1 of the Master Knitter program. Since the last time I worked on them, I decided to re-knit a few and I also decided to change yarns. The early swatches were all knit with a merino wool, the recent ones with a wool/acrylic blend. In the end, I’m a little disappointed with the yarn change. The blend just doesn’t block as well. I think the differences are most pronounced with the cable swatches.

Here’s Swatch #13, knit with all wool:

Here’s Swatch #14, knit with the wool/acrylic blend:

As you can see, the reverse stockinette area around the cable is much more defined with the wool than with the blend. That’s just one example. Whereas small variations between stitches are evened out by blocking the wool, the blend seems to be a lot less forgiving.

However, I have no idea how much I should dwell on these problems. I’m hyper-critical of my work and could re-knit them for the next decade and still find things to fix. Perfect is the enemy of good enough, so I’m just going to mail them in as is and see what flies. It’s how I finished my Ph.D., after all.

You can see all of the swatches in the project notes (although two are still blocking, so no photos yet). I’m off to work on the questions.

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Frog, Knit, Repeat

Yes, just like shampoo instructions.

Squiggles is all ready to be assembled, but I felt like getting some serious knitting time in. So I got back to Marcel’s Sweater. First I frogged the whole front that ended up with the wrong gauge. Then I cast on with one of the balls and tried to start again. However, after a few rows, it was pretty clear that the stitch pattern was intricate enough that the yarn needed to be unkinked for me to see the gauge. So I frogged that and washed the first ball of yarn.

While that was drying, I picked up a ball I hadn’t yet used and started again. I started with larger needles than the pattern called for because my problem with this last piece was that the gauge was way too tight compared to the other pieces I’d knitted. A dozen rows in and I laid it out against the back. Painfully too large. Frog.

Try again with the needle size called for, but took care to knit really loosely. Another dozen rows and lay it out, about the right width, but too long. Frog.

This morning, I cast on again. After a dozen or so rows, I laid it out. Looks good, perhaps a tad too long, but at least the pattern repeats are dead on. So now I’m knitting somewhat tightly on the RS rows and more loosely on the WS rows (to allow some give for all the micro-cables). Hopefully that will keep the length in check.

Here it is, laid out on top of the back to give you an idea of how much more I have to do. Fortunately, today’s forecast calls for nothing but knitting.

One good thing that came out of all this frogging…I’m now an expert at tubular cast-on.

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It’s still cold enough to wear them!

Finishing February has paid off with a Finished Object. I give you….

After the Twisted Magic Loop photo essay last weekend, I was on the home stretch on these puppies. I finished the one in those photos and picked up the second one. Given the gaps in the fourchettes, I decided to try the second glove one finger at a time. Doing it this way was still pretty quick and not having to sew up the gaps when I was finished was a definite improvement. The other bonus was that with finger-at-a-time I didn’t have to manage 4 yarn butterflys — there was only one feed of yarn to work with.

I’m happy to have finished these, but I’m less than thrilled with them. For one thing, Opal isn’t that soft as yarns go (or maybe feet don’t notice as much), so I wish they were a little softer. In addition, I wish that the pattern was a little more pronounced. I’ll have to keep looking for the perfect purple sock yarn. Or maybe I’ll make a pair in Koigu.

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It’s all Squiggly!

Over the weekend, in addition to my Koigu orgy, I finished putting all the squiggles on the Squiggles Sweater. This is what is looks like pre-blocking:

And here’s what it looks like with one side folded over. You can see the squiggles that become ties at the front:

It’s blocking right now, using up all the space on my blocking board. I have to block the sleeves next. Then there’s the shoulder seams to do, the sleeves to attach, and a small amount of edging around the neck. Then it’s a bona-fide finished item!

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Temptation, thy name is Koigu

I don’t stash. It may look to some like I have a lot of yarn (although far, far less than many), but the small amount that isn’t left over from past projects is pretty much all assigned to something. And I certainly don’t go out and buy yarn just for the sake of having it. At least I didn’t, until this came along….

Yup, that’s some Koigu KPPPM.

I’ve pretty much decided to do a Charlotte’s Web for my MIL. She loves purples, so my plan was to select 5 colorways that are predominantly purple, going from light purple to dark purple. To do this, I knew I’d need to buy extra, grabbing a skein of purple here and there, working my way toward 5 that complimented each other and had the right set of variations. So I ordered one Charlotte kit called “amethyst” and I visited a few local shops to see what they had available.

And the first shop, which had one purple-ish skein (that I later returned because it didn’t have the right shades), had the green and black one you see above. One lonely shopworn skein. Logically, I knew I had no plan for it. I couldn’t even delude myself that I could make socks or gloves, because how do you do that with one skein? And yet, I couldn’t put it down. And eventually, with no project in mind, it came home with me.

Dear reader, I’d like to tell you that my Koigu affair ended there. But no, it continues.

In a second shop, I found a much larger selection of purples. Some amazingly vibrant. All very yummy. Some so beautiful that I couldn’t leave them there, I had to buy a couple of them all for myself.

Like this:

And this:

And if that wasn’t bad enough, this one’s not even purple:

So then the kit I’d ordered arrived. And overall, I found it too magenta for the MIL shawl, but again, I loved some of the colors. So I’m hoping that the shop has another skein of this:

At least, for all my efforts, I did end up with a set for this shawl. A few candidates in fact. Here they are. In all the shots, the skeins are lined up from darkest to lightest (left to right). As knit, the darkest will be the most predominant in the shawl.

Candidate #1:

Candidate #2:

Candidate #3:

Unfortunately, the purples appear more blue in the digital photos than they do in real life, so you can’t quite see how amazing they are.

I’m really in love with the darkest skein in Candidate #1, which has a few greens and blues mixed in with purple and black. It’s not evident in the photo, but the purples and blacks nicely match the skein to its right.

Candidates #2 and #3 have swapped out that green/blue one for a new lightest skein. In #3, it’s a solid skein of KPM in a lavender shade. In #2, it’s KPPPM in most of that same lavender, but with some light blues and pinks mixed in.

At this point, I think I should go with #2 or #3 because the greens seem out of place. I’m a little worried, though, that the lavenders seem more pink than purple. And I’m torn between the two light options because I think I should have a varigated skein as opposed to a solid but I don’t like the varigated one all that much. And then I have to remind myself that this will be the least used color in the shawl.

So that’s where I am right now. All weekend, the yarn has been on our dining table. I re-arrange them from time to time. I look at them in different lights at different times of the day. My husband detests clutter, but has been amazingly accomodating of this creative process.

I can’t wait for March to arrive so I can get started on swatching. Until then, I’m firmly in February Finish mode and making smashing progress. But this has been such a long post, I’ll write about it in a day or so.

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Squiggle on

I finished all the grafting over the weekend and finally started on the squiggles.

Here’s a shot from last night:

It’s got a bit of a Mexican look right now, hopefully that will diminish when the squiggles cover the whole body.

The squiggles are all made by weaving the needle through purl bumps (the body is all seed stitch) and then knitting them on. Stockinette for a few rows and bind off. If I thought seed kitchener was a pain, binding off is almost worse because there will be so much more of it! At least binding off is pretty mindless. I really had to concentrate when I did the grafting.

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