FO: Oranje

My fair isle obsession continues.  This has been the winter of colorful colorwork for me, with nary a cable or lace to be seen.

I liked the idea and look of a more modern take on the traditional fair isle yoke sweater- something with a bit of shaping and more modern looking yoke motifs- and I've been wanting to cast on for the Oranje cardigan for a while.  I originally thought I would work this monochrome- black, grey, white- but got inspired and replaced the black with the most insanely shocking pink I could dig out of my stash.

The yarn was sport weight, so it took quite a while to get knitted up.  It was pretty boring until the yoke, and then it got colorful and a bit complicated with all the braids tangling up the yarn.

I finished the knitting, then butchered it.

Ha ha, kidding, I machine-stitched neat lines on either side of the steek, and then split it from navel to throat like the barbarian that I am.  Pullover become a cardigan, presto changeo!

 Oh and I did try it on before I sliced this- I was happy with the fit.  Then I washed and blocked it, and wouldn't you know it?  That son of a bitch grew and grew and grew.  Behold the wonders of superwash wool.  I blocked it a bit smaller, with some success.

Behold.

It is now a too-large cardigan.

I put in button bands, but no buttons or zippers yet as I give this some thought.  The cardigan is in time-out while I decide what to do with it.  I had made the Medium size- 40", wanting something that wasn't skin tight.  Unfortunately, if I would have made the next size down, I would have gotten a much better fit.  So it sits, folded in the corner, waiting for divine inspiration or someone slightly larger then me to be in want of a sweater.  

I love the details- the short rows to build up the back of the neck:

The neatly turned hems:

The colors I chose, and the braids that added texture and gave it a more modern look:

Alas, none of this will make up for the fact that it's about two sizes too big.  It's just way too much fabric for me to swim in!  I did want a relaxed cardigan, but this much ease is just unflattering and unkind to the curvy.  I'm trying to decide if it is worth it to tuck in the button bands and attach a zipper- it would lop off about two inches that way.  I need to somehow get rid of six before I felt like this was a good, flattering fit.

It's not a complete loss: It was fun to knit.  But you can see perfectly in the photo below that all the extra fabric is just hanging out.

But the yarn, ooooh, the yarn.  That touch of cashmere makes it so lush.

Sigh.

I used 2 skeins of Sanguine Gryphon Bugga in Tulip Tree Beauty (grey) and most of one skein of Devil's Flower Mantis (pink) plus a skein of undyed yarn.   I DID SWATCH and yes, I did get gauge.  It's just bad judgement on sizing and yarn drape on my part really.

If anything, this cardigan has taught me to doubt myself a bit more and to take my self-confidence down a few notches.

I did make some modifications: the original has 3/4 sleeves and a high turtleneck that reaches the chin.  I lopped off the turtleneck once I finished the short rows, and added inches to the sleeves.  Having a winter sweater with 3/4 sleeves just seemed silly.

To be continued...

FO: Fell Walkers

It's been a while since I've posted a crafty project.  It's summer (still?), I just don't feel like it.  

I did finish a pair of socks that I started on the trail though.

I went for a stash-dive and picked out a nice ball of Opal Shafpate and cast on for the Reverso socks from the most recent Knitty.

I cast on during the train ride to Carlisle and I was pleasantly surprised to see that they were fell-colored!  What a serendipitous choice for a hiking take-along.   

Not my hairy arm, btw.... 

Or my hairy legs....

I am usually hesitant to try out new techniques when it comes to sock construction.  I'm a bit lazy that way.  I don't like to think too hard when I'm making a pair of socks, as I knit them on the go and dislike fiddly things.  These were worth it though, and an idea that I had been contemplating for a while: how to make a pair of socks that can be worn with the smooth knit-side fabric on the soles without having to do a ridiculous amount of purling.  

Easy: make them inside out!

You start at the cuff in mistake rib pattern.  Instead of gusset increases, you do Cat Borhdi's ceder construction, which puts the increases at the heel instead.  Once you start the heel turn, you flip the socks inside out, and continue in the mistake rib.

So now you have a pair of socks that there is no right or wrong side out!

The only awkward moment was grafting the toe and weaving the ends in, as I tried my best to hide it.  They are cozy, warm stretchy socks that would easily fit a variety of foot sizes, so great for gifting.  They also didn't take too long at all as far as socks go.

The yarn is 75% superwash, 25% nylon, so they should wear well for years.  If not, it's going to be a mess for me to try and patch these up, as I generally count on the repair work to not be seen on the inside.

Now I'm somewhat obsessed with self-striping sock yarn.  For years, I favored intricate cable and lace patterns on my sock, which pairs well with the hand-painted variegated yarn I love so much.  Intricate patterns tend to get lost when you have yarn that stripes heavily, so doing plain socks or some texture works better.

I love them so much, I cast on another pair of stripe socks as soon as I was done.  The bug has bitten once again.  

Fo: Baudelaire Socks

I finished a pair of socks.  I'm in love with them.

They are the Baudelaire, a free pattern from Cookie A via Knitty.com.  Yes, I am a timely knitter- these were published in 2006.  I've been wanting to make them since they came out, but there are so many socks I want to make.  So very many.  I will get to them all eventually, and then I will demand that sock designers everywhere stop designing once I'm caught up.  

The yarn is Skinny Bugga in "Rose Weevil" from Cephalopod Yarns.  It's my favorite shade of red.

 The pattern, although there is a lot going on with both cables and lace, is not terrible to work out.  It's easy to memorize.  While I couldn't really work it out after a glass of wine, the pattern pretty much flew along and I finished these in no time.

Speaking of a glass o'wine, I found a few nice groups of knitters in the London area.  There are lots of options here and people are chatty and sweet, and I can just casually drop in and have a glass or a cup of tea and knock out some long sections of plain boring sections of knitting.  It makes for good inspiration as far as the knits go, and I'm finding knitting to be a good gateway into making friends wherever I end up.  

To gift, or not to gift?  I have plenty of socks.  Can I cram another pair in the sock drawer?  I love these so much.  They are just too pretty, without being too precious or delicate, and the yarn is so luxe and heavenly.  It's a little thick to cram into socks, but perfectly warm and comforting.  

I have a feeling these will see a few Maine winters to come.

FO: Sunday Swing Socks

I've gotten into the habit of knitting exclusively for gifts lately.  Years and years of knitting has saturated my wardrobe with knitwear.  I can't possibly fit another pair of socks in my sock draw, even if I tried, and I have to make a real effort to make sure that every pullover and cardigan in my collection gets used every season.  I'd like to think I've been gifting all this stuff for years out of the kindness of my own heart.  True, lots of times, I make things specifically with certain friends and family in mind.  International postage is quite high though, and lately, whomever happens to be in my sights the moment something is blocked ends up with fresh new socks to wear.

I really love these socks.  

I made the foot plain, as it's so much easier to shove your foot in a pair of shoes with them on when there isn't a bulky cable pattern or nubs of lace to indent into your skin.  The cuffs, I used the pattern from the Sunday Swing Socks, a free pattern on Knitty.  It's a simple, flowing lace pattern that worked nicely with the self-striping yarn.

The one bad thing about gifting all these socks is that I don't know what kind of wear and tear the yarn may or may not hold up to.  This yarn doesn't seem to be too worrisome: it's Regia Blitz Color, a really solid superwash wool and nylon blend that gave me no concerns as I was knitting them.  It seems like the uncomplicated stuff that you can throw in the washer without coming up with baby booties at the end of the cycle, and they will hopefully last for years.

 Oh!  I do have close up the heel join though, it's a bit of an obvious gap.

Great pattern, lovely yarn.  This is why I keep on knitting well after I'm plenty warm.

FO: Lingerie Socks

It's been a while since I've finished a pair of socks. Last fall maybe? I don't know. I've cooled on the sock knitting front a bit. I used to always have a pair on the needles and churned them out fairly regularly. My sock draw is crammed with those monsters now, and pretty much everyone I know has gotten a pair or two as gifts, so I kind of feel like I saturated my world with socks to the flooding point.

I cast on for a pair of Lingerie Socks way back in December to have something to knit while I was traveling around Morocco. I had a really pretty skein a dear friend of mine gifted of Silver Moon Farms sock yarn, with lovely bits of silver tinsel spun in. Twinkle toes! The color is "Sahara", which I thought was oddly appropriate considering where we were going.

So, here's what it's supposed to look like if you follow the pattern:

I started the charts, but then got frustrated wallowing through pages of complicated charts and corrections. Once I finished the cuff charts, which were complicated but not difficult to follow, I just said "fuck it" and went back to making a plain pair of socks. Sitting around in a cafe in a third world country with pages of patterns flying about and yarn tangling and trying to tink back mistakes and GAHHHHH plain socks. Mine look much unlike the model.

But the cuffs are so pretty! So I'm not unhappy. But once I got past them, I kind of lost enthusiasm and worked on them rarely, hence the six months it took me to finish them.

I knit them on size 0 needles, so they are nice and tight-fitting and they will squeeze inside of shoes without bunching up and being annoying. I love the little silvery bits worked in.

FO: Foliage Hat

Hello! I've missed our fireside chats as of late. I've had some adventures, and I'm planning more, and eventually there will be pictures of everything. I have a hard time sitting down and collecting my thoughts at times, and I'm just going through one of those phases. It doesn't help that I've taken thousands of pictures in the past couple weeks, and I'll probably take hundreds more before the weekend is through.

When I go back through the years of archived photographs I have, I find it really amazing how the switch to digital really influenced my style. Back when I had my big clunky Minolta SLR and film and the cost of developing and printing was not cheap, I shot so sparingly. Like, life events were marked by just a photo or two of carefully timed and composed shots. When I made the switch to digital, I shot in much the same fashion: early trips abroad were marked by a few photos here and there of something interesting I saw, and I was always a bit worried about running out of battery and memory (those early digital big cameras were battery beasts, especially in the cold). So now that memory is cheap and the camera is dependable, I've been insane. I'm surprised that the shutter button on the camera isn't worn down to nothing, or I've done some permanent damage to my right index finger. And, being me, I have to spend some time whittling down those thousands to a select few that I thought were decent enough to share. I really dislike it when people are all, "here, see all the pictures I took" and they leave in all their duds, blurry, out of focus and not really illustrating much of anything, and you are left flipping through dozens of pictures of their hotel room in Fiji or the view from their balcony overlooking the parking lot in Lisbon, searching for a hint at what really happened on their trip. Booooring.

Anyway.

Here's a hat I made.

The process of springtime has been quite slow all over the world it seems. I'm still quite chilly here, especially at night. I half-heartedly put away my winter coat only to pull it back out again, and I watch the sad struggle of the cherry trees trying to blossom in what amounts to November. I keep churning out hats, and recipients keep grabbing them up and they are getting wear despite it being the time of year where you start to think about a pedicure.

The pattern is Foliage from Knitty.com. Easy lace, I made it with a bit of ease as to be slouchy. It's blaze-orange Cascade 220 tweed, which is an excellent fashion accessory if you live near the woods in October or November in the states. I've found that hats are idea gifts, since I can pack them flat in a big envelope and I don't have to deal with a customs form. Practical and slightly lazy, which is just my style.

FO: Knotty But Nice Hat

I've been cranking out hats pretty regularly this winter. I'm finding, as always, they make great gifts, especially when I'm out making new-ish friends and don't want to commit to something crazy, like socks. You suffer for me, you cook for me or bring me ultra amazing chocolates, you bring me good booze. Then we will discuss socks. Until then, I am only devoting a couple hours of my time to keep your ears warm.

Hence, the Knotty But Nice hat from knitty.com. It's a simple, straightforward, very little brainpower knit that takes no time at all to whip up. I do love cables, especially when the pattern is intricate or woven-looking. Added bonus that the bunched up fabric makes any garment extra-thick and warm.

It's made for a man with a bigger, more oval head than myself, so it's a bit large one me. It would be much less pointy on the intended recipient.

I will vouch for its warmth. Any day that the sun is out, I will be out, walking around the city, exploring with my camera in tow. This day was windy and freezing cold and I totally got wind burned on my face, but it was lovely having a part of the city to myself that is normally packed with tourist and almost always unnavigable.

I made it from a single skein of Cascade 220 Tweed.

FO: Cadence Pullover

Well that was fast.



I decided rather cleverly that everyone who would normally get knitted gifts around the holidays from me would get them very unseasonably this year. The logistics of having to pack up a sweater, keep it around for months in a yet-to-be-determined location and then ship it from overseas seems a bit silly to me. And expensive. And dicey. As our pseudo-winter breaks into buds and crocuses and birdsongs, heavy woolens will be gifted.

This sweater is a Xmas present for someone a tad bit smaller than me. As in, someone I have several cup sizes over, several inches in height and about ah, I don't even want to discuss weight. Let's just say I got the curves in the family. I could bench press the giftee without it being a big deal. Despite the fact that I could squeeze into the sweater like Lana Turner, this was intended to have some ease and be less form-fitting. So use your imagination.



It's the Cadance Pullover from Jordana Paige from the Fall 2010 issue of Knitty.com. It's a simple, top down design with the only embellishment being a set of lace diamonds around the collar. This is the 35" size.
It's a simple pattern and the heavier gauge yarn meant it was done before I knew it. I usually labor away on sleeves for ages, but I had both of them done in 3 days.



Once again, UPS Brown is my go-to yarn color. I used 1.5 skeins of Cascade Eco. I did a bit more waist shaping then called for, but otherwise, it's the same front and back. I would usually add some short-row shaping or darts to accommodate womanliness, but in this case I didn't have exact measurements so I let it be.



I'm sending this out today, cheerily wrapped with ribbons and tinsel, wishing everyone a great holiday and Happy New Year 2013.

FO: Fantastic Mister Faux

I'm a little fascinated by the relic of the 1920's and 30's: the fox stole. Why anyone would think that an animal carcass with facial features and feet slung over their shoulders is beyond me. But still. It exudes a certain glamour.

Fur has gone out of style, and for good reason- it's heartbreakingly cruel, right up there with foie gras and veal. I really only see it being worn by the Russian Trophy Wives that go on discount shopping trips in my neighborhood (along with heels that I, a high-heel wearer, can only dream of walking in) and sometimes an eccentric older lady will be donning a full-length mink that looks like it's seen better days.

Just before Christmas, we were invited out to one of those grand corporate parties of awkwardness and much drinking. Last minute I was told that it had a 1920's theme. I dug through my stash and came up with the very last novelty yarn I could unearth, and set to work to make a little glamour for my night.











Well, we were pretty much the only people to dress up costumey (which was fine, because their was no real theme going on after all except for excess everything...like southern food). Techie people aren't known for their creativity in their wardrobes. We did see a lot of pleated pants, and quite a few untucked and rumpled shirts restraining a lot of pasty white skin, and red, computer screen strained eyes. Ah well. For this one night, we looked fabulous dahhling, fabulous, if only because very few other fish were in the sea.



The bad thing about the party that it was so huge and spread out, you couldn't find a bar that had the same theme twice. Mixing is bad, people. Champange from the fountain and shots from the vodka luge and a whisky bar and a beer bar and a wine bar and...oh, hell. I should have just stuck to water.



Here is my foxy faux, up close and personal.



He looks much better now in person- after a night of hard drinking, his eyes were coming loose and were hanging by threads and I almost lost his nose at one point. Fox needs to change gears, maybe not do so much damage to his liver. Nice doggy.



Also, note the color change we have going on. He was a scrappy fellow, and when I ran out of one color, I just kept going with the next. Also...his front legs are longer than his back, because I ran out of that yarn.

Here's a list of the yarn that went into him.

Crystal Palace Yarns Fizz Solid
Crystal Palace Yarns Merino Frappe
Crystal Palace Yarns Splash Print
Sirdar Boa
Suss Yarn Mohair

He's squeaky like plastic. Fantastic plastic.

I used a hair clip for his mouth so he will attach to his tail. The pattern is from Knitty from years and years ago. I actually made one from a kit from a now defunct website that made such kits and I gifted that fox to a fabulous glamourpuss friend of mine. This was what I had for leftovers from the kit and other assorted scraps. It only took a couple hours to whip up, finishing and all. It's only really tricky because holding a lot of novelty yarn together makes a mess of your stitches, but it also hides any mistakes you might make.

He's currently elegantly draped across the back of my sofa. Sometimes I hold him in my lap and pet him. I'm creepy like that.