FO: Spectra Scarf

Some things are set aside while the stress and the constant battle of moving is going on. Knitting was one of them.

I haven't really had the mindset to sit and do something quietly for a while now. It seems like a luxury and I just can't bring myself to splurge. I'm hoping that once I get settled next month, and the shipment box with a tote of crafty supplies shows up I'll be a little more inspired.

I did recently finish the Spectra scarf I started way back in March. Everyone loves Westknits right now, and I couldn't resist his designs either. Even here in France, several knitters I met were sporting his goods. Well, Paris probably does have more scarfs per capita than anywhere else in the world, so I'm sure obsessively stitching away at one of his patterns is a good move all around.

I loved this pattern muchly. It used up a skein of Noro Kureyon Sock (which you couldn't pay me to knit a pair of socks out of) and two skeins of Knit Picks Gloss sock. I ran out of the Gloss first and that was where the scarf ended. It's a combination of short rows and simple intarsia that makes it shape the way it does.

And what better way to celebrate the status of a newly minted Parisian than a picnic on the Champ de Mars?

I couldn't think of one. The lawn was surprisingly filled with few tourist and lots of like-minded picnickers.

When the sun comes out in Paris, the masses head for the parks and the lawns with wine and food and friends. It's a very good idea.

I do love my new scarf. It keeps me just toasty enough and it drapes elegantly. It needs a good blocking as I just hung it up on hair clips on the curtain to stretch it out a bit- the bottom edge would ruffle less if it was really bocked. The pattern is simple and it only took two repetitions before I had it memorized. It really shows off colorful yarn nicely.

Fabulous Timing (and a FO)

It is my real-life job to be organized and make things work precisely. If I didn't have this skill or lacked it in any way, my boss would have no real reason to keep me employed unless I chose to resort to blackmail. Which I haven't had to yet.

When I have a personal blunder that involves scheduled, I try keep it very quiet. Like the time I showed up a full week early for a flight to Chicago. D'oh.

I had a weird week recently where I couldn't get my timing right. I showed up hours late for some things, missed other events completely, and then showed up hours early for other appointments without realizing it. At one point, I sat in the doctors office for more than an hour, quietly knitting fuming and wondering where my brain was at.

Luckily, clocks and calenders only seemed to perplex me for that one week. It was a weird phase or mindset that I couldn't shake. I just had to ride it out, and as predicted, I'm back to my regular punctual and organized self.

So I finished a hat. When I started the hat, it was 30 degrees out and freezing sleety raining, and a stranded warm hat seemed like a great idea. A couple days later when I finished the hat, it was 60 and sunny and I couldn't think of anything but shedding layers down to a cami.



Ahh well. It will be put away for next winter, when I'm sure it will be cold again. That's the risk you take when you start something toasty and warm in April.



The pattern is the Fake Isle hat by Amy King. I used a half a skein of Brooklyn Tweed Shelter and a half a skein of Noro Silk Garden that was leftover from a sweater I made last year. If I had to do it again, I would go down a needle size for the ribbing as it flares out a bit from the rest of the hat. It's warm and cozy, and a great way to use up scraps and odd balls of yarn.

FO: Turning Another Square

These little hats are ingenious, and a great way to use up scraps. I was able to squeeze a second one out using the same two skeins of yarn as the first one, with just dipping into a wee bit of a second skein of the brown Shelter yarn to finish it off. The striping pattern in the Noro is much darker than my first hat from this skein:



But I am easily amused and it was so different looking that I didn't really mind making the same hat twice. However, my faithful model was a little miffed by the redundancy.



See, much different with the darker stripes of Noro, right?

I made this for Scott, who is attempting to teach us conversational French. He is a very patient man. I think I mentioned to him that "I am a bottle of red wine" the other night, instead of "I have a bottle of red wine". Silly verbs. I am a lot of things. A linguist is not one of them, but I'm giving it a good try and I'm finding it easier as I go along.



Even though it's a bit late in the season for a wooly knitted hat gift, it was perfectly cold, rainy and dreary the night we met up for class. I still want a nice warm hat some days, and other days a skimpy little tank to flutter around in works as well. Ahh, spring.

I love this pattern so hard. I'll be whipping up some more, I'm sure. I can cast on Monday morning on the subway and be done with it for the ride home Tuesday night without even thinking about it. Plus, it's a great way to use up scraps.

Specs: Size 4 needles, a bit under a half skein of Noro, a bit over a half skein of Shelter. The pattern is a free one: Turn a Square by Jared Flood.

FO: Turn a Square

Oooh boy. I have lots of catching up to do. This has been a winter of constantly being sick, or in the process of getting sick. Those who know me well know that I never, ever, ever get as much as a sniffle most winters and plow right through whatever bug is going around. Not so much this winter. So there is a nice dose of Schadenfreude for you.

Let me tell you about my co-workers for a second (you know I don't like to mix my work life in with anything else, but it's good back story). I work in a sales department, which attracts the kind of people that are competitive in everything that they do, including gift-giving. I use this to my advantage as much as possible, especially around the holidays. If they want to assign their love for me with a cash value, I'm okay with this. If they want to put a little more thought into to get in my good graces and get me a nice fat gift certificate to an upscale yarn boutique, I wouldn't say no. They also tend to stock my personal bar with top-shelf goodness that will keep me warm and happy year-round.

So off to Purl Soho I marched on a bitter cold January day, with my freshly printed gift certificate in hand. It's a beautiful store with equally "beautiful people" clientele, all of them ready to drop a small fortune on a sweater's worth of cashmere. You have a rather unsettled feeling in that shop that the sheep that produce the wool for their yarn somehow produce no poo at all, and are a magic breed of sheep that have the ability to fly at night when no one is watching. It's priced accordingly.

I picked up a sweater's worth of thyme-green Merino and some Brooklyn Tweed Shelter, a new yarn that everyone has been buzzing about.



It's not particularly soft, but it's an interesting blend of Columbia and Tarhgee wools, which makes it very lofty and bouncy. It's rustically spun woolen-style, with lots of interesting neps spun in for texture and a heathered effect. Jared Flood has been blogging about the whole wool-into-yarn process on his blog recently. It's fascinating and I recommend checking it out.

I used some of the pretty brown color, Nest, to make a hat.



I choose the "Turn a Square" pattern, which, appropriately enough, is a Jared Flood pattern. I dug out a skein of Noro Silk Garden that was leftover from a coat I made a couple years ago to use as stripes. The results:





The stripes are very subtle. I love it. Best of all, this took me all of 3 days worth of commuting from start to finish.



He's already worn it a bunch, hence that slightly rumpled look. The requisite guy hat must be able to be crumpled down and shoved into a pocket, and it fits that need quite well. It's a good guy-beanie shape with the square top. It's cozy and warm and already looks like a favorite.



I did a jogless stripe technique to make the seam less visible. You can still see it though.

The best part is that this barely used half a skein of each, so there is definitely enough yarn leftover to make a second one. I did enjoy working with the Shelter. However, I found that when I tinked back to fix a mistake, the yarn would sometimes come unspun completely and break. It spit-splices really well, so it's not bad to fix. Just a bit troublesome that it does that.

The specs: I'm a super-loose knitter so I had to go down several needle sizes in order to get a hat that fit. I used US 3 needles for the ribbing and US 5 for the main part of the hat. I only used about 70 yards of the solid brown Shelter, and even less that with the Silk Garden, making this a great hat if you have scraps to use up. The pattern was well-written and simple.

FO- Winter Romance

It's the time of year where I get a wee bit stir crazy. That winter doldrum sets in and I start dressing more for comfort than style. I dream of the day where I won't need the soft gurgling of a humidifier to lull me to sleep, and hat hair would be optional.

I had 12 skeins of a discontinued color of Noro Silk Garden in my stash, waiting for a little inspiration.



I loved these colors together- royal blue, turquoise, peach and a deep purple balanced nicely with more neutral browns and grays. The whole effect reminds me of a cold winter dusk turning into a long dark night.

Try as I might, I couldn't find a pattern that I felt was right for this yarn. There are tons of patterns out there that utilize this kind of yarn, but I found a great deal of them unflattering or awkward. I wanted something a little sexy and, above all, flattering. Something this colorful needs a simple design but I wanted to make the stripes work with my shape.

So I sat down with a tape measure, graph paper and a calculator, knitted up a gauge swatch and started to design my own.

The end result:



I did not want horizontal stripes around my mid-section. No matter how much time I spend at the gym, I can not banish the feeling that my Buddha belly is here to stay. I can't help it. I love my carbs. On the other hand, I really don't mind appearing bustier than I actually am, so I was pretty okay with the idea of horizontal stripes across the boobs.

I started out by knitting a panel, grafted it into a tube and then picked up stitches along the top. I then did bust shaping- I found this guide to be most helpful when it came to placement. I also wanted to show a bit of skin, so I made a deep V-neck at the same time I started the raglan shaping. The sleeves are fitted until the wrist, where I increased them to a bit of a flare. I finished it by picking up stitches along the bottom and the sleeves for a couple rows of purl, and a row of single crochet along the neck. I have to go back and fix the top edge of the collar as it likes to fold down.



It fits me perfectly.



It's graceful, romantic and warm. Exactly what I want to wear this time of year to get me out of my winter funk.




I'm in the camp of "math is hard, it hurts by brain". Once I got over that fear, I found it really simple to figure out how to do the math on a sweater. Since the math was applied and not abstract I could get my head around it.


The specs: I used all of 9 skeins of Silk Garden- 1098 yards- on a size 7 needle. I went down to a size 6 on the trim. It took me a hair over two weeks from start to finish. I started out using EZ's percentage system but once I figured out how the game was played, I went along with my gut and invented my system based on my personal measurements. I tried it on quite a bit as I went to figure out how far I wanted the raglan decreases to go. That helped me make little tweaks for a better fit.

Winter Romance

This is the start of my Noro sweater:



I'm aiming for a graceful, form-fitting and flattering silhouette. I've finished the torso and I'm now debating what kind of boob-shaping I need to do. I'm leaning towards bust darts (ahem, my inclination is leaning, not my actual boobs) but I am also considering short row shaping.

So my Noro sweater has a friend (project monogamy is such a bore). I've also cast on for the Opulent Raglan by Wendy Bernard:



It's from the Fall 2008 KnitScene. It's a simple fitted top-down raglan with a pretty cable detail. It's exactly what I love to knit- lots of mindless stockinette stitch with a punchy little pay-attention detail.

I'm using some Elsebeth Laavold Silky Wool that was in my stash in the Gooseberry colorway. It drapes beautifully and has a nice crisp silk definition, and it softens up nicely once washed (ha! I actually washed my swatch and figured this out).



Here's the sweater so far:



I love top-down raglans because you can just string them up on some spare yarn (or really long circ needles) and try it on as you go. It really helps banish the "will-it-fit?" jitters and allows you to tweak as you go to fit your body.

I'm looking forward to this weekend...after which I should have a good amount of new spindles made and posted on the Etsy site, and (weather permitting) well-lit pictures of the pile of FOs I have sitting around in my dark living room.

Scatterbrain

I finished the FLS sweater! I'll have pictures once I've blocked it and sewn the buttons on. It was a fast knit, but I got bored with it really quickly. I'm happy with how it came out though.

Aside from that, I've been really scattered with my projects. I'll sit down and start to spin for a few minutes. Suddenly, I'll spy my combs sitting on the table, and then I'll be off to comb some fleece. Oooh, and what's that over there? I should really not neglect my weaving.

I don't exactly have a lot of free nights at home, so any time I do have there, I get a little overwhelmed with all the stuff I could be doing. This leads to pretty much nothing getting done, or at least I don't feel the sense of accomplishment if I would just focus on one project.

I did cast on for not one, but TWO more sweaters. One is the Belle Cardigan from Interweave Fall 2007.



It's cute, but I know how "chunky is as chunky does". This might not be terribly flattering in the end. However, it will use up my stash of ropey Rowan Big Wool that I've had lying around for years and years. It's actually making me sneeze as I knit along because the yarn is a little dusty.

The second sweater is one I'm excited for. In a flurry of creativity brought on by frustration, I started designing my own sweater using some Noro Silk Garden. I really love Silk Garden. I've made a giant Clapotis and the Sunrise Circle Jacket from it in the past.



I love the colors and the long stripes, but I was having a hard time finding another flattering pattern using the yarn. I had a few patterns that I almost liked, but I was worried about them being unflattering or a little too hippie-dippy looking.

I got out the graph paper and a calculator and started swatching and sampling. Then I washed and blocked my samples- this yarn tends to grow quite a bit once it is washed, so it's a good idea to make a big swatch and wash it before you take measurements.

I have a few shapes sketched out and all my measurements worked in. I'm hoping to have some time this weekend to really get cooking on this.