Tag Archives: FO

stress knitting.

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I finished my Sunday Market Shawl tonight. It is way past my bedtime, but it was such a slow, unproductive day of writing that I just needed to make progress on something, you know? Ends aren’t woven in, and it could use a good blocking, but here it is.

sms-done

sms-done2

I love how vibrant this is! Originally, I thought I’d make this huge, with 2 skeins of Fleece Artist Somoko (or a yarn named something close to that) in the Masala colorway, but this is exactly one skein, and it is plenty large!

Also, here are a few more silly pictures of Boh. He just has to be on the couch with the boy. He makes room for himself:

bohcouch1

bohcouch21

Also, I have been seriously internet-stalking spinning wheels. I imagine I’ll take the plunge this summer. It is now wayyyy past my bedtime, and tomorrow I am planning a VERY productive writing day. Good night!

red buttons.

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[Picture-heavy post today!]

Before buttons:

beforebuttons

Yesterday I slipped my 28thirty on to take Boh around the block, and snapped a few pictures of me wearing it. Then I realized that it would be so worth it to sit down, sew on the buttons I’d chosen, and actually finish the sweater!

After buttons:

buttons1

buttons2-dark

buttons-allbuttoned

buttons-arm

buttons3

I can’t help it. I love this sweater. One more picture:

buttons-closeuo

project details:

28thirty, by the Zephyr Girls.

size: 36-39″

yarn: Peace Fleece, colorway grassroots, 4.5 skeins (buttons from ebay)

needles: US 7

mods: lengthened body to hit at hips, followed pattern for yoke and sleeves, but found that sleeves were way too loose — decreased severely on either side of center underarm every other row until stitch count was down to the XS size. decreased a few more time as directed in the pattern at wrist. (I am mostly happy with how this turned out — will likely be useful when I layer this over lots of other things, but over a t-shirt, there is some extra room there in the chest near where the sleeves start.)

victory? yes.

rains/pours.

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Lots of knitting and posting this week, folks! (Me? Hiding? Procrastinating? Never.) First up, 28thirty, gloriously blocking on the kitchen table:

28thirty-blocking

I won three or four lots of buttons yesterday on ebay, and I can’t wait to play around with color combinations. Right now, I’m thinking big red buttons, but we’ll see…

For some reason, the catharsis of casting off just makes me want to knit more! I dug into the bag that goes everywhere with me for my toe up socks, and realized that I only had a few more inches to go on sock #2. A few hours of decompressing from a very productive Monday-Tuesday and voila! Socks!

socks-fo-chair

Although these socks are not perfect, I am thrilled with them, and I may be a toe-up sock convert! This is my first toe-up pair, and believe-you-me I did some serious wrangling with the cast-on, heel instructions, etc. before discovering knitting by bicycle’s tutorial and experiencing an a-ha moment. The heels do not match, and I can’t quite figure out why. Neither looks wrong, exactly, but they are not the same. Also, my loose bind off is not loose enough. Something to work on.

socks-fo-3

socks-kitchen

Maybe I’ll do a wrap up post on these sometime in the future, but for now, these puppies are on my feet! Notes on my stitch count, etc. can be found on the project’s Rav page or in an earlier blog post. (Confession time: I haven’t even gotten around to weaving in the ends and tidying up those little holes that show up sometimes when you turn the heel…)

FO: ribbed baby sweater.

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oscar21

oscar1

Hooray! The seaming is finished. And it wasn’t even that bad. (Note to self: Remember this the next time I let a sweater languish because it needs to be seamed.) Baby sweater seams go super quickly.

Details:

Mission Falls 1824 Cotton, 3.5 (?) balls. (might have been 4.5)

US 7 needles

3-6 mo size.

I would definitely make this again.

The goal was to have this finished in time for my weekly independent study with my advisor — which isn’t for another two hours. Victory!

Time to get back to the book we’re discussing…

first handspun FO.

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handspuncowl1

handspuncowl2

I wasn’t sure how this was going to turn out, as my first plied handspun is definitely a thick-thin yarn. After perusing a bunch of cowl patterns on Ravelry, I settled on something similar to the malabrigo cowl I made a few months ago. I was aiming for a drapey fabric, and figured I’d knit til I ran out of yarn.

I cast on 75 stitches, worked a purl row at some point to counter the roll over, and then knit, knit, knit while catching up with a friend on the other side of the world, listening to This American Life, and even last week’s CraftLit episode. I increased by 9 stitches at a few different points in the middle, worked a decrease row (also 9 st) somewhere, another purl bump row, an increase row, and then at about 14 inches, a purl row close to the bind off. I was worried about getting it over my head, initially, but those fears were totally unfounded. I LOVE this cowl — and not just because it represents my first foray into the spinning side of things. I stayed up an extra hour last night in order to finish this — here’s the token “hold the camera up to the mirror” picture marking my victory:

handspuncowl3

It’s a good thing you can’t actually see how bleary-eyed I was at this moment — but we all know how certain projects induce a kind of “must…finish…” zombie-like state.

In conclusion: hooray for handspun! (And I will finish that baby sweater by Friday. Really.)

fad classic in action.

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fadclassic

This morning, in need of a little more warmth, I dug deep into one of the drawers under my bed and retrieved my Fad Classic. It seemed like just the thing, and the slight variegation and bumpy, round stitch pattern made me smile. I slipped it on under my cozy navy blue cardigan and looked in the mirror. And I LIKED it. See, I neglected to post FO pictures of this particular project because while I liked it in theory, I really didn’t like the way it fit — seemed not long enough, the neckline didn’t seem all that flattering on my shape, blah blah blah. But today, as a layering item, I’m thrilled, and in honor of Vestuary, I wore my Fad Classic out into the world for the first time. And I’ll be doing it again.

fadclassic21

Also, this weekend I wound up my handspun:

my-yarn

I’m really excited to see what it will look like all knit up. Still working on the baby sweater, which needs another inch or so of ribbing and then it will be time for seaming — I will have it done by Friday. I will have it done by Friday. I will have it done by Friday…

pooch for scale.

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pooch-for-scale

pooch-for-scale-2

Ta-da! My first plied yarn. By my calculations (which are often up for debate), this skein contains about 180 yards of squishy mostly worsted weight yarn, with some light worsted and light bulky here and there. I’m thinking that I *need* a new cowl, and once I finish this BSJ for the now overdue baby, maybe I will allow myself to cast on.

bsj-almost

I’m making progress, to be sure — cast off the 5 st on each side for the neckline yesterday, but there is much to do, leaving me with a dilemma: do I read for my independent study with my advisor tomorrow, or knit for him? I’ll likely do some of each, but what I cannot do — I repeat, CANNOT DO — is work on this:

fruitloops1

How did this happen? Spinning is a slippery slope, my friends. I got a new Butterfly Girl Designs spindle in the mail this month, but did not allow myself to test it out until AFTER I had finished spinning the Finn. So, while my plied skein was drying, I figured I had earned just a few minutes with this spindle and some more AVFKW fiber from the club. It seemed slightly unbalanced — likely due to how soft the gold hook is/perhaps some jostling during the shipping process, so I tried bending it slightly this way and that to make it just right — and suddenly, I had spun almost an ounce of this beautiful shetland in the Fruit Loops colorway. This is wayyy too much fun.

Alright — must stop blogging and get reading! or knitting!

plied.

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full-spindle2

I filled this spindle — which split where the hook screws into the shaft just as I was finishing. (I think I’ll mostly be using this for plying, as I didn’t have much luck with it as a beginning spindle, and it seems fixable.) Plying took much longer than I expected — it takes time for an appropriate amount of twist to travel up the strands of yarn! Next I began wrapping the yarn around my arm to make a big loop — but there was too much yarn:

winding

So I started over, using a chair back, and found a reasonably priced niddy noddy online for next time. Here’s my yarn, pre-warm bath:

before-washing

I LOVE it. LOVE. After soaking in warm water/detergent, and then hot water/vinegar, and then warm water again (according to Maggie Casey’s instructions in Start Spinning), I hung it to dry on a hanger in the kitchen.

closeup-hanger

hanging

I woke up this morning to find my yarn almost dry. A few more hours, and I’ll be able to twist it into a skein (and take more pictures). I’ll also work on estimating wraps/inch and yards!

sleepingboh

Boh is pretty tired from all that plying, and I managed to pour my coffee grounds from the grinder into my glass of water instead of into my press. I might be a little tired from plying too! Today I must make progress on that baby sweater. No more spinning until it is done. (Hear that, self?)

the calzone report.

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calzone-making

calzone-detail

Despite my success with pizza dough earlier this week, it seems that I still have a thing or two to learn about calzones, and in particular, the behavior of white-whole wheat flour. I made exactly the same dough recipe, but with white-whole wheat, and it just did not rise this time, which yielded a rather dense calzone dough. These were good, but an airier, dare I say, doughier crust would have made them fantastic. Well, that and not eating an entire loaf of farmers’ market bread BEFORE putting the calzones in the oven.

sheepy-slouch-fo

slouch-side-view

I’m pretty sure I’m ready to jump back into the land of productivity, and my new sheepy slouch will certainly make it a slightly warmer leap!

Details: Le Slouch, by Wendy Bernard.US 7 needles, sheepy Romney/Corriedale blend worsted from the Merck Forest and Farmland Center. CO 74 st, knit 6.25 in before decreasing. I’m not letting Boh get this one.

turn a spindle, turn a square

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vinn-pink

And here’s what I was working on while skein number 1 was hanging to dry. This is the first half of 4 oz of Finn in colorway Equilibrium, the November installment of the AVFKW Woolly Wonders Fiber Club. Here’s the beginning of the second half:

brown-vinn

This is more of a complex chestnut brown than it looks. Silly me for photographing it on a brown chair. I clearly took this picture before my morning coffee. I’m planning to attempt plying on my spindle when I finish spinning this up. I think these colors look lovely together, and “Equilibrium” suits them perfectly.

I’ve also been working on turning another square:

square-in-progress

blurry-square

I had to have one for myself — I’m hoping that the decrease seams will become more slouchy with a good blocking. (Apologies for the blurriness on this shot — all I can say is that my arm is a bit tired from all of the spindling!) Details: Grey Cascade 220 and Araucania Nature Wool Chunky leftovers, size 6 and 7 needles, as directed. Also, even though I’m using the notes to get the stripes to line up, it doesn’t look quite right. I ran the tails of both colors up the seam to fill in a few gaps that formed during color switches. Maybe I need to pull the yarn tighter as I’m carrying the strands along inside.

Totally unrelated, but I found myself wearing my malabrigo cowl on my head. And I like it.

cowl-on-head

Still thinking about my knitting plans for 2009…