Blog Week in Review: 12/3- 12/10

It’s that time of the week again! I’m going to keep this short, because what I really should be doing is putting the final touches on the 8 page paper that is due at five today (that’s over four hours away- I’ve got plenty of time!). Hopefully I’ll have more time to write when I post about my WIP’s on Wed.- so excited to share what I’ve been working on with you!

I love the Twisted Knitter’s Adiri Cowl. Although it could be the color (what? Aren’t you all drawn to patterns when the sample is made in your favorite color?), I still really love the stitch pattern, too!

If you want your daily dose of adorable-ness, take a look at Every Words a Purl’s Litter Professorial Sweater. It’s a toddler in an old-person sweater. Just GAH!

If I had the patience to knit myself a stockinette dress, I would make it exactly the same way Jena A-C did her Still Light Tunic. I swear, it came out awesome!

Finally, Threadpanda has finished her Stonecutter’s Cardigan. I have been watching her progress on her “Sweaterday” posts for what seems like forever, so it’s almost like I just finished a project, too, just without the knitting or the FO. Ok, so I didn’t really finish anything, but she did, so congrats!

Thanksgiving Knitting

This thanksgiving, I am absolutely thankful for knitting. It is perhaps the only thing keeping me sane. Unfortunately, my deadlines are actually driving me crazy. Hanukah is really, really early this year, and we decided to celebrate it tomorrow while the whole family is in town. So, let’s go through the list of knitted presents.

Daniela Cowl

First, my Daniela Cowl. This is the sample for my newest design. It was inspired and named for my sister, so it’s no accident that it is going to her this Hanukah. I used just less than 2 skeins of Knit Picks City Tweed DK to make the medium size. I don’t know if she’s ever had an eternity scarf before, so I hope she likes it. If you would like to check the pattern out, I suggest here on the Knit Picks site.

Windscheif

I made my father a Windscheif in some wonderful Windswept Farms Knitter’s Choice. It’s luscious and warm, so if my father doesn’t like it, I will definitely steal it. The good news is that I have over 60g left, so I’m definitely making myself something!

Turn of the Glass

My mother’s Turn of the Glass Cardigan is currently blocking. It is almost entirely dry. I may have to take it off while it is still slightly damp, but I didn’t really have to do much tugging to get it to the right dimensions, so I am OK with this. I used a little less than 4 skeins of Berocco Vintage DK, which is a perfect gift yarn: hard wearing but comfortably soft. All I have left to do is seam the arms and sew in the ends. Lets hope that I have enough time for that!

Citron

Finally, there’s my Aunt’s Citron. I have been marathon knitting this since I cast on Sunday. I’m on the final ruffle of the pattern. So close! Of course, there are only 540 stitches in each row, and I still have at least 5 to go. Depending on how this afternoon goes, I might try to add another couple of rows for just a little more length. But I’m still going to have to get it on the blocking board by this evening if I want it dry to give. Luckily, Malabrigo Lace won’t take anywhere near as long as DK weight!

WIP Wed: Hurricane Progress

Over my extra long weekend I got a ton of progress done on my Turn of the Glass Cardigan. How much progress? Well, last week I had my inch of seed stitch. Now, I have this:

About 10 inches of the bottom on the fronts and back

It’s been a really fun, intuitive knit! I’ve been modding the heck out of this pattern, although it hasn’t always been on purpose. I wanted to add length, so I extended the start of the cable pattern and added a couple of inches of stockinette. I probably could have just started the cable pattern earlier, because the pattern calls for you to extend the ribbing across the whole back of the sweater. Did I explain that ok? I have no idea. I accidently didn’t do that, anyway.

Side detail

I’ve really enjoyed the stitch pattern. It’s very intuitive- one of those that, as soon as you memorize the actual stitches, you can apply the overall pattern to it. As I was watching the patterns appear, I was a little scared that the fake cable pattern would look really messy next to the real cables. The yarn (Berocco Vintage DK) is 60% acrylic, so the stitch definition isn’t amazing, too. Zooming out, though, I like the contrast. It looks really good!

Really, really close up. I don’t know what happened to the color here.

For more WIP Wed posts, check out Tami’s.

WIP Wed: Mom’s Cardigan, Part 1

I finally got the chance to cast on a new cardigan over the weekend. My mother requested a sweater for Hanukah this year. I’ve tried this in the past with some not-so-awesome results. I think my main problem has been gauge and fit; she likes a looser sweater, which requires that magic animal, EASE. My skills have improved since then, so hopefully we’ll have a better result this time.

Turn of Glass, sniped from ravelry

She picked this sweater. It’s Turn of Glass from the Winter 2011 Knitty. She already asked me to mod it for a little more length, plus my gauge swatch was a little short (I got 3.5″ instead of 4″), so I’m adding a couple extra inches to the bottom. That’s 2 rows of extra seed stitch, plus two inches of stockinette, and I’m extending the chart. At least, that’s the plan. I ordered PLENTY of extra yarn (that’s Berrocco Vintage DK). I hadn’t even noticed that the pattern is written for 50g skeins, and my yarn is 100g. I’m pretty sure I’ll have 2 extras, even after the mods. Fuschia scarf, anyone?

My very, very limited progress

So far, I’ve done about 10 rows of seed stitch. This is definitely the boring part- I have 208 stitches on the needles (I know because I tried to get that number twice before it actually worked out. That was a struggle!). You knit all the way across the bottom, plus I haven’t started the fun cable rib chart yet. I’m excited to get there!

For more WIP Wed. posts, check out Tami’s!

FO Friday: Zest Cardigan

Front side

It’s finally, finally finished. I can’t believe it! It feels like I’ve been working on this cardigan forever. Ok, that’s not exactly true, but a lot has happened to me since I started the project on May 30, which is probably part of why it took so long 🙂

From the front, mostly unbuttoned

For the concrete details, this is the Zest Cardigan by Jennifer Thomas (Fern Knits). Jenn was gracious enough to gift this pattern in a contest, and I was lucky enough to win it! I immediately bought the requisite amount of yarn for the 38″ cardigan: 6 skeins of Knit Picks Palette in black. I ended up barely dipping into the 5th skein, but that could be because of my tight gauge. I don’t know 🙂

Back- over the shoulder!

As a yarn choice, Palette worked out OK. It is definitely a workhorse yarn (as the price suggests), but, occasionally, I would split the plies with my sharper needles as I was doing the lace or cables. And black was probably not the best color to choose, as it made it a lot harder to see.

Detail of the lace on the sleeve

There were a couple of different mods on the sweater. For the “purposeful” mods, I changed a couple of things. First, instead of doing seed stitch in between the front and back, I did a 1×1 ribbing. I was slightly afraid that going up to the 38″ would be too much for me, so that would pull it in a little. Turns out I didn’t need it! I changed a couple of other minor things, mainly shortening the sweater to make it fit my petite frame.

From the front, buttoned

Now for the not so on purpose mods. I didn’t realize until after I finished that I would probably like buttons running all the way down the front, and that there would probably be enough extra material (because I had gone up a size) to use the button band for this, instead of creating the loops called for in the pattern. I grabbed some cheap buttons from Hancock Fabric (and when I say cheap, I mean cheap) and tried my hand at afterthought buttons. I think they ended up OK, but I’m just slightly afraid that they will get bigger the more I wear the sweater. I guess we’ll see. Beyond that, the buttons aren’t exactly even (or placed well), so they gape. At this point, I would just rather wear it with only the top buttoned then do the math to fix this.

Detail of the cable on the back

The other accidental mod has to do with the cable detail on the back. I started this portion while on an airplane (only me), so I ended up totally messing up the chart. I didn’t figure it out until I had completely finished the cable and had done a couple of repeats of the lace. By that point, I was so tired of the cables (black fingering weight cables in airplane light? BAD IDEA) that I didn’t feel like frogging. It came out OK, I think. Besides, it’s not like I will see it very often.

Flat detail of the cables on the back

There’s not much more to talk about this sweater. I’m really excited to finally have a hand-knitted transitional sweater. I’m sure I’ll wear it a lot…as soon as the weather drops down from 89 degrees.

All folded up. C’mon, weather, don’t let it be this way for long!

For more FO Friday posts, check out Tami’s.

WIP Wed: Still working on the socks

I am so close to almost being finished with these socks that it’s not even funny. I literally have 9 rows of 1×1 ribbing and a sewn bind-off left. That’s maybe an hour of work. I can feel it. It’s going to happen. By the way, they’re Pillars Socks made in Candy Skein Yummy in Arctic Mint, converted to Toe-Up.

Ok, I’ll admit it: this is the first sock. The second one is downstairs by the TV. So far away!

I also put some time into my Zest Cardigan yesterday. In the morning, I stopped by Hancock Fabric for buttons. Did I mention to you guys that Hancock is around the corner from my apartment. It’s a good thing that the best yarn they have is Wool-Ease, or I would be stopping there every morning on my walks. In the end, I decided on cheap (really cheap- 70 cents for 6) black buttons. They blend really well with the sweater and are light enough to not warp the fingering weight lace at all, which is pretty good.

Buttons!

I tried to make afterthought buttonholes, tried being the operative word. I don’t know how well they’ll hold… I followed a couple of tutorials that I found after a google search. I had looked in a couple of the knitting encyclopedias in the library (you know, the ones that are so big they would probably make a shelf collapse), and they had surprisingly little information about them. Even Principles of Knitting didn’t have more than a short entry. Still, I think they ended up working out. I’ll make sure to get pictures for Friday!

Buttonholes. I’m afraid they’re growing…

For more WIP Wed. posts, check out Tami’s.

Wip Wed: Olympics Edition

mmmm

I have something pretty stupid to admit to you guys: I just spent an hour and a half in a doctor’s office, and I did not bring a single thing to do. Not the book that I just picked up from the library or the second sock that I have just started. Nothing. And what is even worse? After waiting that long, I literally saw the doctor for a grand total of 3 minutes when he renewed my prescription. It was just a horrible way to spend a morning. In consolation, I stopped at Dunkin on the way back and bought an unreasonably large Medium iced coffee (coupon for any coffee for $1!) and will enjoy it for the next couple of hours 🙂

Zest

After giving the coffee a couple of minutes to set in, I began the process of taking all of the pins and wires out of my sweater and picking it up off of my blocking mats. I’ve been watching the Olympics (women’s gymnastics on the floor, volleyball, and everything nice in life) while sewing up the side seams. I was going to continue to do the button loops, except I just remembered that I HAVEN’T BOUGHT ANY BUTTONS. I’ll have to find some- probably something really simple to not take anything away from the wonderful lace. Maybe in white? Would that pop too much? What do you guys think? I’m always really hesitant when I pick out buttons.

Striped Socks

Also, remember those socks that I cast on while the sweater was blocking? Well, I finished the first one in a record two days (admittedly, they’re only anklets and I’ve spent plenty of time glued to the TV) and I will probably start the next one soon. I’m going up to school with my mom to check out some things in the apartment, so that’s 2 hours of knitting time in the car, and probably more from traffic.

Cast On Monday

Over the weekend, something magical happened. On Sunday afternoon I finished the yoke that would never end. I was so excited by this, that (after awkwardly trying on the unblocked lace sweater which was, of course, too small) I blocked my Zest Cardigan right away. Go me!

closer up

You may notice that one of the sleeves is shorter than the other one. I’m a little concerned by this- they both used the same amount of repeats, but something about the angle of how I was blocking them on the floor made it a lot harder to get length out of one than the other. We’ll see what happens when they’re finished- I can always re-block it!

Just a toe

In order to give my hands something to do while the Olympics are on and the sweater is still blocking, I’ve just cast on a quick pair of socks. This is just the beginning of a toe. I only have one skein of Knit Picks Felici, so I guess they’ll just be anklets. Although with my small feet, they’ll probably go up past my shoes a little.

Felici, already halved

Felici is an incredibly soft self-striping sock yarn. I just looked at the label, and it’s 75% superwash merino and 25% nylon, so that explains it. I’m using the Moonlit colorway, which is stripes of purple, violet, blue, teal, and lime green. I have no idea how it will look, so it’s probably best that they will be safely tucked into my socks! I took the time to half the skein with my teeny-tiny yarn scale. The measurements aren’t exact (there’s one ball of 25.1g and one of 24.3g), but it will probably be a good indicator of when to stop. In any case, I’m using the smaller ball first, so I won’t have to do too much ripping!

WIP Wed: Zest Cardigan, Part 4

Well, it’s been over a month since I last talked about my Zest Cardigan in any depth, and the end is in sight! With the crazy-ness of my internship I didn’t exactly have a lot of time for knitting, but in the last couple days I’ve been watching the Olympics nonstop, and knitting for most of that time. As a result, I’ve gotten through the entire second sleeve! It’s a bottom-up raglan worked in mostly 1 piece, so this morning I had the chance to join all of the pieces together. I used my Knit Picks interchangeable needles for everything, so putting everything together was pretty easy. I would just unscrew the needle from the part I had been knitting from and put it on the next part, using those little end things to keep myself from losing any stitches. Pretty painless, considering how badly it could have gone. Right about now, it looks something like this.

Back of the sweater, including the cable panel in the middle and the mesh lace everywhere else

I apologize for the strange pictures, it’s storming outside, so the light is a little spotty, and this is all my camera could do. I do assure you that the Knit Picks Palette that I am making this out of is BLACK, not charcoal or some other shade of grey. I promise. Did you notice that the cable panel on the back is looking a lot like arrows at this angle? I wasn’t planning that AT ALL- this mainly comes from me trying to do tricky knitting on a plane. It’s still not as awesome as the cables on the original pattern, but its a lot better then I was expecting- yeah me!

from the side- you can actually see how this is going to be a sweater!

Anyway, that’s about all I have to talk about. I’m going to go jet off to watch some beach volleyball (which I didn’t know was so fun to watch- I’m such a big fan now!). For more WIP Wed. posts, go check out Tami’s.

Catching up and Interweave Review

My internship is over, so I finally, finally have the time to sit down and write a long post. I’m going to miss it, but I do look forward to all of the knitting and blogging time in my future!

I finished the Molly hat just in time to give it away…and not enough time to take any pictures with it (or even block it). Still, the recipient loved it, so I think that I will survive! I’m back to working on my Zest Cardigan. I just CO the first sleeve. It’s a bottom up raglan, so after than I’ll just have to do the yoke, block, and sew up- easy peasy! (Famous last words)

But none of those projects are the reason that I felt obligated to post. Two days ago, the Fall 2012 Interweave Knits hit my mailbox. Okay, so it probably hit my mailbox at school days before that, but campus mail was nice enough to forward it to my parents’ house, so now I finally get the chance to talk about it with you. There’s something about this issue that I’m not completely in love with. There’s not a single pattern in here that I JUST HAVE TO KNIT, which is really strange for me, especially considering that this is a fall, not summer or spring, issue. In fact, I don’t think that I’m going to make anything in here. Most of the pieces either feel like they’re for someone much older than me, or that they drastically miscalculated what 20-somethings like to wear. Let’s take a look, and I’ll show you what I mean.

Petit Four Pullover

Blooming Forest Pullover (L) & Sazerac Pullover (R)

Take, for instance, these three pieces from the Stitches Go to Town Collection. Besides the strange construction of the Blooming Forest Pullover (won’t sideways ribbed sleeves stretch a lot?), I feel like all three of these patterns are for people way, way different from me. The Petit Four Pullover is growing on me as something that would be great for work, but the lines of the second two aren’t very modern at all. I guess they’re all just too conservative, but especially since I think of hip and urban when I hear “go to town,” not 40 year old suburbanite.

Traveler’s Socks

These socks (from the “On the Road” collection) strike me as the most modern and forward-thinking piece in the magazine…and they’re socks. They remind me of a toned down version of the bubbles socks that I made a couple of months ago. Maybe I’ll give them a try. Maybe.

Roam Tunic (L) and Sweetheart Pullover (R)

Next are the Roam Tunic and Sweetheart Pullover, also from the On the Road Collection. I guess it gets cold enough in some parts of the world for tunics and pullovers made from chunky yarn in some parts of the world, but I don’t think it ever gets that cold here. Ever. Plus, I don’t think that a tunic is the shape for me, and the picot edging on the pullover…to cutesy. But I do love the cables of both of them, which is just making me think of OTHER patterns, not either of these.

Amstel Hat

While I think that I would love knitting this hat, I’m not sure that I, or anyone else that I know, would ever wear it. I think it goes just past that hip/homemade look- not something anyone wants. That’s just my opinion, though. If I end up making a hat for a fashion-forward friend, I would definitely show them this pattern (although I admit that I would be surprised if they picked it!).

Woven Rain Hat

I think that this pattern might be the least of the evils in the All Wool and a Yard Wide collection. I guess it was aiming for English Country Garden (maybe that’s why there are so many rain-related patterns?), but I think it was a miss. Once again, I would show this to a fashion-forward friend, but I would probably be surprised it they picked it!

Cornflower Cardigan

If I can ever bring myself to learn how to do colorwork, I would definitely make this as a warm and cozy rainy day cardigan (because I don’t have enough of those). This might be one of the few patterns in here were the vintage feel actually worked- maybe because the styling of the rest of the picture feels so modern. I don’t know.

So, what do you think? I’m excited to read everyone else’s reviews of the magazine- maybe someone can convince me that it wasn’t as horrible as I thought! And I completely promise to be back on Wed. with an update on the Zest Cardigan. It’s probably been over a month since I’ve taken pictures!