KnitMe

Happy holiday

Happy holidays from everyone at the Pink Tea.

Not much

I'm not the witty type who can write a whole entry about not having anything to write about, and have it be hilarious and compelling. So I had to run around and take pictures of things, but there isn't much.

The rambouillet that didn't become gloves is becoming a brioche stitch scarf. It's about half done and I think it will be about 30 inches long when finished. I am knitting on size 6 but I probably could comfortably have done this yarn on size 7.

I finished one of the fronts of 'Cutaway' and will cast on the other one tonight. I have jury duty tomorrow and need something I can knit on all day. 'Empirical' would probably be good, but it's on metal needles and I don't want to take a chance of being refused permission to bring it in. I also finished another bobbin of cashmere/merino but haven't had a chance to ply it yet.

I used to have, on my fiber porch, a couch and 3 chairs. I realized last week that the chairs were all full of fiber stuff and could not be sat in. There's a bag of roving on the chair near the spinning wheel. There was one project on one of the side chairs and another project on the other. I figured I would consolidate a little so I'd have at least one actual chair in the room. Here's the other former chair.

I leave you with this, yesterday's "Doonesbury."

Falling in Glove Again

They may just look like slightly neppy old gloves, but they are the first thing I've made that started as a sack of fleece (it's here, and here, and here).

I'm inordinately excited about them. They fit perfectly and they weigh nothing (I used maybe 1.7 ounces of yarn for the two). The glove pattern in the Ann Budd 'handy patterns' book is great, easy to follow and shaped just right. I had PLENTY of yarn, too, so I cast on for a brioche stitch scarf with what's left. If it ends up really short I can pin it like Rosemary does.

I kept on with Cutaway. The back was finished last Monday.

I'm working on the left front. It's early to assess the yarn availability but I think I'm going to make it.

I finally gave in and started Joanne's Empirical Division pattern in the KnitPicks 'Elegance' alpaca/silk yarn. I just couldn't keep my hands off this yarn any longer and I wanted something rich and cuddly to knit. The yarn is firm and wonderful, not just puffs of air with a little fiber in between.

The color is a little off in this photo, the pink does NOT have an orange cast to it although it is definitely a warm pink. This is going to be a relaxing knit.

Here are more pictures of the 'Cats' sweater because I finished the edge decoration and I blocked it. The front:

The back:

Emily loves it so much that she's sleeping with it on the pillow next to her at night. However, we have a dilemma. Because this sweater is so long on her that it comes down past her rear end, here is the lower back of the sweater after the first day of wear:

The disadvantage of a nice soft yarn is that it's soft... I can't just make her not wear it until she's 6 inches taller. We're still pondering the issue.

Salvage operation

It was finishing weekend on Emily's 'Cats' sweater. The project ended up consuming almost all available fiber time. I hardly spun. I hardly knit anything else. I just worked on this, then worked on fixing everything that went wrong.

Luckily Emily was obsessed with playing Blues Clues Preschool Saturday because I needed every bit of the 4 hours she spent doing it. First, I sewed armholes. Then, I crocheted the front neck steek. I steeked the neckline because I was having enough trouble following the eensy weensy chart knitting in a forwardly direction, without also trying to go backward. Upon snipping the neatly crocheted steek, one side lay over quite nicely and the other side disintegrated. I tied as many knots as I could muster, then zigzag stitched the bejeezus out of the little dangling bits of yarn so I'd have the equivalent of a steek. I hope nobody will notice that on the left side of the neckline is a tidy little edge stitch and decrease, and on the other is - well, nothing you can see, the pattern just sort of ends at the edge of the neckband.

I didn't attempt to crochet the back neck steek, I machine stitched it well.

With the sweater temporarily pacified, I picked up for the neckband - better stabilize those little wobbly steeks before trying to set in sleeves.

A couple of hours later, upon completing a tidy stitching-down of the live stitches of the neckband facing, I had something that would never go over Emily's head. At that point I threw the sweater on a chair and went to bed.

Yesterday I unpicked the neckband facing, stitched down the steeks carefully, and reknit a roll-neck. It's not as neat looking as what the pattern calls for, but it does go over her head, and it won't produce princess-and-the-pea neck effects ("mommy it's TOO TIGHT").

The sleeves went in quite nicely, with their little facings. I didn't even wait to block it before reassuring myself that it was going to be a sweater.

I had blocked the sleeves last weekend so I would have armholes the correct depth, so I knew the sweater would spread out wider once it hit the water. This will fit Emily for a couple of years.

The sweater wasn't done with me yet, though. As I laid it out to dry I saw I'd dropped a stitch while binding off the neckband, and I had to run for a crochet hook and a scrap of yarn.

When it's dry there's some blanket-stitch ornamentation on the cuffs and hemline, so there'll be another picture next week. But it's off my back for now.

I'm clinging to my finished New England Socks (Nancy Bush, Knitting on the Road, and Lisa's Sock! in Mardi Gras) as proof that I can make things without huge crises. (We won't mention that I regrafted one of the toes when I noticed that I'd spaced out and not passed through one of the center stitches enough times, resulting in a little hole.)

We had skyblue-pink feet yesterday.

I also finished the back of my Emerald BFL Cutaway last night, but I was done editing photos for the day, so that'll have to wait.

I have been wanting to make another pair of gloves for awhile, so finishing the socks was my cue to start gloves with my handcombed grey Rambouillet, using the Ann Budd Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns.

I swatched on size 3 needles and got a gauge that varied between 5.5 and 6 stitches per inch, and a nice elastic fabric, so I compromised by making the 6 SPI pattern but going down a size. I'm not sure I'll have enough yarn (it metered at a total of about 600 yards but I think there was stretching going on so I don't trust it and hope I have 450). I hope these will work up quickly, I can't wait to wear them.

I'm pondering starting another sweater. I haven't decided exactly what yet, but I have a candidate.