Another Finished Object for Friday

This is the Boogie Vest from an older issue of Knitty.




The yarn is Madil Yarns Iceland, purchased on sale at Knit & Caboodle in St. Charles. The vest used just under 4 skeins. For the most part, I really enjoyed knitting with this yarn, & I love the color. However, I found a knot in a couple of the skeins, which didn't make me happy.

It's my second completed NaKniSweMoDo 2009 sweater. By getting something quick out of the way, there won't be as much pressure to only work on simple knits. Some of the sweaters I have planned for this year are definitely multi-month projects.

What's on My Needles Wednesday

This month has been all about the sweaters. I'm slowly but surely making progress on my Susie Hoodie, but have also been lured into starting new things. The pinkish beige is the start of Mr. Greenjeans, from Knitty.com, in Dream In Color Classy that I bought on clearance as Kirkwood Knittery.

I'm also experimenting with a vest/shrug pattern for this two-tone yarn. I haven't decided yet whether I like this or not.

Saturday Sunrise

Finished Object for Friday

My first finished NaKniSweMoDo 2009 sweater is my February Lady Sweater, which I started last September. I bound off on Monday night & wove all the ends in during the Inauguration Tuesday morning.

The yarn is discontinued Colorado Yarns Knitaly bought on clearance from Webs ages ago. I used a little under 5 balls (500gr) for a size large.

False Start

Is it a bad sign when the first new project of the year doesn't work out? I picked a project involving lots of stockinette in the round, for mindless New Years Day Time-With-Family knitting. In keeping with my goal of using stash yarn this year, I took out 3 skeins of purple sport-weight Louet Gems that I had bought on clearance with the idea of making some sort of vest, & found a project from the Spring Interweave Knits that appeared to be a good fit.

However, I think I goofed the first time I cast on for my Aleita Shell.
I had experimented with using the cable cast-on for this sweater. Cable cast-on is supposed to help with rolling. However, because this sweater is knit in the round, the cast-on-edge ends up backwards from how it would sit when knitting back & forth. (Wrong side out, in other words.)

I made good progress on Aleita over New Years, but it was rolling like crazy at the bottom, so I was contemplating ripping it out & trying a different cast on.


I ended up taking the second ball of yarn & experimenting with the cast on. As the knitting progressed, it became obvious that there was much less rolling going on with the experimental second try. There’s still a bit that may need to be blocked out, but it isn’t quite as bad.


The second time I did the cable cast on, but then knit back along the cast on before joining. That way, the opposite edge of the cast on is towards the outside of the fabric. It does mean a tiny bit of sewing the first back & forth row together, but not much. You can sort of see what I mean here:



Is it too much to hope that this may get my "false start" mojo over for the year?

The Year of the Sweater

This year I am focusing on enjoying & using my stash -- primarily big projects, so that I remove the temptation to break up any of the larger "sweater's worth" amounts only run short later.

In the process of knitting somewhat from stash in 2008, I realized I had several sweater's worth, with only vague ideas of what sweaters I might make. So last November, I decided 2009 would be the year to knit some of my "sweater's worth" stash yarn. I spent Thanksgiving break matching up my "stash list" with my "queue list".

Catching up on my blog reading the following week, I came across this post by Margene. It seems I'm not the only one making 2009 the Year of the Sweater.

Over 400 other folks are also concentrating on sweaters this year, with the goal being a nice, round dozen sweaters over the next 12 months. That's an average of one a month, but not a requirement to finish one every month. A month of no Finished Objects followed by 2 sweaters the next month is still right on track, in other words.

Speaking of words, the word for this insanity is NaKniSweMoDo. Button to be added to my sidebar later...

First Finished Object Friday 2009

Here is my first Finished Object of 2009:




It's a charity scarf to donate to the Special Olympics World Winter Games.

It's made with double-stranded Red Heart yarn, in the Special Olympics Winter Games colors. I used a 60 inch long size 10 circular, cast on enough stitches to fill the needle, & had plenty of mindless knitting for a couple day's worth of meetings.

However, there has been an overwhelming response to the call for hand-made scarves for the athletes. They have received over 14,000 which far surpasses their goal of 5000. Therefore, the scarves collected at the Knitting Guild meeting tomorrow are going to be shipped to the Heartland Regional Special Olympics Winter Games instead.

Happy New Year!

Here's the first sunrise of 2009:




The sun in my window woke me up at a much earlier time than I would have preferred, but it made for more morning knitting time.