Quick Update

I have woefully neglected this blog all summer. Shame on me.

On the other hand, I have finished a sweater I blogged about back in January. This is just a "teaser" post, though, because the sweater isn't making it's debut until the Yarn Harlot's visit today.

Black Ice

In my ongoing pursuit of ways to stay warm while walking across the windy parking lot at work, I finally made a pattern that I've had my eyes on for years.

May I present "Black Ice", my version of the Ice Queen pattern from Knitty.com



When Knitty Couture was having their closing sale, I bought a single skein of 100% cashmere laceweight, with this specific project in mind. I ended up also experimenting with beads, though I decided to add fewer than the pattern calls for. I did not want to be feeling beads against my cheek when I brought the it up to block the wind.



I hadn't counted on the fact that when it's worn up, it covers everything but my recently appearing "natural highlights." I swear my hair doesn't normally look quite that stark white!

When wearing it down, I end up with the lovely effect of an extra thick warm cowl.

2010 Review, Finished Objects Part 1

It hardly seems possible, but I only finished 14 projects in all of 2010, plus a bit of charity knitting. Only one of those projects was even all all big or complicated, so I can't even use difficulty of the knitting as an excuse for my poor volume of output.

I finished:

6 pairs of socks
3 cowls
3 small shawls
2 sets of cuffs/mitts



These were my favorite socks of the year, finished last Spring. I love the colors. They are made with Pagewood Farms Yukon sock yarn. My previous experience with this yarn is that it does relax & pill more than some other yarns, due probably to the bamboo content. So I have gone down a needle size on my more recent sets of bamboo blend socks, which seems to help.






In the Fall, I managed to finish 3 pairs of socks in one day. Sounds impressive until I confess to the real reason behind it. I find it much easier to kitchener in bright sunlight, so the knitting was actually finished at various earlier times.


October 23rd, 2010 was a gorgeous & warm Saturday, so Lucy sat out on the porch with me & kept me company throughout the kitchenering.

11 for 2011

I started 2011 with 11 sweaters in WIP status. (I know, I know, I'm completely crazy.) Most of them were started during NaKniSweMoDo 2009. I did manage to finish a record number of sweaters in 2009, but I didn't finish ANY in 2010.

It's time to rectify that. I have decided to finish all 11 of those UFO/WIP sweaters this year. NaKniSweMoAlmostDo 2011 here I come!

One of the things I DID manage to do in 2010 was to keep my yarn purchases down to very little. At least my stash was not expanding exponentially while I wasn't knitting much!

As a carrot/reward this year, I have decided to allow myself 1 yarn crawl or major purchase for every 3 sweaters I finish.

This one is the closest to being done. The knitting was actually completed in 2010, but it still needs finishing work.




It's the matching cardigan to a vest I completed in 2008.
The yarn is Louet KidLin Laceweight that I bought on sale when Knit & Hook in Kirkwood decided to have only the rug hooking side of their business.






Finishing work includes doing a 3 needle bind-off on the second shoulder, sewing in both sleeves, & crocheting around the front opening & neckline. I decided not to do a regular buttonband because of how loose this cardigan is. I've lost weight since casting it on, so it flows loose even more than designed. I'll just close it with a shawl pin if I ever decide to wear it closed.

2011 Already?!?!?

Where did 2010 go? It almost seems like we skipped it. There are still knitting projects from 2010 that never made it into Ravelry, so I am behind there too. Even taking that into consideration, though, my knitting output for 2010 was rather pitiful.

For today, though, I am going to look ahead to 2011. Resolutions are such an all-or-nothing proposal. (i.e. "Well, I messed once, so now I'll just abandon the whole thing!") So I am making plans instead of resolutions.

For 2011, my plans are:

• Do more knitting
• Finish adding 2010 projects into Ravelry
• Take pictures of all knitting projects that are currently lacking photos
• Get back in the habit of photographing my knitting progress
• Update this blog more often
• Add new projects to Ravelry as they are started
• Don't buy any random yarn just because it's a "good deal"
• Did I mention DO MORE KNITTING?
  
  

Third Time's a Charm

At least, I hope the third time is a charm. I'm going to have the entire Aleita Shell pattern memorized by the time I'm finished with this vest. Between the initial false start & the sizing adjustments & my latest mistake, I'll have done as much knitting on this vest as I would have on a full-sized long-sleeved sweater.

As evidenced by these pictures, I thought I was making great progress. However, it turns out it’s not a good idea to glance at the instructions once & then not bring the pattern with you when KIP’ing. That's 4 inches into the top section of decreasing every FOURTH row instead of every THIRD row. Oops! Back to frogging.

Originally I thought I'd pick the stitches back up on the row after the first decreases, so as to re-knit as little as possible. However, I tried the sweater on again after removing the needles for this latest batch of frogging, & discovered that I really needed another inch of stockinette between the smallest part of the waist & the start of the reverse stockinette/neck division part. Perhaps the latest problem was a blessing in disguise, as otherwise I wouldn't have realized I wanted another inch in the stockinette section until I was either much further along, or perhaps even finished with the vest.

That decision meant frogging back even further, not being able to save the fiddly rows where the neck divides, & more boring stockinette in the round. I think I’ll be happier with the end result this way, though.





It's amazing the difference between decreasing every 3rd row & decreasing every 4th. One good thing about it is that the number of stitches per row decreases faster, which makes for less knitting.
At least re-doing the neck division was much easier & faster the third time around, since I already figured out the directions on how to do it.
Now that I'm back on track, I still hope to finish this before the end of "Vest-uary".

Works In Progress Wednesday

I have the same things on my needles as I did two weeks ago, so there's nothing new for What's on My Needles. I have made progress, but haven't had much chance for pictures. We're more than half-way through Vest-uary, & all I have to show for it is 3 half-finished vests.

I had to do some sizing adjustments on my Aleita Shell, so I've been doing some frogging & re-knitting. I'm reached the neckline division again, though, & am now closing in on the armholes.

The red & blue is the Shawl Collar Vest by Amanda Berka in Elizabeth Austen "Andes" wool from Chris' Needlecraft. The pattern is doing a reasonable job of breaking up the colors. Because the piece is folded & sewn together, I'll also avoid the dreaded vertical lines across my front, so I'm continueing with this experiment.

These are the possible colors I'm considering for yoke section of the Vormorgun Létt-Lopavesti by Védís Jónsdóttir. I went into Chris' Needlecraft to find the grey yarns, since I knew they carry Plymouth Galway.

What's On My Needles This Wednesday

In honor of Vest-uary, my knitting so far this week has been all about the vests. I'm nearly finished with the plain stockinette section of my Aleita Shell. I'm not sure when I'll have enough free time to puzzle through the start of the divided section, though.
To that end, I've started another project to have plain stockinette available for KIP knitting. This is the start of Vormorgun Létt-Lopavesti , free pattern at Istex. I'm using Plymouth Galway Worsted from my stash of going-out-of-yarn-business wool, purchased at what used to be Knit & Hook. (It now only sells rug hooking supplies.)

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.

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.

Last Finished Objects for 2008

This week I finished two final projects for 2008.
Yesterday morning I finished the crochet edges around my vest from the "Quiviut Twinset" by Linda Romens, from The Natural Knitter. I loved knitting this sweater. It was so much fun, in a knitterly kind of way. It took me a little while to figure out the short rows to create the scalloping effect at the bottom, but it was worth it.

The yarn is Louet KidLin Lace Weight, which used to be called Kidlin Pixie. (No Quiviut in it at all, despite the pattern name. That's a bit beyond my budget right now.) The color is called "Smokey Grape", though the purple in it is very subtle & doesn't show much. I used somewhat less than 3 skeins, which were purchased at Kirkwood Knittery in Kirkwood, Missouri. The leftovers might be enough to make a lace cowl at some point.

I also have 6 skeins of this yarn in another dyelot, purchased at a big discount when a different Kirkwood LYS decided to sell off their yarn inventory & focus exclusively on wool rug-hooking. I cast on the matching "Quiviut Twinset" cardigan from that batch of skeins this past week, after finishing the knitting part of the vest. I wanted to finish the scallop part on the cardigan while I was still on vacation, with plenty of time to focus on it.


Yesterday afternoon was glorious & unseasonably warm, so I got unexpected knitting time in while taking the kids to the park. Because of that, I also finished the January socks this morning. Those are the socks which hadn't quite gotten done for Socktoberfest. I'm wearing the socks already, & will be wearing the vest to a New Years Party later on this evening as well.

2008 Wrap Up

I haven't been as good about keeping up with my blog this year as I have in the past. I blame Ravelry, since putting my projects there gives me less incentive to be sure they are documented here.

As much as Ravelry takes away from my blogging, though, it also helps me come up with information far more rapidly. One (of many) handy feature in Ravelry is the ability to sort projects by date completed, which makes figuring out what was completed in 2008 a whole lot easier.

2008 was the Year of the Hat & the Year of the UFO for me. I have to say that working on UFO's & knitting small things on big yarn can have an amazing effect on the number of completed items in a year. (Though the last two items I finished this year were neither pre-2008 UFO's or on bulky yarn.)

My final totals for 2008 are:

20 pairs of socks -- 14 of which were UFO's from prior years.
8 sweaters -- 1 child, 4 vest/sleeveless, & 3 with sleeves.
14 hats -- 12 of which were on bulky yarn.
5 neckwarmers
1 set fingerless mitts
1 scarf
1 shawl
& 7 squares for Warm Up America.
(8 charity items, since 1 hat was for charity.)

The 3 sweaters involving the most knitting were also UFO's from prior years.

According to Ravelry, I also have a lot fewer UFO projects on the needles right now, which was one of my big goals for 2008. I also managed to make it to more Knitting In Public events this year, though I wasn't able to participate in any classes. All in all, I have to say it was a good year, knitting-wise.

My only knitting-related regret for the year is that I haven't been able to keep up with posting on other knitter's blogs very well this year. Doing better with blogging is one of my goals for 2009, both keeping up with my own blog, & also keeping up with reading/commenting in a timely fashion.

Disappearing December

Where did two-thirds of December disappear to? Or, for that matter, the year 2008?

I don't have much in the way of finished objects to show for the past two months. The small items I did finish are Christmas presents, & thus aren't going on the blog yet.

My KIP/carry-around project for the month has been these socks. They are the "Christmas is Coming" colorway from Dyeabolical Yarns. I cast them on Thanksgiving afternoon, while waiting for the turkey to settle enough to have pumpkin pie.


The one finished item I can show is a hat that I knit for the Caps for Kids charity & handed in at the St. Louis Knitter's Guild luncheon.


I have finished both sleeves on my February Lady Sweater, but it remains to be seen whether or not I'll finish the body before the remainder of 2008 disappears.


I've barely touched my Susie Hoodie at all this month, & still have a little bit left to go on my lace vest. I'm hoping to finish the vest next weekend, in time to wear it to a New Years Eve party. That might very well end up the last Finised Object of 2008.

Where did November Go?

Last month went by in a big rush. There is no way I'll be able to sign up for anything like NaBloPoMo or NaNoWriMo until my kids are all grown & gone, that's for sure. (Well, maybe if I win the lottery & retire early -- unlikely since I never buy tickets.)

I didn't participate in the official NaKniSweMo, because I already have plenty of sweaters on the needles. Stash & Burn had a set-your-own-goal Sweater Contest for the month of November though, so I joined that & spent the month focusing on sweater knitting whenever possible. I didn't manage to finish any sweaters in November, though I did finish some Super-Secret-Gift-Knitting.

However, I made a lot more sweater progress than I would have without the contest. Here is the proof:

Socktoberfest Wrap Up

My final total of UFO socks completed for Socktoberfest doesn't quite match my UFOlympics total, even with a full month to work with. Life's always more hectic after school starts -- that's my excuse. Well, that & I was not faithful to the sock projects all month; I did do other knitting too.

My last completed pair was my J.Knits "Denver" socks. This yarn came from Knitorious, though J.Knits yarn is available at several of our LYSes in the area. The first sock was knit for Summer of Socks 2007. The second sock for the pair was cast on in November of 2007, so it was about time it got finished. (May I just say that I am so glad to be nearly finished with my one-sock-at-a-time UFO's? It's much easier & faster for me to do them both at once.)

In addition to the Lime & Violet "Suede Elvis" socks, during Socktober 2008 I also finished a pair for me in Lorna's Laces "Somerset" & a gift pair for my Mother-in-law in Paton's Croy. The Lorna's Laces came from a closeout sale when an LYS went out of business last year, & the Paton's sock yarn came from Chris' Needlecraft, back when I was first experimenting with knitting socks. It feels good to knit up some of the older yarns from my stash.

I also finished the feet of my "January" socks, in Sheepaints yarn from The Loopy Ewe. Since they didn't get finished during Socktoberfest, I'm not sure when they'll be completed. I've got other projects on the front burner for November. Maybe I'll get the January socks finished by January 2009, maybe not.


I hadn't cast on any new socks yet this fall, mostly from being burned out on all the sock knitting I did during the UFOlympics. All the empty needles finally started calling me, though, so I ended up casting on two new pairs last weekend. One of those pairs has the legs mostly finished already, because that was the project I took with me walking around with my Trick-or-Treaters. This is Mountain Colors Bearfoote in "Sapphire Trail", purchased either at Kirkwood Knittery or at Knitorious, I don't remember which. Both stores carry a good supply of Mountain Colors yarn.

Sock Tips on Saturday

In one of the Socktoberfest threads over on Ravelry, someone asked me about dividing skeins in half to knit both socks at once. (Did I say that I'm participating in Socktoberfest this year? No? Well, I am.)

It occurred to me after writing a big, long post over there, that it would be a good idea to share my trick here as well.

I first heard of the idea to use a scale for dividing yarn from the “Wendy Knits” blog. Here is how I do it whenever I am dividing a skein of yarn in half.

Necessary equipment: Kitchen scale – a digital one with the ability to display in grams works best.

Nearly necessary equipment: Ball winder – definitely easier if you have your own to use for this, but would be possible to wind by hand.

Optional equipment: A swift for winding the original yarn ball, but the process works just as well to divide a ball that was wound by your LYS.

Instructions for Dividing a Skein in Half

1. Take the single wound skein of sock yarn & weigh it. Don’t just go by the number on the ball band, because sometimes it’s off by a few grams.

2. Divide that number in half. This is your target number to have each half-skein weigh when you are done.

3. Make sure your scale & ball winder are set up near each other. You will have the yarn cake still set on the scale while you are winding the second yarn cake.

4. Taking from the center of the yarn cake, begin winding a second cake from the middle of the first one. (This is so that both cakes of yarn are wound in the same direction – it wouldn’t do to have your socks be reverse color pattern from each other.) I use my non-winding arm as a yarn guide by propping my elbow near the scale, to help the yarn come up straight out of the original yarn cake.

5. Keep an eye on the scale. When it starts to read within 5-10 grams or so of your target number, stop for a little bit & double-check how much the original yarn cake weighs. I like to stop & pick the yarn ball up, let the scale go to zero, & then re-weigh so that the momentum of the winding isn’t effecting the scale’s readout.

6. Wind more slowly from this point, until you reach your target number.

7. If you want to double-check before cutting, remove the new half-sized cake from the ballwinder & weigh it before cutting the yarn. As long as both cakes are within a gram or two of each other in weight, they should have about the same amount of yarn in each.

Here is a series of pictures illustrating what I mean. I've been meaning to write this up for a while, which is why these pictures are from last Fall. I use sandwich bags to hold each of my half-skeins of yarn after I’m finished dividing them. The second picture shows how the original yarn cake looks after the middle half has been wound to the other one. This is why I contain the halves in sandwich bags – they don’t stay as neatly together once the middle is removed. Plastic bags aren’t very “green” but I do re-use them as I knit up yarn, so at least I’m not adding to the landfill.



The yarn is "English Garden" by Scarlet Fleece, purchased at the Loopy Ewe. Yes, it has been wound for a year but I have yet to actually cast these socks on. Last Fall, when I started wearing my Summer of Socks 2007 socks, I realized my sock wardrobe was sadly lacking in black/grey to wear with black jeans, so pink/green/cream yarn suddenly wasn't a priority to knit up.

This trick also works for any other need to divide yarn in half, such as for mittens or gloves.

Finished Object for Friday

Earlier this week, I finished my second set of Socktoberfest Socks.

These are my standard plain vanilla sock pattern, with 80 stitches around on size 1 DPNs. The yarn is Lime N Violet's Mermaid Sock Yarn, in the colorway "Suede Elvis", purchased at the Loopy Ewe during the big STL Raveler's Yarn Crawl on Mother's Day Weekend.

Please note -- I am working on UFO socks for Socktoberfest this year. Yes, after the UFOlympics, I still have plenty more UFO sock pairs to deal with. I have managed to resist the urge to cast on new socks, at least, so my total number of socks on the needles is going down. The first socks I finished this month had been on the needles for a year & a half, & 3 out of the 5 of my UFOlympic socks were started in 2007, so it's progress to finish one of the pairs that I started this year, that have been on-the-needles less than 6 months.


These are also a good illustration of the knitting problems that I won't bother to go back & fix. After I was already knitting the foot, I realized that the decreases had wandered over by a stitch part way down the gusset of one sock. There was no way I was going to try to rip back to it. I compensated for the shift when I did the toe of that sock, so the structural integrity of the sock was not compromised.
I doubt anyone will ever notice. In fact, I have to look really closely to figure out which side of the gusset & which sock actually had the slight mis-alignment in the decreases.