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.

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...

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.

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.

Cable Fixing

Some cable errors can be left in if it's a matter of a wrong direction crossover 20 rows down. When an error in a travelling cable interferes with going forward in the project, however, there's nothing to do but to fix it. This time, I decided to document the fix, in case it helps anyone else who runs into a similar issue.

I thought I had the Susie Hoodie cable chart memorized, but a four or five rows later, it became apparent that I had started to turn the outside cables back towards the middle two rows early. Oops!

Because the body of the Susie Hoodie is knit all in one piece, tinking back all those rows would be a LOT of stitches. (Not to mention how much of a pain it is to frog mohair.) Therefore, re-knitting just the offending cable sections was the solution.

I put stitch holders through the stitches below the first wrong sets, as extra insurance. For the correct stitches on the very edge of the sweater, a stitch marker of the plastic safety-pin type was the perfect solution to hold only 3 stitches. Then I undid just the stitches I would need to re-knit.

I normally prefer metal DPNs, but wooden ones are great for something like this. When working with only a very few stitches, they stay in place better on wood, & the needle is less likely to fall out.


I re-knit the stitches with the cable travel starting on the correct row. Once the cable closest to the edge had been fixed, I used a wooden DPN to hold all the correct stitches while working on the cable closest to the body of the sweater.

For the side of the sweater where the yarn was, I did go ahead & tink back the entire purl-across-the-cable section, & re-knit all 20-something stitches before resuming work on the sweater.

The cable fix was a bit time consuming to do, but considering how long it takes me to knit each row of the Susie Hoodie, I think I came out ahead by fixing it this way versus frogging 5 rows & re-knitting.

The Main Event (a.k.a. Part 3)

Because I order the book & event tickets over the phone, I walked down the hill from The Studio at 6 p.m. to pick up my book & my tickets early. Here are pictures of the growing crowd, at 6:15, 6:30, & almost 7:00




I wore my Icarus shawl to this book signing, since no one in Kansas City would have seen it before. The hand-dyer of this yarn, Rachel of Dyeabolical, now has her own website for her roving & yarn.

(Excuse the blurry photo -- lack of experience modelling, plus Knitters have trouble keeping their hands still anyway.)




I first encountered Stephanie Pearl-McPhee when she visited St. Louis in 2006. At the time, I'd only recently picked the needles back up, & had yet to read any knit bloggers or knitting books, so the sock photo thing was new to me then. This time, I had a much better idea of what was going on. (Stash = yarn, for one thing. Not my first thought a couple years ago.)

The view from the other side of the sock, & perspective from the other side of the podium, can be found here, as if you didn't know that already.

Stephanie was her usual witty self. We all listened, & laughed, & knit. I haven't laughed so much in ages. My knitting may not care how loud I laugh, but I hope I didn't disturb anyone around me. They were laughing as well, so hopefully not.


In between the laughter, it was amazing how quiet the crowd became at more serious moments. There was a perfect blend of insightful in between the amusing.

It was great to be part of crowd where it was the most normal thing in the world for everyone's hands to be busy, & it was taken for granted that knitting adds to concentration, rather than knitting taking anything away from the experience.


We all kept knitting while waiting to wait in line. (I forgot to ask the bookstore folks if any of their other crowds for author signings were as patient as ours was.) I briefly considered counting a four hour drive as a special circumstance worth "pre-boarding", but decided against it for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that I was having too much fun to cut the evening short. Besides, continueing to knit & wait meant that I got to see Delores On the Fibertarian Tour.

All in all, it was a wonderful evening, & well worth the drive from St. Louis.

What's On My Needles This Wednesday

I've managed to *somewhat* restrain the Cast-On-Everything-Possible impulse since
finishing the UFOlympics, but I have started two new, large projects to replace the two sweaters I finished.
Both newly-started sweater projects are using yarn that has been in my stash for quite some time. I'm doing the Susie Hoodie from More Big Girl Knits, in Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride Worsted yarn. I'm loving this pattern so far.
The other sweater I started is the February Lady sweater, in Colorado Yarns Knitaly. I'm stalled while I figure out how I want to place the increases in the eyelet increase row. I'm also not sure I'm happy with where the button holes ended up in the yoke. I didn't stop to think that the length between button-holes was written for the small size. I wish I'd left a couple more rows between the button-holes, but I can't decide whether or not I want to try to frog this yarn.


I also have some smaller new projects on the needles. I started a pair of Dashing mitts, from Knitty. They are further along than this picture shows. I'm waiting until I have some quiet time this weekend to do the thumbs, & I hope to have them done by my birthday.

I'm also playing around with making mitts from leftover sock yarn. As you can see, however, I made the thumb hole just a *bit* big on this one.

Finished Objects for Friday

First off, thank-you to all the kind comments regarding my UFOlympic knitting! It feels good to not have quite so many UFO's lying around anymore.

However, I haven't felt like working on any other UFO's since then, nor have I felt like starting or working on any big projects.

These last couple weeks have been all about the quick, easy, & relatively mindless. I got a jump on "Single Skein September" & finished off two lovely hand-dyed DK-weight J.Knits skeins that I found on the clearance shelf at Chris' Needlecraft.

The first pattern I found on Jeanne Knits blog & decided it would be perfect for one of my single skeins. The yarn I used is J.Knits "Massachusetts" -- a single skein of the DK weight 100% superwash wool.

It's the Good Luck Cowl from Drop Stitch Knitter. I managed to use almost all of the entire skein, & was actually a little bit worried that I might run out of yarn on the bind off. This picture shows exactly how much yarn I had left when I finished.



This is the Easy Eyelet Gaiter pattern from the book Arctic Lace. I used about 30 grams of leftover Dyeabolical sock yarn, hand-dyed by Rachel in the "African Grey" colorway. I managed to use nearly every foot of yarn I had left of this skein also.

I had quite a bit of yarn left after finishing my African Grey socks during the UFOlympics. (I started them all the way back in August 2007.) It took me a year to finish the socks, but only about a week to finish the neckwarmer.

The last picture is a view of it turned inside-out. I like how the pattern looks on the wrong side nearly as well as the right side, which will be good if it gets folded over while wearing.

I finished a third neckwarmer using my second single skein of DK J.Knits. However, I'm in the process of writing up the pattern for it, so that Finished Object will have it's own post.

Sunday Sweater & Socks (Final UFOlympics Update)

I kept working on my UFOlympics projects right down to the wire. I ended up finishing two more Works In Progress by Sunday morning.

**Project Specs**
**Yarn:** 3 skeins of Cascade Sierra yarn as part of my efforts at Stashdown 2008
**Needles:** Addi Turbo sized 8 & 9 (US)
**Pattern:** Lutea Lace Shell from Interweave Knits

**Finished:** August 23 2008
Originally started June 29th, 2008. I set this sweater aside after easy-KIP-Stockinette-in-the-Round was completed, in favor of working on my Green Mirage sweater earlier this summer. I added this to my WIPs wrestling just in case I managed to finish my other UFOlympics sweaters, since I wanted to be able to wear this sweater at least once or twice before summer is over.


**Project Specs**
**Yarn:** 1 skein of Lime & Violet Shuanmi Squared yarnin colorway Agate
**Needles:** Metal DPN's sized 0 & 1 (US)
**Pattern:** My standard plain-vanilla, with eye-of-partridge heel & 80 stitches around.


**Finished:** August 24 2008 (Finished knitting toes while watching the men's basketball gold-medal match live in the wee hours of Saturday night/Sunday morning US Central time. Kitchenered Sunday morning.)

These socks were originally started back in December of 2007. The socks are my eighth and final Finished Object for this Olympics!

I'm thrilled with how many mostly-done projects I managed to clear off my needles in the past 16 days. I guess I just needed some motivation.

Sunday Socks

It's not often that I have Sunday Socks to follow Saturday Socks, but sitting around watching the Olympics is giving me all sorts of knitting time. I'm sure I'll pay for that later, given the state of my house, but at least I still feel like I'm accomplishing something!

Project Specs
Yarn: 2 skeins of AppleLaine Apple Pie from the Loopy Ewe
Needles: Metal DPN's sized 0 & 2 (US)
Pattern: My standard plain-vanilla, with eye-of-partridge heel & 72 stitches around.

Finished: August 17 2008 Finished knitting toes while watching swimming Saturday night. (Which was Sunday morning in China.) Kitchenered Sunday morning after watching interview with Micheal Phelps & his family. I think I'll call these my "Water Cube" socks.

These socks were originally started back on May 11th 2008. This is my fourth Finished Object for this Olympics!