Half FO

Hello Everyone!

Today I'm squeezing into the FO Friday club at the very last moment! I'll tell you what, I've been all messed up this week. I took a day off yesterday, and all day I kept thinking how it was such a shame that I hadn't finished my mitten in time to do a Friday post this week. The thought process continued until about noon today when I realized WAIT A MINUTE, FRIDAY IS TODAY.  I finished the mitt, and I figure that one whole finished  glove totally counts as finishing something, and is thus worth an FO post, right?



But I couldn't post yet. The way that I prevent the dreaded second sock syndrome (or glove in this case), is a simple easy rule : I alway cast on and knit at least four rows of the 2nd glove on the same day that I bind off the first. The reasoning is simple. It's because I hate casting on and joining in the round. I hate it. It's my absolute least favorite knitting thing to do. I'd even rather weave in ends than do it. So yeah. I made myself do that. (Although secretly it's possibly I will have to re-do it since the tubular cast on sort of kicked my ass today, but that's another story. )

Anyway I was being good and casting on, and then I asked Aaron what he wanted to do about dinner, and before I knew it a dinner of wine and pizza was happening, and then there was some multiplayer Minecraft, and an epic adventure to find sheep and bring them across varied terrain back to our established base of operations and..... well to cut off an incredibly dull story, here I am posting later better than never!




Check out Tami's for more (hopefully complete) FO's!

Startitis Excuse

Hello everyone,

Today I am dangerously close to starting a new project. Why?  I had intended to finish the first glove from my Endpaper Mitts project yesterday, however I do not have the darning needle I need for the tubular bind off (it got left at my old place. )
I also can't knit on the sleekit mitts for the same reason, and even if I wanted to give interim another go, the yarn for that it also not here with me. So I concluded that I should start a new project with the yarn I have with me. I have some turquoise Tosh Lace just begging to be knit up, so I pulled out the old ball winder and swift



This yarn is destined to become the Bramble Shawl, because you can never have too many pretty lace shawls IMHO.





Of course, halfway through winding the yarn a little voice in the back of my head starting speaking. you know it said. You do have a perfectly good project you could be finishing instead, right?



I tried to ignore it, but the reality is that I DO have one, in all of it's beaded glory, waiting patiently for attention.

I don't know how long I can resist the temptation of gloriously plain knitting in the face of all of these impossibly small beads....

Homemaking & WIP

Hello Everyone,

Before I get into today's WIPs, I'd like to veer off topic for a bit. This weekend I had the opportunity to go to an introduction to sheep class - as someone who really really wants to dive right off into the fiber-addict deep end, I've been looking forward to this class for several weeks. I had it marked on my calendar, I had the map-quest instructions ready...but at the last minute I chickened out. I didn't go.
Its rare for other things to override my fiber hobby, but the other notable thing that happened this past week is that I bought a house, and suddenly I found myself waiting for furniture to be delivered, taking all the plastic and Styrofoam out of the appliances, and running around the house taking all of the choking hazard tags off of the blinds. This combined with my innate fear of driving anywhere by myself, and my inability to convince Aaron to come with me to look at sheep..... Sigh. I feel like a bit of a failure, from a spinning/knitting perspective.

Anyway, It feels good to get that off my chest. I'm a little disappointed in how easy it is for me to be derailed from my goals... (although arguably I had a pretty good reason!)

To that end, I've started one new project this week, and plunged into the depths of my craft stash to pull a second project out of hibernation.

The new project is a pair of Sleekit Mitts knit with some Dream in color left over from another project. I'd take a picture, but I think I might have packed them....


The Jeweled Cowl  is a project that I was wildly excited about when I first started it, but that through no fault of it's own, got quietly pushed to the background over the Holidays.

I think it's going to be awesome when it's done, so I'm making an effort to get back into it... So many beads!

FO : Wurm

Hello everyone,

Today I have an extra special FO to show you all. It started with a Christmas present from my sister

5.2 oz of BFL that got spun up on my drop spindle.  This braid contained most of my favorite colors. Purples, blues, grays... It was gorgeous. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to N-ply it, because that's the only way I know how to easily preserve the color transition with plying, and I didn't want it to be all barber-pole like. Those yarns are pretty to look at but I'm never sure what to knit with them. Besides I thought it would mute out the colors and make them all look muddy. 

I wanted to spin fingering weight - and parts of the finished yarn ARE fingering weight - but over all it's a solid worsted yarn. WPI varies between 8-12, and it ended up surprisingly even all things considered. Not that there weren't patches of too-thick or too-thin spots. But over all, I'm very proud of how the whole project turned out. 

Normally for spinners, I guess this would be the "end" of the "finished" spinning project. But of course I'm still mostly a knitter, so I couldn't wait to make something with the yarn. I cast on the Wurm hat with US6 needles, and did almost 5 repeats of the rib pattern before being forced to decrease and bind off - used all put a small bit of the yarn. Love the pattern, love the hat. Love everything. 

My favorite part of the pattern is that the brim is doubled. You knit 21 rows, with a purl row in the middle, fold it up, and knit around picking up and knitting together 1 live stitch with 1 stitch from the CO edge. Brilliant, and supper warm, without having to knit the whole thing doubled or with bulky weight ^__^

 

Don't stop here, you know you want to see more FOs

WIP to the dregs

Good morning!

I'm experimenting a little today with blogging from my phone... 

Good afternoon. That experiment failed the moment I tried to add photos to the equation. So much for being tech-savvy.

Just an observation, but I might be turning into a single-project knitter. I was going to post about progress on my wurm hat, But


Spoiler Alert: 




I may have finished it yesterday




That leaves me with only the endpapers mitts to talk about today. I'm halfway through the first mitt but it doesn't really look any different from the last time I blogged about it. So there are no new pictures. It's hard to feel motivated to knit something that never seems to get any bigger.

Still haven't restarted the interim mitts after frogging them for the 2nd time, so I'm spending a lot of time looking at my queue longingly. There's a lace shawl I've been looking forward to...

Don't forget to check out more WIPs at Tami's

FO : Juneberry Triangle

Hello Everyone,

Today's FO is the Juneberry Shawl. I bought the yarn + Pattern at Fibre Space over the Christmas Holidays and cast on the project on January 2nd.  

I don't even know where to begin talking about this pattern. It is perfect, and was totally lovely to knit. I enjoyed every minute of it. 

The Charts for this pattern are just gorgeous to look at, and while it's complicated enough to be stimulating, I had no problem watching TV while knitting this, and even took it to work/class to work on the last bit of chart D. 

I also really enjoying working the knit-on-edging. It's a simple enough technique and yet I'm always a little surprised that it works out when I'm finished. I saw a lot of finished projects on Ravelry that claimed to do this pattern with only 3 skeins of Shelter, but I finished the 3rd skien at the halfway point of the edging. Thank goodness I was paranoid enough to buy 4 skeins! 

I choose to knit this with the suggest yarn, Brooklyn-tweed Shelter, and I do not regret that decision at all. I think it's pretty much the perfect match for the pattern. 

I love the rustic feel of the wool, and the design really pops out. The cables are neatly defined and the YO's are crisp. However, I should warn  you, if you are considering this yarn and are in any way sensitive to wool, I wouldn't recommend it. It's not exactly itchy, but it's not soft either. It's not going to be something you want to snuggle up to your face even if you aren't wool-sensitive, and if you actively search for "really soft" yarn, this just isn't it. 

Another thing to consider is the large amount of vegetable matter in the yarn. The yarn itself is clean and smells great, but I did find myself picking a decent amount of straw/grass out of it as I knit it up. I didn't find it to be that big a deal, and it certainly wont stop me from knitting with this yarn again in the future, but it's something that might bother other people. 

All in all, I am very pleased. 

Pattern : Juneberry Triangle

Yarn : Brooklyn Tweed Shelter (3 1/2)  

Color: Barn Owl

Needles : US7

CO : 2JAN13

BO : 24FEB13

See more FO's at Tami's!