Category: sweaters

  • plus and minus

    Plus: Pictures of the finished Irving Park socks! They’re great.

    Irving Park socks
    Pattern: basic sock, 64 stitches on US0 (2 mm) Clover dpn
    Yarn: Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock, Irving Park
    Started: September 20, 2005
    Finished: October 1, 2005

    Plus: the v-neck of Cloud is perfect.

    Plus: I cast on for two more pairs of socks, the Vera knee socks (oy…these are going to take awhile) and some Knitpicks ones for class knitting.

    Minus: crappy nighttime indoor photos in this post. Sorry.

    Minus: I put Cloud in the dryer for awhile, then took it out while still a bit damp and laid it flat to dry. Bad news is it’s almost 20″ across, so a 40″ chest – I was aiming for 35″, although I knew as I was knitting it that it was going to be bigger than that. I’d hoped for about 37-38″, but there you go. It’ll probably still be wearable anyway, but meh. I’m REALLY not ripping it.

    Somewhere in between: I’m firmly on the beach of Sleeve Island, as I’m working the second sleeve of Simply Autumn and still the first sleeve of Katy. Where’s my cocktail?

  • gettin’ things done

    Now that the camera’s fully charged, it’s a glut of photos!

    I finished the first tier (of three) of the koigu skirt!

    There’s a difference between the skeins I’ve used so far; three of the hexagons are darker than the others of this size. Doesn’t matter much to me, though. It’ll all work out.

    But, there’s a slightly bigger problem – this:

    See those 4 rows of stockinette? They’re three-needle bound off with right sides together, putting the bulgy bit on the back – see?

    But those rows look weird among the garter stitch. Funnily enough, just as I was resizing that photo, I figured out how to fix it – pick up the stitches with the wrong side facing (rather than the right side) and do the three-needle bind off the same way I did. D’oh. I’ll try doing that on the next hexagon, and if it works out I’ll have to undo all these ones and redo them. Maybe.

    Meanwhile, Katy’s hanging out and I’m super excited! It’s just the sweater I want to be wearing under my jean jacket on the cool days (supposed to be dipping below 10C by the end of the week!).

    In other sweater news, I’ve also finally picked up the stitches around the neck of Cloud and I’m just finishing it off. Should be done tonight, but then it needs a blocking before the final reveal.

    I’ve got a lasagna in the oven – gotta run!

  • rough start, but easy going

    I started a new sweater, out of Blue Sky Alpacas cotton, inspired by “Simply Marilyn” from last spring’s Interweave (pattern is available free here). Inspired by, only, because I’ve got a different gauge, slightly different cable, difference construction, ribbing, etc. Much planning was involved to figure out how I could get the centre cable to come out of the ribbing, while having the total number of stitches be somewhere in my range.

    With 11 stitches to go on my long-tail cast-on, I ran out of yarn.

    And well, my carefully planned ribbing still didn’t quite work out, but it was close enough. Smooth sailing now, and it’s just lovely.

    Since it’s the perfect autumn colour and style, I’m going to go with “simply autumn”. It’s a quick knit with aran weight yarn, the chunkiest I’ve used in awhile. I want to start another sweater, chunkier than this one, soon – but I’ll have to finish something else first.

    I finally managed to weave in all the ends on Cloud, so as soon as I find time to knit the neckband we’ll be in business. Oh, and those irving park socks are pretty much done – just one bout of kitchener and some weaving in of ends. Hm, now I need to cast on for some more socks for commuter knitting!

    The fact that the yarn cake of blue sky cotton, sitting on my desk, has remained pristine is an endless source of amusement – I’m feeling rather stressed at the moment with school, you see. It’s going to get worse long before it gets better!