Slowly but surely, I think I am getting myself out from under my big pile of long-suffering knitting projects and back on the road to some new stuff.
Thanks everyone for your encouragement and some great ideas for busting out of my knitting rut in the comments on Friday. Thanks in part to your feedback, I think the worst of the rut is behind me.
A key to success was finally finishing the last bits of, eh, finishing on the shrug I’ve been working on. The knitting has been done on this for awhile, but I needed to set in sleeves, sew up a band on the collar and block the whole thing. The results turned out great, if I do say so myself!
View from the Front
From the front, this is a plain short-sleeved shrug (held closed here with a vintage pin). In the back, there is a cute surprise. . .
View from the Back
Cabled angel wings! I had the honor of test knitting this fabulous pattern, called Früling Wings, for the very talented Teresa of Canary Knits. From this project, I discovered that I actually kind of enjoy making sweaters from fingering weight. It takes longer, but the results just look so good! This is a great pattern, with lots of cool knitterly features such as a knitted hem, cables on both sides (knit and purl), a sewn on neckband, and grafted shoulders.
I modified the pattern slightly by working most of the body in stockinette stitch; Teresa’s pattern calls for reverse stockinette so the “wings” really pop. I confess I made my mod mostly by accident, but I am happy with the results because I prefer the look of sleeves set into knit stitches rather than purls. I worked the Medium size and it used about 750-yards of fingering weight sock yarn.
If you aren’t already reading Teresa’s blog, you really should be. Watch there for details on the release of this pattern.
I’m also happy to report that I’m about to turn the heel on my long-running yellow Hedera socks. These work up so fast when I am actually working on them! I made the whole leg section in just the few hours I had to knit this weekend. Could I be wearing these later this week? We’ll see…
