Happy New Year, friends! I started 2012 in the best way possible: brunch with friends followed by a day of knitting. As if this wasn’t wonderful enough, I even finished making something beautiful. Check it out:
This is a scarf for moi, made from Lexy Lu’s free Foreign Correspondent pattern and a single skein of Madelinetosh Tosh Merino Light in the Stovepipe colorway. I had this pattern in my queue forever and the Loopy Ewe’s 2011 Fourth Quarter Challenge was just the push I needed to get started on it.
The pattern is simple and well-written, but it is not mindless. I had to pay some attention (so no reading). I worked on this while watching TV and listening to audio books. Credit is due to author David Grann, whose book The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon is so compelling that it pulled me through at least the last two feet of this scarf. I’m hoping the second half of the book can work its magic on my Laar sleeves this week.
Stovepipe is not the softest colorway of Tosh yarn I’ve worked with. I think this gorgeous navy shade comes at a tactile cost. It softened considerably in the blocking, though. The scarf used all but about 8″ of my one skein of yarn. The finished, blocked product is 7″ x 75″—plenty long for me.
While the scarf has an obvious right and wrong side, I was pleased to see that the wrong side looks okay, especially in this dark color. See:
As you may have noticed, the color looks different every time I photograph this yarn. I think capturing the color far exceeds my photographic ability and may not actually be possible, so if any of you want to see the color accurately, we may need to meet in person. Please let me know when you are free.
Project notes on Ravelry
Are you sitting down? I hope so because I don’t want anyone to fall over with shock when I tell you something exciting. Ready?
I finished a knitting project!
This is my new scarf, made from some Fleece Artist Merino 2/6 that has been in my stash forever and could not previously decide its purpose in life. Fortunately, it cooperated well with Jane Richmond’s Rae pattern—a garter stitch triangular scarf.
I made good use of my kitchen scale throughout this project. Before casting on, I weighed my skein and divided the weight by half. A few grams before reaching that halfway mark (just to be on the safe side), I began decreasing.
I’ve been wearing this scarf all the time since I finished it and trying to find a good opportunity to get a photograph of me modeling it for you, but the weather (cloudy, rainy) and my schedule is not cooperating. For now, please imagine my head sticking out from the center of this cozy wool goodness:
See it on Ravelry, too.
Given that so many of the tasks in the rest of my life lately are huge undertakings with long time horizons, knitting projects that are quickly and easily completed have special appeal for me these days. Today I’m sharing the latest case in point: fingerless mitts.
I started with this:
One lonely skein of Wisdom Sonnet yarn, a wool-silk blend with long color repeats. It is similar to Noro Silk Garden, but softer and thicker. I rescued this sad little skein from the back of a clearance bin at my local Tuesday Morning discount shop awhile ago. I believe I paid about $2.50 for the 93 yard skein.
Well, friends, those 93 yards with very little knitting effort quickly became these:
Wonderfully fraternal soft green and blue mitts! Score!
I used a free pattern from Ravelry (Camp Out Fingerless Mitts by Tante Ehm) and US size 6 needles. I’m kind of in love with Tante’s pattern. The construction is interesting, starting with the garter stitch band around the hands and then picking up stitches for cuff. Since these are worked from the finger-side down, they are a great way to use up a small amount of yarn. Oddments of leftovers, handspun, etc. all would be perfect for this simple pattern. I think you could easily adjust the pattern to accommodate any gauge with some very simple maths.
Now I just need a cool morning around here so I can wear these. Come on fall!
I’m beginning to wonder if knit pattern designer Jane Richmond is now or ever has been a graduate student. Or maybe she just knows a lot of graduate students? Her patterns seem designed just to suit my current “mid-term” state of mind (which is a bleary kind of mental exhaustion that doesn’t seem fair or appropriate for this early in the semester).
I recently summoned all of my knitting gusto and time, which wasn’t much, and was able to produce one of Jane’s Autumn hats in such short order that I literally almost forgot to tell you guys about it.
I used the recommended yarn, Lion Brand Wool Ease Thick and Quick, that I purchased at my local big-box craft store for around $5 and ginormous size 11 and 13 needles (8 and 9 mm respectively). After months of knitting on needles of 4mm diameter or less, these babies felt like broomsticks in my hands. But in the time it took me to watch a movie with my husband, I had this cute hat.
There is enough yarn left from the 1 skein I used to make a toddler sized version of the hat, and Jane thoughtfully provided a tiny pattern for that which she includes when you download the grown up size. How cool is that? Now I just need to locate a toddler with cold ears to knit for.
This won’t be my last Autumn hat! Or the last time I look to Jane Richmond for simple, cool patterns.
After a very late night of knitting last week, I completed my Acer cardigan, just in time for the third Camp Loopy deadline. It was a close call on the KAL front, but except for the timing everything about this sweater came together beautifully.
I used almost 5 full skeins of Cascade 220 wool to work the pattern in size 36 almost exactly as written. My only real modification was to work the sleeves from the top down, which I did because my swatch grew quite a bit in blocking and I was worried I might have to adjust the sleeve length (in the end, the sleeves turned out the right length).
This was my very first time working sleeves that way and I’m generally pleased with how they turned out. The fit of the rest of the sweater is excellent. It is an extremely well-designed pattern that I think would flatter lots of different people. I was pleasantly surprised that the cable pattern is pretty easy to memorize as well and I didn’t feel like I had to consult the chart every single row.
That said, I did mess up the cables on the front once at the beginning, and if you recall, I promised you a tutorial on how I fixed it without starting the whole project over. Now that the sweater is finished up, I hope to get that tutorial written very soon.
This certainly won’t be my last sweater by Amy Christoffers. I’ve already got my eye on White Pine and I wouldn’t rule out making another Acer either. It fits that well!
Now I just have to wait for the weather to cool down so I can wear my new cardigan.
