So, I really should have done this a while ago, but I wanted to post up a picture of something my good friends Elaine and Carolyn gave me for my birthday. I took a picture really close up (remember the whole Eye Spy thing on the back of OWL Magazine? ^__^), so see if you can guess what it is. You ready?
Ta~da!! Needless to say, I am loving it and send huge thank you's to them.
Also, while Mita came to visit me at PMH, she happened to see me wearing some wrist-warmers. It's bloody cold in the office, so I can't get by without them. Well, this prompted her to ask me if I could make a pair for her, and who was I to say no to a request? So, we went off to Lettuce Knit to pick out some yarn. Silly me didn't take a picture of the yarn after I bought it, but here's a nice little pic of the FO (along with me being silly)
Lastly, I am getting closer and closer to finishing my Clapotis after having frogged the entire thing all the way back in...uh...I think it was July. I have one more 'official' straight row to go, but I might make it longer considering the fact that I decided to make this Clapotis a bit more narrow. I haven't decided yet. How much more do the decrease rows and finishing rows add?
I've also started the Icarus Shawl from the Summer 2006 Interweave. I'm not quite ready to show pictures of it yet. It hardly looks like anything yet. But I'm finding more and more that lace weight yarn makes me annoyed. Next time I make lace stuff, I might pick a slightly weightier yarn.
Right-o. Got off my lazy butt and took some pictures.
Here's a Branching Out scarf that I made for myself out of Cotton Patine. It's a nice fall scarf and I wear it a lot right now. The only thing I don't like about it is the fact that you don't always seen the pattern clearly when you're wearing it.
And here's a cable hat that I made out of Blue Sky Alpaca (it's hard to see the cables because of the color choice. sorry). I used two strands knit together to make it nice and warm, and super soft. I originally made it for Jamie, but he doesn't want it because he can't fold up the bottom and have it still cover his ears. Never mind the fact that you're not supposed to fold up the bottom. Oh well. It was fun to knit up. But yeah...see what I mean about knitting things for people who won't wear them? Guess that means I should only knit for myself since I'll be sure to use whatever it is I make!
2006/09/13 Edit: Guess I was sufficiently ticked off last night that Jamie decided to reconsider not wanting the hat. He said that he'll give it a try, and maybe change is good.
I have decided that long car trips are great. While Jamie drove us to Ottawa, I got myself a lot of knitting done. Little by little, I will chip away at my stash!!
Okay, so first up we have the multidirectional scarf that I had pretty much finished, but decided to frog.
I ended up decreasing the number of stitches in it, as well as increasing the needle size to US11. Those two changes ended up making a huge difference in the way the scarf turned out. Using just two skeins of Silk Garden, I was able to make what was pretty much a 8-9 foot scarf. So, now I have a third skein of the same stuff that I had bought just in case, and I need to think of something to do with it. The photo of it didn't really turn out that well, but I think you've made enough multidirectional scarves to know what they look like!
Next, is the a 2x2 ribbed hat that I made from the Alchemy that the wonderful Adrienne gave me in our yarn swap, which I can't really call a swap because she never took anything from my stash in the end!
I originally thought I'd make the hat for Jamie, but he decided that the colour of the hat was too girly for him.
It's sometimes hard to try and take a photo of your own head!
>
The thing I'm most proud about the hat project is the fact that I started it in the car on the way back from Ottawa (including winding the yarn), and was pretty much done by the time we got home. It was a nice, fun knit, and the Alchemy yarn was great to work with. It's really soft when it knits up, and the hat itself is quite squishy feeling due to the slightly larger than recommended needle size that I used. Unfortunately, it doesn't match with any coats that I own! Ha ha!!
Because I totally suck, I have been delinquent in putting up these photos. But as I promised in my last post, here are the photos I took of the peacock feathers shawl. The pics were taken while I was blocking the sucker, and let me tell you, it's not easy blocking something like that when you've got two curious kitties around. The computer room wasn't big enough for me to do the best job with the blocking, but I still think it turned out okay. I was running out of room to stand in if you believe it!
Here's a closer look at the lace pattern taken from a slightly different angle.
So, I actually managed to finish that Peacock Feather's shawl for my dance teacher (photos to come). It definitely was a learning experience. I learned that while I love my Denise interchangeables, they can be a pain for large projects where you need to chain a whole bunch of those connector pieces together. My loops would get caught on the joints, and it kinda drove me nuts sometimes. Also, I learned that you can't always trust what they say on the pattern for the amount of yarn that you'll need. I got two skeins of the Jaeggerspun (which is REALLY nice to work with, and I highly recommend it), but it turned out not to be enough. I had to end the shawl early and thankfully was able to finish the crochet chain binding (another new thing that I learned!). And even still, the shawl turned out HUGE! It was just kinda weird though, cuz that made me feel like I wasn't knitting tightly enough, but they even say in the instructions to knit more loosely. Oh well.
I think I'm going to move back to smaller, more recreational projects soon. Blocking that sucker was pretty hard. And back to stash busting!! I really need to make a serious dent in it.
I just finished a sock. A toe-up sock. And I started the second sock. Then I discovered that the first sock is actually too big. More specifically, the toe on the first sock is knit too loosely and that resulted in the rest of the sock being too big (I always knit a certain # of rows for the foot, that is how boring I am when it comes to knitting socks, it appears that I always do the same damned thing because I like the mindlessness of it all). Now the second toe is done, and it is much tighter and smaller. So what to do with the first toe? Rip out the whole sock? Cut the yarn and reknit the toe, and graft the stitches back together? Both of those things will really awaken the anxiety-ridden perfectionist monster in me and make me cry and cause way more stress than I need right now. So it looks like maybe I will just have to learn to live with yet another pair of mismatched socks. It's a funny thing, I pretty much lose interest in my socks once I'm done knitting them. I fret incessantly about minor imperfections when I'm actually working on the socks, but then I completely forget about them afterwards. I do wear them sometimes, but I don't really knit socks for the pleasure of wearing handknitted socks, but more for the joy of working with pretty yarn. Process knitter indeed.
