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!
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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.
....is to knit something that drives you absolutely batshit crazy, so that you can only work on it in small doses at a time. Here is my current project of woe:
Lovely, isn't it? That's Alchemy Silk Purse, and the scarf is this pattern. I bought it because I've always wanted to try it, and it was on super-duper-irresistable sale. It is currently known as Jason's Mom's Scarf (see, getting around the stash guilt by making into a gift!), though whether I'll actually finish the scarf before I go completely insane remains to be seen. The silk is lovely and soft, but it is also slubby and a single ply so there tends to be a lot of snagging and halo-ing (especially if you've had to tink back as much as I've had to). Also, the silk totally sticks to my bamboo needles, so much so that I'm considering giving metal needles a try, even though I find them icky and hand-hurty. Lesser of two evils, perhaps? In addition, the two balls of yarn are completely different shades of purple (not sure if you can make it out in the picture), so I have to do that annoying alternating rows thing. One of the drawbacks of buying handdyed yarn from an online store, I guess. Anyway, the yarn is yummy, and the pattern is quite attractive, but the knitting experience has not exactly been a walk in the park so far. Then again, I'm supposed to be doing this in small doses (if at all), and this is definitely keeping me from overexerting myself. =)
Hurrah, hurrah, some finished knit items! All knit from stash, enabling me to subtract around 20 skeins (23 if we count all half-skeins as "used" =P) from the stash total. Which should make me feel really good and free to go buy more yarn, right? Funnily enough, I don't really feel like it. I like this knitting-from-stash thing so far. Of course, I'm not actually supposed to be knitting right now....and I'm not really, I promise! OK, onto the unveiling. Here is the Mission Falls Log Cabin Blanket, finished and bordered and with all the ends woven in (which are in the back, of course): 
Next up, a quickie garter stitch scarf knit in Colinette Zanziba using 7 mm needles (fun pink plastic Crystal Palace Daisy needles!). I used 2 skeins, one in colour 100 (Gauguin) and one in colour 101 (Monet), alternating every 2 rows. These skeins were my very first Colinette purchase, and will probably be my last, since I've discovered that I'm not really the hugest fan of bulky yarns. 
And finally, a sweater! My second sweater! A fun cabled short-sleeved Michael Kors sweater, from the Holiday 2005 issue of Vogue Knitting. Knit using Jaeger Extra Fine Merino Aran, colour 552. The seams still need a light steaming, but I thought I'd show it you anyway. It was hard to take a picture of myself wearing it. 
Here is a closeup of the 3 patterns used in the sweater. A diamond-with-berry thing, regular ol' braided cables, and a berry stitch pattern that was quite the pain in the arse. I'm very glad that I knit this thing in the sweater class, because the directions for the neck shaping in the front were just plain wrong, and I probably wouldn't have been able to figure it out myself. I'm finding that a lot of patterns have mistakes in them. 
There is this one glaring (to me) mistake in the sweater, but everyone insists that they would never see it unless I specifically pointed it out to them, so I'll resist the urge to point out my deficiencies as a knitter and just leave it at that. =)Where is my first sweater, you ask? That blue cardigan-thing? Well, it's completely done, except I haven't sewn the buttons on yet. I'm debating whether I even want buttons. That thing was such a chore to knit. Pictures some other time, when I feel like lugging it out. =)So how do I feel, with two sweaters under my belt? I'm not sure I'm really a knitter-of-sweaters. I feel like I get bored too easily, that the novelty wears off. It was only having the sweater class that kept me motivated to keep knitting. So I'm taking a break from that for now, since I've been having wrist issues, and turning my attention to smaller projects and thinking about Christmas presents. It's never too early to plan!
