Just hours before the end of 2008, I wanted to make one last post for the heck of it. First off, here's a little something I made for my mom for Christmas that I forgot to post about.
A pair of Fetching wrist warmers made of the same Berroco Alpaca that I made mine out of. I modified the pattern to make mine extra long, but I didn't do the same for my mom's. When I gave them to her, she was a bit puzzled as to what to use them for, but hopefully she'll find them as useful as I find mine.
As some of you might already know, the hubby and I are now house-hunting. We're packing up our condo in preparation for putting it up on the market, so that means a HUGE de-clutter, and sending a ton of things into storage. And so, my knitting corner had to disappear from the premises (ack!). I've had to select a few key skeins to tide me over, but the rest had to be packed away. So here it is. My entire stash.
Yes Adrienne, that includes all that Silk Garden you were so kind to bring me. I seriously thought I had more yarn than that. Maybe I can treat myself to some more yarn when we've got ourselves a house :)
Have a safe and happy New Year's celebration, everyone! See you all in 2009!!
First off, I wanted to thank everyone for their very helpful input. After reading all the comments, and thinking about it a bit more, I've decided to continue with the sweater. As for my own thoughts, I have to say that I really love the way the cables look. But like Adrienne said, the check pattern on the sides (a simple k2, p2 alternating), seems a bit visually distracting. However, I find that I really like the way that part feels when you touch it, so maybe Baby will like how it feels too. And yes, I agree that the sweater is not quite gender neutral. I'm not knitting it for any baby in particular, so I'll just hang on to it until someone I know has a baby girl.
Man...you know what this means? I'm going to procrastinate on that second toe sock even more!
I took the opportunity to photograph what I've knit so far of Baby Yours in some natural light this morning (and let me tell you we've had very little natural light lately), and that's what it looks like.
So, before I venture forth with the rest of this sweater, I'd like to solicit some opinions from you. Keep on knitting, or start a-froggin'?
[And in case any of you are wondering, I do have my own opinions about this, but I wanted to see what you all say without me polluting your initial thoughts.]
Many of you know that finishing is one of my least favourite parts of the whole knitting process. I try to take as many sneaky tricks as possible to minimize the amout of it I have to do, but sometimes there's just no helping it. And so, after having put it off for a little while, I decided to sew the seams and put the buttons on that Baby Surprise Jacket.
Having learned from the first BSJ that I knit, I resolved to do a better job of the seams this time.
I think they turned out pretty well this time around (and my camera fails at taking close-up shots like that).
With all sorts of friends with something cooking in the oven so to speak, I decided to start yet another baby sweater.
DETAILS
Pattern: Baby Yours by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee
Yarn: Socks that Rock Mediumweight in Jasper
Needles: US size 4 Addi Turbos
I'm not sure about the colour, to tell you the truth. Or rather, I'm not sure about how all those lovely cables will look considering the amount of striping that's happening. I'm not really an experienced cable knitter, so I'm not sure if cables+variagated will still turn out to be perfectly lovely. The only time I've really done cables have been with non-variagated yarns. I do admit to being quite enamored with the pattern so far, and have been enjoying it greatly, so the only question now is if I should really be getting a different colourway. Any thoughts before I get too far with it?
Little by little, I'm getting closer to finishing up projects that I've had going. The first is another EZ Baby Surprise Jacket that I'm making from some friends of mine who are expecting. They've elected not to find out the baby's gender, so I tried to pick something relatively neutral.
This sweater turned out a lot more brown than I thought it would based on the yarn. I thought the light blue would be more obvious. In some ways, all that brown makes me feel like the sweater has a more "manly" feel to it, but I guess it's still pretty gender neutral. Just need to sew up the shoulders and put the buttons on. I wasn't in much of a finishing mood today, so I decided to just leave it for now.
Since I was in the mood to do some more brainless knitting, I decided to finish off one of those toe socks that have been on my needles forever now.
I am now exactly 50% done this project. Someday, I'll get off my butt and cast on the second sock. But today's not that day either. I made these with size 0 needles, and found those to be a huge pain in the rear. These will probably be the last pair of socks that I make on size 0's. That said, the small needles have produced a wonderfully cozy sock, but I'm just not sure they're worth the pain (quite literally too since my hands were starting to ache from those ridiculously small dpns).
Yay! I finally finished knitting my mother's Absolutely Fabulous Throw, after 10 months of knitting. I started this beast way back in January, made fairly good progress on it during the winter, then put it away once the weather started warming up. Then some chilly weather descended upon us in October, so out came the blanket again. And now it's done at last!
This is Colinette's Absolutely Fabulous Throw in the Antique colourway. I was under the impression that they stopped selling these in the U.S. a while back, and started selling other (similar) throw kits, but I think I've still seen some of these kits around so I don't really know what's happening.
After having experienced this finished product I dearly want one of these for myself, but I'm not sure I could bring myself to do all that knitting again. It's the mohair (3 different colourways) that really got to me. As well as the Fandango (chenille, ugh).
All that mohair makes this a very very warm blanket, though. Almost as good as having a purring kitty sitting on your lap.
My mom and I bought this kit together, so it's not exactly a surprise present. I hope she uses it, especially since it's basically the most awesome blanket ever.
I know this is supposed to be a knit blog, but I finished a fun little craft that I wanted to share. I made myself a purse organizer following the instructions here. It's a very easy and affordable little project, and costs much less than similar purse organizers that are on the market. For the fabric and interfacing, I paid about $7; I have enough interfacing left over to make another organizer too.
It folds up nicely, so I can put it into both small and large bags. Makes changing bags really easy now. If you're a rookie at sewing, I highly recommend this project as something to get you started.
