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Yarnmule




"Knitting is very conducive to thought. It is nice to knit a while, put down the needles, write a while,
then take up the sock again." - Dorothy Day

The Next Big Thing


It's nearly 70 degrees outside today, so I thought it might be a good day to start Christmas knitting. Heh.

This is actually a re-do project. A very long time ago, as one of my very first knitting projects, I made Christmas stockings for the family. Everyone coming to Christmas at the cabin got one. I used these patterns (which are fabulous). Unfortunately, I also used a popular discount-store worsted weight acrylic yarn (whose name I won't bother to denigrate here). The colors were a little garish, but that wasn't even the worst part. If you've ever done any colorwork, you know that you want your yarn to have a good deal of spring. Acrylic doesn't play that game. So what I have are stockings with a slightly different gauge for each section of patterning. I also have stockings that won't stretch to accommodate all the little gifts I want to stuff them with. So I had a Christmas fit over the weekend and decided they all needed to be re-done.

I ran off to my favorite LYS and picked myself up a bunch of Cascade 220. I've got a lovely heathered forest green (color # 9447), a nice warm cranberry red (8884), and a naturally sheepy heathered oatmeal sort of thing (2442). I'm swatching tonight, and will be knitting by tomorrow (if I can wait that long). The last time I made these, they went very quickly, and I like to think I am a better and faster knitter now. The only way I won't finish in time is if I succumb to another fit of cast-on-itis. Which, given my recent track record, could happen the moment another knitting magazine shows up at my doorstep.

Oh yeah,my last project is finished, and soaking as I write this. Next time, there will be pictures of a FO.

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Blob... In Color!

So I've gotten a pretty good swath of knitting done in the last few weeks, but as I mentioned last time, it's still blobby.

I recently got a subscription to Interweave Knits, and when my first issue arrived, I was immediately smitten with the Mosaic Yoke Jacket (Ravelry link). This was one of those that I had to cast on Right Now. I had an approximate bushel sized load of black Bernat Lana in the stash, so I grabbed a skein and went. In less than a day I had continued the stash-dive, come up with a whole new set of colors, and was on the way.

The original pattern has black and dark grey as the main color: I had those. The colored yoke called for a whole mess of colors I didn't have, didn't want to wait for, and didn't particularly love. So...



Instead of the rust/gold/white, I went with red/beige/white. And where the original had black/beige/blue, I went black/blue/light grey. Was I afraid of the red/blue transition? Yep. But you know what, I think it works, in an Eddie Bauer Americana sort of way. The blue should go well with the jeans that I will inevitably wear with this. All of the colors except the black, red and white are heathered, which I think softens the transitions a little.

I've been doing a lot of small needle knitting lately, so this worsted thing flew by. I think I finished the knitting in about two weeks. It's been at least another two since then, and I'm still crawling my way through the finishing. The hems are all doubled and sewn, and the tedium may kill me. I haven't even allowed my mind to wander to the weaving in of ends yet. Ugh. My current plan is thirty minutes every evening until I'm done. Except maybe tonight. Writing about finishing fulfills that quota, right?

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Oh Hai

I can haz blog now?

It's been a long summer. What have I been up to (other than not blogging)?

- A wedding and a funeral, not necessarily in that order.
- Three secret knitting projects, the last of which is nearly completed.
- A truly killer run of twelve hour days at work.

All of this has led to the longest stretch of "nothing to blog about" that I could have imagined. I have recently, however, started and nearly finished a sweater. Sadly, I'm in the phase of finishing that makes everything look like a blob. Soon, my dears, soon, I will have moved on to blocking and picture-taking. There is real live blogging on the horizon.

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