This is my progress on Sweetpea. The back is complete, up to the armholes shaping.
What a quick knit! I like the barely spun, bulky yarn. It's soft and pretty.
I'm a little bit nervous about the short row shoulders-I seem to have a real knack for missing the wraps. This is just a few of them, so hopefully I'll get them all the first time through. I'm really looking forward to seeing this one all knit up!
Ellie has an absolute requirement that the cornucopia comes out the day after Halloween. There was a year, back when she was in first grade, where it failed to make an appearance. The result was unfortunate, involving a long series of entries in her school journal that convulsed both her teacher and me in laughter when we read them together. Since then, I make sure the cornucopia comes out in a timely fashion.
But, this first dash of the holidays always makes me think about gifts, which in many cases means making gifts. I don't want to reveal too much, but thought I would share pictures of a couple of early gifts in progress. First, some roving in one of my favorite colorways, Copper Patina. This is Blue Faced Leicester roving, which is very finicky too dye -- requiring a very slow temperature rise and then sustained, consistent heat before cooling overnight in order to avoid felting.
This roving always turns out so soft and so beautiful that I forgive it for all the extra attention it requires.
I'm also dyeing up a skein of Blue Faced Leicester aran weight yarn, here it is in the first of two baths it will go through, as a present for a special friend.
I feel good about having started. I still have time to make a few special presents and get in some early shopping before we hit the serious baking season sometime around Thanksgiving. I've also started in on my holiday knitting project, The Sweet Pea Sweater, which I'm knitting for myself. I did the border on the back of the sweater over coffee this morning. The yarn is luscious and bulky, and although I'm not a quick knitter by any means, I hope to have some time to work on this and perhaps be wearing it for the holidays.
It's been done for a week now, and I've had the best intentions of getting good pictures for you. Instead I got this, at 3:45 in the morning with no one around to help.
It's a new art form--bad flash mirror pictures or something.
The Clapotis is wonderful, though. The yarn is a silk/linen blend and it ripples like water in this colorway. Here.
Some people in our house think this pattern is actually a catpotis, but I feel quite sure it is going to be worn, a lot, by me.
I've finished the first of the unfinished shrugs. This is Ellie's Miho Shrug. I finished it while I was waiting for her ballet class to end and surprised her with it on the way out.
It's knit from wonderful soft Manos Silk/Merino yarn. We're both delighted with it.
The pattern has fabulous little details like an exposed seam at the top,
and this clever little roll at the back.
Despite my anxiety, it was ridiculously quick and easy to finish. Although the yarn came in the mail today for my newest object of knit-lust (Kate Gilbert's Sweet Pea Jacket)I'm going to do the finishing on my shrug -- same yarn, but a different pattern, before I dive in.
There is an Eleanor Roosevelt quote on a magnet in a store I like to go to. It says "do something that scares you every day." Good words to live by.
I have mentioned in the past that I have a certain level of finishing anxiety when it comes to knitting. I know how to do it and have done it repeatedly. But, I dislike it. I rationalize that it is because the nature of my life is such that I knit in five minute increments here and there which is as disruptive for finishing as it is for intricate lace or cables. In reality though, I think finishing scares me a little bit. What if I totally screw up after putting all that effort into knitting a sweater?
Today is a perfect day to conquer some fear. I've blocked all of the pieces for the shrugs I knit (I'm not saying how long ago but if you read my blog, well, you can probably figure out precisely how long I've procrastinated) from Manos Silk/Merino for Ellie and for myself. I'm going to start finishing them upon pain of not being able to start anything new until I'm done.
Of course, that isn't much of a threat since I have a lot of projects in progress, but at least it's a start. I also picked up a long-shelved cabling project this week. It's the Vintage Velvet scarf. I've had this yarn forever and had started it ages ago, and got quite a ways before realizing I had a mistake in the first cable cross. I ripped it back to the very beginning this week and have started back up.
It doesn't look like much at this stage -- the yarn is Muensch's Touch Me, and the cool part of this pattern is that you lightly felt the scarf when it's done, which gives it a smooth velvelty look and permits the cable to appear distinctly, whereas here it looks like a mass of yarn.
I'm also getting in a few more inches on my linen/silk Clapotis every week. I'm about to finish the first skein of yarn. I love knitting this. The pattern is easy to memorize and the fun of dropping a row of stitches is enough to convince me to keep going.
Knucks is a pattern written by a wonderful knitter, Pamela Grossman, for fingerless mittens. I remember when the pattern was first published, because my dear friend Elizabeth Thompson knitted and embellished a pair for the write up.
[Elizabeth once knit this absolutely incredible pair of baby pants for me, and I have to digress to show them to you...
Aren't they amazing?]
So, Knucks. I've been in search of just the right pattern for the fingerless mitts my six year old wants. He wanted partial fingers, rather than the style that just wraps around the hand. In the middle of searching Ravelry for a pattern, Knucks popped up. Why hadn't I thought of them earlier? And, predictably, Pamela had included a child's size in her pattern.
I was all set -- ready to swatch them in some Alpaca I had dyed in Ollie's favorite colorway, Eco, a shading of greens.
I swatched on the way to a Labor Day picnic. It was a long drive so I swatched further than I normally would have.
When I was done, I realized it was a total disaster. This yarn was much bulkier than the yarn the pattern was written for, and taking it down to a needle size that would have made it close would result in a fabric so dense there would be no give in it.
Fortunately, we had a long drive home. I promised Ollie a pair of Knucks as soon as I could make it to the store toss my stash (really!) to get a more appropriate yarn. And, in the meantime, I knit a second swatch and apologized to him for making something that wasn't exactly what he wanted.
Not much too it -- just two squares. I took a bit of extra care when doing mattress stitch to match up the edges to let the stockinette roll, and left about 3/4" unstitched for a nice little thumb hole. He seems quite taken with them -- and fell asleep wearing them.
But, next on my list is a pair of knucks.
All four of our children, as of yesterday, are back to school. This involved an unusual dance of "you go here and I'll be there," which involved repeated flights to Connecticut (it would be too easy if all schools started the same day), getting our oldest settled in college, and being chastised by a certain science teacher for failing to get our ten-year-old the required red folder (it didn't appear on her supplies list). We are none the less sort of settled, and for those of you who know about other goings on, I'm settled into a new job -- both demanding and rewarding -- as well.
You might suppose that all of this has left me with little time to knit, but that is not the case. Although I have sadly spent no time whatsoever in my studio, endless plane flights have left me with a great deal of knitting time. I have a little bit of eye candy for you, and a hope that with everything on a more settled footing, I can go back to being a regular (if not as frequent as previously) blogger.
Teva Durham's Tundra pattern caught my eye some time ago. So much so, that I had to start knitting it immediately. It's a simple premise -- a wrap using a bulky yarn and a wide rib. Mine knit up quickly.
I especially love the buttons and find it to be the perfect wrap -- it has saved me a couple of times from a suddenly cold airplane.
I was surprised by the rib though. In the pattern photo, it looked as though the knit part of the rib would be wider than the purl when worn. It was the opposite in mine. I looked through the pattern for a mistake, but wasn't able to find one. I decided to knit it again, and play close attention -- perhaps I had omitted a row causing the rib to flip?
I knitted a second version for Ellie. Rather than doing the math to resize the pattern, I used a somewhat less bulky yarn, Misti Alpaca Chunky, in a luscious handpaint. I did not change the needle size, hoping for a somewhat less dense fabric that would let Miss El use hers as a wrapper during ballet rehearsals.
Same rib patterning.
I absolutely love it and so does she, but you can see that in the pattern as written, the portion of the rib that shows wider when worn is the purl side. I'm thinking about a third Tundra that flips the rib.
One last project -- I've been working on and off on my linen Clapotis. I'm on the straight section and plan on doing four to six more repeats. This is some dyed by me linen-silk blend yarn.
I'm hoping the dropped stitches will pop out nicely once it is finished and blocked. I like the colors so much that I'm considering redoing my kitchen in blues and browns. It's a very relaxing color play.
Next week, more flying and knitting in store for me. In the meantime, I've been working in my studio this weekend, trying to sort through my yarn and fabric stash. I'm stuck on a good way to store myriad knitting supplies in a way that makes them easy to use, so I've sorted through my fabric and am sending a large bag off to a friend. I've also decided I must pare down my yarn stash so that it does not exceed my lifetime stash plus Ellie's. To achieve that goal, I'll probably do some give aways here over the next few weeks. Also, please post in the comments if you know of a group in Birmingham that does charity knitting, knitting with teens, etc., as I have some of those older yarns that make me wonder "what was I thinking" but that would probably make someone else quite happy -- I'd like to find a charitable group to donate them to.
After talking a brief break from my Linen Clapotis to knit a hat earlier this week, I went back to it yesterday.
The yarn is my own, Elliebelly Flaxen, and I'm really delighted with the silk/linen blend, which makes for a much softer knit than linen alone. If you look in the upper right hand corner, you'll see that I've just started the straight sections, where every 8th row starts with the dropped stitch that forms the basis for Clapotis's appeal.
My recollection from the first Clapotis I knit several years ago is that it's a pretty long slog through the straight sections, with miles of stockinette, thankfully broken up by the occasional dropped stitch row. But this little piece already looks disarmingly pretty draped around my neck, so I'm highly motivated to knit it up!
I'm also eyeing this pretty little shrug pattern, which I had not noticed before today. It's calling me. It's Teva Durham's Loop-d-Loop Tundra yarn. It's to die for. I don't think I can resist.
I've been doing the first bit of dyeing I've done since I closed Elliebelly -- some Alpaca in Eco Green, that Ollie wants for his winter sweater and some (heaven help me) fingerless pirate mitts. I'll have pictures later this week, and am hoping to find time to do a tutorial on the two step process I use for dyeing colorways like Eco.
I picked up some Spud and Chloe super bulky merino-cotton yesterday, and interruped the linen clapotis to knit it into their boyfriend hat today.
The color work was a first for me and I didn't know to let the strands of unworked yarn hang loosely. The hat is nonethess very very cool, but it's now destined for the 6 year old, not the 18 year old.
Fortunately I have enough yarn left to reverse the colors and do a second hat, and this pattern is interesting enough to have a second go at it
This is a little bit of late night business trip knitting--the start of a Clapotis in my own hand-dyed linen. I only have two skeins so it will be, of necessity, a miniature version.
I'm internetless here, so I'm reading the pattern off of my iPhone as I go and hoping that will work.
