Turns out, it’s pretty.

But how many tea towels can one person have?

Three more, I’m thinking, since that’s how many are in my craft room waiting to be embroidered.  After that?  I must be stopped.

But for now?  Hmm, what will be next?  Perhaps a squirrel?  Or some charming camping-themed items?  Perhaps Ganesha, so he can hang out with the BVM? (Oooh, a whole series of Deities tea towels?  I’m sure I could totally whip out a Flying Spaghetti Monster.)

Oh, so may tea towels, so little time.

(Both patterns are Sublime Stitching designs; the stag from the Forest Friends set and Our Lady of Guadalupe from Dia de los Muertos)

After finishing two sweaters in a week (what’s that you say?  one of them took me almost two years? Yeah, but I finished it in a week!  Ok?  Shut up!), my hands needed a little break from the needles.  But I’m no longer capable, it turns out, of sitting with idle hands.  Can’t do it.  It makes me feel restless and lazy.  I know!  I’ve totally internalized old-timey standards of virtuous womanhood!  For my next act, I shall be insisting on being accompanied by a chaperone when taking a turn about the gardens.

Anyway, luckily, it was Father’s Day last week, and although I couldn’t think of a single thing to knit for my dad that he would even remotely want or use, I did take a tip from the Purl Bee to come up with something that I could hand-craft for him: handkerchiefs!

Seven of them.  And yeah, my dad uses handkerchiefs, which, gross! Tissues!  Look into them!  (ETA: I know, I know, hankies are environmentally friendlier, but I stand by my gross.  Hey, I’m doing the locavore thing all summer; I can use a kleenex ever now and then.)  But I really wanted to make him something with my own hands, rather than buying him another random kitchen accessory or book or whatever damn thing, so I thought I could at least ensure that he had a clean hanky for every day of the week.  However, my dad has since elevated them from handkerchiefs to pocket squares, so they will, happily, be snot-free for the foreseeable future.

And as it turned out, doing the hand-stitching on the hems of those bad boys awakened some kind of demon within: on Tuesday, I was overcome with an unshakeable compulsion to embroider something. Why?  I don’t know.  That’s just the way it was.

So far, I’ve done that tea towel and two pillowcases with patterns from the Sublime Stitching book.

And I show no signs of stopping.  But hey, it’s all in the name of virtuous womanhood, right?  Or it’s because I’m being driven by the demon of craft.  Take your pick.

Yeah, another gray sweater.

When I started this in November of 2006 (HA!) this was an Hourglass.  As of today, it’s kind of an unholy hybrid of the Hourglass and the Union Square Market Pullover.  Why?  Alpaca.  I used Elann’s Peruvian Baby Cashmere for this sweater, which despite its name is 60% alpaca, and alpaca simply does not have the sproing to be a successful Hourglass–a sweater that’s already notorious for its Flashdance-esque neckline.  So when I finished this this morning–having already knit 3″ beyond the pattern’s suggestion for the length of the raglan line–and put it on, I should not have been surprised when the shoulders started drifting down, down, down, which, based on my experience with my other Hourglass, is a problem that will only exacerbate.  The beauty of the raglan–its lack of seams–can also be kind of a downfall, in that there’s no seams to stabilize the shoulders of the sweater.

So, I was faced with a pretty much unwearable sweater, and a couple of options: either frog it entirely, or find a way to make the best of it.  Option B seemed more appealing, so here we are, and here’s my secret weapon:

Twill tape!  Twill tape has no stretch.  So when you sew it to something stretchy, it keeps it from stretching.  Ah, physics.  It’s like magic.  I made a couple of abortive passes at this with the sewing machine, but ended up hand-stitching it in instead.  It’s not professional quality, by any means, but it doesn’t look bad from the outside:

And it does its job perfectly.  But with the back neckline stabilized, I still had a big, floppy front to contend with (I should’ve taken Before pics, too, I guess; sorry), and while I was playing around with ways to deal with that I came up with the USMP foldover concept.  It’s not my ideal neckline for the sweater, but I think it came out pretty well, considering that there’s not supposed to be a foldover flap on this sweater.

And hey, regardless of anything else, I do love the sleeves on this one.

There are still some other problems with it that aren’t going away any time soon.  For one thing, there’s a visible line where I left off knitting in 2006 and picked up again last month, because my gauge didn’t match up exactly (it sure did help when I switched to Continental, though!).  And you can see where I had to swap in a new dyelot, on account of, you know, waiting for two years to finish it.  And the body of the sweater ended up biased, so the side shaping isn’t exactly on the sides.  But hey, considering that when I put the sweater on this morning I thought it wouldn’t be wearable at all, it’s not half bad.  I mean it is half bad, but that’s a huge improvement from all the way bad.  Right?  Right.

Oh, and also, Bailey Bean is five today.

I just thought you should know.

(Heh.  See how I am totally squeaking in under the month-since-I-posted mark?)

Hey, remember all those gray sweaters I have lying around in various states of half-done-ness?  Well, they’re all still like that.  But this one?

This one is finished.  I know, right?  Two weeks from cast-on to cast-off, although it took a few more days than that to get it blocked and buttoned.  I think I just got so mad at not having finished a sweater in forever that I felt compelled to finish a sweater right away now immediately, and then along came Pam with a full bag of RYC Soft Tweed that she didn’t want, and then I was browsing Ravelry for patterns and then, well, there was a cardigan on the move.

The pattern is the (lengthily-named) #77 Vine Lace Top Down Cardigan from SweaterBabe.com, and it is, as you might guess, a top down cardigan using a vine lace pattern

only I kind of messed up the vine lace.  Oops.  Eh, things happen.  The pattern is really, really thorough; it’s, like, the diametrical opposite of an EZ pattern. If you’re a newer knitter or not familiar with top-down raglan construction, this would be a perfect first sweater–you’ll be walked through line by line, no prob.  But the top-down raglan is also awesomely adaptable, which is perfect, if, like me, you have arms that are, um, a bit longer than average.

So I ended up making quite a few mods, especially regarding length, the placement of that waist ribbing, etc.

A word about the waist ribbing: it is a thing of genius.  It’s got some decrease/increase shaping built in (see that little hourglass shape in the ribbing up there?) but most of the work is done by ribbing’s natural propensity to pull in.  Which means that even as the shaping gives you some, well, shape, the ribbing makes sure that the shaping looks natural, since it adjusts to your own contours, which are, obviously, different on each person.  Totally brilliant.

Other mods: gauge was a big one for me; I could get gauge with the yarn I wanted to use, but I hated the fabric it produced; it was like flabby, wooly mesh.  Sounds hot, right?  So I ended up running the math for the gauge I wanted to knit at, and it turned out that I could knit the XXL size at my smaller gauge and have everything work out, so I did that.  I left the pockets off the front, although I may go back and add them later; I was just afraid they would add too much bulk to my hips, which do not need it.  And as mentioned, I added length–a lot.  The original pattern has 7 buttonholes; I ended up with 10 (although some of that was due to my smaller gauge as well).

Probably the biggest mod, though, was that I put the sleeve stitches on holders and knit them last, rather than doing them after the yoke as directed by the pattern.  The pattern calls for bracelet-length sleeves, and I was pretty sure I wanted to do them longer, but I wasn’t sure I’d have enough yarn (and it’s discontinued–yoiks!), so I figured I’d knit the body to the right length, and then see if I had enough yarn to do long sleeves.  As it turned out, I had plenty just with the 10 balls I’d bought off Pam; I had three spares in different dyelots for emergencies, but they weren’t needed.  I think I ended up using just over 800 yards of yarn.

So now?  I have a finished gray sweater, and it’s easily the best-fitting sweater I’ve knit.  And this is how happy it makes me.

Yay!

A while back (kind of an embarrassingly long time back, actually), my friend Alex asked me to make a quilt for the baby of one of her good friends. Now, I don’t take on commissions lightly, but Alex is the kind of friend who is just such a good person that it was a no-brainer that I would make this quilt. All I knew when I started it was that it was a boy, and that his moms were calling him “Sprout” before he was born. I went back and forth on a couple of different designs, but kept coming back to a garden theme, and when I flipped past the Stacked Coins quilt in Last Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts, I finally had it:

There’s a brown border for the good loamy dirt of a well-tended garden, blues for the water and the sky, and green for growing things.

Peas and apples as a wish for a bountiful life, elephants as a reminder to respect and love animals,

Garden gnomes, of course, to look after him,

And cranes, as a wish for peace in his lifetime.

Sprout’s got a little bit of a head start on this quilt, because I was drowning in work at the end of the semester, but I hope he loves it. (You always want yours to be the blankie, you know?) And Alex, I hope you do too.

Charades. Two of them. Woot!

A mere 6 months (um, and four days) after Wendie sent me the first one, I have a pair. Couldn’t be prouder. Seriously, yo. This is a really great pattern, done in my all-time favorite sock yarn, Koigu, so there was no reason for them to take me this long. But no matter, they’re finished now.

And I’m happy to say that I came pretty close to matching Wendie’s gauge! I was nervous about this, since I find myself becoming a tighter and tighter knitter as the years go by, and when I started the sock I was definitely knitting at a smaller gauge than Wendie. I thought about going up a needle size, but instead I made a conscious decision to knit a bit more loosely (better on the hands anyway), and I ended up being only maybe 1/4″ off in circumference–not enough to affect the fit at all. Yay!

The pattern, as I said, is awesome. I really like the herringbone stitch–it’ll go faster if you work the YO by bringing the yarn over the needle from back to front, rather than under and back over–and I might be knitting all my toes like this from now on. Oh, I’ll be knitting more Charades, yes I will. Genius designing, Ms Sandra.

Wendie, thanks for my awesome socks, lady! Yarn/Needle/Mod info on Ravelry.

Cleaning house forces you to come to terms with stuff, sometimes. Like how much you suck at sticking to a project, for example:

The back of a Demi. Abandoned because the twisted stitches made almost every stitch of this sweater a physically painful experience. I’m so torn here–I really want this sweater. But I don’t know if I’ll ever want to knit it, because it really, really hurt my hands.

The body, one sleeve, and a few inches of another sleeve of an Hourglass. Abandoned because I lost the notes i made on the sleeve shaping for the first sleeve, so I’ll have to recreate those notes by examining the sleeve and counting the increases and decreases and the rows between them. In other words, because of sheer laziness. I’ll probably tackle this one first.

The body of Tangled Yoke. Abandoned when I realized I’d frakked up the waist shaping and would need to rip back and recalculate, based on my own actual measurements rather than on anything related to the actual pattern. Oh lordy–all those long stockinette rows for nothing. On the plus side, I can now knit continental, so re-knitting should take much less time!

Of course, seeing all these half-finished gray lumps in one place makes me want nothing more than to go cast on something cute in bright pink–which I would no doubt get halfway through before abandoning. Because, apparently, I am that knitter now.

I haven’t been knitting much since my semester finished–been on an intensive spring cleaning binge instead–but when I’m flung myself down on the couch, exhausted, after scrubbing down the windows and the like, I’ve felt the need for something soothing to knit: a pattern that lets me not think too hard, warm, soothing colors, and sweet, sweet Koigu softness. Enter my Project Spectrum Second Sock Project Earth sock:

Good like good chocolate. You may remember that the first sock of this pair was knit for me by Wendie, using Sandra’s awesome Charade pattern, and I’ve really put off knitting the second for far too long. Wendie, this is a totally fun knit–thanks again, girlie!

I’ve also put off for far too long a huge thank you to Elspeth, who knit me another single sock as part of our own little swap–that Drunken Bee I knit was for her. Elspeth not only knit me a lovely springy sock (it’s the Coupling pattern from knitty)

but she made me a gorgeous little bag to keep my project in, and–because she knows the way to a girl’s heart, she sent along some organic heart-shaped peanut butter treats for Bailey,

who of course loves them. E, please forgive me for being a butthead and not blogging this sock long before now; if I’d been blogging anything at all, this would’ve been it!

Papers marked, final grades calculated, and I can finally breathe deeply and put the semester behind me. Here’s what I’ve been up to…

 

Oh, and this:

Oops.

An email from my hosting service prompting me to renew my account reminded me that this is my third blogiversary. Three! I had no idea when I started that I’d keep at it for six months, let alone three years. Thank you all so very, very much for everything: for being sources of inspiration, information, support, enthusiasm, and friendship. Even when, as now, I’m in something of a bloggy slump; I haven’t been posting much lately, or getting around to your blogs, and I’m sorry about that. I was thinking about formalizing it into a wee blog break, but instead I’m just going to say that I’m in an ebb right now, but soon things will flow again (um, like when my semester ends, perhaps?).

But in the meantime, I do have something to show for myself, just in time to be included in the Blog Year Three FO archive: A finished Shetland Triangle.

I made it big: the pattern calls for only 10 repeats, and I went for 15. Which was nearly the death of the entire project, by the way: I ran out of the 4 skeins (880 yards) I’d originally commissioned from Adam a quarter of the way through the bindoff. I know! But luckily Adam had also sent along the sample skeins he tested the dyes on, and so I spliced in about 15 yards of that to finish the job, bringing me to just under 900 yards of DK for the whole project.

I might not have trusted the spit-splice on a bindoff row on another yarn, by the way, but the BFL felts as soon as you look at it, pretty much; I tested it, and I had to exert just as much force, if not more, to break the join than I did to break the original strand of yarn. So I think it’s safe, and obviously I blocked it out with no trouble, so there we go. (Although honestly, part of me wanted to keep it unblocked–it’s so springy and snuggly when it’s in its egg-crate state.)

It’s super warm, and, I think, appropriate for Project Spectrum on multiple levels: the lace pattern, I believe, is traditionally referred to as “fir cone,” but when I look at it I see little candle flames flickering everywhere. That, plus Adam’s phenomenal red, plus the warmth of the shawl itself, make it the ideal Fire project.

Love! So much, in fact, that I have yet another shawl planned for the Earth months. Stay tuned!

PS Project details are on Ravelry.

Edited because I can’t resist adding this picture. Let’s all pretend it so that you can see the sheeny goodness of the BFL, ok?