Finally finished!

After too many months, I finally finished my mohair Spring Twilight Pullover with a few minor errors and modifications....

- The V-neck was not turning out as lovely as it does in the pattern's photos, so I decided to change it so that it looked more like a bow. I sewed a running stitch through the two overlapping parts of the collar's BO edge and pulled them up toward the V of the neck. It makes for an even more exaggerated asymmetrical look - I actually think I like it better than what the pattern calls for. It feels more like my style anyway:

- As usual, had some trouble with the sleeves being too large for my arm holes. Why does this always happen? I re-knit the caps and shaped them as follows: BO 7 sts at beg of next two rows. BO 3 sts at beg of next 2 rows. Went on the same as for the XS until dec each side of needle every RS 8 times, which was changed from 8 times to 1 time. Then BO 2 sts beg of next 4 rows--12 sts.

- I messed up the ruching at the bottom hem. I didn't realize it was a 9-round pattern, and instead read it as a 3-round 3x repeat (9 rounds total). Duh. It looks OK, and I guess it's a bit more flattering than ruching at one's waist:

- I don't particularly enjoy this cast on. It's some strange decorative cast on that forces you to do longtail. It looks great, but I had to do it about 4 times before I had enough yarn to reach the number of stitches. I also changed Step 4 to alternating between long tail cast on (single strand from ball) and backward loop cast on (the four strands), which seems to have worked OK and was much easier.

Swatches and More Swatches

My mother is visiting me right now and the whole time she has been here, I have been swatching. She wants everyone to know that she did not raise me to be the Swatch Nazi. She made her first swatch only recently. (Of course, I told her to make the swatch.) She is a quilter much more than a knitter. But recently she accidentally made a king-sized quilt when she intended to make a queen.....What more can I say?

So here are some swatches. I am on my fifth. First I knit two stockinette swatches and ended up happy with 14.5 sts over 4 inches. Then, Wendy and I both struggled with the "Fancy Rib". The pattern says to:

"pass right needle behind first stitch on left needle, knit second stitch, then knit first stitch, drop both stitches off left needle."

This is not easy to do without knitting the stitch you reach around for through the back loop. (You are presumably supposed to knit it through the front loop, practically impossible.) I tried the back loop way and got this:

23 st over 4"

Kind of mushy and tight and the gauge is way off. Then I read in someone's blog that if you rearrange the stitches by "slipping the first st as if to purl and slip the next as if to knit and then put them back on the left needle and then complete the stitch" it would work better. I tried it and got this:

18 sts over 4"

Much better. More defined. Better gauge. Who would have thought that one twisted stitch would have such an effect. But being the SN I am, I am going to do one more with smaller needles. Just to be sure.

Vacation Knitting

I love vacation knitting. It is so fun to plan before I leave home and I try to pick something that I can finish. This time I finished two things. A cowl - Spiraluscious by Anne Hanson made out of Blue Sky Alpaca Silk. And I made the orange Gnomey Hat by Adrian Bazilla. I also finished a Gnomey hat that I had started earlier - the blue one. I am making the hats for Simma's cancer patients at Children's Hospital. She says the hat box contains really pathetic and unwearable hats. This cannot be! Simma's patients range in ages of 1-20. The real little ones don't really care that much about their hair, but the older ones do, so we need to get them something better. I am going to make this next. I have my mom knitting hats also. If anyone else wants to join in, let me know.

Happy Day

I am finally done with my alpaca sweater! After HOURS of sewing all the pieces together, I am really happy with the results. Wendy saved the day by recommending that I sew it with sock yarn and I happened to have the right color. This pattern was very pleasant to knit and I think the stitch pattern along with the construction was the right thing for the droopy yarn. Also, I have tons of antique shell buttons - all white. I dyed 9 buttons in a little bit diluted black dye and they came out a pale gray.
Pattern: Sprossling by Anne Hanson of Knitspot
Yarn: "Alpaka" that I bought at Stitches '08.
Needles: #4

Yarn Extravaganza

My dad came down from upstate New York on Thursday, and on Friday we went to the Renninger's Extravaganza in Kutztown, a gigantic flea market. We'd been planning all week -- what time we'd get up, which route we'd take to get there, how much cold water we'd need. Hat? Check. Sunglasses? Check. Cash? Check. Checkbook? Check.

It ended up being a bust.

Having walked the show twice over, we were ready to leave by 11:00 with nothing to show for it. We didn't even buy a bag of Kettle Korn (tm). The Extravaganza has become what many flea markets have become these days -- a kind of shabby, down-in the-mouth affair full of depressed people and their goods. Blame it on eBay, blame it on the economy, blame it on whatever. Flea markets just aren't what they used to be and this was clear proof. Back in the day, Renninger's was one of the best-known flea markets and everyone went to the Extravaganzas.

As a consolation prize, we drove to Adamstown, "Antiques Capital of USA" [sic], and trolled a couple of the antique malls there. My dad spent $5.00 on a figure for his train set, and I spent $9.00 on a bag of vintage yarn. Here it is laid out on my table. No real duds, I was happy to find. And only one skein, white, that has some rust stains I'll see if I can get out.


Behold.


This angora is so soft. There's only a little bit of the turquoise left, and some white. But it's enough to use as a highlight in a stranded project.


I love the old labels. Here, Opalette, a blend of wool and rayon. And mothproof!


Pure Shetland from Brunswick. The blue is my favorite. Too bad there's only one skein of it.


Coquette!


And the softest 100% wool yarn from Reynolds, which is inspiring me to think about knitting argyles again.

So, even though we failed at the Extravaganza itself, I feel like I hit it big with this little Yarn Extravaganza in a bag. Extravaganza, with the letters v, x, and z, is such a nice word.

Yeti in pink pants

Here are photos of another yeti I've made. I'm wondering if it might become part of a series. What's next, the Loch Ness monster? Bigfoot? A unicorn?

Full yeti, standing about 15" tall. He needs the pink pants to keep him warm.

He's got a sweet face.


A detail of his back pocket. For his cigs. Or his moleskin notebook.

His belt, keeping it all together.

A close-up of his fuzzy feet, his pants buttons, and his navel.

For two summers during college I worked at a frame shop in Cape May, NJ, selling prints and posters of the Jersey shore and a bunch of other stuff to tourists. I dealt with a lot of French Canadian men who would mosey in bare-footed, flashing their wet, matted chest hair and wearing nothing but a heavy gold chain and one of those embarrassingly tiny Speed-Os. Hard to take them seriously as customers when clearly they weren't carrying their wallets on them. (Or were they. . . ?)

Anyway, one day a guy came in and asked if we had posters of unicorns. I said no, we didn't in stock, but I pulled out our graphic arts poster catalog, started thumbing through it, and suggested we could order something. Something like this. Or this. Oh no, he clarified. I want a photograph of a unicorn. Oh, well, no, I didn't think I could get anything like that. So young. So naive -- I didn't know about cryptozoology back then.

Olympiad

I finally finished this hat and I feel like it was a bit of an Olympic effort on my part. I was copying the hat that Ralph Lauren designed for the US Team. It looked like this:
The day after the opening ceremonies when the team first wore the hat, I took a look on Ravelry and sure enough- someone had already posted a pattern. I happened to be hanging out with my sister, who's family nickname is Moose. (Long story- she is not a large person, though.) She likes things with moose on them and her 50th birthday is coming up and she asked me to make her the hat. But I was on a yarn diet, only using yarn from my stash. I did have red, white and blue, but a different gauge and, now that I see these pictures together, rather different colors. I cast on and knit all the way up to the moose's nose when I was sure it was too small. Frogged and started over. I am not too good at knitting anything twice, so it was tough going for a while there. But all in all, I am happy with it. The yarn is really nice Norwegian Dale yarn and I dyed the blue. The red is some leftover yarn that Simma got in Germany- I think it is alpaca. The hat is very soft and kind of fuzzy.