...and sleeves started. Toyed with the idea of knitting them circularly and then setting them into the body, but opted instead to knit both at once, which always seems to take longer but yields much pleasure when both are finished at once...
Happy sleeves! Look at them smile!I think I mentioned that I've been exercising knitting monogamy with this cardigan...and that is true, except for a few moments' indiscretion early this week when I cast on this little afghan, which I'm calling the Citrus Throw (for obvious reasons)...
I'd gone into work on Saturday to find five hanks of Araucania Nature Cotton in the 50% off bin...three orange and two yellow. Not enough to make anything big, but I thought it might be good to play with and practice the technique I'm going to use to make a couple of much larger afghans later this year. Not overly enjoying knitting with the bulky cotton, though, so thankfully it has not sidetracked me from Scarlett at all!
Took a quick tour through my UFO box under my bed last night. I like to do that every few months, see what is still aging in there, what I might feel inspired to work on and/or finish up, or what -- like this item -- might be ready to be frogged and forgotten forever...
There's a story of sorts to why I decided to make this tank top...it seems pathetic to me now, and I'll share it later because maybe it will help someone else get over the same issue I was having at the time. Meanwhile, if anyone's interested in a Plymouth tank top pattern and 8 balls of Ms. Jones yarn, let me know and we can negotiate!
Still holding out hope for these project, though...
This is a tube shawl (pattern from one of my favorite books, AlterKnits) knit from Ovation kid mohair and silk. It was the first mohair item I ever worked on, and it was daunting to me at the time and I felt like I'd never finish it. Having since learned how to knit continental rather proficiently, I know I could make good time with this should I choose to get back to it. And I will. I love the colors. Maybe it will be airplane knitting next month?
This is a ponchette made from O-Wool Balance, a cotton/merino blend...
Love the pattern, not crazy about the fiber. It was the first cotton yarn I ever knit with, and it is very rough, at least compared to several others I've used since. I go back to this every now and then. Will eventually finish it, if not for me, maybe at least for my daughter.And then there is this curiosity...
This is my own creation -- started out being envisioned as a tank top and then possibly as a cap sleeve top. Right now it is only the bottom five inches of a diagonal lacy pattern, which you really can't discern because it is rather accordioned together...This all started with the colors. Colors can wreck me because I fall in love with them and begin to obsess over them. This teal Debbie Bliss Cathay went perfectly -- per-fect-ly -- with this Elsbeth Lavold Cotton Frappe. A truer color match never existed. During the yarn shop's summer sale last year, I bought these yarns with the intent to make something lovely that was then a mere figment in my mind. Then I came home and realized, even with my employee discount, that I'd spent a small fortune on yarn that might end up not turning into anything wearable. Buyer's remorse set in after starting to knit the first two balls together, and I returned the rest. But then I had those two open balls at home, staring at me, reminding me how freakin' perfectly they went together. And so -- yes, I'm a moron -- I went back to work the next week and bought the same damn stuff again, this time paying more for it because the sale was over. Hello! Stupid much?!
And you see how far I've gotten. The thing about the summer sale, which happened at the end of summer, is that my mind soon turned to fall and winter knits, and all things cotton were relegated to the UFO box under the bed. Hopefully, this will see the light of day later this spring, when I can either try and pick up where I left off (the pink card has my vague pattern that I was creating, and the little green stitch marker in the foreground? yeah...no idea where it came from, but this does not bode well as this pattern had a lot of yarn-overs in it...at least one of which may be missing by this point because at some point I needed the original needles that I was using, so I threaded the whole thing onto other needles not once, but twice, since hibernating this piece -- hence the little note on the bed reminding me to go back to size 7s and don't start knitting with the size 2s or whatever it's on at the moment...it's all insane...I should probably just start over).
(Self-realization note...all three of these items I just mentioned are also related to the story I referred to up there when I was talking about the Ms. Jones top. Hm. Interesting. More on that another time.)
Oh, and in case all of this knitting stuff isn't crazy enough, there's always the other box under my bed, full of roving and my drop spindles. Someday, I really want to learn to spin...I toyed with the idea of buying a wheel this year, but I've decided against it. Right now, I want to focus on knitting, not spinning (though I'm considering investing in a table loom to do some weaving...but the kids can also enjoy that, right? ahem...). And I want to become somewhat proficient at drop-spindling before I invest in a wheel. That said, I had no qualms about purchasing this lovely little spindle from Amy Singer, who was doing her own housecleaning a while back and was selling this off...
...pretty and formerly owned by a yarn celeb! Bonus! ;) (It's a very nice spindle...I played with it the other evening after it arrived...very lightweight, compared to my other two.)
And just because he's cute, here are a couple of picture of our temporary dog, Toby...
Why do dog eyes almost always reflect green in pictures? He looks so freaky like that! (And just to clarify, Toby will remain a dog for the rest of his days, but he will only be here at our house temporarily! LOL)
No comments:
Post a Comment