Cable = it's not just for TV anymore (and lots of other updates!) :)

So many updates, so I'm just going to dive right in. :)

A few weeks back, I decided that I wanted to work on learning cables. I love the look of cables...so elegant and intricate, but I had never really attempted them before. As you may know (or if you don't, you might not have tuned in before now), my go-to project for learning how to do techniques is to work on dishcloths. :)

My first cable dishcloth was one I had printed out a while ago, the Bridge Over the River pattern from the COTW Yahoo Group. You have to be a member of the group to access the pattern there, but an identical pattern (as far as I can tell the patterns are identical) by the same designer is found here (A Cable & A Zig). Whatever the pattern really is, I absolutely love it. I like that the lace and the cable patterns compliment each other nicely. In this pattern, I think that the lace is the dominant feature, at least in my opinion, while the cables are almost an after thought. I also think it is deceptively difficult- it looks a lot more complicated than it actually is.

I used the Peaches & Creme colorway Passion, which is currently one of their Premium colors. This cloth was made out of one of my leftover balls of Passion from when it was a Special and not part of their normal line, but it was so beautiful that luckily the lovely people at Pisgah took notice and added it to the Premium line. Hooray! I do wish that it showed the cables a bit better, but the K1P1 link shows a cloth in a solid color which shows off the cable and lace pattern nicely.

The next cable cloth that I picked on has been affectionately named my "ER dishcloth" because I started it and finished about 3/4ths of it while I took my mom to the ER a few weeks ago (note: Mom is fine now). It kept the waiting game from being boring! I did this pattern by default- I put all of my COTW patterns into plastic sleeves and keep them in a binder. Since the COTW patterns are only a page long, I can put 2 patterns into one plastic sleeve. I grabbed the same plastic sleeve that housed Bridge Over the River and thought I would do another BOTR cloth, but the back of BOTR had the C4 Lattice Pattern, which was another pattern featuring cables (no lace on this one though).

I am kind of neutral on this pattern. It was good for practicing both front cross cables and back cross cables, but I'm not all "OMG I LOVE THIS PATTERN." Still, it served its purpose and it has a great texture. I made sure to take a close up of this cable pattern because a- it has great texture, and b- I didn't really think of this as a cable pattern at first, but it is.

Since I was taking these pictures at night (when, oh when will I learn to take these during the day with natural light??), the Peaches & Creme teal is somewhere between the picture taken without the flash and the picture taken with the flash.

My next pattern was also done in the Peaches & Creme Teal, the Lace & Cable Ensemble. This cable is more of the cable I think of when someone says knitting cable- a 3 stitch back cross. There might be a zillion scarf and sweater patterns with a variation of this cable (or maybe I'm exaggerating). :)

This cable proved a bit more tricky because the other two cable patterns had a 2 stitch cross and this one had a 3 stitch cross. Aside from that, a cable is a cable is a cable- it's more or less just rearranging the order that you knit the stitches!

I did want to show a close up of this one to show how nicely the cables and lace compliment each other in this pattern too. In this pattern, unlike with the Bridge Over the River, I felt like the cables were the center of the pattern, with the lace just as a compliment to the cables. YMMV, of course. The only problem I had with this one is that the lace pattern consistently did not "open up" in one particular spot. I don't usually block dishcloths, but I may try it with this one. I will post updated pictures if I do end up doing that.

Anywho, so that's all for the dishcloths right now. I do have another cotton project on the needles, but it is undergoing some re-working since it came out a lot bigger than I expected. It also may have to do with a certain famous Beagle, so I will definitely wait until I have photographed it to say more...in this case, a picture is worth a thousand words!

Oooh, but what's this?

After working on all those exciting cable projects, I felt the need to expand on my newly acquired skills. I found a really cute sweater, the Cables & Garter Cardi (ravelry link), that I thought would be a nice follow up on my cable fun! I decided that I would bring this pattern along to my new "young and knitting" group (which met this past Sunday). However, when I went to go print the pattern, only the pictures printed with no text. Blegh. I had even selected the yarn, some Lavish Alpaca Light Worsted (ravelry link) in white since then it would go with anything! But no such luck for now.

But I still had to find something to bring to my knitting group. Hm. It was as good a time as any to bring along my February Lady Sweater (ravelry link) pattern and Wine Kettle-Dyed WotA to start the sweater. Of course, I forgot to bring stitch markers, so I couldn't actually do anything except cast on and knit the first three rows, but I got out the stitch markers at home and continued progressing on my sweater. I even managed to work the first button hole (with a LOT of trial and error), using the Buttonhole Knit Over One Row D, including the Twisted Purl Cast On too. We'll see if I'll be able to replicate it again for the next buttonhole...I'm sure I'll be able to do it, but it may take more trial and error and reading the directions aloud slowly (my cat must think I'm nuts). Anyway, so far the sweater is going pretty well (but I'm only about 5 inches in). I like the yarn color, but I'm finding that even though it's supposed to be kettle-dyed, there aren't any color variations in this skein of WotA. I still love the color anyway, so I'm not complaining too much.

I probably won't have another update for a while, unless I finish tweaking my famous beagle project and have it photographed before Thursday. That is pretty highly unlikely at this point, though! :)

This little piggy went to market, this little piggy stayed home...

....okay so this post has nothing whatsoever to do with piggies, but it was the only clever thing I could come up with having to do with market. :)

Once upon a time, I started working on a market bag. And then I moved to Milwaukee and this project got packed into a bag, and got put into my yarn spare room closet, and I never got around to finishing it...(it's still in the closet, I really should dig that thing out). The other day, I went to dig out a cone of Raspberry Swirls Peaches & Creme, and I found a couple other cones of cotton yarn that I really wanted to use up, one of them being Blue Swirls.

I bought this color a while ago, and it got buried in the same closet after the move, of course...

Anyway, so I've been looking for a good market bag pattern. I like the one that I used with the previous market bag, but the Blue Swirls is a worsted weight, and not a double worsted weight. Plus I have a bunch of market bag patterns in my Ravelry queue, so I figured I should branch out. I settled on the Fantasy Naturale Market Bag pattern from the Plymouth Yarn website.

The pattern initially called for size 10 needles and size 15 needles, but since I was doing this in worsted weight yarn and it does eventually have to hold things, I looked through the projects on Ravelry and decided to make some modifications.

I cast on the bottom of the bag with size 7 needles (pattern calls for straights, but I used a KnitPicks fixed circular). This made a pretty firm fabric for the bottom of the bag. I did the same number of stitches that the pattern called for. I have never picked up stitches before, so when I went to pick them up, I only picked up 98 stitches instead of 100. So I decreased down 2 stitches since the pattern is repeats of 4. I didn't start on the pattern right away, but I "extended" the bottom doing just straight knitting for a while before switching to the bigger needles for the mesh part of the bag.

I switched to size 10 needles, and I used the size 10 from my Denise set. The pattern was easy to memorize, so I did most of the knitting while watching TV.

I didn't change anything else for the rest of the pattern, except since I only had 96 stitches instead of 100, I had to adjust the knitting at the end a bit. For Round 5, I changed it to: Knit 29, Bind Off 14, Knit 34, Bind Off 15 and Knit 5. That was the only adjustment I made for the end, I still re-cast on 20 stitches for the handle.

I really like this pattern, and I may knit more of it. However, there are so many market bag patterns and so little time, we'll see if I get back to doing this one! I think this will end up being a Mother's Day present for my mom so she can take it to farmer's markets this summer, but we'll see. ;)

Incidentally, I had this market bag in my Ravelry queue since 9/20/2008, so it officially counts as a project from my queue! That marks queue project #4 in as many months of 2010, so I should have no problem finishing 10 queue projects by the end of 2010. Hooray!

Easter Fun!

Aaaaaaaaaaaas promised, I will be showing off my exciting projects made after being "inspired" by the "colorways that make you want to stab your eyes out" on Ravelry (oh, how I love Ravelry for inspiration!). Surprise! Juanita Rose Peaches & Creme does NOT make me want to stab my eyes out. Repeat: does NOT want to make my stab my eyes out. I'm going to take a break from it for a while, but I do that after I use a colorway for a while (see also Pink Lilacs after the baby blankets! I still have the equivalent of about 2/3rds of a cone left of this colorway, buuuuuut I'm definitely not interested in using it for a while!). Anywho, without further ado, the fruits of this week's projects! Fun times with cotton variegated yarn!

All of the dishcloths used a size 6 needle which can be quite rough on the hands when combined with cotton. Remember to take breaks even if the dishcloth is calling your name and you just have to get another pattern repeat in there. Don't do it!

Oh, and I also took all these pictures without the flash. I think they are pretty close to the actual colors (after doing a little editing on the photos), but they might seem a little less "bright"....someday I'll do this during the daylight, I mean it. Oh, and if you haven't figured it out already, you can click on the photo and it should take you to my flickr page where you can see the whole picture. Since my template is kind of narrow, it tends to cut off part of the pictures.

ORRRRRRRRRRRR, The Powers That Be at Ravelry just unrolled a brand new feature, the SHARE BUTTON! Yay! So if you want to see more details on the entire project (including pictures), click here!

#1- Garter Dishcloth w/Pointy Corners (Ravelry linky): Have had this pattern memorized pretty much as soon as I learned it. Love it, but get bored with it quite easily. Pros: can tune out knitting and watch TV.

#2- Feather & Fan Dishcloth: Also have had this memorized forever. And love this one too. I've done it a bunch of times, more times than I can count, actually. Not as mindless as the aforementioned dishcloth as I have to tune in to do the lace row, but aside from that, it's pretty mindless.

#3- Eyelet Rib : I've done this one once before in a solid, but it isn't so lacy that the pattern disappeared in a variegated/ombre. I prefer it with a solid, but this one turned out pretty nicely too, I'd say. I didn't do the Slip1-Knit1-Pass Slipped Stitch Over (Sl1, K1, PSSO) and instead used the Slip-Slip-Knit (SSK). Why? Whenever I do a Sl1, K1, PSSO with cotton yarn, my passed slip stitch looks uneven and kind of wonky. I think it's just because cotton yarn has a lot less give and my gauge is a bit tighter. Your mileage may vary, of course, so if you want to do this pattern I recommend trying both and using whichever one you like better/looks better.

For this one, I even took a close up. Ta-da!

#4- The infamous BallBand pattern: As you may be able to guess, this pattern, in addition to being found at the Peaches & Creme website, is found on the ballband (clever!) of every single skein of Peaches & Creme you will ever buy. Since I didn't want to tote around my computer while I was working on this (since, it's a- annoying, b- distracting, and c- I do have to share it!), I just went up to my craft room, rummaged around for about 5 seconds and found a ballband. Voila, a BallBand pattern! Yay!

For this one, since it requires two colors, the other color I used was the remains of the Tea Rose skein that I used on my Lilacs on the Veranda cloth (found here). I didn't even use up about 1/2 of what I had left (so I'm guessing I only used about 1/4 a solid skein, or approximately 25 yards), so there might be another BallBand in the near future using Tea Rose...

I even took a closeup of the ballband too.

I'd just like to warn people that these are actually like crack. They are so addictive. And not hard. And there's also a crochet-friendly variation: The Brick Wall Dishcloth (I have not crocheted this since my problem with crocheting mainly is that I crochet waaaaaay too tightly and cotton has no give, so me+crochet+cotton=major disaster, and yes I've tried crocheting with cotton, so I cannot comment as to whether this is like crack for crocheters). I lurves me the ballband pattern. I already cannot wait to start my next one (which will most likely not be a present, but who knows) and am planning many fun color combinations with this!

My one beef with this project was actually not with the patterns at all, it was actually with the yarn. Weird, I know. The Juanita Rose colorway is, according to the Peaches & Creme website (found here- scroll to the bottom of the page, Juanita Rose is 229) is Sage Green, Lemon and Shrimp. I had no problems with the Lemon (which is more of a soft yellow, not an ugly neon yellow like the poster in the Ravelry thread described it as, haha) and Shrimp as they were pretty neatly and tightly wound, but the Sage Green was often very splitty. That is very unusual for Peaches & Creme (in my experience, anyway). I'm going to chalk it up to the fact that I did not buy this cone from the factory directly, but I bought it at the Evil Empire. I hadn't even set foot in that store in over a year because a- the one near me is waaaaaaay ghetto-fab, b- it's not far away, but it's totally out of my way for the most part, and c- well, I won't go into it....but after going to 2 Joann's and 2 Michael's in ONE DAY trying to find a color of yarn, it was my last option (short of ordering online and having to pay higher prices + shipping)... so while I was there, I got some Juanita Rose since I hadn't tried that color yet. Hmm, lesson learned. I'll just order from the factory from now on (though I am well stocked in Peaches & Creme yarn, so I won't need to order for a while....maybe not till 2020). :)

And now that I've finished that project, I've updated my KnitMeter! I have now knitted 859 meters this year. Well on my way to knit 2000 meters in 2010! If I keep this up, I should be able to for sure hit, if not exceed, my goal. :)

Well, that's it for now (it took me about two hours to write this, wtf!)...now that I've got this out of the way and over a month till Mother's Day (my mom's present usually involves dishcloths), I'll try to accomplish some non-dishcloth knitting. I hear that Shimmer Yarn and CashSilk Fern Scarf calling.......