More Sweater Updates!

Last night I finished the body of my February Lady Sweater (rav link)! Now I only have to work the sleeves, weave in the ends, block it a bit to open up the lace and we're all set. Hooray!

The pattern calls to bind off with a size 10 needle (entire sweater was worked in a size 8 needle). I couldn't figure out why, but since I am using my Harmony Interchangeable set, I just swapped the right needle up to a size 10, and the bind off row is very neat and even. I'm not sure if that's what the author intended but it certainly worked well!

I don't have much else to update, so I have a few pictures of the sweater.

Close-up of the lace pattern:

Please excuse my awesome Dazed and Confused Derby Days shirt:

My Autumn Red Lace Scarf is coming along quite nicely as well. I work 1-2 repeats at a time since I'm clearly not in the market for a scarf anytime soon (knock on wood). I am definitely going to have to attempt to block this though, since the lace pattern is beautiful but is not showing up as is right now!

However, to take a break from the sweater and scarf (and to do something that isn't in a shade of red!), I did my first Mermaid pattern (The Mermaid Surfaces) and it is so pretty! When I get around to dyeing that bare yarn I have, I want to make a Traveling Woman (rav link) and it uses that pattern. I don't have a picture yet of my Mermaid Surfaces because I want to block it first.

Going along with my Mermaid pattern, I've also decided I want to do two things: 1- Knit down my cotton stash (it is a bit out of control), and 2- stop buying any sort of store bought dish cloths. So, in an effort to knit down my cotton stash, I'm working on making lots more dish cloths for use around my house. I love making dish cloths, but it never really occurred to me to use them for things aside from dish cloths and face cloths - but the other day I used one to clean my sink, wipe down the stove, etc etc etc. If I have a large stash, then I can use them for just about anything, and consequently knitting down my stash. :) I started by doing a standard Grandmother's Favorite in Peaches & Creme Aztec (a fun color of purple, brown and green!). So, we'll see how that goes...we're going to be moving soon so any amount of time I can spend knitting down stash means less boxes to move. :)

April/May/June(!?!?!) Lady Sweater and a Lace Scarf

It has been a while since I've been able to update because I had to go almost 2 weeks without knitting anything. Oh, the horrors! I somehow managed to hurt my back a few weeks ago so I spent quite a bit of the last week and a half or so lying in bed or on the floor. Good times. My back is feeling better now, so I have been able to resume working on my February Lady Sweater, which started out as the April Lady Sweater, then became the April/May Lady Sweater but at this rate, it is soon to be the April/May/June Lady Sweater! If I have to tag on July too....well....

I am still working on the body of the sweater, though I'm about 3/4ths of the way done with that part! I have not yet worked out how I am going to do the sleeves. I don't think I have DPNs in size 8 (and my size 7dpns are only 5" long so I'm not sure they'd work for the sleeves either) and I don't know that I want to buy them. I may try doing the sleeves with Magic Loop. That might not be a bad first ML "project" but I'll work that out later. :)

I took a couple of progress photos tonight to show what I've gotten done so far. My preferred method is to take a picture into a mirror but I wasn't able to do this for two reasons- 1. can't use flash that way, 2. I don't have a full length mirror at this house...

Anyway, I am super excited about how the sweater is coming along. I was a little disappointed at first because the first two skeins of the Kettle Dyed Wool of the Andes was more or less a solid red, but all of the skeins since then have been more variegated in the shades of wine/red. I think I am on skein 6, but I'll have to check. I bought 10 skeins for the project since I didn't know how the sizing would work out. I'm glad I waited a while to start this since I bought the yarn almost a year ago and I was between 15-20 pounds heavier then, so I might have had to make the Medium instead of the small and risk it not fitting now! I know I will definitely have yarn left over, so I might make a hat and maybe a scarf or mittens (depending on how much is leftover) to match the sweater. :)

I was also going through my craft room and starting to take more of a mental inventory of what's in there. I found some random skeins in a box, and one of them was a partially used skein of Simply Soft in the Autumn Red that I had used when I started swatching for the filet crochet afghan that I made in '07. Since it was partially used, I ripped out the project, but of course I didn't want to tote around yarn barf, so I wound it on my ball winder. For some reason, I hate having acrylic yarn in yarn cakes, so I decided I wanted to use it up, fast. I was flipping through my pattern binder and found a printout of the Lion Brand Lace Scarf. I printed this out a few years ago but put it in my binder and forgot about it. I figured this would be a good lace scarf project and should use up the bulk of this skein of Simply Soft. I am not sure how it will work with acrylic though, so I may have to do an experiment with "killing" acrylic after I'm done...

And finally- I am hoping that this weekend will yield some Kool-Aid dyeing! I went to Goodwill on Monday and bought a microwave safe plastic measuring cup (I used to have on just like it when I was in college...used to make ramen in it...blech) and another microwave safe bowl for under $5. I don't want to ruin any of my bowls and stain them with Kool-Aid. I have cherry, black cherry, lemon-lime, orange, grape, ice blue raspberry lemonade and surfin' berry punch to experiment with! I am going to try dyeing the KP bare yarns I have (two skeins of merino fingering wool and one skein of superwash merino/nylon fingering weight) and I might try "overdyeing" some Andy's Merino yarn I got a few years ago from Farmhouse Yarns. The yarn is lovely, I'm just not in love with a lot of the colors I have. Naturally, if I do end up dyeing tomorrow, I will document it with pictures. :) I am hoping to get my dyeing in soon, because one of the skeins of the KP Bare fingering weight merino is going to be a Traveling Woman scarf (ravelry link) and I am dying (no pun intended, har har) to start that shawl. :)

Some April/May Lady Sweater updates and a canine friend!

So I had a post written out and then Blogger crapped on me and everything disappeared! Boo!

I have spent the majority of the last week working on my sweater. Andy & I went to Door County for our 3rd anniversary vacation, and I had lots of kitty-free knitting time (sorry, Smores!). Don't get me wrong, I love my kitty, but kitty-free knitting is a lot easier than knitting with a curious kitty. :)

Over the weekend, I finished the yoke, separated the sleeves, and started on the gull lace pattern. Once I finished the yoke, there is an eyelet row to set up. The pattern just stated to place the eyelets evenly, but I wasn't really sure how to go about doing that. I was able to find this handy tutorial on how to place eyelets evenly. I initially set it up for the xtra-small size and couldn't figure out why I didn't have the eyelets correctly, and then I realized I had plugged the wrong numbers. So make sure you have the right size and you'll be fine! :)

As long as my dentist appointment goes okay tomorrow, I should be heading to my church's craft group to do some more work on my sweater!

Finally, in July 2008 I began working on That Old Beagle...but while I was moving and just trying to pack up my apartment etc etc etc, this project got sidelined for, well, almost 2 years... I found it in my craft room and realized that it had been holding my KP fixed Harmony size 7 circs hostage! I decided I needed to either finish or frog, and since it's That Old Beagle, I didn't want to frog (even though I'd only finished 18 rows on the pattern). I finally finished the pattern, and went to do the seed stitch top border, but I realized the pattern was a lot bigger than I thought it would be. I'm currently working on re-working the top so that I can get it turned into a small hanging towel since I don't think that it's really suitable for washing dishes, that's for sure!

Hooray for Joe Cool!

Woodstock is coming soon, whenever I can locate my yellow cotton yarn!

Also coming soon- I've decided that I want to try my hand at dying yarn with Kool-Aid. Stay tuned. :)