I've been cheating

I made The List with all the best intentions. I was going to prioritize the projects for the fall, write them down in (virtual) pen, make myself accountable to all five people who read this blog (not counting my mother) and Get. Things. Done.

Well. That was before this. I made the mistake of going over to take a look.

And I found three (!) sweaters that I liked. Three sweaters that I even have the yarn for. Three. And I realized that knitting up some of the sweater lots in my stash would clear out some space. Which is always a good thing, right?

That giant thud you just heard was The List getting tossed to the bottom of the rubbish bin and buried under the moldy leftovers I cleaned out of the refridgerator. Temporary insanity is my excuse. Insanity and an overwhelming desire to knit with cotton/angora yarn. In the autumn (part of the insanity thing - it doesn't get that cold in London in the winter, but it's definitely colder then cotton/angora). That's the only explanation to explain why this

is now taking over all of my evening knitting time. I was hoping to maintain my speed and get it done in a week (2 girl sweaters = 1 porpoise sweater, right?), but sadly, I'm now into the stockinette body, and even though it's on US 10/6.0 mm needles, it's taking quite a while. Maybe two weeks, and then I can get back to The List.

I promise.

Quarter Three Output

Right, a cheater blog post for an extremely busy Wednesday:

Knitting
Annis #5 and #6
Aran Necklace Tank (not blogged because it's not quite wearable yet...)
Two handspun hats
One pair of socks
Norberta (sadly gifted before I took a finished shot)
Mittens for Nana
Girl sweaters

Spinning
The Tour de Fleece
4! Oz! Challenge spinning
Pencil roving

Now back to the frantic guilty knitting (I cast on for something not on the list, because I just couldn't help myself).

Nana cheated

She opened her birthday present early. Of course, we were talking on Skype, and she did ask me if it was ok. After ascertaining that it was cold enough in the mornings to need some hand covering when she walks the dog, I said it was ok.

Pattern: Triskele Mittens by Violet Green
Yarn: Knit Picks Palette in Rainforest Heather and some unknown color of Jamesons Spindrift taken off of knitlet's hands in a stash swap back in Houston. Maybe 1/3 of a ball of the Palette and 25 gr of Spindrift? Not sure, but not much yarn at all.
Needles: US 2/2.75 mm bamboo dpns
Start/finish: 5 Sept - 13 Sept 2010
Comments/mods: A really nice pattern - reasonably quick for colorwork, and interesting enough to take some attention. I could work on them while watching TV as long as I didn't need to pay attention to every second of whatever was on (or even most seconds). I used fingering weight yarn instead of the DK weight indicated in the pattern. But Mom has small hands, so that worked out ok - I could get them on, but there wasn't any extra room in there.

I love the wavy palms, and the mirroring of the pattern in the left and right mittens.

Now that these are done, I'm ready to jump in to another pair of colorwork mittens, only this time with handspun. Yee haw!

FF: One week, two sweaters

Sweater #1:

Sweater #2:

Not surprisingly, Devil was uninterested in modeling her sweater, although I have managed to get her into it voluntarily. But Boo was happy to put her's on for our grey and drizzly Sunday visit to HMS Belfast.

Both sweaters: top down raglans a la Barbara Walker.
Needles: US 10/6.0 mm for bodies, US 8/5.0 mm for ribbing on the Technicolor Dreamsweater
Yarn: handspun from girl-dyed top (colorways Mermaid and Clown Barf). I used all of the Mermaid yarn and 95% of the Clown Barf.

These were great fun to knit, and have only increased my conviction that I will be much happier when I do most of my knitting from handspun rather then commercial yarn. It's so satisfying. I am also pleased that Boo's dye job ended up as a very bright, but perfectly 3-year-old-appropriate sweater. She loves it, and it makes it really easy to keep track of her in a crowd!

I've got to go back and fix the collar I think - add ribbing all the way around instead of doing a little Peter Pan deal - but then it will be time to move on to the next project. Spinning seems to be falling by the wayside these days, in favor of actually using up some of the stash. I think the next sweater should be the IM Aran, but a new Knitty (and a new Norah Gaughan pattern) is very tempting!

Handspun patterns

The 4! Oz! Challenge! ends tomorrow, and I'm happy to say that I finished my patterns and got them submitted before the last day (a miracle in and of itself, seeing as how I am the Queen Procrastination). Here they are*:

Lisbon Cloche**, superwash merino in "Thunderstorm" from Spunky Eclectic

download now

Shelburne Falls Beret, Targhee in "Garland" from Hello Yarn

download now

This was a really interesting process for me. Usually I spin without much of an end product in mind (although the TdF did change that a bit). For these, I had four days in between trips in August to spin up the yarn, and I knew two things: 1) I was going to chain ply both colorways to keep the colors intact, and 2) I was going to knit hats, but I didn't want them to be really obviously stripey.

For the SE merino, I ended up spinning a really fast, thick single. When it was plied up, the yarn ranged from 6-10 wpi and was super squooshy. I used a slipped stitch pattern (same as in an eye of partridge heel flap) to break up the striping, but since the colors didn't contrast very much, that was sufficient.

For the Targhee, which I spun second, I was a bit rushed - the final yarn was a wee bit overplied. But...there wasn't a lot I could do about that while on vacation, so I soldiered on. Since the colors in that skein were much more contrasting, I needed to take "extreme" measures to try and break up the striping. The stitch pattern I chose has two rounds of slipping the same stitch, which is then crossed over two stitches on the third round. I'm really pleased with how it came out.

The patterns include details about spinning the yarn and a whackload of specs (i.e. singles wpi/tpi, plied wpi/tpi, twist angle, etc). Both hats are knit from the top down, starting with i-cord in waste yarn, and can easily be adjusted in size as you go (patterns are written for only one size). Enjoy***!

* Please excuse the goofy pictures, but it's really hard to take pictures of your own head without looking like an idiot.
** Named for the towns in which the respective dyers (Amy of Spunky Eclectic and Adrian of Hello Yarn) are located.
*** If you knit up one of these in a commercial yarn, please let me know how it works out and I'll add that to the Ravelry pattern pages. Thanks!