A week in sweaters, part I

Last week was a big finishing up things week for me. To whit:

Pattern: Dahlia Cardigan by Heather Zoppetti, Interweave Knits Fall 2011
Yarn: Elspeth Lavold Silky Wool (the old version), 65% wool/35% silk, don't know how many skeins, but I'll weigh it and find out
Needles: US 4/3.5 mm
Start/finish: 13 August - 5 October 2011
Comments/modifications: The moment I saw this cardigan, I knew I had to make it. I loved the flowy style, the back panel, the three quarter length sleeves. I even had yarn in stash. So I cast on just before we left for our trip back to the States in August.

I was a bit worried that I would knit the lace panel and then stall out on the stockinette sections. There was a bit of that going on, but it actually made for excellent TV knitting - I had to pay attention enough to get the borders right, but it was mindless after that.

The modifications: well, surprise, surprise, I didn't use the yarn called for in the pattern. Silky Wool (my favorite yarn ever) is listed as a DK weight, but is kind of a light DK, so it worked perfectly for the sportweight yarn recommended by the pattern. The silk gives it a nice nubbly, slightly crunchy texture that I really like knitting with, and it drapes beautifully once it's blocked.

I also used Judy's Magic Cast On instead of the crochet chain provisional cast on (which I despise)(I despise it because I always screw it up and end up having to unpick it stitch by stitch. Always). My lace panel ended up slightly bigger then called for in the pattern, so I adjusted the amount of knitting needed to get to the armholes accordingly. That being said, if I were to do it all over again, I might make the back slightly wider - the afterthought armholes/sleeves mean there isn't any shaping at the shoulders, and it pulled the tiniest bit when I first wore it. Thankfully, it's stretched out a bit now, so it's fine.

No idea why this photo is so washed out/overly bright

I like it with the fronts open and closed - I think it's going to be a very versatile item. I finished it last week in time for Ally Pally, and was very gratified to have someone ask me about it. Hooray for a new fall sweater! And there will be more to come this week. Bwahahahahaha!

Current 2011 sweater tally: Four. Uh oh...I must be forgetting something...

Truant

This week somehow totally got away from me, but it has been productive. This hasn't, of course, helped with the backlog of as-yet-unblogged projects, but there you have it. Sometimes life gets in the way of the whole blogging thing and that's just how it is.

Yesterday, I played hookey and took myself off to North London to Ally Pally, aka Alexandra Palace, the home of the Knitting and Stitching Show. I hadn't realized the show was coming up until my spinning group on Tuesday night, and the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to go. The girls had an after school club yesterday, so I took them to school and marched myself off to the train.

On the one hand, it was the kind of event where you pay for the priviledge of going in and spending more money on stuff that really, do you even need? But, in addition to loads of booths of stuff to buy, there were the most incredible displays - tapestries, textile artists, design students' final projects, various guilds displaying samples...It was just such an amazing variety of the things people do with fiber in all its myriad incarnations.

There were beads, miles and miles of beads...

There were clothes, of various degrees of wearability,

and yarn, lots of yarn (this is just one example).

Have paid my £14 to get in, I wasn't too interested in spending a lot more. I spent most of my time wandering around just looking and taking in all the colors. But I got sucked in by a new-to-me local magazine (to which I now have a subscription),

a gorgeous orange sketchbook,

and a cone of mohair boucle to use in some core spinning, which I've been dying to try for a while now. I managed to make it out without getting a new sewing machine (though it was very tempting), or with any yarn. I was on a mission to find some DK weight, dark grey-slatey blue handdyed yarn, but by far the vast majority of the yarns available were sock and lace weight. Bah! Any UK-based indie dyers up for producing some heavier weight gorgeousness? Please?!!!!

FF: Lincoln Socks

I am feeling a bit like the unblogged projects are piling up and I don't really know where to start. There's so much going on at the moment that blogging is taking a bit of a back seat, so I'm going to try and get some things posted just to keep them straight in my own head.

This is a terrifically craptastic nighttime picture of Dev's new handspun socks, made out of Lincoln that I dyed. Since Lincoln is a longwool, and I didn't want the yarn to feel like twine, I spun the singles at 7.25:1 and then chain plied at 6.5:1 - I'm hoping the length and strength of the fiber will keep these from wearing out too soon.

Pattern is a simple toe-up, short-row heel, worked in k3, p1 rib. I changed to k2, p2 ribbing at the cuff. And I managed to get them on to her feet for an even worse modeled shot.

Given that it has been extraordinarily warm here recently (they're calling for 28 degrees over the weekend - bliss!) (Also: WTF end of September? This is July weather. Of course, in July we had October weather, so maybe it's all evening out), these babies are destined for the back of the sock drawer for quite a while. Thankfully they're a bit loose, so she shouldn't grow out of them before December.

I hope...

Sweater updates

I've been moving along in the sweater-production phase pretty steadily recently. Exhibit 1:

A finished almost-for-Dad-sweater, which needs to be photographed, packed up, and sent off to the US so I can get my brother to do a photo shoot for me ASAP. I'm hoping to have the pattern available by the middle or end of October. A vest version will follow shortly thereafter.

Exhibit 2:

Progress being made on sleeve #2 of my Dahlia cardigan A finished Dahlia cardigan being blocked. I had to cannibalize my failed Aleita Shell for the second sleeve, but I'm hoping to have it done by the end of the month it's actually almost done! Left to do: sew up the seams on the back and decide whether or not to make the front panels a bit longer.

Exhibit 3:

115 yards of dark grey Falklands, for the River Run pullover. This was the one color I messed up on in the dyeing process, by dyeing about half the yardage I actually needed (in my defense, I think that's a boo boo in the yardage requirements in the pattern, but whatever). I spun up another skein pretty quickly, but it took a few days to get the color close enough to work. It's not the same, but there's so much going on in the colorwork, that I'm hoping it will be good enough. But I'm about halfway up the armholes, so I'm feeling like it's moving along. By the end of the current repeat, I should be able to put in the neck steek. And then I'll be almost done with the body!

It's definitely turning into sweater-knitting weather here (even despite todays 25 plus degrees - WTF September?). I'm already itching to get the next batch on the needles. There's some handspun that needs to be knit up for the girls, and I'm having fits about doing Pas de Valse in overdyed alpaca again, so I might actually have to get going on that. And then there's this to deal with - anybody have any good handspun sweater suggestions?

Disaster!

My lovely, lovely Aquaphobia socks, knit out of the only skein of Hill Country Yarns I will probably ever own, took an ill-advised trip through the washing machine last week.

Now they will fit Devil (in a year or so), and I have a new system for dealing with handknitted items that need to be washed (also known as hoarding them in a bag under my bed so that this Never. Happens. Again). And instead of Mummy having some nice socks, and Devil getting a new pair of handspun socks this month, she gets two pairs. Grrrr...