Something's different around here...

Last night, in response to being stressed out by events more or less beyond my control*, I started playing around with the blog layout. It is still a work in progress, but I'm liking it so far. I am going to move all my patterns to a separate tab along the top, and off of the sidebar in the next coupld of days. I will eventually probably customize the colors a bit more, maybe change the background picture to something more fibery or (gasp!) put together a real header for myself one of these days. It's a work in progress...;-)

I'm also prepping an update for the shop. It's been grey and cold, and I think that influenced my color choices quite a bit this time around...both sympathetically and in rebellion against. Update should be live tomorrow sometime, but you can check out a teaser post on the blog here.

And do I have knitting to share! There's a finished shawl, a handspun scarf, and a couple of cute critters. A few need to be held back until they reach their destinations, but there should be something new and off the needles on here this week. I have also firmly committed myself to sitting down and spinning tomorrow (more Falkland for the handspun-colorwork-sweater-that-will-never-end) because, well, March is coming, and I need to get cracking now that I've run out of yarn halfway down sleeve 1!

Let me know what y'all think of the new design, and what you'd like to see more of - I'm always open to suggestions, and I love knowing that you're out there!

* Nothing of health or job or family concerns, more along the lines of if-I'd-been-an-actual-adult-and-taken-care-of-this earlier-we-wouldn't-be-in-this-unfortunate-but-thankfully-only-potentially-disappointing-and-not-dire-predicament.

A finished present, only 6 months after the fact

My lovely mother-in-law turned 70 last August, and as a present I gave her the choice of any knitted item she might like. After a bit of hemming and hawing, she said she wanted a sweater. Off I went to Ravelry to search for a pattern. After a bit of back and forth, she settled on a lovely pattern from Artesano Yarns. And now, several months later, it's all done.

Pattern: Rachel by Ros Wilson
Yarn: Bartlettyarns Fisherman 2-ply in midnight, just under 5 skeins for the 43" size
Needles: US 10/6.0 mm
Gauge: 15 stitches/20 rows per 4 inches
Start/finish: 4 November 2011 - 23 January 2012
Comments and modifications: Of course I changed things up - it's what I do after all. Can't leave well enough alone...

First off - the arms. The sweater is knit from one cuff to the other, casting on stitches for the body when you get there. The pattern calls for some seriously belled sleeves, but Mermaid wanted normally shaped sleeves, so I did a bit of math and off I went. Not a terribly difficult change, all in all, but I did have to take some careful notes to make sure the arms matched (since they were knit 2 months apart!). The only other change that I made in this version was to work a slightly deeper collar, to match the cuff detail.

However...the pattern, as written, is quite compressed, and I found what I interpreted as a number of errors. Nothing too egregious - mostly around the shoulder shaping and the number of rows that needed to be worked to get both sides to match. And a couple of instances where it seemed like an extra row was thrown in that would mean working things on the wrong side. It's entirely possible that it was operator error, so take that critique with a grain of salt. It's hard to complain with a free pattern after all.

If I made this sweater again (which I'm considering - it's nice and cozy), the only additional mods I would make are as follows: make the body a bit shorter - it's quite long in this version. Might be my gauge at issue, but when I tried it on, it came down way past my hips. I'd prefer it a bit shorter. I'd also change the hem. This has a double thickness hem around the bottom which I'm not a real fan of. I'd add a few of the same ridges that are around the sleeve cuffs and neck to make it a bit more cohesive.

The overwhelming upside of this project was the glorious yarn I used. Bartlettyarns are one of the last mule-spun yarns made. This results in a rustic, nubbly, almost-handspun feel that was a pleasure to work with. And as I was seaming up the finished item, I noticed an interesting thing about the yarn after blocking.

See that? The strand on the left is the unwashed yarn I used for seaming, the one on the right is the end of my blocked swatch. There's a bit of difference, no? I love how much the yarn poofs up after finishing, and I'm really glad I washed my swatch before I checked the gauge and cast on. Imagine the disaster otherwise!

So Mermaid: the sweater is finished. It needs one more bath to even out the seaming, and then it can be on it's way to you. It might go via the Far East though, depending on how organized I get. Hope you can wait! But I'll need some better pictures once it makes it to its new home, ok?

Logo! Logo! Logo!

I am very excited about my new logo, designed by my lovely knitting and spinning compatriot SpiffyJenny. We talked about a logo for the first time waaay back in December, but with the craziness of the holidays and various and sundry other things, we didn't finalize anything until last week. Today she emailed me the final images, and I am thrilled.

I love what she came up with, from my seriously garbled and uninspired ramblings. It's this kind of thing that makes me appreciate graphic designs skills even more then I did before.

The dyepots are cooking

Sadly, I have spent much of the period of time since Christmas sick or recovering from being sick, including being on antibiotics for the first time in about seven years. But over the last week the energy has come back, and I've got some new pretties in the works.

This time around the inspiration is (in no particular order) George R. R. Martin, woodland amphibians, and nanometer size particles. We'll see which ones actually make it into the shop over the next few days.

I'm hoping to have everything dyed and photographed and packaged by 1st February, so check back in that day to see if the update has gone live. Til then, happy spinning!

Can't blog, too busy knitting

My plan was to celebrate the end of this week with a finished sweater for my mother-in-law. Instead I'm pulling together a care package to send to a knitter/spinner friend whose house caught on fire this week. She's not sure if she's going to have any stash left, so I'm pulling out things from my stash left, right and center to send to her. And doing a couple little things for her wee ones as well. So the sweater, lacking only one seam to be a FO, will have to wait a little bit longer. I think Mermaid will be ok with that...