Crotchfruit Knitting

Happy Spring!

Wow, why is everyone I know suddenly pregnant? Holy crap.  I'm not a huge fan of children, myself (I babysat once in my entire youth, and it was a horrible experience which I hope never to repeat), but hey, if people want the little critters, then more power to 'em!

While I don't exactly want to hold a child, I will knit for it willingly!

Behold, various knitting projects for Friends Bearing Crotchfruit!

Exhibit A: Radiating Star blanket.  I'm over halfway done, but because it's a round thing, every other round grows by many stitches.  Luckily, the pattern is pretty easy to memorize & knit in front of the TV.  I have 3 "Fullmetal Alchemist" DVD's to work my way through, thanks to Netflix.

Exhibit B: Strawberry hat.  This is for my friend who will be popping that kiddo out in the next week or so, with any luck.  A note about the pattern - I followed the "bobble" instructions given, and really if I knit this again, I would do at least two of the "k,p into the same stitch" moves to make the bobble more noticeable.

****

The Moral?  Want something knit for your impending child, and aren't in a hurry? I can probably accomodate you. :)

Destash 2010!

Okay Peeps, this is it.

Check out my Ravelry Destash page if you want some good deals on yarn.  (Well, give me a few minutes to finish posting pictures, but I should finish by tonight).

I've got Socks That Rock, Noro, some stuff from Yarnia, laceweight, leftovers, handspun - You name it!!

Sweater Reverse Engineering

Last night I went on a shopping trip with my friend, Jeanne. A store-that-shall-remain-nameless-but-has-fruit-in-the-title was having a substantial sale (25% off, 30% if you possessed their credit card).

I purchased several things, among them a pair of pants with attached cummerbund, and the sweater below.



The sweater was $130 without the discount, and the fiber content was mostly wool, with about 10% nylon + 16% cashmere, and I think there may have been something else in the mix.

Well! I know this is very possible to replicate, so that is what I intend to do. Of course, at a machine-knit gauge of 9 st/in, I am not going to go all-out and knit it in sock yarn! However, I feel I can capture the spirit of the thing.

So I took photos of it.


And another photo, from the front.


Oh my god, do I actually have a defined waist?! Not really, it's all the jacket (at least from the back view).

I love the overlayed double-breasted style of the jacket. It has a 1" band of 2x2 rib around all the edges, and long ribbed cuffs. The sleeves are a tad puffy up at the shoulder, and are set in. The collar is a long bit of ribbing, too.

I measured the crud out of this sweater! Everything that I thought would be critical, got measured. Sleeve width, rate of decrease (so I measured about halfway down the sleeve, and then at the beginning of the cuff), cuff length, panel dimensions for the back and two half-front panels, button placement and relative distances (especially important because the front panels are not actually rectangular).

For $130, I think I can use a much nicer yarn, and possibly do it in the round. Damn right. The Spirit of EZ is with me, Hallelujah! Praise Saint Cascade and All the Sock Yarns!

Book Review Time

I just splurged and bought two new knitting books:

Reversible Knitting, by Lynne Barr

and

The Enchanted Sole, by Janel Laidman.

"Reversible Knitting" is just what it sounds like - a stitch dictionary of fully reversible patterns. I also enjoy several of the patterns included in the book - my favorites are a sweater by Wenlan Chia that you can wear top-down or bottom-up, a bubble dress / tunic with flubby cables on one side and a texture on the other, and a double knit tank dress with a great labyrinth pattern.

"The Enchanted Sole" is Laidman's second book, that I have, and I love her colorwork designs for socks. All her socks in this book are based on myth or fairy tale. My favorites are the Tree of Life and Firebird socks. She also has some interesting sideways-knit socks that intrigue me.

Finally, a couple of weeks ago I bought Cat Bordhi's new sock book "Personal Footprints for Insouciant Sock Knitters" (Rav link to patterns). I love Cat. This new method she has is certainly unique, but I am anxious to finish knitting my friend Priscila's socks so I can try it out. She has you make a cardboard cutout to match your foot, and then you knit a closed tube, essentially, to match your foot, and then use lifelines to cut a hole at the top of the sock, wherein you pick up stitches and knit up the leg. Neat!! And she explains it far better than I do here.

Meanwhile I am finishing up a book not about knitting, called "Bacchus and Me", written by a wine critic who I fear was not well known (Jay McInerney), but it is very delightful reading! He details his travels to different wine regions around the world.

I am off to relax for the evening and think about sleeping soon... pilates class tomorrow!

Flapper Hat FO

I finished my Side Slip Cloche hat on Friday, while eating my way through Portland with a friend of mine. :)



Here it is, on the floor:



I was really worried that one skein of Dream in Color Classy wouldn't be enough for a hat. I don't know what I was thinking - I have about half the ball left!

The hat construction is interesting - you knit the band around, then you block it (and I wove in ends), and then you pick up stitches around the top and knit up the hat in the round.

My hat is not as poofy as the pattern suggests, but it just might need some blocking to stretch out a bit.

Overall, I'm very happy with it! And I loved knitting with Classy - the colors are saturated, and the yarn is nice and tightly plied, which I love. In my opinion, it feels like a high-class Cascade 220.

...Now what to knit???

I have yarn wound off for many projects, but I think tonight I will work on my Spring Forward socks for my friend Priscila...

Fiber Destashing

ETA: I sold the Lincoln Fleece!

I'm cleaning out my closet, and getting rid of some things! I want them to go to good homes, so hopefully posting them on Ravelry will be fruitful. I already sold a raw alpaca fleece, as well as a large bump of alpaca / Merino top.

The listings are on Ravelry: Lincoln fleece.

Here are the pictures. I have approximately 1 lb of raw fleece. Average staple length 5". $10 + shipping. It washes up to a beautiful white color (you can see it in the lower left of the picture below).


Below is a picture of an average lock, showing staple length.

The Uber-Sweater

I think I have decided what to make with my Blue Moon yarn (BFL Sport) that I purchased at OFFF.

An Uber-Sweater. A basic, wear-it-around-every-day, colorful sweater that looks good on me.

I present a sketch:

Ignore the shadow on the paper. A childhood spent yearning to be a fashion designer, yet feeling I never really could until I wasn't overweight (have you ever seen a fat fashion designer, Karl Lagerfeld pre-weight-loss not included? OK, I should say - have you ever seen a fat female fashion designer? No. Because 90% of those women are neurotic, smoke, eat too little and party too much to be healthy anyway. And I bet none of them could do any sort of deadlift at all! Bam!)

I digress. So... sweater details:

- Nalgar shoulder shaping (courtesy of EZ; notice the two diagonal lines at the shoulders above. Since I haven't browsed Ravelry yet for real-life pictures of a Nalgar in the wild, I am relying on translating her drawing of a Nalgar from her "Knitting Workshop" book into what it would like on a body.)
- EZ's knit waistband (vs. a ribbed waistband, so it doesn't tuck in and bubble out around my waist)
- deep ribbed arm cuffs (cuz I like that!)
- waistband hits mid-hip. I learned with my February Lady Sweater that cropped things hitting at my actual waist are Not. Flattering to me. At All.

A note: I find it interesting how my perception of proportions on bodies has changed over the years. My initial sketch had the shoulders too broad, the arms hanging out to the sides beyond the ribcage, and the arms too long. The forehead was too high, initially. Also, the legs were too fat (at least to represent ME **thank you Mom and Dad for not afflicting me with Cankles, Saddlebags, and giving me Nice Leg Shaping!**). Thank goodness for pencil erasers, and patience. I think, for a 20 minute sketching exercise, this is a fair representation of myself. :)


***

What's this? The beginning of a new hat! The "Side Slip Cloche" from Boutique Knits, to be exact. This is the lower band of the hat, with the side ruffles. It's about 14" long right now, and needs to be 20.5" before I proceed with the rest of the hat. The yarn is Dream in Color Classy worsted in "Flamingo Pie". It is a beautiful base yarn, more tightly plied than Cascade 220 (which is what I originally thought the base was), and the dyers do a wonderful job. And there is more yardage than Cascade 220 (well, 30 more yards!), although it is much more expensive than Cascade 220... but I think for a one-skein project, it works great!