Knit One, Purr Too

Comfy

I decided that the only way I was going to get that sweater done was if I took all the pieces with me to craft night, and not bring anything else, thus forcing me to do nothing but seam. So I did, and I seamed and we talked and I knit the ribbing edges for the front placket, and there was a small kitten making the rounds of all of our laps because there was lots of yarn to bap at, and by the time I was ready to leave, it was done. Phew.

I washed it and wore it today and it's a little on the loose side, which suggest that either my real gauge didn't match my swatch gauge, or else I was too generous on the measurements; either way I'm going to have to make some modifications to what I plug into the Sweater Wizard software next time. But overall I am quite pleased with the result.

The yarn is a cotton and acrylic slub that I picked up last year at Stitches West (don't recall the booth). It's a heavy yarn - not in width, but in how the fabric turns out, but this means that it has a nice drape - especially since it's rather roomy. I got a lot of compliments on it, especially since I discovered that the socks I received in my first sock pal exchange match it perfectly!

Speaking of socks, I completely forgot to include something sock-related and very cool that happened to me when I was at Stitches West. I got to meet Emy, the person who is responsible for getting me into sock knitting in the first place! When I did the knitting Secret Pal last spring, she sent me a ball of blue striped sock yarn and a set of DPN's and most importantly, a pattern which was so easy that I decided I just needed to get over my irrational fear of turning heels once and for all, and once I started I just couldn't stop. She was working at one of the boothes and had mentioned she might be there, so at one point during Stitches I wandered around all the booths surrounding the one she said hers was next to, eying all the people working at all of them and trying to figure out which one might be her. Luckily she recognized me first. Heh.

So now that the sweater is done, I've been working on a few new things. This evening I cast on for the bear rug, since I decided I needed something frivolous, although I would like to point out that fun fur tangles if you look at it cross-eyed, and when you multiply that by three strands of fun fur held together plus a strand of wool-ease, well, you can just imagine the sweari...I mean, the joy.

I'm also finally making more progress on my FLAK cardigan. After about three more rounds of cable swapping and a few more hours of pouring through my stitch pattern books, I finally decided on the cables I wanted to use, swatched it out in the little chunk of yarn they gave me, and what do you know, about the time I finished that, my first three skeins of yarn from Black Water Abbey arrived!

Here's my swatch, which actually captures the color pretty well.

After washing and blocking (which wasn't much more than laying it on a towel to dry) the swatch is just about exactly the width I need for the back section, which makes me quite relieved because I wasn't exactly looking forward to having to go through the whole process of picking cables/swatching again. Although I will admit that I decided to take advantage of all this cable swatching to transition entirely to cabling without a needle. I'd been doing it all along for some of the smaller two or three-stitch cables, but hadn't really tried it for the larger ones. When I finally looked up the directions, I laughed, because it wouldn't have been that much longer til I'd figured it all out on my own anyway.

And while I haven't cast on for it yet, there's one more large project coming up. While at craft night, I picked up a skein of peacock Zephyr and the pattern for the Pacific Northwest Shawl, because I'm going to be making that for a friend to display in her shop. It works out well - I like knitting lace but I just don't wear it, so I get to do something I enjoy and someone else gets to benefit. I suspect I'll be casting on for that before the week is out, since there is only so much swearing at fun fur and wrestling of cables that a woman can do at a time.

Posted by Jenipurr at March 5, 2006 06:40 PM