the fiber fetishist

swatches

The swatch on top is for Plum Frost Pullover & Cardigan — not because I harbor any delusions that I might start it soon but more because I was in the mood to knit something small and different from the other stuff I am currently working on.

I think the grey + yellow will be what I end up knitting, though it is so different from my usual palette. I’m just missing the medium grey color, and hope to find something that will work at Madrona!

When I put my silky wool henley on waste yarn to knit a sleeve, I tried it on and realized that I had changed the ribbing pattern too soon for my, er, bust. It fit great, but the ribbing pattern change happened at a very, er, noticable place. Heh!

After finishing the first sleeve, I went back and laddered down 10 rows in many places around the sweater body to switch the ribbing back to 2×2. In a few more inches I will start the other ribbing patterns.

Last week I needed to occupy my hands so I did not say negative things on a phone call. I grabbed the closest yarn — Queensland Collection Kathmanu Aran in 130 — and started a hat — Lotus Hat, published at Third Base Line.

hat, trees

It took me less than two days to finish it, I used almost every last yard of the yarn, and it fits! [my ravelry notes]

I do like hats

It’s hard to see, but the yarn has green and dark purple tweedy bits. I really like it.

flat hat

Ginger doesn’t like it much, though.

gingie hat

It’s ok, I’ll let it hang.

hanging hat

Way too many pictures for a simple hat!

seed stitch

I had planned to knit a sweater for friends of ours who are having a baby girl. I mistakenly thought she was due in June…. nope, early April! That changed my project plans and I cast on immediately for Kate Gilbert’s Pea Pod baby sweater in some Berroco Comfort DK I picked up at Ben Franklin.

I just need to seam the sleeves in and weave in ends now and it’s done.

in motion

Back in November, Little Knits had a big sale. E (PokingMyEyesOut) and I went down there to see what they had and I got a couple of things — a needle to finish Fugl, some yarn for a vest for my brother, and a lone hank of malabrigo worsted in glazed carrot that decided it must come home with me.

Back in early December I started a simple open scarf on biiiiig needles (US15). I finished it earlier this week.

scarfy

It’s warm and squishy and soft.

propped

The pattern is Mustard Scarf, designed by Jane Richmond and available on Ravelry as a free download.

Well… I totally deviated from the pattern. But I sewed a button on just like the pattern!

After I finished my honeycomb vest, I was inspired to immediately start a new garment for myself. After musing it over a little, tweeting about it with E (PokingMyEyesOut), and eyeing the stash, I finally started Slinky Ribs from Custom Knits by Wendy Bernard (Knit and Tonic).

sleeve started

The construction of this sweater is the big reason I was drawn to it (well, ok, I love ribbed, fitted, henleys too). It is knit top-down with set-in sleeves.

First you provisionally cast on the stitches across the shoulders and knit down the back to the bottom of the armhole. Next you pick up the stitches at the top of the shoulders and knit down the fronts, working the neckline and armhole shaping. Note that when you do this, you are knitting in two different directions from the same starting point, so the 2×2 ribbing will actually be offset by 1/2 stitch — TechKnitter explains why here.

Once both front and back are at the bottom of the armhole and the henley is however long you want it, you join the body in the round and knit it down.

I finished knitting one ball of yarn and put the body on waste yarn. Partially to try it on and make sure I hadn’t made a too scandalous neckline, partially because I wanted to see how long it was, but mostly because I wanted to start one of the sleeves!

modeled

For the sleeves, you pick up stitches around the entire sleeve cap and work short rows back and forth starting at the top of the sleeve cap, slowly increasing by adding in the stitches to make longer short rows. I’m not explaining it well!

It’s hard to see here, but the sleeve hole and sleeve itself actually fit me very well. Proportionally I have small shoulders to proportionally large bust (ahem!). Store-bought shirts are usually too wide across my shoulders. Raglan style handknits I never knit to the raglan length suggested. It’s a little more difficult for me with set-in sleeves. They’re always a bit too wide for my taste. This is the first one that I really, really am happy with (even though picking up stitches evenly around the armhole was less than fun).

Can’t wait until this is a wearable item!

This took me a while to finish knitting due to the whole selling/buying a house thing and the whole not-knitting-for-myself thing, but I finally finished a garment for myself.

honeycomb

Quick Notes–[my ravelry project page]

Pattern

Honeycomb, designed by Sarah Castor, published in Knitty. [ravel it]

Started-Finished

30 June 2009 – 10 January 2010.

Yarn

7.5 balls of Rowan Scottish Tweed DK in 031 / Indigo. 7 balls Purchased from E (PokingMyEyesOut) — she knit her dad a sweater in the same yarn (but a VERY different dye lot). When I started to run out of yarn, I purchased 2 more balls from Dancing Ewe Yarns. I only used about half of a ball for the armhole ribbing.

Needles

Knit Picks metal options in US5.

Modifications

A few:

• I knit it in the round with a 2 stitch rib flanked by a single purl stitch up either side.
• I knit with left twists and right twists instead of the 2 stitch cables as the pattern specifies (as described here).
• I worked more increases for the bust.
• My gauge was totally off, so I knit something similar to the Small size but got something closer to the 2X size.
• My mom made this vest and it looks great on her — the one thing she said she did not like is that the sides are too wide on her because she has small shoulders. I have small shoulders too, so I actually worked more decreases at the armholes to make the width smaller and I also worked 2 fewer rows of armhole ribbing to make it less wide. It worked out for me, the vest is not too wide there (but would have been if I had not worked more decreases at the armholes).

I’m just sick, not unhappy

detail

contemplating my ribbing

pattern stitch

I pulled this work in progress out of my bin yesterday during some work vpn/dns/dhcp issues in order to move it to a new needle and knit a couple of rows … then realized I had dropped a stitch way down there.

three needle surgery

I spent a few minutes on a conference call in the afternoon performing surgery on the scarf. It’s as good as new!

Maybe I’ll make some progress on this simple scarf now. Knitting on huge needles is killing me (they are US15/10mm; yarn is malabrigo worsted in glazed carrot).

pattern impossible to see in this tweedy yarn

I’m not the first and likely won’t be the last to work this modification on the lovely Honeycomb vest pattern (designed by Sarah Castor, published at Knitty).

Each pattern row of the cable pattern has a two-stitch cable — so every stitch in the row is part of a cable cross. That was a little too much work for me, even cabling without a cable needle.

Instead, I am working left twists (rightmost stitch ends up on top) and right twists (leftmost stitch ends up on top).

LT:

slip each st separately, then move back to left needle. k tbl on second stitch, leave on needle, then k2tog tbl through both sitches.

RT:

k2tog, leave st on needle. k through first stitch, drop both stitches.

There are other methods for working left/right twists, but I am very pleased with how these two mirror one another.

Now if only I could knit faster!

Some coffee and my Honeycomb vest (ravel it!).