Knitting Update.

Here's what I've been working on:

The EZ Baby Surprise Jacket. I'm concerned that I might run out of yarn (Lorna's Laces Worsted in 912 Kedzie, lot 1747... in case you have it). Hopefully, I'll be able to find more soon.  This is what it looks like so far, I added a panic thread, in case I have to pull back to incorporate a new dye lot or something. I think I marhed the pattern where I place the thread, so I don't something twice, or not at all. It Looks really funny to me but ...

This is the drawing I've been presented with in the book. Helpful.

The Paternal Twin Shawl A is coming along quite nicely. The rows are getting longer, at this point there are 11 repeats in each row, then there will be 12 then 13 until I run out of yarn. Honestly, I love it. I was frustrated with everything, wait till you see what I have next, so I picked this back up and finished a whole section in 1 day.

It turns out that you can use a gram scale to make sure you have the same amount of yarn per Mitt. LeAnne from knit night brought her scale (and cupcakes!!!) so I could divide my hand spun for the Jane Austin Mitts. LeAnne asked me if I had my own digital scale last week and I looked at her for a long moment before responding "no...? I'm not a drug dealer...?" The whole table started laughing so hard I thought we would get kicked out. LeAnne replied, "neither am I, they are useful to knitter too!" huh, learn something new every day!

I seriously was having way too much fun being the human swift. The yarn kept pulling off and then I'd laugh and look a little bit manic. It was awesome.

All my balls on LeAnne's scale. I'm trying to tell you, Knit Night is so much fun, I'm surprised Huz lets me leave.

That's Wanda in the back enjoying her cupcake a lot, the Las Vegas Spin Fairy and I love her. She brought me the yarn featured in the bottomest photos. LeAnne brought them because I was came to knit night the week of my birthday and no one knew and she needed an excuse for cupcakes. I provided said excuse. They were from a place here in Vegas called Nothing Bunt Cakes and they were the most amazing cupcakes I've ever had.

This sweater went from here...

...to here...

...by way of her. Lol. KaBean had a lot of fun helping me frog the Borealis Sweater. It felt really good to get that yarn back...

...there was a whole lot of it, and I love it, and it's too pretty to be stuck in a UFO that will never get finished.

 

I just thought this was too cute. Love this girl!

Wanda gifted me with some gorgeous, custom, hand painted yarn in my perfect colors. Probably a little less than 250 yards of beautiful. I chose to do a really neat Moebius Lace pattern, but as I knit along, I realized that I really really hate the purl side of the pattern and need to rework the whole thing.

I LOVE the top, the lace pattern shows really nicely on the knit side, but I feel quite sure that there has to be something that will look better for the bottom section. If you don't know anything about the wonder that is Moebius Knitting, stay tuned, I'll have a whole bunch of posts about it coming up, it's the most amazing, frustrating, tricky things I've learned in a long time.

Knitting...

The Not-Noro-2 Row-1x1 Rib Scarf. This was a blast to knit, but I don't think I'd choose it on purpose... It's good for using up large amounts of leftovers. Although, I don't know when else I would have so much left over coordinating-ish, color changing yarn.  

I know I said there would be no pictures of the finished Martinmas? Well, there won't. This picture is not a picture of the finished Martinmas, this picture is a picture of 2 unblocked projects made out of the same yarn. This picture is a picture of the really cool colors and the frequency of the silk blobs in the Mushishi. I would use this yarn again, but only if I had the perfect pattern for it first. Next time I use this yarn for something, the ends would be woven in almost immediately, not quite at the beginning, we all know how often I have to frog and start over cough*everytime*cough, I noticed that the longer the ends were left exposed, the rattier they became. Not a good look. 

My 4 year old daughter picked out the purple sparkle yarn. She really needs a purple-sparkle-fluffy hat to make the world amazing. That's all.

This is the Borealis Sweater. I thought I would love it. I thought it would be amazing. I thought that using a baby sweater pattern with much larger yarn than called for would produce and interesting, proportional adult sweater. I was wrong. I don't love it, it got boring. The colors make my brain hurt. The sleeves look fat and stupid. This might be my first real UnFinishedObject.

Jane Austin Knits Summer 2012. Go now. Buy it. You really need this knitting book. I love it. I actually pick it up to read it. Everything in it is beautiful. I think I will actually end up knitting more than one thing out of this, and that's saying a lot.

This handspun yarn and this pattern, in Jane Austin, fell in love with each other in my mind and when they met in person, it was destiny. Problem: What the hell is a Provisional Cast On? This, this is not easy. Enter Sin City Knits, the Las Vegas knit night I found on Ravelry. I took the yarn and the pattern and the question and left with a simple explanation and demonstration of the crochet method and the first row cast on and knit.

Saturday sees the whole first section finished and blocking so that I can more easily see the 20 stitches I have to pick up and knit at each end of the Provisional Cast On. Problem: The pink cotton waste yarn and the blue/green wool kind of mated and didn't want to part from each other and refused to come apart gracefully.

In the end, I am victorious and today, Monday, sees me on the very last lace row before the Cast Off. Then the final blocking and finding a button and yay! I might get to bring it to the next Knit Night!

This odd little thing is more stash busting my handspun. I gathered all the little puffs of wool leftover from my first spinning projects and carded them together and spun it out into and interesting single. There is silk and orange and super wash and tons of blue and red and wool and rabbit (not fancy rabbit, just very very very special rabbit). It looked flimsy so I spun out a bunch of the practice wool Helen gave me and then plied them together and got this. Turns out I was just short having the same amount of white as of blue. So instead of spinning more white, I pulled out the blue, bent it back on itself and let it ply. There was just enough for a little stripe of blue and I love it.
The pattern is based on the technique Susan B. Anthony uses to make the petals on her Flower Pacifier Clip. I've modified it to be much bigger, to hold my new camera!

And look at that, finished in 2 days, very simple, really neat how the K1, Sl1 back and forth makes a hollow piece of knitting. After knitting on for a while, I flipped it right side out and bound off half the stitches and then just kept the stockinette stitch going until the flap of the pouch was 2 times longer than the pouch itself. I'm going to use some more of this yarn to crocket in some reinforcment then slightly felt the whole thing to make it a touch smaller and the fabric a bit thicker. This was a really interesting practice project and I think I'll be keeping this technique tucked in case I need to pump out any more little pouches. Yay, for easy knitting.