It's Been a Long Time

I'm sorry to have deserted you faithful readers, both of you, for so long. I have been dwelling in a deep cellar of Family Obligations and am finally coming up for air.

When last we met it was--brrrrrr--February and I was getting frostbitten trying to put up yarnbombs. I did go back later and shot a couple of my tree sweaters that hardier souls had installed.

 These are the ones I got before my battery pooped out, but you get the idea.

I have been doing plenty of knitting down there in the cellar, and here are some of the Finished Objects:

 The Brocade Leaves cardigan is all done and complete with nordic clasp. It was from a Poetry in Stitches pullover kit that I converted to a cardigan.

I made a Hippie Scarf out of that crazy Himalayan Recycled Silk yarn. It's really fuzzy and fun and warm with all sorts of draping possibilities.

.....And then there are the mittens I made for a temporary winter resident of Fairbanks.  Scroll down that Fairbanks link to "climate" in order to see why a person needs a pair, nay, many pairs of double-layer mittens just to make it from the front door to the frozen car on an average January day.

Currently on the needles is Siv by Elsebeth Lavold. I'm making it in Lavold's Silky Wool, a yarn I've drooled over for a long time because of its season-spanning capabilities and its deep, deep saturated colors.

I've changed the pattern a little to make the links the same length as the knot sections, increasing the chances that I will be able to be consistent over the whole garment. Looking at some of the other Sivs on Ravelry, I know I'm not the only one to have thought of this.

Home From Sleeve Island

Hey, know what makes great travel knitting? (compact, simple-ish) Sleeves! Especially second sleeves. It only works for sew-in sleeves, not knit-on sleeves, because the idea is to not have the bulk of a sweater body to tote around, but for my second Brocade Leaves sleeve this was the perfect chance to git 'er done while miles away from the siren call of other projects.

If you're making them in sequence, not simultaneously, it's a good idea to bring Sleeve #1 along for frequent comparison. It's not much bigger than a sock, and you want them to match, riiiight? Periods of forced concentration (aka long airplane rides) enabled me to crank along to the last repeat of the leaf pattern. I'm home now, but so close to being done that motivation is not a problem. (Update: I am done!)

So after the sleeves are done and sewn on, the remaining challenge is the cardigan edging. I'm not an enormous fan of the plain blue edge of the cropped cardigan version. In fact, there are a whole bunch of different takes on this sweater as a cardigan. Take a look on Ravelry and see what I mean.

 I'd rather continue the picot edge theme of the hem and sleeves, with maybe a little taste of the contrast colors.

And then finish the whole thing off with nordic clasps. What do you think?

Resurrection from The Heap

Rummaging in the stash closet for something else, I rediscovered a bagful from the Heap of Malfunctioning Rubble. It has been composting in the heap for so long, I have no idea when it was actually started, but once brought to light, it seized my fancy for some reason.

It's the Brocade Leaves Sweater by Solveig Hisdal, purchased as a kit with original yarn. The design is the cover feature of Hisdal's very popular book, Poetry in Stitches. (Yikes! I just had a look at what the book is selling for these days--$100 bucks for a knitting book!)

So why had I abandoned it to the Heap? For starters, I had converted the pullover sweater to a cardigan. No problem, really. After knitting most of the body, I discovered a big blooper: two of the yarn shades are very close, off-white and light peach. The big flower motifs were supposed to be done in light peach, and by the time I got to the sleeves I had used up a significant portion of the white in the body. The two yarns are very very close (hence my mistake), and it doesn't seem all that noticeable if the sleeve flowers are peach and the body ones are left white. You can see how close the colors are below. There's hardly any white left; the big ball is peach. So far, so acceptable.

But the boo boos keep coming. The body is 2 inches longer than it's supposed to be at the front/back divide. Now we're looking at running out of blue yarn. Gulp. No way to know for sure, but it might happen. Especially when a cropped cardigan version of the pattern shows edges finished in a light blue knitted band. (see Poetry cover) but the final thing that sent it tumbling into the Heap was the size. The pattern is provided in only one size, a rather oversized medium. At the time of abandonment, I was a very oversized XL. It wasn't going to fit, and there was no use putting a lot of time and effort in rescuing my other mistakes if the bloomin' thing wasn't going to fit anyway. Well, dear reader, I am myself now an oversized medium, and there's a very good chance that after blocking it will fit! Game on!