Saturday, March 28, 2009

vacation knitting

I've done very little knitting on my spring break (somehow it doesn't feel right to bring out wool and needles while I'm sitting on the beach) but I did spend a couple hours on the plane ride to maui working on these lemony snicket socks. They are slow going but kind of cool-looking, I think. I don't have a cable needle with me, but I've been using a toothpick as a substitute.

Here's a gratuitous beach shot to fill out this posting...

Monday, March 16, 2009

FO: turn a square hat



Pattern: Turn a Square by Jared Flood, found on Brooklyn Tweed.
Yarn: MC=Sportivo, CC=scraps (who knows what by now...)
Modifications: Because my MC yarn was quite bulky, I didn't get gauge for this, I got 4sts/inch instead of 5, so I cast on 76 sts instead of 96. Then, when I was doing the decrease rounds, I stupidly misread the directions and kept decreasing every other round until I had 20 stitches left instead of switching to decreases every round with 32 stitches left.

It was about time I chose a project that I could whip up in a weekend! With all the sweaters I've been attempting lately, I have missed instant gratification knitting. This was a great, easy pattern and I'm very happy with the results.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

quilt back

I finished my quilt back a couple of weeks ago, but haven't yet figured out how to put the whole thing together and quilt it...so I'm sort of stalled on this project. I've missed sewing. In the meantime, I did make a couple more pincushions, but no pictures yet. Anyway, this is probably the last quilt-in-progress picture I will post, until I can show the completed thing, which may not be until June.

Sunday, March 1, 2009

FO: shawl collar sweater

I would count this sweater as a dismal failure. I sort of made up the pattern; that is--I loosely based it on starsky (found on knitty.com) but I left out the belt and the cables, and I was nowhere near gauge so I had to do a lot of math to figure out my stitch counts. And the finished product looks nothing like the original sweater. I used knitpicks decadence, a bulky-weight alpaca that has been discontinued, in a caramel color that, turns out, is very unflattering to my complexion. I think I will be giving this one away or stuffing it in the very back of my closet.