A Scarf for Me!

I am very excited about this scarf.

Knit from two skeins of Manos on US 11 needles, it was a total Instant Gratification Project (2 days, I think?). I love how the herringbone stitch of the sweater is perfect for Manos's variegated colors. Plus it is a nice thick squishy scarf, of which I have few. Bring on the scarf weather! And the sweater weather and the glove weather and the hat weather...

Zeebee for BeeZee and Zeebee for MeeBee

Two more Zeebees, knit on size 8 needles in Manos del Uruguay



and just for fun, here are two Octopodes, crocheted by Bek



and action shots:





The Octopodes are MeeBee and BeeZee

Buttony and a long-term WIP

The last of my streak of sweaters knit on large needles


Meet Buttony. I'm a little "meh" about this cardigan. The design of it is great, but there were some problems with the pattern. It calls for 9 balls of Debbie Bliss Merino Chunky, knit on US 9 needles. Well, I decided to knit the sweater smaller than the one size that the pattern is written for (cast on 80 stitches instead of 96), and I decided to add waist shaping. I also knit the sweater on US 10.5 needles. So theoretically, I should have used less than the 9 balls of yarn. But I used 12. That's right. Twelve. And I didn't even lengthen the sleeves and torso (they were written long enough in the pattern). I'm wondering if the yarn that the pattern author used wasn't Cashmerino Chunky, which has 72 yards per 50g (for a total of 648yds) instead of Merino Chunky's 55 yards per 50g (for a total of 495yds). I used about 650 yards. Also, looking at the pattern photo, the yarn has a certain sheen that Cashmerino Chunky has but Merino Chunky does not. So that's my verdict.
Finishing this sweater was a bit of a pain. I had knit to where you separate the body from the sleeves (it is a top-down sweater) and I had used 3 1/2 balls of yarn. I realized that I probably wouldn't even be able to knit a 3/4 sleeve sweater with the 10 balls of yarn I had. So I set out to find more. Well, this yarn is discontinued. And apparantley the color I used (401) was discontinued before that. So I ended up having to beg someone on Ravelry to trade with me so that I could get a few more balls of yarn because the yarn was impossible to find from ebay or an online yarn retailer.
In the end, its a bit too tight and the neck is a bit too wide. I was trying to conserve yarn and thought the yarn would block out so that I could stretch the sleeves a bit, and thus knit the sleeves kinda tight, but no such luck, this yarn doesn't grow very much with blocking (maybe because it is superwash wool?). I might end up re-knitting the whole sweater at some point, as I have 5 balls of yarn left over. Lastly, I knit buttonholes every 16 rows instead of 10, as I wanted the sweater to be a bit less "buttony."

And now, for a much more brief introduction to a WIP that will most likely be long-term.

This is an Elizabeth Zimmerman-inspired seamless hybrid, and it is great movie theater knitting. It is for a man, so no waist shaping needed, thus it is perfect auto-pilot knitting. At least for now. So I only work on this when I'm watching a movie in a theater, hence it'll probably take a while to finish.

Dead Leaves and a Solution?

Well I must have been thinking about the next FO I was going to blog about when I accidentally typed "drop stitch" instead of "drop shoulder" in my last post (well, my last real post). That's because there is a non-intentional dropped stitch somewhere in this sweater:


Meet Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground aka the Lace Leaf Pullover from Loop-d-Loop. Dead Leaves was knit on US 11 needles using Rowan Polar in color Combat. I used less than 5 balls of yarn for this sweater. Modifications? The usual- waist shaping. I decreased a total of 12 stitches and then increased 12, following the shaping on Marilyn, since they were knit at a similar gauge. Verdict? I like it a lot. The yarn is a little itchy, but I guess I'll usually be wearing a tank top under it at the very least (or a long-sleeved shirt if I wear it to work), and I have thoughts about re-blocking the neck so that its a bit wider. Good idea? You can also see the graft line (cuts my boobs in half laterally), but I'm thinking that will even itself out after a few wearings. Why is there grafting involved in this sweater, you ask? Well, I guess you can't knit lace leaves upside-down, so you knit the bottom half bottom-up, then the top half top-down, and then graft them together. Which some people hated, but I loooooove grafting. Seriously, love it. Its a way to knit with a darning needle- how darned cool is that?! Sorry, moving on... Oh and speaking of grafting- seaming and grafting with this yarn is a BITCH. It gets fluffier and loftier until it is essentially roving and really easy to pull apart. In fact, I'm going to blame the yarn for my dropping a stitch when I was grafting the top to the bottom. I realized it after I was done and didn't feel like going back, so I just pulled the offending stitch inside the sweater and tacked it down with some yarn.
As an aside... I accidentally bought a lot of this yarn (we won't say how much or how one "accidentally" buys too much yarn. But it honestly was a mistake, and lets just say that British currency was involved and leave it at that) and was thinking that, especially since they are 100gm balls, a whole sweater would make a dent in the pile I had, right? Nope, less than 5 balls used. So, it looks like I'll be knitting a simple all-one-piece raglan out of this yarn, because I'm not freaking seaming anything with it ever again!

Ok, onto the promised "solution?" to my drop-SHOULDER sweater problem mentioned here. Well, here is the body and cowl of the sweater

This is the Placed Cable Aran. And I love the sweater. But yeah, drop shoulder, not for me. So I think I might rip everything out to the armpits and re-knit it as a set-in shoulder sweater, so that I can keep the cables the way they are. I'm afraid that if I knit it up as a raglan, I'd lose a big chunk of the cables along the way. The one and only thing that pains me about doing all of this is that what I've knit so far has already been blocked out. I guess that shouldn't matter, but I've never re-knit already-blocked yarn. Well, here goes nothing!