Hee!

I missed National Sweater Day on February 9th. Aw.

A different kind of WIP

Yesterday I had the first session of my back piece. This is being done by the same amazing artist who did my phoenix, and I'm super excited about it. I've got 3 more appointments scheduled (March, June and July), but will hopefully sneak in for April or May, as well, if he has any cancellations.

Fishes and trees

My world is fixated on blankets right now. I've been designing a quilt for my nephew for longer than I'd like to admit, and after deciding that no, this is not a new breed of self-finishing project, I brought it back out and did the hard parts. I'm debating if I want to sew or draw little faces on these guys or not. Keep in mind, it is intended for a 3 year old. The grey, red, yellow and green are all flannel, for a little contrast in touching the blanket.

Fishes!

Sharks! (The tail was a particular PITA, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.)

And a now-already-outdated pic of the Yggdrasil blanket I'm working on. Finished the leaf border a couple of days ago, and I'm doing another cream stockinette border before finishing it off with the grey knotwork. I'm messing with this border a bit to try to make the finished blanket a rectangle instead of a square. It looks a little strange and lumpy around the middle, but I'm hoping that'll block out. Blocking this will be exciting, since I don't actually have anywhere larger than a queen size bed to block on. Ah, well. I'll worry about that more when I'm closer to finishing.

Edited to add: It was only after I posted these pictures and thought "ah, just squares left on the middle part of the quilt!" that I had that Bad Feeling(TM). Upon checking, I found that yes, all of the sharks were made to be facing the same way, when two of the 4 needed to point the other way. Stupid non-interchangeable shark faces. *tears them apart, fixes and puts back together*

More pics and project progress

Sometimes, when you have a really complicated project (or two), you've just gotta do something quick and fun. This sweater? Totally quick and fun, and used yarn from the stash, so, bonus on that!

Please excuse my hair. I had just put on the sweater and Daven is not good at telling my my hair looks like I've been attacked by static monsters. I also look stoned. I was not. (This is a V neck sweater, I was just wearing a mock turtleneck shirt under it.)

This is the inside of the Fair Isle sweater. It is a lot of ends. The pattern had said "leave a long tail and braid them all together to finish", which I thought sounded clever. In reality, that turned into a big clunky mess. So, after several iterations of attempts, what I'm doing is this:

That would be making a billion tiny braids (typically 3 strand, occasionally a 4 or 5 strand will sneak in if there aren't enough buddy strands for it to fit in elsewhere). Then I weave those little bastards in:

And ta da! I think it looks pretty good and there won't be the threat of the holes between colours opening up due to teeny knots and then neurotic braids. The downside is that, well, this is REALLY SLOW GOING. Mostly due to the fact that it totally messes with my left wrist, which has been rather tetchy recently anyway. So, I can only work on it for about an hour at a shot. Eventually it will be done and will look wonderful and hopefully fit. I'm really not sure on that point, and since there are no arm holes, it isn't like I can try it on. If it does not fit me, I will gnash my teeth, shake my fists at the sky and give it to my mother, who loves Fair Isle sweaters, is much narrower than me and shares my tastes in colourways. I'm kind of hoping it will fit me, though. Funny, that.

My next update will include photos of the progress I'm making on the bigass blanket I've been knitting for over a year. Strangely, when I stopped working on it for about 10 months, it failed to grow at all. Now that I'm working on it again, it is once more growing. Funny how that works. :p For the curious, I got hung up about halfway through the first side of the leaf border. Now, after about 2 weeks, I'm approaching corner 3, with only one more side to go on it. I finally memorized the damn pattern, which helps. It is a little wiggly, so it took a while to get into my fingers, especially with the 10 month break.

Another project

A feather and fan scarf pattern (I actually have never done one of these before; I figured it was about time) that I picked up from knitpicks.com. Knit with a single Zauberball, this turned out really fun, and I got a ton of comments on it from people when I knit it in public. Usually people just ignore the crazy lady, but man, did they love this. I did modify the pattern by making it one repeat narrower than they called for. I don't like exceedingly wide scarves, and I prefer longer ones, so that worked out nicely. I knit this over a couple of weeks in December. (Yes, I have a backlog of projects to take pictures of. I'm getting to 'em slowly.)

Look! Pictures!

Admittedly, not very many pictures, but pictures nonetheless.

I chopped off all of my hair, making my neck cold, so I knit a cowl.

My first Cowl(TM)! I didn't like any of the patterns out there, so I made something up as I went along. Undyed handspun silk/alpaca blend. I might dye it eventually.

The front of the Fair Isle Sweater. I now have an ends-weaving-in strategy, which I'll poke away at when the mood strikes me. After all, I have the steek and neckline left to do!

The back of the FI sweater; you can see the upper pattern a little better here.

It is apparent that I am totally unable to finish projects. The colours on this are a little off; the purple isn't quite so blue blending into the pink. Baby surprise jacket made with a bunch of "sock bites" I picked up at a local yarn shop.

*random post to be snarky*

Am I allowed to redact someone's yarn privileges? Because these people should not be allowed near it anymore. These people, on the other hand, get as much yarn as they can handle. It is all in the execution!

Eventually more photos will happen. The fair isle sweater hit a snag...the finishing portion. I don't like weaving in ends for a normal project, this thing has an inner mane. I'm trying other options, but it is almost all knit...just in two bits.

Lots of other knitting has happened. More will happen. Maybe you see it, maybe you don't! Depends on my sense of whimsy! WHIMSY!

...I'm in a strange mood. Fleeing the keyboard back to project 1239784 now.

Week 4

Slowly but surely, we plod along.

Week 3

Finished up the sleeves (I maintain that steeked sleeves look like crotchless leggings until you cut them apart), finished my travel knitting (the scarf) and cast on for the body. Also, because I love to torture myself, I did some simple math. See that teeny tiny little bit of ribbing that is the bottom band? Just the ribbing part is over 7000 stitches, on size 0 needles. Check me out *not* discouraging myself by doing the rest of the math, lest I fall upon my needles and knit no more.

So, yeah. This is a weekly status of the sweater, and if I finish anything else, it gets screen time, too.

Week 2

Got a little distracted, and didn't get much done on the sweater this week. Without the impromptu "must do this now!" project, I should get more accomplished on the sweater.

(A little girl had a Curious George themed birthday party today, which is who the monkey was for; I came up with the idea of it on Tuesday, so it was a bit of a rush. I also included a card with $20 to "Cover a little bit of her therapy if the monkey is creepy instead of cute." Happily, she hugged it, so, it apparently is cute and not terrifying. It is a fine line between these two options in handmade toys.)