two knits of ivory

We all know there was life before Wii. I have knitted proof. I wore said proof to work on Monday with my Digitessa socks . Woot. The kitties wanted to get in on the photo shoot yesterday, too. Right over that bridge is a pathway into the boggy woods behind my house. I take the dogs there almost every weekday. Over the winter our most scarediest of cats, Hunter (background), started coming with me on my walks. I was amazed, and encouraged him. Hunter was hit by something, most probably a car, when he was one. His leg was shattered in three places requiring an orthopedic surgeon to insert three sets of pins at each break. Three months later he had all but one set of pins removed, the poor guy, and he's never been the same. Who would be? Now he spends most of his time out of doors in the woods, or when he's indoors, under the kitchen sink. For several weeks now, since the weather has been less hostile, Hunter comes with the dogs and I every single day. Grissom joined us two days t...

It may be Blueberry Moon's week and not La Digitessa's . Facing miles of stockinette just seems more palatable at the moment, and might remain so for the rest of the week. We'll see. I've got my marathon hair appointment this afternoon and I've brought both of these projects, as well as a cake of sock yarn. Here she is with the sleeve I finished Sunday night. I had to frog the cuff last night and add a few rows; it was just a smidgen short. I've never frogged and reknit something that had been in it's knitted form for very long. I've frogged dormant projects, but I either gave away the yarn, or it's still sitting in my stash. It's a leap of faith to look at all that wrinkliness and assume it will look normal after a good wash. Faith is not something of which I'm well endowed. Love of the Big Mac, sadly, yes, but faith? errr, not so much. With this sweater I am 100% a project knitter. I bought enough yarn for a sweater, and a sweater I will h...

Hubby had a grand old time being my foot model. He has no reason for modesty, and clearly he knows it. As you can see my Blue Wavering socks are done. One good wash and they'll be ready for the post. With a second cast off to tighten up one sock's bind off, a weight was lifted off my shoulders. As I contemplated the status of my knitting basket, (near empty!), the elephants meandering out of the room were near tangible. Who would have thunk three and a half ounces of knitted wool goodness would have such import? Really they don't. I know it in my heart. Time is working it's magic and it has coincided with the conclusion of these socks. I've still have a way to go, but after seven or so months of stress it's nice to breath some uncomplicated air. Seriously, though, my knitting basket is near empty! This is such a hallelujah! moment for me. I decided to put the Malabrigo yarn away and I resisted casting on another sock. As of today, I have Blueberry Moon , La Dig...

For some knitters the summer slows them down, for me it sped up my knitting. I hate the heat and find myself locked indoors with the A/C. Now that the weather has cooled (at least for last week, it's supposed to 71 degrees tomorrow where the Rhinebeck festival is happening!) I can finally get out of my cocoon and this has definitely slowed down my knitting. But maybe it's not only the weather. The design element I've introduced to Blueberry Moon has left me a bit dispirited. I all but finished one wrist and I'm stalled. I'm not sure it's what I want and I'm too afraid to forge ahead and find myself needing to frog it again. So it's 'resting.' But my mind wasn't. Between this and the disapprobation I feel because of the Firestarter socks, I feel I've been thrown off my knitting groove. It took me a few days to remember knitting is supposed to be fun and that I had another great project I could work on that is all love, Project ...

I put Blueberry Moon to the side for a couple of weeks and let percolate my amorphous idea of adding some kind of textured accent to the bottom trim of the wrist and body. And though I love many stitch patterns from the Harmony Guide: 220 Aran Stitches I picked up last month, I'm suffering from an embossed twining vine leaf monomania. I made several aborted attempts on the sleeve of Blueberry Moon a couple of nights ago until it dawned on me to whip out the test yarn I purchased when I was working on the the shoulder seam. Test patterning showed instant progress and I was able to quickly find a variation of this leaf motif that would work knitting top down. Last night I concentrated on how to frame the motif, how to manage the increases and decreases and I think I'm all set to go forward on the actual garment this weekend. Big yeah!

My Blueberry Moon sweater has only received perfunctory attention these past few weeks. The cold snap early last week ignited my interest again. Yesterday it received almost undivided attention and I was able to knit about 200 yards, as well as redo the shoulder seam. I reduced the number of buttons, expanded the button holes from one stitch to two, and used a 1K2P rib. All day yesterday I mulled over how I could add expanding cables on the bottom half of the sweater using some A-line shaping in the spirit of Vogue's Silver Belle . As soon as I'm done with this ball on the body, I'll start a sleeve to experiment on. If I had knit as many stitches on my socks last night as I did on this sweater I would have had both hubby's earth socks and the regia silk self striping socks done. Well, not exactly. I realize stockinette stitch on a 36" needle goes a heck of a lot faster than mostly stockinette on three size US1 dpns. My inner castigator, she prefers to believe the ...

I had knit beyond the shoulder seam on my Blueberry Moon sweater project by the end of last week. Before going any further I wanted to knit up the shoulder seam. If I was going to have to frog, I didn't want have to frog more than necessary. So instead of diving right in I took some time to mull over how one does this, since I am winging it. Sunday night I struggled with the top seam, the one with the buttonholes. Picking up stitches isn't my forte, especially when I have no clue if what I'm doing is going to make sense, much less look acceptable. As soon as I finished the top, buttonhole seam I set it aside. Yesterday, I picked it up again and immediately realized that I used a k2p2 rib, instead of the p2k1 rib I used on the neckband. Big d'oh. Instead of frogging right then and there I decided to plow ahead with the rest of the shoulder seam and consider the result a test drive, a draft run. This is how it came out. Not bad, considering. I'm thinking four buttons ...

Finally, finally, finally, I have begun my Blueberry Moon sweater using the Malachite colorway of Rowan 4 Ply soft , which is a fingering weight merino wool. According to Rowan's website it is a washable yarn, so maybe that's why my washed swatched didn't blossom. Hmm.... I was hoping to knit this on size US2 needles. I have a set of two 16" bamboo circulars for the initial knit up but knowing I'm going to need the larger lengths for when I get closer to the bust portion of the garment I hit the web in search of bamboo needles and found zip. Seems like the only market for size 2 and smaller is sock knitting and sock knitters primarily use dpns or metal circulars. I want bamboo. Insert a big WAH! In fact some of the things I did read about bamboo needles in the smaller sizes echo the complaint that I have with the needles I do have. There is a metal join between the nylon cording and the bamboo needle. It snags at the stitches so that one must manually push the stit...

First things first. I've had many hours of preparatory knitting with the Rowan 4 Ply Soft and I finally have something to show for it. Not a pattern, but a name: Blueberry Moon. Second things second. I am so longing to start this project. Still. Yesterday, after moaning about my lack of pattern books, I actually had two ideas. One was to check my local library for the Barbara G. Walker books - which yielded three of the four treasuries - and the second was a simple solution to my swatching fears. Swatching fear happens when one’s need to swatch and test knit meets up with the realization (or irrational fear) that one may not have enough yarn to finish the sweater once one has swatched herself to kingdom come. For this problem I realized test yarn was needed and after work I hit a LYS and found a similar yarn, with the same ‘twist’ as the Rowan 4 Ply Soft. By solving these two dilemmas so swiftly in succession, I thought I could swatch out my idea and the pattern would magically re...