A Return

My knitting group usually meets twice a month, on the first and third Wednesdays. Occasionally, if there are five Wednesdays in a month, we'll meet a third time. In spite of this frequency, I had not managed to make it to one meeting since sometime in August -- either the Mister was traveling or had a work event or I had some event to go to. So last night, when I finally had a Wednesday night free, I gladly made the drive, even though I'd had a very long day and probably could have curled up in my bed and passed out early. I'm very glad I went, though, because it was a good opportunity to catch up with some friends I don't usually see otherwise -- and to get in some uninterrupted knitting time.

I left Rainbow's doll at home, because taking it would have also meant taking the giant bag of polyfill I'm using to stuff it, so instead I worked on my sweater and made a lot of progress on the first sleeve.

I think I mentioned the last couple of times I've talked about the sweater that I had more stitches for the sleeve than called for in the pattern (I had to pick up more around the armscye than specified), so I'd been pondering how to deal with those extra stitches. I finally settled on decreasing them all away, so in order to do that and not have a sleeve that was too long, I moved the increases closer together, from every 10th row to every sixth row. I finished all the decreases while I was out last night and tried on the sleeve; the length I had at that point was about at my elbow. I've decided to make these sleeves full length, so I'm adding in some straight rounds before I start the patterned cuff.

There's still a good chunk of knitting to be done on this sweater before it's done, but it's moving a lot more quickly now. It also looks like I may have an entire skein of yarn leftover when I'm done, in spite of the added length to the sleeves, as I only just joined the fourth skein last night (the fifth was used to knit the swatch, which is still attached to it). I can guarantee that this sweater will be worn right away as soon as it's off the needles -- they're calling for snow on Saturday!

Out of Hibernation

Nearly two years ago, in December of 2012, I started knitting a doll for Rainbow out of Susan B. Anderson's book Itty-Bitty Toys. At the time, I think I thought it would be a quick knit that I could get through in a week or two. Clearly, that was a delusion. I was knitting it in worsted weight cotton on size 4 needles -- in other words, it was murder on my hands. I managed to finish the body and half of the head before I stuffed it into a bag and pretty much forgot about it.

In the years since, I've thought about it from time to time, but it's only been in the past couple months that Rainbow started asking about it. Her birthday is coming up in about a month and a half, and when she asked if I could finish it by then, I thought it was high time I pulled it out again and got to work on it seriously. On Sunday afternoon, I finished up the head. By Sunday evening, I'd done the hair and one arm and started the second arm. Last night, I finished the second arm, stuffed and sewed both arms on, knit and attached the thumbs, and knit most of the first leg. It's now really starting to look like a doll.

While the knitting is not difficult (aside from the stiffness of the cotton), this is a really fiddly piece. Almost everything is knit separately and sewn together -- that includes the thumbs, the belly button, and the nose, which are all tiny little bits of knitting. The feet and the legs are worked separately and sewn together, even. So my progress is a bit slower than I'd like, but I am definitely in the home stretch for the doll pieces. I'm hopeful that I'll be able to get through both legs and perhaps start the feet this evening. After that there's only the belly button and nose to knit on the dolls itself before I move on to the accessories (the diaper, the dress, and the hat). If I can keep up the pace I've set the past two days, I'm hopeful that it will all be done by early to mid-November. I doubt that Rainbow will want to wait until her birthday to play with it, though, and I can't say I blame her. Even without legs or facial features, this doll is so stinking cute.

Autumn and Winter Together

Spinning thick yarn can be such a treat -- I really should do it more often. You've seen the two plies of this yarn when they were in progress, but here's the finished yarn:

This was my October Fat Cat Knits shipment, which I got in superwash merino. One colorway, Ruby Truffle, looked very autumnal to me -- reds, greens, browns, and oranges, just like the changing fall leaves. The other colorway, Periwinkle Sky, looked just like the colors of Frozen to me -- blues, purples, white, and dark green. I may have taken the easy way out by simply spinning each colorway up separately and plying them together, but I do like the results.

The finished yarn looks to be about DK weight (though there are some spots that are a little thinner and some that are a little thicker), and it's approximately 256 yards. Rainbow had asked me to spin it for her, so this skein is destined to become a hat and perhaps mittens.

Meanwhile, I started a new project last night with some fiber that a friend brought me back from one of her trips home to Michigan maybe a year or so ago. It was a big bag (8 oz.) of fiber, and I split it roughly into thirds for a traditional three ply. I'm spinning it to match some moorit Shetland fiber I spun up a couple of summers ago with the intention of using them together in a two-color shawl.

It's not spinning up perfectly smooth because it's roving, rather than top, but I think it'll be fine in the long run. I'm still getting a kick out of the label that came attached to the bag:

Apparently I'm spinning 112% fiber!

The Long-suffering Sweater

I generally consider myself a fast knitter. I've been known to crank out a pair of socks in a couple of days, and I once knit a sweater in about 16 days, even while working full time. So I'm starting to wonder if my Sople is cursed, because I started it at the beginning of April and it's still lingering on the needles. Yes, I know that when you leave a project sitting around untouched for long periods of time it has a tendency to not get done -- that's the obvious answer. But I'm in the home stretch now, with just the sleeves left to do, so in theory I should be able to finish it up without too much more effort.

The last time you saw it, it finally had a successful short-row sleeve cap after three attempts. I'm now working my way down the sleeve.

I do have some extra stitches to work with (because I picked up more stitches than specified for the sleeve cap in order to avoid some pretty ugly puckering), and I'm still undecided as to whether I'll decrease them all away or have a slightly wider sleeve. As written, the sleeves are somewhere between three-quarters length and bracelet length, so I may add several more inches of length anyway and that would certainly give me more space to decrease. At least I know that the twisted ribbing at the cuff will not be my undoing this time -- I find it interminable when worked flat but no big deal when worked in the round.

While I'm not going to give myself any unreasonable deadlines on this project, I think it would be really great if I could finish this by the end of the month, freeing me up to perhaps cast on a new sweater for November (which is, of course, National Knit a Sweater Month, with an accompanying knitalong on Ravelry). I have several skeins of Miss Babs Yowza! that I bought at MDSW last year (as in 2013) that are destined to be a Cabletta Cardigan, and I would really like to finally knit it. Fingers crossed, but no promises made!

Well Heeled

The mystery project continues, though I am hopeful that it will be finished up this week and I can return to knitting that I can talk about.

The knitting that isn't a mystery right now is my second Boogaloo sock, which now has a completed heel and a partial foot. I'm hoping that the rest of the foot and the toe won't take any longer than the rest of the week and I can add a new pair of handspun socks to my sock drawer by the weekend.

Unfortunately, we've reached that part of the year when there really isn't good light any time I'm home during the workweek, so take my word for the fact that this are much prettier in real life than it appears to be in this cell phone photo.

I think it's appropriate that I'm close to finishing these up because there's another 4 oz. of Boogaloo ready to go on my wheel very shortly. This time around, I'm going to split up the fiber lengthwise, spin it all as one single, and chain ply to get more distinct stripes. Of course, before I can get to that, I need to ply the singles that are already one my wheel, and that's happening tonight.

I Can't Un-see It

I am nearly done finished spinning up the second half of this month's Fat Cat Knits fiber club shipment, which I started spinning on Friday night. The colorway of this fiber is called Periwinkle Sky, but (and this may just be because I have a 4-year-old girl in the house) I haven't been able to look at it without seeing the colors of Frozen:

This should be finished up and ready to be plied in the next couple of days!

Being Secretive

I've been knitting a bunch the past few days, but I can't show you what I've been knitting or even give much of a clue. I'm sorry to have to tease you with that information, but I at least wanted to give some explanation for why there's not much knitting on the blog this week. I'm about halfway done with that project, though, and hope to maybe have it wrapped up in another week or so, so soon I'll return to my regular projects.

I have continued to work on my handspun socks during my lunch break, and they've made a couple of outings as well. I'm more than halfway through the leg of the second sock now:

These will be coming with me this evening, when the Mister and I are attending a taping of one of my favorite radio shows, Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me! I've been wanting to see a live taping for years now, so I'm thrilled that they've finally come back to Pittsburgh. I bought tickets as soon as I heard about it, but we'll be way back in the top of the balcony area (I keep reminding myself that this is a radio show, so it's okay if I can't see that well).

The weekend coming up is going to be a bit of a whirlwind -- a concert, three kids' birthday parties, and a high school reunion to attend -- so I'm not sure when I'll get back to my wheel and you shouldn't be too surprised if I don't post on Sunday. I think when it's over I'm going to need a vacation! All of you who are going to Rhinebeck, please have a wonderful time and post lots of pictures so that I can be properly envious!

Off Kilter

It's Tuesday today, which is something I've had to keep reminding myself of all day long. This is what happens when you take a Monday off from work and it feels like a Sunday. Today was back to the normal schedule, though I've felt a little off all day.

Part of that might be due to the fact that I keep bouncing from project to project. I started the sleeve decreases on my Sople on Saturday, but I put it down as soon as I find out that our neighbors finally had their baby because that meant I had to knit a hat in a hurry -- it's my opinion that any baby born in October is required to have a pumpkin hat. I dug out some leftovers of Cascade 220 superwash and whipped up a Berry Baby Hat in a matter of hours. The Mister didn't believe that I could knit a hat that fast, but this is 64 stitches in worsted weight -- easy peasy. I cast on Saturday evening and had it finished by Sunday morning.

I made no mods to the pattern, and you can see why this is one of my go-to patterns when I need a quick baby knit. It's easy to do, requires very little yarn (I had only a partial skein of the orange when I started and probably have enough to make another one), and is always cute. It was a big hit with the new mom and dad, too.

I spent a good portion of my down time yesterday spinning and was able to finish up the first bobbin of singles from my most recent Fat Cat Knits club shipment (it's amazing how fast spinning will go when you're not spinning frog hair!).

And I also finished a sock:

I don't think these have made their blog debut before, but these are being knit from some yarn I spun during this year's Tour de Fleece. It looks like I should have enough leftover to make Rainbow a pair of socks as well, and I have another braid of fiber in the colorway to spin into a self-striping yarn -- as much as I like the blended look here, I also want a pair of socks where the colors stay as bright as they were in the original fiber.

Nearly Instant Gratification

After the last spinning project, I needed to spin up something thick and quick, so I took this braid of fiber from Fat Cat Knits (superwash merino in Wayfarer):

I split it into thirds and very quickly spun up three bobbins' worth of singles. Today and yesterday, in maybe two hours total, I plied it all. Here it is in progress:

and on the niddy noddy:

It's currently soaking in the tub, so I'll have to wait until tomorrow to see what the final yardage is.

Meanwhile, my October club shipment from FCK arrived earlier in the week -- 5 oz. of superwash merino in two colors, Ruby Truffle and Periwinkle Sky. Rainbow promptly claimed it for herself, so I'm spinning up each color separately and will ply them together, with the plan to make her a hat and/or mittens (or "middens," as she calls them).

I started spinning up the Ruby Truffle already. This fiber practically spins itself!

I'm off from work tomorrow to stay home with Rainbow (her preschool is closed) so I'm hoping to spend at least a little of it behind the wheel.

Well That Was Most Unfortunate

In the past year, I've gotten used to hand-knit socks wearing out on me. After all, I've been knitting socks for quite a few years, and I wear hand-knit socks pretty much every day of the fall, winter, and spring, so they get a lot of use. Yesterday, though, I got a surprise that I was not expecting -- and it was not a pleasant surprise. I was getting changed after work to go for a run, and I took off the socks I'd been wearing all day (my Rubus suberectus socks, which were finished just last spring) only to discover that I had a soon-to-be hole on the heel flap on one of them, and close inspection of the other sock revealed some thinning in the same area.

This was such a surprise to me because usually I wear out socks under the ball of my foot or even under the heel, but the heel flap is usually a safe area. Granted, these socks have a ribbed heel flap without any reinforcement, and the yarn I used also might not have been ideal for socks, but I didn't expect these to wear out as quickly as they did given that I haven't worn them that many times (maybe a dozen times or fewer). I'm going to have to go stash diving to see if I have any of the yarn leftover that could be used to reinforce the heel flaps, but I'll be honest -- I'm more than a bit bummed. These socks were not an especially fast knit because of the stitch pattern, and other than the heel, they still look brand new. But I suppose I have to accept that if I'm going to wear hand-knit socks, they are eventually going to wear out.

Meanwhile, last night I sat down to rectify the sleeve situation on my Sople. I ripped out everything I had done, picked up stitches again, and started working the short-row sleeve cap -- only to discover when I was nearly done that I'd completely misread the directions and had to rip back again. (You know how they always say to read through the pattern before you start knitting? It's really not a bad idea.) Fortunately, what I'd missed made the process a lot faster, so by the time I put it down for the night, I'd finished all the short rows and was ready to start decreasing. I have about 12 extra stitches, due to having to pick up more than specified, but I actually like the extra space in the arm, especially considering I almost always wear a shirt under my sweaters. I need to sit down and ponder the rest of the arm instructions to figure out if I want to decrease all the extra stitches away or if I want to adapt the cuff to be slightly wider. One can only hope that when it comes time to do the second sleeve, I'll be able to get it right on the first try.

Done but for the Baby

Our neighbors' baby is due to arrive any second now, but I no longer feel guilty for delaying its arrival because its sweater isn't done.

Pattern: Baby Surprise Jacket by Elizabeth Zimmermann
Yarn: Dream in Color Smooshy (100% superwash merino) in Miami Red, less than one skein
Needles: US 5 (3.75 mm)
Started/Completed: September 15/October 1
Mods: omitted buttonholes in favor of applied I-cord loops and edging

I have lost count of how many times I have knit this pattern now; it's become my go-to pattern when I need a baby gift and the gender of the baby is unknown. I like knitting it in sock yarn for a newborn, especially one born in the fall or winter, because it ends up fitting almost right away and it's not too bulky. I knit one for Rainbow way back when, and she actually wore it home from the hospital.

The main mod I made was to use an applied I-cord edging all the way around the fronts, neckline, and bottom of the body. This makes it really easy to apply some loops that function as buttonholes. With my own kid, I found it a lot easier to fasten her up using this big loops as opposed to trying to squeeze tiny buttons into buttonholes, so I've continued doing it with the BSJs I've knit since then.

I still have to weigh my leftovers, but there's plenty of yarn left (perhaps enough to make a tiny hat, should I feel so inspired).

Once I finished the baby knitting, I did turn my attention back to my own sweater, which I'm happy to report now has a finished body, finished button bands, and a finished neckline. The last thing that remains to be done is the sleeves, which are worked seamlessly from the top down, starting with a short-row sleeve cap. I've only done this type of sleeve construction once before, and it was years ago and a bit of a disaster. What you see here is actually going to be ripped out and started over because I didn't really start it in the right place and I need to make some adjustments.

I'm starting to get anxious about finishing this -- we actually had to turn our heat on over the weekend because it went down into the 30s overnight! I wouldn't mind another sweater to add to my fall/winter wardrobe right now.

Well Worth the Wait

When I spin, I have a tendency to spin fine yarns, so it should not come as a surprise that it sometimes takes me a while to finish a project. I was a bit shocked, however, at how long it took me to finish this skein, because it felt like I was spinning a lot (and I was using my miniSpinner, which usually makes things a bit faster). My Ravelry spinning project page tells me that I started spinning this fiber (my Fat Cat Knits club shipment from July, I believe, an 85% polwarth/15% silk blend in the colorways Betty Boop and Olive Oyl) way back on August 15 -- so more than a month and a half from start to finish. As a reminder, here's what the fiber looked like before I started spinning:

I decided I wanted to do sort of a faux gradient, so I split each braid in half lengthwise and alternated the pieces so that they would flow into each other (blue going into purple, orange going into yellow):

I wound all the fiber up into a big ball and spun from one end to the other, then chain plied. It took several plying sessions to get it all done, but I finally have a finished skein. After washing, it looks to be a light fingering weight and roughly 689 yards. It's gorgeous, and I love it, but I have absolutely no idea what to do with it.

The colors are just amazing:

As soon as I finished plying and winding off and got the skein in the wash, I knew I wanted to start something new (but much thicker), so I pulled out another braid of FCK fiber, this time superwash merino in a colorway called Wayfarer.

I split the top into thirds and am spinning up a three-ply worsted weight (or perhaps heavier). I am thinking that the yarn from this fiber would be good for a hat or mittens when it's done. The first bobbin of singles was finished up in short order yesterday and the second one is about halfway done.

Judging from how quickly this is spinning up, I think I'll have a finished skein by next Sunday!

Tying Up Loose Ends

I've reached that point where all my projects seem to be getting done at the same time. Last night I finished the applied I-cord edging on the Baby Surprise Jacket and wove in the last of the ends, so it's done but for sewing on the buttons and blocking it, both of which will happen tonight.

I also finished the shawl, so there is just weaving in of ends and blocking left to do. The pattern writing should be finished up shortly as well -- I just have to do the written directions for the lace and the final measurements after it's dry.

Finally, I'm nearly finished plying my spinning project (I probably need one more hour or so at the wheel). That will happen at some point this weekend.

So now I'm in that weird place where I'm wondering what to cast on next. I wound a skein of handspun sock yarn last night, thinking it would be my next lunch knitting project, but I'm tempted to do something else (like knitting the shawl sample again in a single skein of handspun). There's also my Sople that still needs to be finished and is probably more than halfway done, but I have to try to rediscover my love for it. I think I only have about four rows left on the body, so perhaps I'll try to get through those tonight.

The weather forecast is calling for a very cool weekend, so of course I'm getting the itch to start a new sweater. I feel like I should finish the one that's on the needles before I start something new, though, don't you think?

In Which There Is Mild Panic

Last week I got an e-mail from a friend asking if I had any old swatches that I could donate toward a yarn bombing project at her kids' school. As it happened, I had a drawer full of them, most of them many years old and thus entirely unneeded, so I told her I'd pull them out when I had a moment. That moment came last Thursday, when I was home for the holiday.

It had probably been years since I'd looked in that drawer (part of a plastic storage system that was the original home of my stash, though the stash has long outgrown it), and some of those swatches were knit before we moved into our house six years ago; I can't even remember the last time I opened that particular drawer to look inside it. What I found both astonished and scared me. Quite a few of the swatches had what looked like pills on them as well as what looked like grains of sand. I had a feeling that this was evidence of some four-letter pest that likes to eat wool, and an e-mail to the friend who had requested the swatches confirmed it (I wanted to see if she still wanted the swatches even though they might be contaminated).

This incident freaked me out enough that I actually stayed away from the stash for a day or two until I was ready to fully investigate. Fortunately, it looks like any pest activity was contained to that one drawer -- there was no evidence of anything like what I saw in that drawer on any of the yarn in the storage unit. I pulled everything out, bagged it, vacuumed the entire space and every drawer, and put everything back with lavender sachets. Everything that was possibly contaminated was thrown out, so my fingers are crossed that that's the end of it.

Meanwhile, lest you think I've been spending every free hour thinking about moths, there has been knitting. The Baby Surprise Jacket for our neighbors is just about done -- there's just a few inches of applied I-cord left to do on the body. If they know the gender of the baby, they haven't shared, so I went with a color that could go either way. I did I-cord loops for the buttons rather than the traditional button holes; it's what I did for the BSJ Rainbow came home from the hospital in, and I found them a lot easier to deal with when trying to get a squirmy newborn into a sweater.

I'm also nearly done with the sample for my next shawl pattern; I finished the lace section today.

I predict I'll be done with this by the end of the week, so with any luck I can get the pattern finalized and off to the tech editor in the next week or so.

The Long Slog

I know this yarn will be gorgeous when it's done, but it is taking quite a long time to finish. I stayed up a little late on Friday to finish the singles:

I let them rest for about a day and then, this afternoon, I sat down to start plying. Fortunately, that's going a bit faster -- this is the result of maybe an hour and a half to two hours of plying and I'm approaching the halfway point (or so I think).

The darker purple that's just starting to appear was the first color of the third strip of fiber, so I figure another session or two at the wheel should do it.

"I Wish I Could Wear It Every Day!"

After more than a month, I finally finished up Rainbow's Magnolia in Bloom last weekend. I got her to sit down and pick out buttons with me and then gave it a good blocking. It was ready for her to wear to Rosh Hashanah dinner last night.

My friends at my LYS can tell you that I was not at all pleased with her reaction when I had her try it on just before I finished the body (I believe it was something like "I hate it!"), but fortunately I had a feeling that she would like it when it was actually finished and carried on. I'm glad I did, because her reaction to trying it on when it was actually finished was about the best I could expect (hint: it's the title of this post).

These are pretty rubbish pictures, but you can get a sense of how well it fits her and how pleased she is with it.

Pattern: Magnolia in Bloom by Anna Rauf, tunic version, size 6
Yarn: Cascade Heritage Sock (75% superwash merino/25% nylon) in color 5615/Royal, approximately 1.25 skeins
Needles: US 4 (3.5 mm) and US 3 (3.25 mm) circs
Started/Completed: August 14/September 20
Mods: I picked up a few more stitches at the underarms than specified and did only three buttonholes on the placket

This was a fun knit, though the pattern was a bit interesting to follow at times. I think that's probably because the designer is not a native English speaker, so things were worded a bit unusually (or at least differently than I'm used to). I ended up making the size 6 because my gauge was just a tad off and the size 4 probably would have fit but not for long. As you can see, there is some room to grow. What you can't see is the little oops that I made in the lace on the bottom. At some point I must have done an extra half round, because one of the repeats of the lace on the back is taller than the rest. I discovered it several lace repeats later; at that point, though, I was getting so sick of knitting the body that I just wanted to be done, and I figured that it was unlikely to be seen and noticed as it's on the back side of the top. I worked 1x1 rib on the bottom of the body and at the sleeves so all the edges would match.

Although I'm not likely to do it for Rainbow, I might knit this pattern again, perhaps as a baby gift. The pattern gives you the option to do it as a tunic or a dress, and I think it would be a fairly quick knit for a smaller kid. I will say that there were times when I was knitting the "skirt" that I thought it would never end, but considering that I was working on this in between other projects, I think it really did go rather quickly. And clearly I haven't gotten sweaters in fingering out of my system just yet, because I just bought the next pattern to make for Rainbow, at her request. I already have two skeins of Malabrigo Sock in my stash that will be perfect for it -- but I'm finishing a sweater for me first!

Pattern Release: Foglie e Cardi

The shawl pattern I released today has been nearly a year and a half in the making -- a long time even by my slow standards. It started with the lace design class I took with Kirsten Kapur last April. After that class, I had an idea of what I wanted to do, but it was months before I started putting together all the pieces. It was one of those projects that I'd pull out and work on excitedly for a while only to have to put it on the back burner when something else came up. This cycle continued for maybe a year. Finally, earlier this spring, just before MDSW, I finished the charts and knitting the sample from them, and I wore the shawl to the festival. It took several more months to get my hand-written charts into my charting program, generate and clean up the written directions, and put the pattern through several rounds of tech editing. But, after all that work, at long last, it's ready to share with you.

Foglie e Cardi is a top-down triangle shawl, and it starts with a garter tab. The meaning of the name is "leaves and thistles" in Italian, and those two motifs are featured prominently in the lace patterns. The first pattern (and the majority of the shawl) is made up of a small leaf stitch pattern. It transitions into a thistle stitch pattern and finally to a border. The lower edge of the shawl can be pinned out into points, as you see in my sample, or blocked straight, depending on your preference.

The lace stitches themselves are not difficult -- there are no knitting gymnastics here! However, I will note that the stitch repeat moves around a bit in the thistle section, so if you're the kind of knitter who likes to use stitch markers between pattern repeats, you'll need to be aware that there may be a lot of shifting of markers in this section.

The shawl uses fingering weight yarn; I used Done Roving Yarns Frolicking Feet for my sample. This yarn is a two-ply superwash wool that comes in very vibrant colors (the color I chose is Cloverleaf). Any fingering weight -- or even laceweight -- yarn will work for this pattern. You'll need somewhere in the range of 450 yds. to complete the shawl.

This pattern was a lot of work, but I couldn't be happier with the result, and I'm so excited to finally be able to share it with you!

The Spin That Never Ends

I'm starting to think that Ginny of Fat Cat Knits put some sort of magic into this fiber that's causing it to take longer than normal to spin. I mean, I know I'm spinning very fine singles, but I spin fine singles all the time and it doesn't seem to take this long!

What you see here is all the spinning I've done up until now. I spent Friday evening at the wheel (once I got Rainbow to sleep) and managed to join the fourth and final section -- though, as you can see, I didn't get too far (the fourth section started with the yellow). I'll grant you I haven't spent all that much time at the wheel in the past couple of weeks, but I thought I would have been further by now. I really do need to step up my game a bit this week, though, because the next shipment of the fiber club ships out October 1, and I'd really like to have this done by then. With any luck, by next Sunday, I'll have a complete bobbin to show you (or even the start of plying)!

I'm Sensing a Trend

Do you ever notice that every now and then your knitting seems to all kind of look the same? At the moment, I seem to be going through a stripe phase.

First of all, after much knitting last week, I did manage to finish up my brioche cowl last Friday night, just before we left for our weekend trip. I finished binding off just before bed -- I didn't even weave in all my ends before we left! -- and tossed it into one of my project bags to be dealt with when we got back. On Tuesday evening, I wove in the last of the ends and blocked it. By yesterday, it was dry. And it is now big and squishy and cozy; it will be a great winter accessory.

You may recall that I knit another brioche cowl earlier this year, but this was my first time doing the stitch in two colors. I really like the effect, but there are definitely some tension issues (mostly at the beginning of the round, where I switched from one color to the other). I suspect these issues might be improved with a tighter gauge, but I'll also wait and see if the stitches even out a bit on their own as I wear it and it gets tugged this way and that.

I didn't really use a pattern for this cowl; I just cast on until the 40 in. needle was full (making sure I had an even number) and worked basically until I round out of yarn. I started at the light end of the Retro Chic skein and the dark end of the Vintage skein to make sure I had contrast throughout.

The reason that I was so anxious to finish up this project (aside from the fact that I'd been working on it for more than a month and was a bit sick of it) was that I wanted to free up the needles to cast on for a new shawl design sample. This one will be a companion shawl to Leventry and have a similar construction, but with a few twists. As you can see, the beginning is striped:

I'm using Quince & Co. Finch for this shawl, the first time I've used this particular yarn, and I am loving it. It is wonderfully springy and bouncy, and it's soft to boot. I know it won't be the last time I use it.

Pattern Release: Onder

I'm sorry for the radio silence the past few days. We were away over the weekend for a family wedding, and I took my computer with me, intending to post, but then discovered that I didn't have Internet access. Whoops. In any case, I'm back with a bang today. Meet my newest pattern design, Onder.

Onder is a crescent-shaped shawl worked from one end to the other. For the first half of the shawl, you work gradual increases to make the shawl wider. For the second half, you work gradual decreases to get back to the original stitch count. All the while you work a relatively simple lace edging that features the subtle sparkle of seed beads (though the beads are entirely optional).

For the sample, I used one skein of Baah! La Jolla, a delightfully springy fingering weight yarn. This yarn is 400 yds. per skein, but it's easy to adapt the pattern if you have a skein with more or less yardage. This pattern would be great for a skein of handspun -- with a scale to measure how much yarn you have, you can modify the pattern to use it all.

I'm really excited about this pattern. It was a lot of fun to knit and I'm looking forward to wearing it now that the weather has taken a turn for the cooler. I hope you enjoy it!