wip: Rusted Root

(Not that I’ve been posting that much recently, but things are in danger of slowing down even more because I’m starting a new job and I will actually be in a real office all week long. I thought I’d spread out some posts about my current wips to give you some material for the next week or so. And hopefully at least one of these will become a FO by then! This one is dangerously close.)

So you know how there are some patterns that it seems like basically everyone has knit, and anyone who hasn’t knit it by now probably just doesn’t get their kicks from that pattern and so that’s that, no more of those FOs? It seems to me that Ravelry is changing that, because there are new rashes of Clapotis, Pomatomus, and – yep – Rusted Root all over the place. For myself, I never realized how cute this pattern was until I looked through pages and pages of cute knitters wearing their finished tops! All the different colors and styling really made me see the potential in this simple sweater. Ok, it also helped me to see that this sweater is really simple, and that people knit it really fast.

This is where the sweater was on April 16:

(Those are my Pomatomus socks!) This was three days after starting – but keep in mind that the “first day” was just swatching, and the second and third day (April 14 & 15) I was working for a tax preparer all day. At this point, I was almost through the raglan shaping, about to separate the arm stitches.

Five days later, April 21, I had this:

At this point, I was through with the waist decreases and starting a straight knitting portion before doing hip increases.  Since then, I’ve completed the hip increases and knit several inches…I just have a little bit more to knit lengthwise, then I’ll do the ribbing, the neck ribbing, and the sleeve finishing!  This is going to be my  first finished garment and it’s so close I can taste it.  (No pictures, sorry!)

Despite my new job and loss of daytime knitting time, I’m being extremely monogamous with my knitting right now (ok, I’m having a sort of on-the-road affair with my lace ribbon scarf, but this sweater could in no way be mistaken for travel knitting during rush hour on the subway in NYC) and making time for this sweater every morning before work and every evening while watching TV or waiting for GFF to come home for us to eat dinner or whatever.  I’m DETERMINED to wear this sweater a lot before it gets too hot for such a heavy (albeit cotton) top this summer.

Want an example of my extreme at-home project monogamy?  I’m seriously yearning to cast on for something new (in particular, I’m dreaming of slinky bamboo or silk tank tops – even though these don’t really make that much sense in my wardrobe – and new socks and lace shawls).   Yesterday, I spent over an hour pulling all my yarn out (I really don’t have that much)*, searching Ravelry for patterns to use with my most summer-appropriate choices, and basically just feeling all these different yarns.  I found a partial ball of Cascade Fixation and cast on 40 stitches in the round, knit 4 rounds (just to ease my yearnings) and immediately ripped out and rewound the yarn.  I mean, really, that could hardly be taken to count as cheating on my project!

So I hope to have this done soon, hopefully by next weekend, and I will post a FO report then.  In the meantime, I’ll try to post about my Lace Ribbon Scarf and the socks I’m working on (the second of which will be my traveling project when LRS is finished).  Happy Sunday knitting, y’all!

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*I can tell that GFF finds this extremely odd.  She can tell it makes me happy to look at my box of possibility, but she is a little confused when I also pull out my bag of scraps (you know, all the little leftover balls at the end of projects) and start to look at those, too.  But I’m not alone in this type of behavior, right?

in love with the lys

This is just a post to say that I love my lys.

On my way to the coop this afternoon, it was so pretty and warm and the trees were blooming and I was going to have to pass by my lys and I thought, well, self, let’s just take a peek towards the window.  (Self has no money to be spending at the lys or anywhere else OTHER than the coop right now, so even a peek was a big gamble to make with my lil’ ole spend-happy heart.)

So I peeked towards the window and saw these huge, fluffy, colorful skeins of yarn tucked under a shelf right smack dab in the middle of the storefront.  (I really wish I had a picture of this display to share with you.  Must. fix. digital. camera.)  The yarn was this amazing variegated chunky yarn from Chasing Rainbows Dyeworks.  Here’s a picture of one of their colorways:

Anyway, I obviously had to go in at that point.

I didn’t have any more money to spend inside the store than I had outside it, so I spent a lot of time talking myself down from buying the amazing sale yarns she had, and all of the summer-appropriate new stock. I did think I could use some split ring stitch markers, so I parted with a couple dollar bills and bought those to be supportive in some small way.

And then I spent almost an hour talking to the owner, Maxine.  People, she is amazing.  We talked a lot about knitting, and how you go about buying yarn for a yarn store (sounds hard), and about our neighborhood, and about the knitting tattoo I am planning.  And zines.  And magazine publishing.  And nonprofits we like.  And..and….and……And she was knitting a really beautiful 3/4 sleve cardigan of her own design out of another yarn from Chasing Rainbows dyeworks!  (That yarn has amazing yardage and the colors are un-frickin’-believable.)

I left the store feeling like I had met a member of this big community that I hardly ever meet face to face.  Knitters!  We are so awesome!  There is so much knowledge we can all share about knitting (and crocheting), and it felt so good to have the normalizing experience of speaking the same fibery language.  She invited me to come back anytime and just work on a project and drink some tea with her.  You betcha I’m planning on it.

FO: Hedera Socks

Several weeks ago I was going on and on about gift knitting I couldn’t talk about. Sometimes I forget about how the internet isn’t really private, so I quit talking about a knitting project I’d already put pictures of all over the place. I knit GFF’s mom a pair of Hedera Socks! Here they are:

Pattern: Hedera by Cookie A., from Knitty.com
Yarn: Soxx Appeal from Knit One Crochet Too in color 9553 Teal (bought at Downtown Yarns in NYC)
Needles: Knitpicks dpns, size US 1.5

This is the second time I’ve knit these socks, and I found the pattern really enjoyable again. I first knit a pair for GFF out of Knit Picks Essential, and happened to be in Tulsa when I was working on them. Debbie loved them so I decided to knit her a pair, too. The pattern repeat is four rows, easily memorized. I did 17 repeats of the lace pattern on the leg instead of the recommended 14 – I like my socks to be a little longer and I make them that way for everyone else, too.

(sorry for the blur!)

Soxx Appeal is super-stretchy, similar to Cascade Fixation, although it is constructed really differently. I originally knit one skein in the Baudelaire pattern (also Cookie A., but I swear I knit socks from other designers, too!). The sock turned out way too small, so I ripped and re-knit the yarn for this pattern. The yarn didn’t look so good when I originally ripped it out, but after being re-knit it looked fine, just like the other sock. It is supposed to be superwash but I haven’t tested it out in the laundry. I gave them to Debbie while I was there and she wore them around a lot, even inside a pair of shoes. They seemed to wear well and feel good! It was awesome to see her enjoy them.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have a digital camera on our trip so I don’t have a picture of them on her…or as a pair.  Oops!  Maybe I will do an update post one day with more pics and info on how they have worn.

At this point, I would go to this pattern as a…go-to.  For gift socks, especially.  They go quite quickly for me now, and are pleasurable to knit.  I’d like to knit myself a pair of socks in this yarn, too!  It’s really soft and the stretchiness makes your socks a lot easier to get on.

Next up:  updates on what I’m knitting now.  (I’ve already decided to rip out the soysilk shrug I showed you a few posts ago because it was way too big on top of the fact that it was never going to be as cute as I imagined.  [My advice to raglan-in-the-round knitters:  try it on very early in the knitting!  Continue to try it on frequently!!  Even if it means putting in a life line every few rows and you find that really annoying and are convinced that you still need to increase about eleventy more times!!!]  After ripping that sucker out, I think I’m going to knit Ysolda’s Cloud Bolero in the Soysilk.)  Plus socks that aren’t Cookie A.’s, what may possibly be my first finished garment, and the must-have knit of the season — still to come at knitwhere!

yarnbombing: call for submissions

I just found this link via Craftzine.com’s blog.  Submission deadline is May 30, so if you have something you’d like to submit…hop to!

I am so nuts over knitting “grafitti” (otherwise known as outdoor, public decorations).  I would really like to come up with a submission for this book!  I’ve had some different ideas for public knitting/crocheting installations, and maybe this call for submissions will be an encouraging push to think something up.

Yarnbombing seems to be a fairly new blog, and promises to profile yarn graffiti groups around the world.  I’m definitely looking forward to watching this blog!  It’s a co-blog by friends Mandy Moore (tech editor of knitty.com, not the American former-singer, current-actress) and Leanne Prain (apparently she started a knitting group at a pub, which is what GFF always suggests I should look for).  Their book will come out in fall 2009 from Arsenal Press.