Time for another edition of Knitapalooza…I finally got un-lazy enough to take a couple of pictures to share!
I had plenty of knitting time on the plane to Switzerland and Italy, so I took along a little lace scarf I’m working on. The pattern is Lace Ribbon Scarf, and it’s a nice little pattern that uses sock yarn (I chose Araucania Ranco, and I’m probably halfway finished. It’s pretty easy once you memorize the pattern….I just won’t tell you that it took me hours of knitting and un-knitting to do that. 🙂
Here’s a close-up (click to embiggen):
Now, those of you with a good memory will be wondering: what about the purple sweater? And if your memory is really good, you’ll be wondering if I finished it in time to take it on my trip…I didn’t.
I did complete the hood, including the grafting of the cables on the border:
I was pretty proud of myself for that…CBtE offered to model for me, so here’s another pic showing the hood:
I also figured out how to do the attached I-cord on the front edge (just need to graft it to the rolled edge of the hood, which is why those double-pointed needles are sticking out in the next photo). Another first!
Let’s see, what else?
A new yarn shop opened up a couple towns over, and I just went over to check it out with my mom on Friday…
…and they have a fantastic selection, gorgeous yarns, great ideas and tempting samples of stuff that I’ve been thinking about knitting, and…
…you guessed it.
I purchased.
Some handpainted linen yarn for a little jacket-y wrap-y thing. Straight stockinette stitch (BORING!), 5 rectangles, sewn together, but the finished product was so cute with a nice shawl pin.
I told myself I wouldn’t touch it until I finished the finishing touches on my purple sweater. You know, the purple sweater I won’t be able to wear until fall anyway…
And, breaking my own rule about never having more than 2 projects going at once, I promptly got up Saturday morning and swatched for the new project while everyone was still asleep. Oy.
Enough about my knitting…what’s needling you?
some fabric of your thoughts.
Totally OT, but is anyone else suffering from political BS burnout this week?
Complete political burn-out here.. So grateful to see a knitapalooza. It’s late now, but will do my best to get back tomorrow with some knitting stuff. Socks, afghan, more socks.. You get the picture – when the going gets tough, the tough get knitting (or crocheting)
I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s feeling a little tired of being sick and tired….
I’ll be looking for the pictures.
I’m curious: Do you find it harder to knit in the summer, or do you just switch to lace and socks?
I don’t really find it more difficult to knit on big projects in the summer – probably because I tend to have a cat on my lap anyway {g}. I sort of shove the bulk of the project to one side so only part of it is sitting on me. This is easier with crocheting so that’s why I’m making these afghans in simple double crochet. This is the first one for our charity knit & crochet group that will go to a local hospital. I started one in shades of green last night.
It’s 50×65″ and had a few more rows to go when this photo was taken.
I finished this pair of socks before I prepared to cast on the toe of a new pair for the Summer of Socks 08 KAL which started at 12:01 a.m. on the 21st. One of the cats insisted on helping arrange the needles.
So at the moment, I have an afghan, a sock & a scarf or two on the needles (or hook). And, as usual, a feline to help me whether I’m knitting, crocheting, or blogging.
I’m so loving those socks. I just purchased some new circs, a book on socks using same, and a couple of skeins of sock yarn. That will be my next goal, learning how to knit socks, I think by using the magic loop method.
Your kitties are also freaking adorable.
I make my socks toe-up on double points except for the first few rows at the toe where I use two circulars. I make a “figure 8” cast on of 16 stitches over the points of the circulars, pull one circular through so the bottom stitches are on the cord (which gives me room to work off the top needle) and knit a 4 row rectangle on 8 stitches using dps, slipping the first stitch of each row. Then I pull the bottom circular back so the stitches are on the point, pick up two stitches in the slipped stitches at the end of the rectangle and work off onto two more dps for a total of 3 needles and 20 stitches. Because I have a narrow foot, I increase 4 stitches every other row four times and then every third row until I have a total of 60 stitches. I tried knitting on two circulars, but I couldn’t keep the stitches where the circulars met from laddering so I went back to dps. I love the Harmony dps from KnitPicks and usually knit on size 2s as they give me 8 stitches to the inch.
That purple sweater is going to be gorgeous when it is finished. The yarn is so beautiful that I feel I could touch it through the computer screen.
Do you curse when you ‘unknit’ and did that bother the people near you on the plane? 😉
You probably won’t believe this, but I just consider the occasional un-knitting part of the whole process, and I’m usually pretty zen about it. I doubt the guy next to me even knew I was un-knitting when I did it.
Now, when I realized I had screwed up the cabling on the hood for the purple sweater and had to rip back 30 rows, thereby ensuring that I wouldn’t be able to finish it in time to wear it in Italy, I was a little more vocal, with some handwringing thrown in for good measure. 🙂
And thanks for the sweater compliments. The yarn has just enough silk in it to give it a velvety squooshy feeling. I guess I could do the i-cord up the other side of the front tonight…
CBtE looks so handsome in that purple hoodie sweater. 😉
I was sitting at an outdoor table eating blood orange gelato with a friend of mine and I couldn’t take my eyes off a shawl thingie that a woman at a nearby table was knitting. It was so delicate and lovely that it sort of looked like that old timey tatting (lace making) that my great grandmother used to do.
MMM. Blood orange gelato is my absolute favorite flavor. Especially with dark bittersweet chocolate. But I digress…
There are some really beautiful lace shawl patterns out there. And some of the yarns people use to knit them with make me wonder how they manage to knit an entire shawl without getting it caught on something and pulled…
Did your great grandmother ever teach any of you tatting when you were kids? One of my friends was into that when we were younger, and I still have the snowflakes Christmas ornament she made me on my tree every year.
I’d wondered if you were still knitting during the warmer weather. The pattern and color of that hood look great.
I do knit in the summer, but the heavier sweater type projects wait until the weather cools down. It’s hard to knit on a wool sweater when it’s 80 degrees in the shade…
Hi there CG –
You are a knitting genius! Grafting cables and icords – incredibly impressive stuff – that sweater is beautiful! Wouldn’t it have been too warm for Europe anyway? Did you buy any yarn while there? I’ve gotten some of my favorites in Europe (of course that was a long time before the euro was practically twice the dollar…).
Hi curly! Actually, it was chilly and breezy enough on the lake one day that I pulled out my favorite fleece pullover.
I didn’t see any yarn shops while we there, which is probably a good thing considering the exchange rate. 🙂
Now, when are we having our top-down sweater knit-a-long? September? I want to do this Not-so-shrunken Cardigan, but with hooks and eyes instead of the buttons.
WOW! I’m soooo jealous – all you ladies are so prolific! And everything – dresses, socks, sweaters, afghans are so very pretty. After 2 months, I finally finished a baby sweater but forgot to take a pic before wrapping it. Maybe I’ll take one after the baby shower just to prove I’ve done something.
CG – I’d love to see the “Not So Shrunken Cardigan”, but the link leads to that really cool Spool shop you mentioned. September is probably a perfect time to start a top down project – maybe I’ll have it done by January!
Oops…here’s the right link.
Cool site – great sweater. I’d love to make that one too. Have you got the pattern? You think a knitting nerd such as myself could pull it off?
I think it looks pretty easy (they had a sample in the yarn shop and were billing it as a quick and easy knit). It’s mostly plain stockinette stitch – the trickiest part is probably picking up and crocheting that little ruffle down the front, and that’s really not that hard to learn. I could always take a day trip up and show you how, you know…
Hi CG –
Don’t know if you’re still picking up responses – but it would be great to get together soon!
Hi, good work CG, you are doing great on the knitting. I love the colors.
I’m still sewing, rather than take pics. of each item I just took a pic of most of the things I made in the last few weeks. I think I am up to about 15 or more items. Last thing I worked on were 2 sundresses, just in time for this awful heat wave we are having out here.
Wow, you’ve been busy! The colors and prints are all so pretty. Almost makes me wish it hadn’t been 35 years since I last wore a dress…
Thanks and hi SN, well only 2 of these are dresses, they would be the last 2 on the right, the rest are tops. But you know dresses, well sundresses, are cooler than anything. It’s been so hot here I can barely stand anything, but the dresses are loose and airy enough. The dresses I made with no pattern, one of them out of a skirt and matching scarf. I sewed the scarf to a remade skirt base, added elastic and an empire type band, 2 straps and I had a dress.
Very cool! And I second what SN said: you’ve been very busy! They’re really pretty, Diane.
I saw this dress on another blog last week, and I thought it looked cute and it seemed pretty simple to make. There’s also a really cool new fabric shop near the Philly Drinking Liberally called Spool, and all the fabrics there are so bright and cheerful it makes me want to break out my sewing machine and make something.
Thanks CG, I forgot how easy it is to sew up something new. My biggest problem has been a sewing machine that doesn’t want to cooperate, plus I think a little 2 year old twisted the tension awhile ago. The other day I had a battle royale with said machine, thought I would have to sew garment by hand, but wouldn’t give up, finally was able to get a reasonable stitch.
I have a lot of what my daughter calls ‘long flowing skirts’, so about 5 of those tops are made from the skirts. I keep looking at other skirts to see if I want to make them into tops.
WooHoo Diane, you are a veritable crafting machine!
What pretty prints & colors! I used to sew clothes – mainly plain colored skirts – but haven’t in years.
Wow, CG, that Hoodie is looking really smashing. Can’t wait to see it finished. The handpainted linen is also really pretty. I want t get some cool yarn like that, but so far haven’t taken the plunge.
I never did finish my Skully sweater. Here it is currently:
After much wrestling with learning intarsia, I think I finally got it. Sadly, the sweater is just a tad too small, so I am thinking of frogging the whole thing and starting over. Sigh.
While taking a break from that project, I restarted my lace project. It was going really well:
I was really enjoying it and feeling quite proud until this point. I kept getting to the same damn row and screwing up, ripping back, and screwing up again. So, I have also put it in a corner until it behaves itself.
So, I decided to do something really mindless:
It truly is pretty mindless and I am enjoying it. Of course, I am only on row 75 or so, so I may start to loathe it after say row 150. :>)
I’m terribly addicted to Ravelry.com. It has done wonders for my knitting, but my boss would be pretty upset if he knew how much of my work time I waste at the site!
I love the Skully sweater! One of these decades, I want to knit a sweater with the Grateful Dead Lightning Bolt skull – just need to graph it out first. I’m working on a truly mindless scarf – one strand of worsted weight combined with various fancy yarns in garter stitch on size 19 needles. This one is in shades of green and I have enough of the fancy yarns for one in purples & reds that someone donated to our charity knitting group. Can’t send this one off for charity, but I’ll put it in our Xmas craft show that we put on to make money to buy machine washable yarns.
Wow! Look at all that! And to think that you were just learning how to knit back at Christmastime…I’m impressed.
I love the skully sweater, and your lace looks pretty too. What pattern is that?
Thanks CG. I’m pretty amazed I can do this stuff too.
The lace is Lace Leaf Shawl.