The Virtual Knitter

Hello!  As they say, “Better late than never!”  Yup – it’s been a long time since my last post.  I started one when we got back from vacation but never finished it.  Rather than publish such old news, I just deleted it and am starting over.  As is often the case, summer has been a busy time for me so I’ve just not kept up with my blogging.  I always tell myself that I’ll do better, but that just never seems to happen.  One thing that happens to me is that I’ll often think “Oh, I should blog about this experience,” and then I start writing the blog in my head.  Well, as you might guess, since I’ve already written it out in my head, I’m bored with it later, and it never gets entered!  I guess I’ll just have to quit doing that!I’ve been working on a few knitting projects lately (nope – can’t stick to just one at a time, not this girl!)  A couple of them have deadlines so I’ll talk about those in this post.

The first one is John’s Birthday Sweater.  This is a sweater I started over a year ago for his birthday last year.  Well, now I’m aiming for having it finished this year for his birthday, which takes place in about 4 weeks!  I’m knitting it from Elann Peruvian Highland Wool in gray with black and red bands.  I’m following the “recipe” for a raglan sleeve sweater from the Anne Budd “Handy Book of Sweater Patterns,” which is working out well for me.  However, when I was originally working on this, I got  hung up on the sleeves because I decided to use them to work on one of my weaknesses – knitting with DPNs.  Looking back, I realize that this was not such a good idea on something so important.  I should have just stuck with the 2-circular method since I’m so at ease with it.  Since I had knit the body with my Denise needles, and I had to switch to bamboos for the sleeves, the guage was drastically different, so I had to keep starting over with different sizes.  And the ladders – they were just terrible when using the larger size DPNs.  Consequently, it got set aside and not touched for months.  But now I’m back at it and things are going well:

One thing that I had to figure out was whether or not I should try to match the bands on the arms to the bands on the sweater.  I finally figured out that it would be easier and most likely look better, to have the band pattern on the sleeves be different and not try to match them as that was going to be a losing battle.  Instead of having a wide band on the sleeves, I’ll have two narrow one, as shown, on the lower part and one narrow band on the upper part (I think – I may skip the upper one and just leave it all gray). 

Another deadline driven project I have going is Evelyn Clark’s “Falling In Love” scarf knit in Malabrigo (how the heck do you pronounce that anyway) lace weight merino in the Amaroso colorway.  I just started this morning (I’m home with a headcold today, and knitting and blogging are about the only activities I can do without feeling overheated and feaverish).  So far I’ve completed one section of the “falling hearts” pattern, which is repeated several time before finishing each end with the “intertwined hearts” section.  This scarf is knit from the center back, so I had to do a provisional cast on for the first time ever, which was actually extremely easy (I say that now – we’ll see what happens when it’s time to start at the center back to knit the other side!)  Anyway, here’s a detail of my progress so far:

The Malabrigo is a “singles” yarn instead of a plied yarn, so ths pattern should work perfectly as it is a garter stich lace.  This yarn might have a tendency to bias in a stockinette pattern. I’m quite pleased with it so far.  The reason this is deadline driven is that in mid-September I’m taking a class in designing lace triangles, from the the lace queen herself – Evelyn Clark.  I thought that prior to taking the class, it might be a good idea to finish one of her patterns.  I already had this pattern on hand, having purchased it some time ago, I just had to find the right yarn for it.  I originally bought some red Misti Alpaca lace weight for it, but prior to staring, I found that my LYS, Hilltop Yarn East, had just gotten this wonderful yarn in stock.  I thought this red & pink colorway would be perfect for this pattern.  I may still knit one with the alpaca too as a gift (my mother would love it!)  This one’s going to be for me though.

As far as spinning goes, I took a dye class two weeks ago!  I learned how to paint roving as well as how to do a low water bath dye on the stovetop.  I really enjoyed the class and hope to incorporate the techniques learned into my own work.  I’ll post a picture of the yarn I’ve spun from the class roving when I get a chance.  

And now for the obligatory cat picture.  Here’s Rajah, wearing a miniature Seattle Mariner’s hat: