spaazlicious

Finished red sweater!

I was going to write up the pattern and submit it for publication (to who? I dunno. Anybody. If I'd left off the waist it would've been just right for Vogueknits, being a chunkyknit wool long sleeved mock turtleneck croptop and all ;)) but I've decided against it. I may rewrite and tweak it and see about it then, but for now, nope.

Things I'll change:

• slightly smaller gauge, use yarn with better stitch definition. I'm thinking handpainted GEMS Sapphire superwash merino.
  
• take out the blah cables on either side of the lancet braid and raise the braid up so it is just a breast band--it comes too far down and makes ze boobies look a leetle dumpy, IMO.
  

Other than that though, I love this sweater.
It's warm, cozy and completely my own creation.
Well, and a little help from Barbara Walker's Charted Knitting Lancet Braid.

I liked how fast it was to knit, although I don't think I want to work with the Gatsby yarn anymore. It's discontinued but I still have about three skeins left (which is amazing because it means this sweater took only seven to make I think, all hail the wonder that is chunky knitting). It has a nice sheen, but it's a tweedy single, so the little yellow and brown slubs kind of just pull off while you knit. Meh. Enough stay in that you get the point of it anyway.

It also means that I fulfilled a new year's goal: I designed and knit my own cable sweater.

Thank g-d that's over, eh?

Spinning sock yarn!

These are singles from 4 ounces of BFL that Mary-Kay handdyed and gave out at a little get-together at her house. I spun it up and watched epsiodes from the first season of Lost which she loaned me. So kind of a celebration of Mary-Kay's generosity, eh?

I totally forgot to take a pic of it pre-spinning, and post-plying, 'cuz I'm a crap blogger.

Last night I plied them together, and today I'm going to ply them together again for a cabled yarn. It looks actually like they'll be more sportweight than sockweight, but I already have a pattern picked out for them:



The Ribble Socks from Socks³ (on the right, underneath the green sleeve). Yeah, you can barely see it in the pic, but also pictured is the cuff of the Aran Sandal Socks I've started in Silky Wool and the second time started sleeve of the Wear Everywhere Pullover.

The Wear Everywhere Pullover takes forever as the linen, dpns, twisted stitches and a fancy rib stitch that is a mere 4 rows repeated but just similar enough and just different enough that you have to really keep track of where you are (at least I do, at this stage) mean that this might be a long term knitting project. A part of me is thinking this is a good chance to figure out 2 socks, 2 circs type thing, but another, equally large part says "hell no!" to starting over again.

I like the color though (Shamrock) and I'm looking forward to just tossing it in the washer afterwards and seeing if linen really does get better and better as time goes by.

Boo crappy alpaca roving!

I spun up the rest of my vm-infested overpriced "Peaches" alpaca roving and decided to make a cabled yarn of it. I'm just in a cabley mood, what can I say?



I wanted to get all of it in one skein, so I way overloaded my plying head and bobbin--just for reference, it shouldn't look like this. ;)



Also, if you pay $3/oz it shouldn't look like this when you wash it to set the twist:

Yay stripey merino!

I sought solace in the arms of the pine colored merino my secret pal had sent, and some of my handpainted variegated South African Fine Wool:



I ended up with a three ply worsted weight that'll do a subtle striping thingy when knit.


I've also been having a fun time spinning bulky yarns from merino superwash, but they're still undyed and therefore dull.

Does this look comfortable to you?

It doesn't look comfortable to me, but he sleeps like that all the time. Weirdo.

Better.



Betterer.



Most betterest.