Evangelines

I finished my Evangelines yesterday, and they are lovely. I'm so happy with my knitting these days.

These were definitely an exercise in finicky perfectionism, though. Every time I decided something was not quite right about the pattern, I figured out how to make it better and then fixed it. The ribbing in the pattern as written doesn't line up with the cables, so I ripped back and adjusted it. The pattern has you use the same cable for both gloves, but I wanted them to be symmetrical, so I tweaked it. 3/4 of the way through the second glove, I decided that the cable should only be framed by two purl stitches, rather than three, so I dropped the stitches all the way down and reworked them back up as knit stitches with a crochet hook. Then I decided that the cable on the right glove would be better suited to being the left glove, so I ripped back to the thumb hole and put it on the other side. Then, the thumbs were too tight, so I ripped them out and made them 14 stitches instead of twelve. And even with all the fixing, I still loved making them. It's an interesting cable, and the yarn works beautifully with it. Plus the back of the gloves are just a little bit stripy, which is fun.

I made most of them on the flight out to Colorado. I love that the Madison airport security people never ever give me trouble about my needles. Especially because this time I had an entire week worth's of projects in my carry on. I brought a bunch of little projects. These, my daisy stitch armwarmers I started, the Rose armwarmers that I'll be making in Silky, Gretel, and then my Cherie Amour, which I'm restarting. The armwarmers are going faster than I expected them too. I'm about half done with the second daisy stitch one, which is surprising, because the first one took me forever. And, just in case that's not enough, I bought more yarn off of Eat.Sleep.Knit. God I love that site. They got in a new shipment of Malabrigo, and they carry Shibui Knits now, so I'm finally gonna get to try it, which I am super excited about.

Pattern: Evangeline by Michelle Szeghalmi
Yarn: Malabrigo Worsted in Applewood, a bit under one skein
Needles: US 7 Brittany DPNs
Modifications: I adjusted the placement of the ribbing, framed the cables with two purl stitches instead of three, and made the cables symmetrical.
Started: June 2008
Finished: June 2008

Elijah!

He is so cute! I love him oodles and oodles.He's all floppy and adorable. And now that he's got eyes, he's all finished. If I were to make him again, I would probably stuff him a bit fuller, but as it is I find his floppiness quite lovable. I was originally planning on making him as a gift for a to be determined recipient, but I think I might keep him and make baby clothes for the babies who might have gotten him.


All in all, the pattern (as with all of Ysolda's designs) was really lovely. Clear and easy to follow. There's a lot of picked up stitches, and occasionally it got a little bit finicky (sock size dpns made a big difference here), but no seams and no sewing on pieces. He was fun and quick to make. I'm quite happy.


He even reads my blog!


Pattern: Elijah by Ysolda Teague
Yarn: Knit One Crochet Too Babyboo in Bright Aqua, just over 1 skein
Needles: US 2 1/2 Crystal Palace Bamboo dpns
Started: May 2008
Finished: June 2008

Mrs. Darcy

So after this languished on my needles twice when I tried to knit it flat, I decided to work it out to knit seamlessly and it totally flew by, despite the fact that I was working out the numbers as I went along. But now it's done and it's beautiful.


I'm particularly happy with the shoulders. I knit the sleeves in the round, and joined them as if it had been a bottom up raglan, but then only decreased on one side to keep the look of set in shoulders. And it worked.


I also knit the neck edging onto the top of the back so I didn't have to seam anything at all when I was done. A bit of grafting, underneath the arms and when I connected the two sides of the neck edging and a three needle bind off for the shoulders, but nothing else.


Pattern: Mrs. Darcy Cardigan by Mary Weaver
Yarn: Lamb's Pride Worsted in Mulberry, 5 skeins
Needles: Size 9 24 inch Addi Turbos
Modifications: A gazillion. I don't think I kept a single number the same as the original pattern. They're all laid out here.
Started: January 2008, but frogged and restarted June 2008
Finished June 2008

Yarn!

I just got a box of yarn in the mail!


I ordered it on Sunday night, it was mailed on Monday morning, and it got here today. It's all Malabrigo, from Eat.Sleep.Knit, and I love it. I have four skeins of Loro Barranquero, to make a Cherie Amour, five skeins of worsted in various colors (Applewood, Sealing Wax, Glazed Carrot, Jewel Blue and Emerald) and my first ever skein of silky, in Evening Violet. I don't quite know what I'm going to do with all of it, but I'm excited to play with it. I think the Applewood will probably turn into the Evangelines I've been meaning to make forever, and the Emerald will probably become a Gretel.


And I got fun stuff for buying over a mile of yarn. There's a shawl pattern, cards of all the yarn that Eat.Sleep.Knit carries, two buttons and a little purple ruler. Plus a Yarn Lotto card that I enjoyed scratching, even though I didn't win anything on it. I'd never bough yarn off the internet before, and it was very exciting. It was like getting presents in the mail, and since I used Grandma's birthday money to get it, I suppose that's actually kind of true. I throughly stalked all of the colors I was considering on Ravelry first, to see what they might look like knitted up, and it was much fun. Really, the whole thing was delightful and I highly recommend the store.


Also, I finally devised an effective way of keeping my yarn still while I wind it into a ball, since I don't have a swift and ballwinder. If I loop the yarn around two cans of tomatoes, I can keep it from tangling. The 28-oz cans are both heavy enough to stay still and short enough that it's not too cumbersome to lift the yarn over them. I'm really very pleased, because for the first time winding my yarn into balls myself isn't a hassle.

I've also been knitting oodles and oodles. I'm nearly done with my first cardigan and I'm well into the hat I started yesterday. I love how much knitting time I have now that it's summer!

The London Knitting Round Up.

So, I've been back in the US for a couple weeks now, and I did a horrible job of keeping this updated with all my London knitting, but I did an awful lot of it while I was there. And I visited quite a few yarn stores too.

Final Count of FOs: 12
Final Count of WiPs: 4
Balls of Yarn Bought and Knit: 15
Balls of Yarn Brought Home Unknit: 12
Yarn Stores Visited: 6

It was good. I made eight hats, one bag, a shrug, a cowl and a sweater. FO posts about them will come. For now, be patient.

The Troll Hat.

So, while looking around Ravelry for a hat pattern for my Point Five yesterday, I was suprised by how few patterns there were for super bulky yarn. So I've decided to give you the pattern I improvised, in case you don't feel like thinking. Hence, the Troll hat, a really simple hat in super bulky thick and thin yarn. At first this hat didn't have a name, but the point at the top reminds me of the trolls' heads in Jan Brett's books, which I read as a child. And it seems to me that if a troll is going to make a hat, it would come out all lumpy and bumpy. I used Colinette Point 5 in Frangipani, a really fun Welsh yarn, but I would imagine another super bulky thick and thin yarn would work as well, although it should be noted that I used all 54 yards to make the hat and the pom pom.

The Troll Hat
by Riah Werner


Materials:
1 skein Colinette Point 5 (100% Wool, 100 grams/54 yards/50 meters)
Size 13 (9 mm) 16-inch circular needle
size 10.5 (6.5 mm) double pointed needles

Gauge:
I can't quite figure out how to get an accurate measurement with this yarn, but it works out to 2.25 st to the inch in stockinette with the bigger needles. The finished size of the hat is 21.5 inches.

Instructions:

CO 48 sts. Join, being careful not to twist sts. Work in stockinette st for 5 inches.

Begin decreases, switching to dpns when necessary.

Row 1: [K2tog, k 11] 4 x.

Row 2: [K2tog, k 10] 4 x.
Row 3: [K2tog, k 9] 4 x.
Row 4: [K2tog, k 8] 4 x.
Row 5: [K2tog, k 7] 4 x.
Row 6: [K2tog, k 6] 4 x.
Row 7: [K2tog, k 5] 4 x.
Row 8: [K2tog, k 4] 4 x.
Row 9: [K2tog, k 3] 4 x.
Row 10: [K2tog, k 2] 4 x.
Row 11: [K2tog, k 1] 4 x.
Row 12: [K2tog] 4x.

K 1 rnd.
BO.

Make a pom pom with the remaining yarn and attach to the top of the hat.

Stress Knitting + a Foreign Country = Lots of Hats

So, I've actually been knitting bunches here, in part because it's more stressful than I think I want to admit to myself. First, I made myself another charcoal Foliage, to replace the one I'd lost over Winter Break.

And then I found a pattern for the Limulidae hat in I Knit's newsletter and thought it would be perfect in the bulky turquoise mohair, which was making such a poor wisp. So I made one. And now I have two balls of the yarn leftover and no idea what to make with them.

And then I improvised a hat out of the Colinette Point Five, which I picked up because I wanted to get some British yarn when I'm here, and it's from Wales. I originally intended to make another Fourteen out of it, because it reminds me a bit of Aquarella, and that had worked so well the first time, but the yarn changed color too quickly and the thick and thin variations were too extreme to look good in the Brioche stitch. I tried a little bit of one by one ribbing, but I decided that that was too boring, so I improvised a super simple hat pattern that actually works with the yarn.

As a bit of a side note, I liked Loop in Islington, where I got the yarn. It was a charming little store and they didn't make me feel uncomfortable when I stayed there for ages even though the place was tiny, and they let me spread all of their Point Five out on the floor to see what colorway I liked best, and were generally friendly, but not too pushy and were totally willing to help me figure out what the American sizes I need were in metric. But I didn't love their selection of yarn. They had circular addi turbos, which had been proving troublesome to find in Madison, and nice buttons, but they didn't have any basic, colorful worsteds I felt like getting. And I do most of what I do in basic worsteds. But it is in walking distance, so if I need one of the things they carry, or have a sudden craving to do lots of knitting in many variations of greys and beiges and muted colors, then I would definitely go back.

Now on to the WIPs. I've been knitting the "February" fetchings, but I have realized that I have nowhere near enough yarn to finish them, so this is a bit of a dilemma. I either need to make them shorter or add another color of yarn or find some more Goldenrod Lamb's Pride here. We'll see what I wind up doing. But I think I like the patterns in the color particularly well. It reminds me of Twelfth Night, and is my not terribly inspired knitalong/readalong project for the Bardolatrists group on Ravelry. So I think I might hold off on finishing them until I get more of the yarn, but we'll see.

And then there's my V neck sweater from Fitted Knits. I've never done a top down raglan before, and I love it. There's such a feeling of completeness in knowing that as I knit something, I know exactly what it's going to wind up being. Although, transferring stitches so I can try the thing on as I go is a major pain. But I like it and it's been going so quickly, and I'm just a couple of rounds from being done with the body, because I want a longer sweater than the pattern calls for. And then onto the sleeves, which I'm pretty sure I'm going to knit in the round, because since they're already attached to the body, I see no reason why seaming them would be beneficial. The fabric that the Malabrigo is making is so lovely and soft and warm. I can absolutely see why everyone loves this yarn so much. I can't wait to wear this thing. I think that's part of the reason why I'm knitting it so quickly. I've never before been so impatient to get to the final product as I am with this sweater.

And now I'm starting to run out of the stash that I brought with me. There's still the Mrs. Darcy, which has been put on the back burner in favor of the Malabrigo V neck, and I probably will have an extra ball leftover once I'm done with that. And I've only used two and a half balls on the body of the V neck and I have five total, so unless I make monster sleeves from hell, there will be leftovers of that too. And I have the two orphaned balls of turquoise mohair, and a bit of leftover Donegal tweed, which is probably too little to do much with and then some green Lamb's Pride Worsted. And then, of course there's the Kid Silk for when I feel like making the Ice Queen, sans beads. So at the rate I'm knitting, I'll just have to get more yarn here. Tee hee. I still need something to make a Gretel with, and yarn for my next pairs of armwarmers. I'm looking forward to visiting more yarn stores here, because it gives me something to do where I can actually meet British people on terms that are not freakishly awkward. Tomorrow after studio, I think I'm actually going to go to my first knitting group, at a pub by Trafalgar Square, and while I've never been to such a thing before, I'm looking forward to it.