This weekend was the start of spring cleaning for me, which I apparently inherited from my mom. I’m not sure if it’s good or bad yet, but it certainly has me doing a lot more work, which I’m starting to think is bad at the end of the semester. On Sunday I washed the walls in the bathroom and the hallway and then on Monday I did a stash toss.
I took out all my bins of yarn, washed all the bins and lids using lavender euclan diluted in water (since lavender helps deter bugs and moths) and then sorted everything by weight and put it back into bins. This took about 3 hours and I have 6 bins of varying sizes and 5, wait, 6 dresser drawers full of yarn. One dresser drawer is full of leftovers from past knitting projects and 2 are full of yarn that I want to sell.
The whole point of this endeavor is to make sure your stash hasn’t been taken over by bugs, moths, or mice. Since we’re in the basement of the house, and there’s a swamp right behind our house, we get a ton of spiders and I wanted to make sure that they hadn’t infested my yarn. Even tho my yarn is stored in rubbermaid bins, due to the amount of yarn stuffed into the bins, they haven’t always been closing as well as they could. I took out the last empty bin and decided to use that as well, which was a good idea. Originally the stash was stored in 5 bins and then the dresser drawers and sorted kind of by vendor, but not really. I decided to sort it by yarn weight instead, and to label the bins. My bins are of varying sizes, small, medium and large which helped.
The last step of all this, was to update my stash in ravelry and list which bin or drawer the yarn is in. This will hopefully reduce the time spent looking for yarn as I have a specific place to start. This took forever (and honestly still isn’t completely finished) but will be worth it in the end. Overall I’m really happy with how it went and I’m also really glad that my boyfriend wasn’t home so he doesn’t know how much yarn I actually have.
This has been finished and blocked for a week or two now, but we all know I’m a blog slacker so it’s getting posted now. My Venetian and Composition Book Grey “Wine and Shadows” is finally done and I even have some really nice pictures to post! The actual knitting was fairly boring, stupid long purl rows just about killed me. I knew I would love the finished product tho, even if it’s not for me. While I was planning on making it bigger then I did, I’m glad I stopped when I did. I only had 10 grams left of Venetian (the purple) and wouldn’t have had enough to finish it if I had gone bigger, and it blocked out HUGE. It covered the love seat cushions from one side to the other when I blocked it. It’s a really nice, generous size and I’m incredibly happy with it.
I kind of want to make one for myself now…
Here is a shot of my somewhat bashful model…
So I promised in November or December that I would post pictures of my mom in her Rocky Coast Cardigan once it was done. I’ve been very bad and have been keeping them from whoever might decide to read this!
Here is my wonderful mother in her cardigan. Everything fits well, except the armpits are a bit tight even tho I cast on an extra inch of stitches. I wish the mods for a larger yoke had been posted before I got past that part.
So I have named myself a blog slacker and am somewhat ashamed of how lackluster posting has been. Not that I really think that anyone reads this, but at least I have some record of things I’ve done or whatever, which is important since my memory is getting to be like swiss cheese…full of holes. Classes have been very busy, especially with not having full time use of a vehicle. It’s midterm time again, and a bunch of presentations, projects, and reports are due in the next few weeks. Work has also been keeping me busy, as they almost immediately doubled the hours I work from what was discussed during the interviews and such, which is ok but leaves me very little time during the week to do much since I have evening classes two days a week this term. My brother is getting married in May, so we’re trying to plan for a trip to Manitoba for that, plus my boyfriend’s parents are trying to convince us to go to mexico in October for a week.
In the knitting world, I have also been very busy. I’m involved in two shawl swaps, one due in May and one in June. Both have been started and the june one is almost done but I’m slacking somewhat. For the June swap I decided to do a Daybreak, which as usual for Stephen West’s designs, is beautiful and I love the striping and the slipped stitches and the colours I picked, but I hate knitting it by this point. SO TIRED of super long purl rows. I’m learning again that I really don’t like a lot of purling, but I love stockinette and can’t always knit in the round. I’m going for a size inbetween the medium and large, which means I’m doing about 18 pairs of stripes and currently have 13 done, it’s really not that much further to go before I can wash it, block it, and mail it out.
The second swap due in May is a full sized shawl using Malabrigo sock in a dark tonal blue. The majority of the yarn is a dark midnight blue but it does have some lighter bits. I’m doing a large size Damask and am hoping it’s considered “large” enough for the swap as that’s one of the rules. I’ve done the cast on and completed I think 7 or 8 rows. It’ll go quickly once I pick it up, but I’ve been wanting to get daybreak done first.
In addition to these two swaps, I’ve also taken it upon myself to knit a wedding shawl for my brother’s fiancee. The issue is that she wants it in a dusty rose colour, which is incredibly hard to find so I’ve had tons of trouble just getting the yarn. While I have some skeins that would be the right colour, I don’t have enough to do the shawl I want, Rock Island. My mom ended up getting some alpaca silk in Winnipeg on Saturday and is shipping that over because she’s actually seen the colour Sarah wants.
I’ve also gotten myself involved with feministry’s Great Cowl KAL, which has you knitting cowls within a deadline in order to get the next pattern. The first pattern was free and with 3 down and 2 more to go, I’m excited to be finished with that too. I’m really getting eager to be finished with it so I can complete some of the other things I have to get done soon.
As another thing, because apparently I like to plan out my entire year of knitting before march, I have started a striped featherweight cardigan, have bought yarn to do my own Rocky Coast Cardigan in grey, and want to knit my mom a featherweight in a dark brown for her birthday in december.
This all comes down to one thing really…I need a ball winder.
Everything is either completed or has been frogged! I started a Daybreak shawl by Stephen West in Madelinetosh Tosh Sock for a swap that’s due in June and cast on for my Breakwater sweater in Tanis Fiber Arts Blue Label Fingering in Stormy.
Finished Taiyo Shawl
Tomorrow night is New Years Eve (duh) and I guess I should have thought of this earlier, but I think I want to try and get all my unfinished objects (ufo’s) and works-in-progress (wip’s) in order and either frogged or completed. I finished my mom’s Rockey Coast Cardigan today (YAY!) and am going to wash it tomorrow so pictures will come yet. Here are the other projects that have been languishing in drawers.
Cabled Scarf
This is the oldest one, I started it a year ago with lana grossa self-striping sock yarn in kind of a muted rainbow and rowan kidsilk haze in a pale green. I don’t even know how far I have left to go on it because I haven’t touched it in so long, but it’d be easy to bang out and finish…I just don’t know if I’d actually use it to be honest. But frogging kidsilk haze is…blah.
Taiyo Shawl
This is a shawl I started over the summer with Taiyo sock yarn, aiming for a cooler summer shawl since it’s a mostly cotton yarn. I’m not using a pattern for it. I was originally planning to use the entire skein of yarn, but am halfway done and am really tired of the long purl rows. The plan is to make it a ruffled edge as well, which I think will eat quite a bit of the yarn. I absolutely LOVE the colour changes, it reminds me of winter.
Velvet Shimmer
This is a shrug I started over the summer out of Tanis Fiber Arts Green Label Aran weight yarn in Velvet, a reddish/purply/blue superwash merino yarn. I have 4 skeins of it and they won’t be enough to finish it. I’m done the first sleeve and have started the 2nd sleeve. I’m almost done the 2nd skein of yarn and definitely can’t afford to buy more yarn. I think this will get frogged.
Norway Flip Tops
This is an easy one, I will finish these. I’m making them in madelinetosh dk in norway spruce and am done the first glove till the flip top.
It’s kind of exciting to be able to start any project I want if I really really want to, but I think I need to finish some other stuff first. Anyone have any suggestions or comments on what they’re doing to start the new year?
For about the last month I’ve been working on my first large garment. I picked the Rocky Coast Cardigan, which is found in Coastal Knits by Alana Dakos and Hannah Fettig. This particular cardigan is by Hanna, and it’s gorgeous like all of her patterns. It’s a top down raglan, like most of her cardigans, and has a simple cable pattern with wide ribbing. When my mom was out in September, I showed her a pattern in a magazine because we were going to my LYS, 88 stitches in Langley, to buy some yarn so I could make myself a cardigan. She picked a different cardigan for herself and promptly bought 8 skeins of Berroco Ultra Alpaca in a really pretty dark teal. About 2 months later I got caught up in Coastal Knits and decided to make this one instead!
I got gauge with size 10.5 needles, here’s the gauge swatch:
I sent the swatch to my mom and she really loved it. It was a lot thinner then she was expecting and she really loves the colour and drape so I started the actual cardigan. Tonight I finished the body and am working on the collar. I hate picking up stitches and I always think my ribbing looks dumb, but I think washing and blocking will even it out. Right now I’m a little worried that it’s going to be too short, but I think I’ll be able to block it out a bit longer too.
You can find more information about this cardigan, and about coastal knits here.
Today is World Aid’s Day and a favorite knitting blog of mine, Bitches get Stitches, is gathering donations for the Pittsburg aid’s task force, which provides free HIV testing and other support for people living with hiv/aids. While I can’t donate myself due to school and both myself and my boyfriend being unemployed, he has raised more then $2000. Please go here , read his post, and please donate if you can.
Nothing new is finished this week. I have been bitten by the Sims 3 bug and it’s practically all I’ve been doing besides schoolwork lately. The item I’ve been working on occasionally is the Pogona Shawl, a pattern by the wonderful Stephen West, the same designer who created the Dolinar I completed recently, which I should post pictures of. Pogona is a crescent shaped shaw, supposed to be done in fingering weight yarn. I’m doing it in Malabrigo Rios, a worsted weight superwash merino wool on size 9 needles. It’s going to be wonderfully squishy and soft when it’s done!
While I officially cast off the 2nd mitt on Friday night, I waited till today to write up this post because it took them forever to dry after their bath and I wanted to get pictures with the buttons on.
This pattern was fairly easy and well written. I had issues with 2 parts, and neither were really anything to do with the pattern itself, just my own stupidity. During the chart there are a bunch of M1′s that sit on different rows, but close together. On the first mitten there are holes here, I guess I didn’t twist the stitch correctly when I made the new stitch. This wasn’t an issue on the 2nd glove, which is nice. The other problem area I had was when attaching the flip top part. The way she did it is very smart, it looks completely seamless, and for all intents and purposes, it is. But it’s also somewhat hard to describe, so that took awhile for me to understand completely. This was my first time working an i-chord, which looks awesome, and my gauge on the 2nd mitt was a bit looser for row gauge, so it’s just a touch longer then the first mitt, which my mom probably won’t notice once they’re on.
Overall I’m very happy with them and with the pattern. I’ve already started thinking about making a pair for myself, so I think this pattern will get more then one use, which is good since it’s a paid pattern.
You can find out more information about this pattern and about the designer, Ysolda, here.
