Obsession Confession

I have been wholly caught up in Autumn Rose. Until Sunday morning* all my free time (not including commutes) had pretty much been devoted to working on Autumn Rose. This is not to say that the knitting has been smooth sailing, no, unfortunately, I stumbled. This sweater requires many color changes. As I knit each of the sleeves, I always double checked the color name when I made a switch. As I knit the body to the sleeve join, I double checked the color names when I made a switch. It seems though that when I joined the sleeves to the body I must have become arrogant and not double checked the color names. Do you see a difference in these two photos?

I used the wrong color for the darker section. I used a browner red than I was supposed to. When I discovered the mistake I thought, very seriously, about leaving it as is. The color difference is not drastic (unless the 2 colors are right next to each other) and frogging hundreds of tiny stitches seemed too depressing. I thought for a minute, then pulled my size 2 needle out of the sweater and started to pull out 9 rows of knitting. When it was all torn out I went to work (the rest of the day pretty much followed the pattern for the morning).

When I returned home on Friday I really didn't want to start to put hundreds of tiny stitches back onto the needles, but I made myself slog on. I knew that if I didn't Autumn Rose would never be done. After I finished 2 rows I got back into the swing and the obsession returned. Eventually I went to sleep. When I woke up on Saturday I immediately resumed knitting. New trouble appeared to be brewing though, my last skein of Old Gold (the tan/brown color in the above photos) was nearly used up. Would I have enough? No, I didn't have enough. I knit like mad all through Saturday and into the wee hours of Sunday morning. I finished all of the sweater but the collar. My Old Gold lasted to that point, but with only about a foot of yarn left over. Now, I am paused in my Autumn Rose obsession. I am sending 6 unused skeins of yarn back to the on-line vendor where I purchased the yarn, and then they will send me the one skein of Old Gold that I need to finish Autumn up.

*By Sunday morning I am referring to 2 am, which technically is Sunday morning and not still Saturday. Those who know me outside of the blog know that I generally turn into a pumpkin MUCH earlier than that.

Time to Flash the Fos:

December 4:

My sweater for today is Lace & Tuck by Shirley Padden (if I remember correctly) from IK. This is made using 100% alpaca, Inca Alpaca, I believe. It was sport weight yarn, and there are two pieces to this garment, the big cowl like piece comes off. I made this sweater in late '05/early '06. The problem with using 100% alpaca is that the yarn had little to no memory, this mostly effects the elbow area since the sweater was not knit with negative ease. I don't remember how much ease there is in the sweater. I like this sweater and had fun making it, it moved along pretty quickly and was a nice practical use of lace (I have way too many shawls and I hardly ever use shawls). If you are curious about my previous posts on this you can find them here.

Hello, everyone, it's K here. My December 4th FO is Rusted Root:



Yes, it's a goofy photo of me, but the sweater looks good! That's all that matters, right? This is another one of my successes (the failures come later in the month...SO not looking forward to wearing some of those monstrosities. The relevant details about the project can be found here. This is a top that I wear a lot. It fits well, is comfortable, hasn't stretched out at all and can be dressed up or down. The wool in the Cotton Fleece has fuzzed up a little, which surprised me, but it still looks good and is going strong.

Weekend of Knitting

So how much knitting can one apparently insanely obsessed knitter get done in the long Thanksgiving holiday? Well, if that knitter is me, and if the project is the Autumn Rose Pullover more can be done than expected, but less than hoped for. As you may recall, I started the weekend (Thursday being the start) with one sleeve done to the point where it would be joined to the body and the second sleeve started and done to about the end of the cuff. Before too long I had 2 sleeves finished to the point where they get joined to the body:

After finishing the sleeves it was time to move on to the body itself. I had deluded hopes that after a weekend of insane knitting I might actually have the sweater done so that I could wear it this week (hello? It is fingering weight yarn knit on size 2 needles, there is a steek involved, it needs blocking, I need sleep and to eat occasionally, what was I thinking there?!). I knew that my expectations weren't realistic, so the question was, how far could I really get?

The answer is 2+ rows of circle motifs and moving on to start the 3rd row of circle motifs, which means that the sleeves are going to be joined at the end of these circles and that the neck will start to be shaped and steek stitches cast on very soon.

This weekend I got to thinking of the finished sweaters that I own. I have a dresser that is pretty much devoted to my hand knits (hey, they take up a lot of space!) and I know that now that it is fall I have been wearing handknits most days. I keep most (ok, pretty much all) of my FOs (I am selfish, what can I say?) and I know that I have accumulated bunch of sweaters since I started knitting. I have decided that while I didn't participate in the knit a sweater month (what is NaSweKniMo or something?) I am going to start December by wearing a different hand knit sweater every day. I want to see how far into the month I can go. I have a couple of court appearances in December, but fortunately, I have a couple (or at least one) tank type sweater that works well under a suit jacket. People flash their stash, and as stated earlier, devoted a month to knitting a sweater, but I am unaware of any kind of group flashing of FOs. While I know that our blog readership isn't big enough for this to catch on large scale, I would be interested in seeing the FOs of our readers if you are interested in sharing, any takers?

Happy Thanksgiving!

As I write this I am sitting at home sipping tea instead of running around trying to leave for my bus in five minutes. It is Thanksgiving. I am a vegetarian so a big turkey dinner isn't my thing. I do enjoy most of the side dishes that are served for Thanksgiving, but I don't feel any special pull of this holiday. I haven't had Thanksgiving dinner with my family for probably 8 or 9 years. I am happy with a quiet and often non-traditional Thanksgiving. What Thanksgiving means to me, this year, is 4 days that can be pretty much devoted to knitting. Admittedly, I have some work to do, something to file in Boston tomorrow and a brief to write, but neither activity will be particularly taxing. My brief isn't that complex and the filing should take 15 minutes.

I mentioned a little while ago that I was working on some small projects while waiting to start my next sweater. Well, I have started my next sweater, so the little projects may not get the same devotion (ok, to be honest, there is no way they will get the same devotion/attention they got before). I thought I would share a couple of them today. You probably won't hear them mentioned again until after Autumn Rose is done.

I don't know how much knitting for Christmas I will do this year, but this (on the right) small project is a Christmas knit. I have decided to give one of my Grandmother's a mini-Clapotis which I am knitting with SeaSilk. This has become my travel project (Autumn Rose has too many color changes for me to be able to knit it on my bus).

Another small project that picked up steam was my knee high Millicent Socks from Cookie A. I have one sock done and am at the heel flap on the second. I am doing the heel flap in the same color that I used for the top cuff. This sock was put on pause because of that color change. To be honest, most of this sock was not knit after I finished my cabled cardigan, but during the playoffs and World Series (the cabled cardigan seemed to be a jinx). I didn't have the yarn with me when I was last out knitting with it and then became engrossed with another project, which I am not showing here, instead.

While writing this post I paused to finally block my Forest Path Stole. I finished knitting this some time over the summer but for some reason could never quite bring myself to take the time to block it. (ETA: I was just going around adding labels to old posts (sorry that I republished a bunch of them, didn't realize there was a different way) and noticed that this shawl was finished in July, JULY!!!! I posted that I finished in on 7/17/07, I can't beleive that I took so long to block this thing!)

Finally, progress shots on Autumn Rose:

Happiness Is...

A new nearly finished FO: Season of Darkness and Winter Light from Norsk Strikkedesign. I did not buy a kit and did not use the called for yarn. My Season was knit using Blackberry Ridge fingering weight yarn in taupe and dark brown for the body and Mostly Merino sport weight yarn for the edging. The brown colorwork part was knit on size 2 Addi's (3mm), the edging with size 5 Addis. This has been my first steeked project, and I will admit that I am still a little afraid of unravelling, even though all the steeked bits have been sewn over (either with hems or attaching edging to sleeves).

This piece has been knit off and on now for over a year. Initially I thought of it as a sweater, but now that it is finished I think it is more of a shrug. I wore it yesterday and thought about wearing it again today. It seems to be very warm, but I can't put a coat on over those huge sleeves, which means that it probably won't be worn much in the winter when I plan to go out.

I finished the knitting a month or so ago but hadn't bothered attaching the edging to the body (the blue to the brown) because I have to sew a velvet lining in under the edging parts. I had thought that this had to be done when the pieces were separate, but then I saw another blogger had attached the edging before putting in the lining. Seeing this spawned a long IM with K, and emails to her local sewing experts, which, when added to my impatience, resulted in putting the edging on without lining.

This isn't finished yet, though, because I am going to put the velvet lining in. I hope to beg or borrow access to a sewing machine for that. K tells me NOT to use the machine to attach the lining, but she also tells me that I have to hem the fabric before attaching the lining and I really don't want to make the hems by hand.

While happiness is being able to wear a new FO, joy is starting another sweater. I am now working on the Autumn Rose Sweater by Eunny Jang and, so far, am loving every stitch I make.