A Weekend Without Work

For the past 2 weeks or so I have had a project covering my desk, dominating my working time, taking over some evenings, intruding on my weekend. Because of this project I have missed several karate classes and, more tragically, lost knitting time. This weekend, despite having more work to do on this case, I didn't work, I knit. Then I knit some more.

I managed to finish the sleeves of the Nantucket Jacket. K's Sugar Plum cotton-ease seemed to work perfectly. Thanks K! I used one skein to make both sleeves and had a small amount of yarn left over from that skein. I attached the sleeves to the jacket, then I unseemed the center of the collar and re-did it, and then I picked up the cotton-ease that I had started with and did the crocheted edging

As a result of the knitting time, I managed to finish the whole jacket (well, except for weaving in the ends, and buying and attaching buttons) I am hoping that with proper buttons attached the sweater won't gape the way it does in this photo.

While I am not participating officially or unofficially in the UFO resurrection thing, I did resurrect Etheral Fichu. I did more repeats of the main pattern section, and a half a repeat less of the end repeat section. I am so sick of this shawl that I am going to knit 1 1/2 more rows then bind off the thing, call it done and block it. End of story.

Well, I have to return to work now. Have a good day!

Nantucket Jacket

Surprisingly, I am some how managing to make some real progress on the Nantucket Jacket. I managed to finish both halves of the front this weekend and to seem them to the back. I am a little worried that the sweater will be shorter than I want, but since it will be a cotton sweater, I am hopeful that gravity will help lengthen the sweater. One interesting thing about this pattern is that you make the collar simply by knitting 3 1/2 inches of seed stitch on the top of each of the front halves of the cardigan, then you seem the two cast off edges together (I don't know why you don't simple leave the stitches live then graft them together, but, whatever). I think that I am going to end up undoing my collar seeming and re-seeming it. The way I have it done now, if the collar folds over (which I think it will) the wrong side of the seeming shows, which will be rather unattractive.

I have just under one skein of my cotton-ease left, so I am holding off starting the sleeves. I figure that I can use my cotton-ease to do the crochet edging around the button edges of the cardigan, and if the cotton-ease K sends me is a different shade, I can just pretend that I meant for the sleeves to be a different color than the body. I think that I am making the 36" bust version of the Nantucket Jacket (one size above the smallest size). I am using the old cotton-ease, I haven't yet seen the new cotton-ease live.

I have heat again, thankfully. After a beautiful, warm winter the weather if finally turning bitterly cold, it wasn't the best time to loose heat. My landlord was good and came right out and got my heat working again.

I have not made much progress with my knits. The wristwarmer I started I ended up frogging. It was too loose and figuring out decreases to go around my wrist was too much work. I redesigned the Arrrgyle a bit to make smaller squares, and cast on again. This time I decided to go with 3 colors. This is kind of a pain, but more significantly I think my carries may be getting too tight. Now I am having a little difficulty getting the warmer over my hand. It may be frogged again. Perhaps I will be back at just 2 colors, or will do a plain argyle type warmer. Then again, I may just try to do one pattern repeat and see how it looks and see if it is too tight and go from there.

I made more progress on the front of my Nantucket Jacket. I am still using my second skein of Cotton-Ease, though I will probably have to break into a third soon. Remember, I have only 4 skeins of Cotton-Ease (though K may be able to come to the rescue, Yay K!).

I know that I should be working on winter sweaters so that I can wear them as soon as I finish, but I am just not feeling the pull of any right now. Let me rephrase, I am not feeling pulled enough to spend money on yarn for any right now. It is a rather odd feeling...

No Heat

My landlord should be fixing it today. Once a year I seem to loose heat to my apartment. I still have hot water, so I don't know what the deal is. Isis is at the office with me today.

Well, that is my off topic bit. On topic, I have completed the back of my Nantucket Jacket, and started the right front. I am enjoying working with Cotton-Ease, the stitch definition is great and I think this will be a fabulous spring sweater.

The other thing I started is a wrist warmer using the Pirate Arrrgyle chart. The warmer is a little loose on my wrist, so I am going to do some stitch decreases near the wrist before increasing again for the hand. The stitches will be done within the navy arrrgyle blocks, not the pink. I have no idea how this thing will actually turn out, or if there will be 2 done. It will be a mystery to all of us!

Provisional Cast on or Imaginary Cast on?

No, this isn't about a new technique. It is a whine. A month or two ago I bought some lovely Handmaiden Sea Silk with a gift certificate given to me by L (a blogless N.End knitter). For a variety of reasons I hadn't done anything with the yarn in 2006. The skein contains 400 meters, a respectable amount of yarn, but not enough to make a shawl. After much thought I decided that a lacey scarf would be perfect with this yarn. I picked out my main motif for the scarf then did a provisional cast on. My idea was that I would add an edging on both skinny sides. Little did i know just how provisional the cast on would be. I pulled out the scarf to show to someone last night and saw my provisional yarn sticking out midway through the cast on row. See the yarn end sticking up on the photo in the upper right? That thread should not be there, it should be sticking out of the end of the row. I managed to rescue most of the stitches that came off of the provisional cast on, but one is still lost. In order to prevent more problems, as you can see, all provisional cast on stitches (save the one lost stitch) are now on a stitch holder.

Since I knew that the fallen stitches would drive me batty, I chose to spend most of last night working on my newest project. I am making the Nantucket Jacket using Sugar Plum Cotton-Ease. I know that K loves this yarn, but I don't have any Cotton-Ease FOs (with the exception of a Baby Bobbi Bear). Originally the Sugar Plum Cotton-Ease I had was going to be a shirt dress. Well, I ran out of yarn before I got to the sleeves, the dress was so short that it barely covered what needed to be covered, and I looked like I weighed a ton in the sack like dress. Since it was so awful I just threw it aside and ignored it, and ignored it, and ignored it. Now, with a tight budget, a boredom with socks, and a desire to make a sweater, the Cotton-Ease called me. I have undone 3 balls worth of the yarn, and am knitting directly off the dress for the last skein that I have. I probably don't have enough yarn to finish the sweater, but will see how far I can go with it before I worry.