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.

My First Steek (and misc other stuff)

For over a year I have been working off and on on Seasons of Darkness Winter of Light, a colorwork sweater with cabled lace edging. The pattern from from Norsk Strikkedesign and is actually the cover pattern. All the knitting is now complete, and Tuesday night I cut my first steek. After cutting the steek, I pinned my unblocked body edging (but not the sleeve edging) to the body of the sweater. I then tried it on to see how it looked/fitted. I know that this is probably not an accurate preview because the edging yarn blocks a bigger. As mentioned before, K sent me some beautiful velvet that is going to be used to line the cabled lace edging. My next step is to block the edging, cut a "pattern", pin the pattern to the fabric, cut the fabric, sew the fabric to the edging, then attach it all to the sweater body. In other words, while the knitting is all done, I still have a long way to go before I get to wear this sweater.

On a non-knitting note, I was apparently mistaken when I announced a couple weeks ago that I made my last appearance at Fenway. At 6pm last night I was told to leave my apartment, get on the green line and head to Kenmore Square. Josh Beckett (my favorite Sox player) was pitching and he was on fire last night, pitching an 8 strikeout, no walks, 4 hit, shutout complete game. In addition to Beckett's phenomenal performance the Sox had Homerus from Kevin Youkilis and David Ortiz, and some great feilding plays. Sorry for babbling about baseball, but I am still in a post game euphoric condition, and yes, I know this is only game one of the ALDS, but it is probably the only post season game I will get to see from Fenway.

I have a couple of other Boston photos that I want to share: a circley thing, a newly opened part of the Rose Kennedy Greenway, and the Zakim Bridge (I am particularly proud of the Zakim Bridge photo).

Seasons

Nearly there. Litterball hasn't been used yet, but probably will be.

Litterball to the Rescue? (The Curse of the Colorwork Sweater)

Do you remember the brown colorwork sweater I started last year? The sweater that was delayed as I waited for more brown yarn to come in? Seasons of Darkness, etc. If you remember that sweater you may remember that I finished the colorwork segment and that I finished the sleeve cuff segment before summer rolled around. I even merrily began the body edging, but I had problems, then heat rolled in and so I stopped. I quietly resumed this project when K was in Boston. I frogged the edging that I had done, recast on, knit, frogged, cast on again, frogged, then started one last time. Shear number of times frogged made me start to fear that I would never finish this project.

Then, a few more problems arose. First a partial ball of yarn rolled off my table and directly into Isis's litter box (hereinafter "litterball"). I thought about throwing litterball away, but it still had a significant amount of yarn in it, so I placed litterball in a plastic bag and set it aside for emergencies. Then, Isis threw up on the edging and on the pattern. Clearly this edging was cursed. Nevertheless, I kept on knitting (after washing my edging, of course).

This weekend I finished the bottom portion of the edging and started to move up the front side when my ball of yarn ended. No big deal, I thought. I set it aside and picked up something else since I wasn't really in the mood to wind another ball at that moment. Last night I was ready to wind. I reached into my bag to pull out another skein, there wasn't one. OK, I thought, I must not have pulled out all of the yarn (I have a pine trunk that I keep yarn in). I went to my trunk and searched my non-stash stash for additional yarn. THERE WASN'T ANY. Now I was starting to get nervous, I really don't want to go to litterball. After some search I discovered that I have bits of yarn left. There is a ball, smaller than litterball, and failed attempts at the edging that didn't frog well, and, of course, there is litterball. As much as I want to avoid litterball, I think I will have to resort to using it. The question becomes then, how does one clean litterball?

With my sweater design, I haven't settled on the diamond cable choice yet. Thanks for your input, the votes seem to be about even, though there are a couple of non-blog votes for moss, and one for twisty. Joanna, yes there will definitely be more space around moss if I go that way, I just didn't cast on enough stitches for my swatch, and had increased 4 stitches as it was. I have started the left front though. I am on the rib pattern, which will go for 5+ inches, don't know exactly how long the ribbing will be. I have a photo of just the rib for you and of the rib and cables placed next to each other. I don't know if seeing the rib with the cable will effect any one's opinion, but just in case...

Edging Closer to Finishin Season

This weekend was filled for me with some reading, relaxing, and, of course, knitting. I spent some time working on the Forest Path Stole, finishing my second skein of the Zephyr yarn and starting the 3rd. After spending some time in the freezer I have not found any other creepy crawlies on my knitting. Before long I hope to have a photo worthy in progress Forest Path to share.

I also took advantage of the rainy weekend to start the body edging for Seasons. This edging is knit in the round, but then gets steeked latter. I am not sure why I am doing this, but I am willing to give it a try. Each row is over 300 stitches, so they move slowly. After I have finished this bit all that is left is steeking and sewing, so before long I hope to move this into the FO column.

Season of Darkness

On Tuesday night I finished the colorwork for my Season of Darkness sweater. I also joined the two halves of the sweater together using the three needle bind off called for in the instructions. I don't love how the pattern calls for 2 rows of plain knitting with the main color at the end. This creates about 4 rows of plain knitting without any colorwork right down the center of the back.

I still have lots of edging to work on with this. While I now have 1 1/2 of the cuff edging done, the cable and lace edging extends all around the body of the sweater and acts as the collar. Then once all the edging is done I have to buy some crushed velvet to line the edging and sew it in place. So, there is still a good deal of work to be done with this sweater, but the end if very near now! I am both excited and a little disappointed. I really enjoyed doing the colorwork on this and I LOVE the brocade look of the knit fabric.

Frog is a Four Letter Word

On Saturday I blissfully picked up Seasons of Darkness and Winter of Light and pleasantly knit and knit on it. Then I went to bed. Sometimes while I am sleeping good ideas come to me. My mind is freer and less constrained and sometimes creative. Sometimes, though, while I am sleeping I realize that I made a major mistake somewhere.
Sometime between Sat night and Sun morning, as I was sleeping, I realized I might need to frog some of Season of Darkness. I thought that I would have to frog the work I did on Saturday, the first work that I have done on this sweater in months. You see, as I was sleeping I remembered that I have to have some steek stitches in the sleeve so that I can create a front and a back. I remembered that these steek stitches get inserted a couple of inches before approximately half of the stitches are cast off. The work I did on Saturday left me about perhaps 20ish rows away from the cast off area, and this was closer than I remembered for the steek stitches to start.

As I compared the finished left sleeve with the right sleeve I realized that I am 3ish inches past where the steek stitches should have started. I did not knit 3ish inches last night. Apparently, I started making this mistake before Seasons got set aside. (See photo on the right )
Fortunately, working on the piece on Saturday reminded me of how happy this project makes me. Perhaps even more fortunately, my office isn’t open on Patriots’ Day (a Massachusetts Holiday that occurs on the day the Boston Marathon is run), so I had plenty of knitting time in which to correct my mistake, which I did. I guess, in the spirit of stupid optimism, I could look at the mistake as a way to prolong my enjoyment of this sweater and not look at it as a set back. Could I be that “glass if half full”? By Sunday night I was past the progress that I made on Saturday, and I had finished my skein of dark brown, so I set this aside so I can wind the dark brown into a new cake.

Since I still had another full day in which I could knit I started the second sleeve for Whiskey (by the way, I had managed to finish the left front on Saturday (I think)). Here is my new Whiskey progress: