Lorette

Eggplant Sweater, Finished!

Both the vacation and the sweater are finished. I’ll show some photos of the vacation later this week when I sort through them. I think there are some swell examples of knitting on vacation in the bunch.

In the meantime, here’s a photo or two of my latest finished project. This one has been a long time in the making. If it looks like I’m not particularly enjoying this photo shoot, it’s probably because I’m in a wool sweater on a nearly 70 degree day. It also took several tries to get the color right on the photos. It’s still a little washed out looking. The real color is more like the first photo below.

First, final seaming, with the aid of Knit Klips. If you haven’t tried these, get over there and buy some now. I’ve had these for awhile, but it’s the first time I’ve used them. They make sewing seams a breeze.

Project Specs:

Pattern: Laurel Hill, affectionately known as the Eggplant sweater around here. It’s from Jo Sharp Handknitting Collections, Book Number 1.
Yarn: Jo Sharp DK Wool, in a color remarkably close to eggplant skin. Not too remarkably, it’s called “aubergine”.
For: Me me me.
Started: Oh, brother. I had to go way back in the archives on this one. I started this in December 2005. You read that right, people, 2005. An explanation follows in the “what I learned from this one” section.
Finished: June, 2007, in Fairmont Hot Springs, BC, on vacation.
Needles: 3.5mm & 3.75mm circs.
What I Learned From This One: Look for pattern corrections before you start knitting. Jo Sharp pattern corrections can be found here. I started this damn thing a couple of times before I got it going. Sometime around late winter 2006, this one went into hibernation because I was sick of it. I pulled it out again this winter and finally finished the thing. I also learned that I don’t particularly like doing miles of seed stitch. I don’t mind seed stitch, exactly, it just gets boring after about 20 miles of it.
Modifications: I modified the collar a bit. The pattern comes in two versions, one cropped with a snugger fit and a short stand-up collar. The other is looser with a cowl-neck. I did the cropped version, mostly because I was a bit worried about my yarn quantity. I did the collar a bit bigger around than the standard short collar, but not as floppy as the cowl. Otherwise it’s pretty much as portrayed in the pattern book.
Verdict: I like this sweater. The yarn is absolutely wonderful, soft enough to wear against bare skin, and I’ll get a lot of wear out of it. I had my reservations about the dropped shoulder construction, but it looks better on me than I thought it would.

What’s next? I’m not exactly sure. I have 2 shawls and a pair of socks on the needles, but I like having a sweater going also. I’d planned on doing a sweater for John out of Peace Fleece, but I really don’t want to be working with heavy worsted wool as we go into summer. I’m planning on a little stash diving to see what I come up with. It’s not like I don’t have options in those Rubbermaid boxes. You guys will be the first to know!

Next time, vacation photos!

Giving You All The Finger

I found this one on Purl This!, and couldn’t resist. Somehow I thought that I would be a different finger.

You Are the Thumb

You’re unique and flexible. And you defy any category.
Mentally strong and agile, you do things your own way. And you do them well.
You are a natural leader… but also truly a loner. You inspire many but connect with few.

You get along well with: The Middle Finger

Stay away from: The Pinky

What Finger Are You?

In trolling through Bloglines yesterday, I found this on Fleegle’s blog. She’s compiled a spreadsheet of laceweight yarns, with yarn name, company, fiber content, and yards per pound. Brilliant!

On Vacation

We are still on our road trip, and in true "Lorette" fashion, I packed the car full of everything you could imagine. Books, yarn, enough clothing and wine to last us weeks, etc. Everything except for the camera cord, so I can’t upload any photos to show you how lovely this spot is. We really did have sort of a plan for where we would end up, as we had reservations at a timeshare in the Canadian Rockies. We took a few meandering days to get here though, and now we’ve moved to a lovely spot near Lake Louise, in Alberta. Our room overlooks a rushing creek, and it’s just perfect.

Well, perfect except for the fun-loving guys who partied by the creek until 4 AM last night. John yelled at them at about 3 AM, and when it didn’t make any difference, I got dressed and went out and gave them my best disapproving schoolmarm lecture that they shouldn’t just quiet down, they should end the party now. I’m not sure if it was the lecture, or the sight of me in my Bat Signal sweatshirt, with my hair on end, but they called it quits and went to bed. Of course they left the fire going, and left numerous empty bottles of booze for the staff to clean up this morning. The manager said they are still here tonight, but she’s going to give them another dressing down and make sure it doesn’t happen again tonight. I hope so. I don’t want to be trooping around outside at 4 AM again tonight.

I have been getting some knitting done. I finally finished that Eggplant Jo Sharp sweater, and when I get back home and find the camera cord, I’ll post photos. It fits better than I anticipated, given that it has drop shoulders instead of fitted sleeves. I’m quite happy with it overall, even though I won’t be able to wear it for many months. I’ve also been working on the lace shawl in progress, and am nearly at the point of starting the edging. It’s the Forest Canopy shawl, and I’m making it in some leftover emerald colored Zephyr laceweight. I’m not sure how big it will be, as I had about three ounces total of the yarn to work with. I also forgot to bring my handy little scale with me. I started with one 2-ounce ball of the yarn, and another approximately one ounce ball. My current plan is to use up the larger ball on the body, then switch to the edging half way into the second ball. I think half an ounce of lace yarn should be way more than enough for the edging, don’t you? This is an easy enough pattern that I haven’t been using a lifeline, but I might just put one in a couple of repeats before I do the edging, just in case.

And there you have it. The photo-less knitting blog report. We should be home this weekend, so hopefully I’ll get some photos up next week!

Oh, and go congratulate Claudia on reaching, and surpassing her fundraising goal for the MS ride that she is doing this weekend. She is the #1 fundraiser for the event. She is also still taking last minute donations, so if you haven’t given, or if you have some extra cash and can donate a bit more, get over there. She’s perilously close to $35,000, people. $35,000 sounds like a nice round number, doesn’t it?

No Knitting

I have no knitting progress to report, so will show cute kid photos instead. My surprise weekend trip was to Sacramento to visit my niece, Donna, and her family. She graduated from her master’s program this week, and I flew down to surprise her and attend the festivities. My sister Linda was there also, so we had a fun time (yes, Diane, we talked about you, you should have come).
Here are those cute photos just to get started. You can see that my niece is raising her daughters with the proper queenly expectations.

Notice that somebody got her ears pierced; she was very brave for the procedure:

Here’s the graduate and her mom, my sister Linda:

And one after the ceremony with Donna and I:

And Donna and her sister, Jan:

There was a post-graduation party where everybody had lots of food and drinks and a great time. Oh heck, I’ll show a photo from that as well. Before you see this one, you need to know that Donna is not much of a party girl-drinker. Master’s degrees don’t come every day though, so she decided to celebrate with her friends:

That guy in the middle is her husband, Brian. The party was luau-themed, so there was a grass skirt and coconut bra involved, but since this generally is a family-rated blog, I won’t show them.

Congratulations, Donna!

There was knitting involved, actually. I worked on the green lace Forest Canopy shawl, and finished a couple more repeats. I have about an ounce and a half of the yarn left, and would like to just use it all up. It’s just a blob at present, and not very photogenic. I’m also still working on that eggplant Jo Sharp sweater, knitting more miles of seed stitch collar. The pattern has two options, one for a short mock turtleneck type of collar, and the second for more of a cowl collar. I’m aiming for something in between, more like a real turtleneck that folds over, but not quite as floppy as a cowl. We’ll see. It better work; I’ll cry if I have to rip and knit much more seed stitch.

Typepad was on drugs last week, as some of you noticed when you tried to comment. To their credit, once I figured it out and emailed them, they responded quickly, fixed it, then emailed me to let me know they’d fixed it. Hopefully it’s working now. If you can’t comment, email me (link over there to the lower right in the sidebar) to let me know.

We’re off on a road trip for the next week. We’re headed east and north, through eastern Washington, Idaho, British Columbia, and aiming to end up around Banff. We don’t have a definite plan, and though we’re leaving today, we’re not exactly packed either. The “plan” so far is that when we get to an intersection, we’ll flip a coin to see whether we go right or left. It makes my husband nervous when I drive, which is perfect. He gets to drive, I get to knit all the way. We’re taking the laptop, but seriously doubt that there will be wireless access where we’re going. If I’m wrong, I’ll post, if not, I might have some finished stuff to show you when I get back!

Purply Picots

I promised a photo of the new sock yarn, so here goes. I ran across this yarn on somebody’s blog some time back, and after a bit of dithering, decided that I needed to have some in the stash. It’s from Rohrspatz & Wollmeise, a German fiber company. Check out that link. If you click on the yarn blobs, you’ll get to the fiber section. There’s a little link on the bottom for “englisch”, in case you don’t speak German.

I emailed the owner, Claudia, and within a matter of hours had an order ready to go. I ordered several different colors of the sock yarn (as long as the boat was sailing this way, you know), and as soon as I finished the Easter Egg socks from the last post, had this one on the needles. Claudia couldn’t have been nicer to work with. Though her website doesn’t have a shopping cart set up, it was no trouble to email back and forth until we got it together. The only real trouble that I had with the order was deciding which colors to get. I really want them all.

Her yarn colors come in three intensities, and the stuff I bought was “medium”. This one is called Krauterbeet, which I readily admit, I bought simply because of the name. And how can you not like purple and green together?

There was a little mishap with the ball winder and swift, which is totally not Claudia’s fault. I readily admit to a measure of operator error in this one. I ended up winding the whole hank by hand, then rewinding it with the ballwinder into 2 equal cakes.

Click on that to get an idea of how lovely the yarn is.

And here’s the beginning of my sock. It should be no surprise to anyone what pattern I’m using.

In fundraising news, Claudia is doing her annual bicycle ride to raise money for the National MS Society. She’s already very close to her original goal of $20,000 ($20,000 all from knitters, people!), and has raised the bar to $30,000, with the deadline on June 25th. Go donate, if you haven’t already. If you do, you will help some folks who really need it. If you don’t, who knows, you just might have very bad karma for the rest of the year. At the very least, you’ll feel guilty if you don’t send her money. And if we can afford blogs and yarn, we can afford a few bucks for a good cause, right?

I’m off to pack. I’m going on a little surprise trip for the weekend, so I can’t say where. Now, what knitting to take?

Randomness

Or, How I Survived an Unintended 3-Week Blog Vacation

I was tagged eons ago by three people, Marjorie, Michelle, and Tam for the 7 random things thing. I’m finally getting around to it, and explaining the blog absence and knitting progress in the process. I’m publishing the rules, but I’m just not tagging anybody, because I think this one has probably reached the end of its blog life. If you haven’t done it, and want to, consider yourself tagged.

Rules:

1. Each player starts with 7 random facts about themselves.

2. People who are tagged write a blog post about their 7 random things and post the rules.

3. At the end of your post you need to tag 7 people and post their names.

4. Don’t forget to leave them a comment and tell them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Random Fact 1: This has been one hell of a month at work. I signed up for a couple of extra shifts, which is just inexplicable in itself, as I don’t ordinarily sign up to do any more work than what I have to. We also had 3 team members have babies within a week of each other, so we were a bit short on staff and a bit long on patients to see. There used to be a warm-weather slowdown in hospital admissions in the good old days when people got to check in for questionable indications. As a byproduct of much tighter insurance company restrictions on what they will pay for, that doesn’t happen much anymore.

Random Fact 2: I generally work a 7-day on, 7-day off shift schedule. The 7-day off part sounds great, (and it is, really), but the 7-day on is a hell-on-wheels, 90-some hour extravaganza of fun, chaos, and terror. I thrive on fun, chaos, and terror, so it works for me. However, I don’t get much done except work, eat, and sleep, and the latter tends to be limited.

Random Fact 3: I am a total slob at home, and an expert procrastinator. This is in contrast to work, where I am obsessive-compulsive enough that even my coworkers, all obsessive-compulsive internists in their own rights, think it’s amusing. I have an unnatural love for cool and geeky office supplies.

Random Fact 4: They call me the Highlighter Queen at work.

Random Fact 5: My immediate family thinks I’m spoiled rotten and a princess-y prima donna. They are dead wrong. I’m spoiled rotten and a Queenly prima donna. I keep telling them, I’m not a Princess. The Princess has to answer to someone, and that would be the Queen, me. I even have a crown, you’ve all seen it here.

Random Fact 6: I’ve gotten virtually no knitting done this past 3 weeks. If you want to see progress photos on that stupid purple sweater, go back a few posts. I have all the pieces done and am in the process of knitting more stupid seed stitch on the collar, and then have the seams to do.

Random Fact 6 1/2: I love doing mattress-stitch seams.

Random Fact 7: I have actually finished something. The Easter Egg socks are done done done. These are just my favorite socks. Here’s a photo, and Project Specs.

Oh heck, here’s another one, I might get lost and not post again for another month. This is a closeup that shows my perfect little gussets. I loves me a good flap heel and gusset.

Random Project Specs:

Pattern: My own sock pattern. This one is 56 stitches, with a flap heel, gusset, and the toe grafted on 12 stitches.
Yarn: Joslyn’s Fiber Farm Bunny Luxury, in Easter Egg. The yarn is 20% angora, 80% wool, about a sport weight.
For: Me me me (refer back to Random Fact 5)
Started: April 3, this year.
Finished: This morning.
Needles: Lantern Moon ebony, size 2.75.
What I learned: Sport weight socks go fast, provided you actually pick them up and work on them now and then. I also learned to buy yarn when I see it. Joslyn doesn’t sell this particular blend anymore. These will make great Birkenstock socks (yes, I wear socks with my Birkenstocks; this is considered fashionable in the Pacific Northwest).

I’ve already picked out yarn for the next pair, and started them. I’ll post photos next time. Whenever that might be.

Help!

I’ve Fallen Into The Stash, And I Can’t Get Out…

After several recent attempts to find something specific in my yarn stash, I decided that it was time to clean house. I set up a database of all my yarn a long time ago, but it was a Microsoft Access file, and when I switched to Mac last year, I just sort of quit using it. Microsoft doesn’t make Access for Mac (what the hell is up with that anyway?), and the file just didn’t convert nicely to an Excel file. So I had these bags and bags of yarn everywhere, and there have been additions and subtractions all over the place in the stash. It was time to reorganize. It finally dawned on me that I still have my old laptop, as I use it from time to time when we travel, and that I could still use the old file. It just needed some serious updating.

So that’s what I’ve been doing all week. Box by box, I dumped it all out, sorting, counting, tallying, drooling. It was a little like a college reunion, where you meet all your old friends that you haven’t seen in years, and you remember why you loved them. There were a few skeins that made me think “what the frack did I see in them anyway?” (Just like that old college boyfriend, the one that got a pitcher of beer dumped on his head for being a jackass.) I have almost all of it back into boxes, and added all the new yarn purchases over the last 8 or 9 months to the database. No, I have no idea how many yards total I have. I am so not going there. Even if I were to add up those skeins to get that number, I would not under any circumstance publish it to a blog that my husband occasionally reads.

Here’s a little taste. First, a small sampling of the sock stash, out for inspection:

And back in the box:

Just to give you a hint of how much yarn I have, I’ve numbered the boxes.

And don’t ask. Yes, that’s a “9”, implying that there are “8” boxes of yarn before this one. I am just not saying how many there may or may not be after this one.

Ok, Ok, here’s a bit from one of the other boxes. I’m not saying what number this one was. It was the “mostly lace” box.

That’s all. I am not giving out any more information. I’m just thinking that after tallying all this up, I might consider printing out a list, putting a monetary value on all of it, and getting a separate insurance company rider for it. Don’t laugh, it’s actually not such a dumb idea.

Next time: Perhaps a Finished Object. I’m close, so close.

Call For Help

Remember this photo?

That’s my Birch shawl, with a big honking hole that I found last fall. I stuck the pin in it until I could muster up the nerve to fix the thing. It’s been in a heap ever since.

The thing is, I don’t have any of the Kidsilk Haze left. I know I had some leftover, I must have tossed it out in a fit of pique, being quite done with KSH at the time. I could probably do a real half-assed job without extra yarn, but I spent so much time on this sucker that I’d like to try to really fix it.

Which is where the Call For Help comes in. I’m hauling out the Knit Signal.

Does anybody have some of this yarn in their stash that they would be willing to part with? It’s Kidsilk Haze, by Rowan, in the color Liqueur, a very deep nail-lacquer red. I don’t have the dyelot number (if I’d saved the fracking yarn, I’d know the dyelot, now, wouldn’t I?), but at this point I’m willing to give anything a shot. I probably don’t need more than a few yards, so if you have a bit leftover, I’d love to have it.

In return, I’ll go shopping in my stash (a deep, extensive stash, I might point out) for a little something to compensate you. If you are the one who has the KSH in your stash, I’ll even let you pick the category: something for a scarf, or a hat, or perhaps a pair of socks.

Call it a blog contest. First one to say they can send me that yarn in the right color wins.

Added later:

I knew I could count on you guys. I have multiple offers of KSH, so I should be all set. Thanks!

Abby Normal

You Are 40% Abnormal

You are at low risk for being a psychopath. It is unlikely that you have no soul.

You are at medium risk for having a borderline personality. It is somewhat likely that you are a chaotic mess.

You are at low risk for having a narcissistic personality. It is unlikely that you are in love with your own reflection.

You are at high risk for having a social phobia. It is very likely that you feel most comfortable in your mom’s basement.

You are at medium risk for obsessive compulsive disorder. It is somewhat likely that you are addicted to hand sanitizer.

How Abnormal Are You?

The hand sanitizer part may be true. As may be the part about my mom’s basement, but only if it’s stocked with yarn.

Beach Party

We’re back from our week at Hilton Head, and we had a great time. It’s been one of those usual rainy springs around the Pacific NW, so it was good to see some sunshine. Of course, now that we’re back home, it’s gotten distinctly spring-like here finally, with the lilacs blooming, and a few baby ducks showing off on the lake. No pictures of them yet, but so far I’ve counted five new arrivals.

Here are a few photos of the trip, giving you an idea of just how much fun we had.

Since we had a two-bedroom condo, John’s sister, Ena, came along to spend the week with us.

We took a short bus tour of Charleston, which I’m pretty sure that John planned out so we wouldn’t have time to hit the yarn shops.

I did have time to meet another knit-blogger, Vera, of Vera’s Crafty Blog. We met after the tour for lunch.

Here are our current socks-in-progress:

We dipped our feet in the Atlantic Ocean:

And we knit. Ena is learning how to knit, and when I saw that she was in dire need of some new yarn for a project, what could a sister do? We found the local yarn shops (which were a little less than inspiring, by the way–I’m pretty sure I have more yarn in the stash at home than either one that we went to), and she stocked up on some yarn for pretty scarves.

We played Mexican Train. While John and I are old pros, this was the first time Ena had played.

We finally ran out of booze and had to come home:

This was the first time I had been to Hilton Head, but I could definitely see going back.

Next time, a Project Update!

Five Rows Short Of A Sleeve

Or, Where I Am In That Crazy Never-Ending Eggplant Sweater

I really am going to finish this one of these days. For those not keeping track, I started this way back in December of 2005. Not 2006, but 2005. It sat in time-out for most of last year due to a variety of issues. I’ve been pretty sporadic about working on it, but I swear, I am not starting one more thing until this is done. That’s the first of two sleeves, and seriously, I’m thinking it would be preferable to just amputate an arm at this point. I don’t mind seed stitch, as I don’t mind purling, but given the miles of seed stitch in this sweater, I am getting heartily sick of it. That cable pattern going up the sleeve is of course the same one repeated across the front and back, so it’s all just boring at this point.

Not boring:

The Easter Egg socks are just wonderful. I love this yarn, even if I clearly can’t take pictures. While the yarn is a bit fuzzy, it’s my photography skills, or lack thereof, that makes them THAT fuzzy. I now have proof of why I buy as much yarn as I do for the stash. I only have one color of this yarn, this one, and they don’t make it anymore. Do I need any other evidence? I’m about ready to turn the heel on this one, my favorite part of sock knitting.

And in the category of funding my yarn retirement program:

Oh my. This is Dream In Color sock yarn. I was following clues on the internet one day, and found this. A few quick emails back and forth to Kris, the owner of Sonny and Shear, and she had a order on the way to her online shop. It came last week. It came, I ordered, it was delivered. She of course normally mails things, but we belong to the same knitting group that meets weekly, so she delivered it to me Wednesday in person. She had it in a brown paper sack so I could sneak it into the house without any interrogation. It sort of reminded me of a drug-dealer handoff.

Turns out I didn’t need to sneak it in. John took one look at that brown yarn, and claimed it as his own. (For socks for me to knit for him, not for him to knit!) Go buy some of your very own before Kris sells out of the stuff.

We’re off for another adventure tomorrow. We’re using a week of timeshare to go to Hilton Head. My sister-in-law Ena will be there for part of the time. She emailed me to say that she’s learning how to knit, so I’ll have a partner in crime while I’m there. Woot! You’ll have to excuse me, I need to go pack knitting projects.

Added Later:

I promised Teyani a photo of my knitting spot in the kitchen:

When we remodeled, we got rid of our kitchen table and put in comfortable chairs for people to hang out in while we cook and chat. It’s turned out to be my favorite place to knit. When I’m in the kitchen by myself, I turn one of those chairs around to face the lake. Perfect!

Grits And Sticks!

World Grits Day was Saturday. We decided to celebrate the occasion with a dinner party. Kris and her family were invited, along with a few other guests. (Hey, I’m not above bribing the contest-runner with food and chocolate martinis!)

The menu was all southern. We had John’s famous Cheese Biscuits for appetizers.

The rest of the menu included shrimp grits, greens, and cornbread. And chocolate cake for dessert.

The whole thing involved lots of butter and cream, and yes, chocolate martinis. It’s not southern without lots of butter and cream. A real southerner would have put bacon grease in there, too, but we were looking for ways to cut calories.

Anna Grace had fun, once she realized that Riley the dog wasn’t a vicious wild beast.

It was Patti’s birthday, so we had chocolate cake for dessert. Ok, we would have had chocolate anyway, but the birthday made it legal.

Even the dogs had fun. Here’s Rae the Corgi, having worn herself out completely, and ready for a nap.

And the dinner was over, table was cleared, ready for cake, when I remembered the whole point of the dinner was to take a photo of the grits and sticks. We rescued some leftovers and made a valiant attempt to recreate the plate. It was much prettier the first time around.

Riley’s Pink Wallaby

Project Specs:

Pattern: Wonderful Wallaby, by Cottage Creations
Yarn: Cotton Ease, in Pepto Pink (not the real color name!)
For: Baby Riley, my new great-niece (or is it grand-niece?)
Started: February 2007
Finished: March 29, 2007
Needles: KnitPicks Options circulars, and Swallow dpns, in size 4mm for the cuffs/bottom rib, and size 5mm for the rest.

Modifications: None. If I make this again, I’d do something
differently with the split at the bottom of the v-neck. There’s a loose
stitch there that gaps, and I think there are ways to knit that stitch
so it doesn’t do that. I saw a version of this on Brooke’s blog with a cable up each side of the pouch and around the hood. That would be fun to do.

Bad Cat!

And in the time it took me to get that last post together, Lucy was quietly busy behind me.

I got up from the chair and turned around:

I was going to offer this yarn* to someone who wanted to make a Shedir. Lucy had other ideas for it.

*See the previous post for what it looked like a moment ago. At least she didn’t shred the hat.

And Another FO!

I am apparently on a finishing roll. Here is Shedir, finished yesterday.

Here’s how much of the partial ball of Calmer I had left. So this hat took 1 full ball of the Calmer, plus 9.2 grams of the second ball. Further notes on yarn usage are in the Project Specs below.

And an action shot. Sorry, you don’t get to see my face. I’m still in my jammies and pre-shower here. This hat does a great job of covering up bedhead, by the way.

Project Specs:

Pattern: Shedir, from the special Knitty breast cancer awareness issue.
Yarn: Rowan Calmer in Flamingo, left over from my Audrey sweater.
Needles: 3.25mm needles, I used a bamboo 16 inch circular (this brand) for most of it, and Ivore double points once I got to the decreased part of the top.
Started: Version 2 was started on March 18th. I really started it about a week before that, but had to rip it all out due to a cable misadventure.
Finished: April 13th.
For: ?? This one’s going to Rebekah for her charity chemo hat collection.

What I learned: I’m pretty much done with knitting with Calmer. It’s great for chemo hats, as it’s very stretchy and soft. But it splits like crazy, and if you drop a stitch, forget about it. The sproinginess of the yarn makes it just disappear down the line of knitting. This pattern, however, is pure joy. Jenna Wilson, the designer, also did Rogue, and she is a genius with cable design. I learned a lot about how cables are built while doing this one.

On the running-out-of-yarn thing. The pattern calls for one ball of Calmer, and I didn’t quite make it with one. However, to be fair, Jenna says right in the pattern instructions that one ball cut it pretty close for her. I also didn’t bother with measuring gauge, and it’s entirely possible that knitting these on a smaller needle would have made a difference for me. I just went with the size needle that the pattern called for, in a let-the-force-be-with-you way.

This is also a very deep hat measured from brim to tip, a good thing if you have no hair and want to cover everything up. If you are making this just for fashionable wearing, you could make it shorter and get it out of one ball of yarn. That central section of cabling is a 8-row pattern, repeated 5 times. You could leave out one, or even two, repeats, and have a plenty big hat.

—————————————————————————————–

What’s next? I dragged this sleeve out of project oblivion and started working on it. I really need to finish this sweater. It’s the Laurel Hill sweater from one of the Jo Sharp pattern collections, and the yarn is Jo Sharp DK wool. This yarn is just lovely to work with. I have the front and back pieces done, and am partway through the first sleeve. I had to do a little bit of math contortions to rework the sleeve increases, which I might explain in a future post. Here’s where I am. The pins are to keep track of sleeve increases. I’m increasing on each side 25 times, so I put the string of 25 pins on the sleeve, and take one off to mark the increase row each time I complete it. And yes, I still use a cable needle. I have an unreasonable love of double points and cable needles.

Last, but certainly not least, is an action shot of the Wallaby sweater and baby Riley. I had her momma take photos now to show how tiny she is in comparison with the sweater. This is the smallest size in the pattern, and is more small toddler size.

This photo just cracks me up.

And a close up to show just how pretty she is. I’m pretty convinced she’s going to be a redhead, like her grandma, my sister.

Don’t forget, today is World Grits Day! Kris is asking us to show our Grits and Sticks photos. We’re having our grits for dinner tonight, so my photo will be up tomorrow!