It's a Pumpkin!

Well, I hope I don't look like a pumpkin in this! It's the Shalom Cardigan by Meghan McFarlane. As of this moment, there are 1040 other Shaloms out there on Ravelry. Very popular! It's an easy, top-down cardigan with a twisted rib yoke. Simple yet appealing. I knit this with 4.5 skeins of Cascade 109 LE Bulky on size 6.5mm (10.5 US) needles. It's a rust orangy pumpkiny color. I really do like this cardigan, even with the fly-away front. There's enough coverage in front that it doesn't showcase my chest and stomach in an awful way. I'm glad the cardigan turned out bigger post-blocking than pre-blocking. It's a bit too big but still wearable.

Where did I get this yarn? From the WEBS booth at Stitches West! I bought enough yarn to make four sweaters. Stitches West was definitely calmer than previous years but still fun. Probably more enjoyable without the pushy crowds. Weeks ago, I meant to post about my haul but I've been MIA on the blog. So, besides Cascade 109, I bought Gedifra Shetland Deluxe at the WEBS booth. Both yarns were close-outs and heavily discounted. A real plus, when buying sweater quantities... I also bought some red-purple-orange (sounds horrible but looks great!) Mas Acero from Brooks Farm. And to top off my haul, I chose a light grey bulky weight 50/50 Jacob Alpaca yarn from Toots LeBlanc. Good loot! And I've already made something with one of my purchases. Woo hoo!

Cable-y Goodness

This is old news but better late than never. Introducing my new cabled beret! Actually, I finished it at the end of December and have been wearing it ever since. For a long time, I've wanted to knit a slouchy beret and kept looking for the right pattern. On Ravelry, I came across the Cabled Goodness pattern, but I have to say my hat was "inspired by" the written pattern and not an exact copy of what the designer intended. I tried to follow her instructions, but things just didn't work out for me. So, when in doubt, wing it!

First off, I altered the brim circumference to 20 inches for the hat because I didn't think a 17 inch brim would go around my head. I was very wrong about that. As I neared completion, I tried the hat on and it swallowed my head. Way too big. With berets, since there's hardly a crown because you increase right away to make the disk shape, you need the brim to be snug just to stay on. Anyway, after I finished the top of the hat, I cut at stitch an inch or so in to the brim and unravelled all the way to the cast-on. Once I rescued all the stitches back onto the needles, I immediately decreased down to 17 inches, knit the ribbed brim, and bound off. That marked the end. This should have been an easy, straight forward hat to make, but it took longer than expected. It took three tries to figure out the decreases at the top. I must have been way off from the pattern because after initially following the written instructions, it didn't look right at all. Frogged it twice before the third time (the charm?) I made something work out, even though it doesn't have the cool cables snaking all the way to the top. Oh well. If the written pattern works out for you, that's great. I obviously had a hard time for some reason :)

Anyway, I love it now. This is fantastic yarn from Artfibers in San Francisco. Super squishy and luxurious. I made my pilgrimmage to Artfibers back in December before they closed their storefront. Even though I'm from this area, I had never been there before. I had known about it for a long time but took it for granted that it would always be there. At least I had a chance to do their "yarn tasting" and knit with a couple of their yarns before leaving.



Yarn: Ming (50% wool, 50% silk), Artfibers
Needles: size 7 (4.5mm)

Tweedy Aran Cardi

I love this cardigan! It fits well, especially around the shoulders. I've worked on other set-in sleeve patterns, but those still looked drop-shouldered. All thanks go to Norah Gaughan for a well designed pattern.



Pattern: Tweedy Aran Cardigan by Norah Gaughan
Size: ~35 inches around chest
Yarn: Tahki Donegal Tweed, olive green, less than 6 hanks
Needles: size 6 and 8
Knitting time: 2 months start to finish



My gauge was a little bit bigger (closer to 4 stitches/inch) than the written gauge. Sticking with my own gauge, I followed the pattern for the smallest size and came out with finished chest size of about 35 inches. This is probably the warmest sweater I have. Now with the weather cooling down again, I can wear it often this season. Yay!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! Hope you all had a great time during the holidays! Time has flown by. Although I haven't blogged about anything in over a month, I've been busy with all the holiday hustle and bustle. Seems all I did over the past few weeks was eat, eat, eat. Not that I'm complaining.

Onto the knitting. I managed to cram in a lot of knitting, whenever I could. It's my way of keeping calm and centered.

Old business first. This is my first felted project ever. I made Meema's Felted Tote Bag from the first Stitch N Bitch book. Knit on 15s with 3 skeins of Knitpicks' Wool of the Andes Bulky in Grape.


Finished knitting within days back in October, but the felting process took me a lot longer. Since I only have coin-op washing machines in my building and can't control the speed, I hand felted the bag. Taking advice from my friend, Annika, the felting queen, I had super hot water ready, dish soap, and rubber gloves. Now, being the smartypants that I am, I decided to use my silcone oven mitts (way too big for my hands, by the way), so I wouldn't feel the boiling water as I pummeled the poor wool into felt fabric. Well, I managed to rub the skin off my knuckles because of too much movement inside the silicone mitts. EEEWWW. So, that set me back at least a week before the stinging subsided. Anyway, after the bag dried, I wanted to lose more of the stitch definition, plus shrink it more. A month and a half later (I was lazy), I re-felted the bag in hot (not boiling water) and didn't need gloves after the water cooled a bit.


Pre-felting bag dimensions: length x width x height, 11 inches x 6.5 inches x 16.5 inches
Final dimensions: 10 inches x 5 inches x 10 inches
Decreased ~40% vertically and ~15% horizontally


Next, I made a cowl from yarn I bought at Stitches West 2008.

It's super luxurious cashmere silk from Argosy. Haiku 4ply in Blackberry. I took the shell lace stitch pattern from Barbara Walker's First Treasury of Stitch Patterns, calculated for a 20 inch circumference, and knit til I used up all of the yarn, ~200 yards. Feels great against my neck.


There's more but that's all for now. Happy 2009!

Let's Skate!

Hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving! Now that I have my new top ready, I can go skating to work off my turkey dinner.

After three months of work, I finally completed my Skater's Top, the overtop. This is really a two piece set- a lace short-sleeved overtop and a plain stockinette long-sleeved undertop. The long sleeve top does have interesting cables on the sleeves. Although I wasn't planning originally to knit the undertop, I am now interested in making it to wear separately, not as a set. The weather here is not cold enough to merit wearing both simultaneosly. For me, a thin layering tee is enough to wear under the short-sleeved top.



For the overtop, there are two main lace charts to follow to make the pattern, the tree pattern and the little fir cone pattern. Things were fine until I had to decrease at the sleeves to shape the cap, etc. With my stitch count off everytime, I slowed my knitting between rounds, counted stitches, and decided how I would proceed while maintaining the stitch pattern yet decreasing here and there. Basically, I winged it but didn't write down my alterations (sorry). Luckily, it fits! As I knitted the last few rounds, I suddenly worried that it wouldn't fit and that all my work would have been wasted. Knowing that lace can stretch, I consoled myself that it would fit somehow, unless it had to stretch to frumpy proportions.

On Ravelry, I am one of the few people who have not used Rowan Kid Silk Haze, the recommended yarn, to make my top. Instead, I chose Valley Yarn's Colrain Laceweight, a wool and tencel blend, which I bought at the WEBS booth at Stitches West earlier this year. Lovely yarn. It felt smooth, running through my hands as I knit. Although it doesn't give off that "hazy" halo look as in the Kid Silk Haze, I think the clear stitch definition from this yarn works well for this top too. And I only used about 120 grams of the yarn, so I have half of the cone left! Need to think of something to use that for...



Pattern: Skater's Top, overtop
Book: Knitting Classic Style by Veronik Avery
Size: 38
Yarn: Valley Yarn's Colrain Laceweight, used ~770 yards (120 grams), blue grey
Needles: size 6 (4mm)

Completing this top was my goal for November's Knit a Sweater Month (NaNiSweMo). I'd been working on this for so long but allowed myself to work on many other projects at the same time. When the November challenge came up, I decided to finish the top and not let it drag out for more months. Anyway, it's done. So are my Fawkes socks (Belated Socktober). So many things suddenly reached a happy end recently. After months of slogging through WIPS and never feeling like I'd made progress, I finally made it to the end. Including things at my real job, last week really marked the culmination of a lot of work with knitting and non-knitting. I can fully enjoy the holidays! Now, what to knit next?

Belated Socktober

Better late than never! Originally, I meant to finish these in October for the Socktober challenge, but it didn't happen. Oh well, I completed these last Friday, about a month after my start date.



Pattern: Fawkes Socks by Monkey Toes
Yarn: Superwash Sock Yarn (merino wool/bamboo/nylon) by Mary Jane's Attic
Color: Bananarama
Needle: 2.75mm

The pattern was inspired by Fawkes, Dumbledore's phoenix, in the Harry Potter series. And yes, I realize I didn't use red or orange yarn to go along with the flame theme. I might try out a few of the other Harry Potter inspired sock patterns by the same sock designer- Nagini and Bellatrix. Fawkes reminded me a little bit of Cookie A's Monkey sock pattern but had narrower curves. The flame pattern is pretty cool, although I'm not sure how clear it is to see in this particular yarn colorway.

By the way, I chose this colorway because it's different from anything I'd usually buy. It's kind of crazy, and I really like it. The yarn was hand-dyed by Jamie of Mary Jane's Attic, who happens to be a childhood friend of my cousin. Small world! Recently, she opened her own fiber store in San Francisco, Urban Fauna Studio. Check it out! You can also see her yarn at the San Francisco Bazaar Bizarre this Sunday, November 30th. A cool indie craft fair that sounds similar to the Renegade Craft Fair I went to this summer. Can't wait to go!

Recycled Plastic Bag

In an effort to be less wasteful, I'm interested in ways to re-use/recycle items at home. By using my own cloth bags at stores, I've reduced the amount of plastic and paper in our bag pile. That's fine, but, as a knitter, I want to go a step further and make something out of it. I can't help wanting to turn those plastic bags into something useful, other than garbage bags. Recently, I came across the Re-bag pattern by Cocoknits. It's a knit tote bag made out of chopped up plastic bags. It's a great idea, and she includes a tutorial on how to turn the plastic bags into yarn. Looks cool and crafty! I wonder how sturdy it is?