First up, a big thanks for all the compliments on Sarcelle! Sarcelle is hoping that it will get lots of wear, but with the weather in the high 70’s (and humid!) right now, it may be quite a while.

Last week, I ran out of yarn for the cat bed. I need one single ball of Wool of the Andes, but Knitpicks shipping typically takes two full weeks to get here (from Ohio! what gives?). After that grinding halt, I started a new project, the Airy Wrap Cardigan from Fitted Knits.

Ick, the cardigan is definitely in its ugly phase. I’m using a completely different yarn from the pattern – the pattern calls for a mohair blend yarn, and I have a straight-up wool (in the same weight), Lang Thema:

Lang Thema is a DK weight superwash wool. It’s super soft and I’m really enjoying working with it, and I would definitely buy more if I came across it. I’m pretty sure it’s discontinued, although Yarndex shows that Lang Thema Nuova is still in production.

This stuff is by far the best deal I’ve ever found in yarn. Back when I lived in MA, I stumbled across a garage sale (possibly an estate sale?) where there were three huge trash bags of yarn for sale. There were smaller (old skool) Webs bags in the trash bags, and all the yarn was quite old looking. I had just started knitting seriously, and had a bad experience knitting a waist-shaping-less Bad Penny out of heavy cotton, so I was only searching for wool yarns. My haul:

1 bag of the Lang Thema
1 bag of red Lane Bougosesia dal 1850 – a fingering-weight wool
4 skeins of Shetland for Men (hee!) in navy, green, light gray, and dark pink
6 skeins of black Reynolds wool/silk yarn

The guy running the joint requested that I make him an offer, and my offer was a whopping $5. Sold! In the end, I wound up throwing out the Reynolds yarn because it both smelled and felt icky. The remainder of the yarn was purchased for about 25 cents a ball. So cheap!

So yeah, keep your eyes peeled for tag sale yarn! Especially if you live near Webs.

My modeled shot from the book. My gauge is off from the pattern, so my cabled portions are shorter than what’s shown in the book. I may go back and add another pattern repeat once the sweater is done.

They say that knitting an even fabric in unyielding cotton is not as easy as it looks. I’d say the same thing about knitting an even fabric on big-ass needles – I’m knitting a DK weight yarn with size US 10.5 needles, and my tension is all over the place. Let’s hope that an aggressive blocking takes care of things.

Sarcelle flapping in the wind on a beautiful, breezy Saturday:

Pattern: Sarcelle
Yarn: Random laceweight from Staci’s yarn swap, dyed by me
Modifications: Worked a M1 increase rather than kfb, because the latter was leaving holes in the lace. Also, I used a size US 5 (rather than US 2) needle, because my yarn is thicker than the called-for yarn.

I’ve had this done for quite a while. The knitting part was finished about two months ago, and I blocked it a few weekends ago on Amy’s nicely carpeted floor. I bought the Knitpicks blocking wires, and hoo boy were they useful! Using the blocking wires was SO much easier than trying to create a straight line with a zillion pins.

The pattern itself is really pretty. I’m totally in love with faggoting now. Sarcelle has patterning on both the right and wrong sides, but the pattern is pretty easy to memorize. My one mistake was forgetting to work the cast-on stitches on one row of the chart, and I would have to frog back the whole damn row. I worked the straight pattern section until I felt that it was long enough, which produced a 20 by almost-80 inch stole after blocking. I like my stoles big and enveloping, but it is a bit on the long side.

My favorite part about the project is the yarn. The yarn was previously a lovingly dyed, perfectly variegated, shocking electric PINK! I realized the potential in those little skeins, so I picked it up from the yarn swap, planning to dye it. The full dyeing story is here, and results turned out awesome. The above photo is the best representative of the final color (and a good representation of my need for a haircut).

I’m very happy with the end result here, even though I’m not an everyday stole-wearer. It will probably get more use as a lightweight (long!) scarf in the cooler months.

Rob and I missed SXSW last weekend, but we did something even more Texan – we went to the Houston Livestock and Rodeo Show. We really weren’t planning on going, but we met these people at a restaurant who convinced us to go. We were discussing the rodeo and the wacky things that get deep fried these days, and they told us about the wonderment of macaroni and cheese on a stick. On a stick! Seeing such a thing in the wild is worth the price of admission alone.

I’ll cut to the chase and say that we did not find the elusive mac+cheese on a stick. Trust me, I searched. How disappointing! However, we had no problem finding turkey legs, various sausage products on a stick, or $7.50 beers.

We did pay extra to actually see the rodeo, in our requested Cheap Seats.

The rodeo was ok. I have no idea how the bucking animal things are scored, but 83 is the score to beat. There were also timed horse racing things where the time difference between competitors was within tenths of a second. Rob’s favorite moment was when the announcer called someone “A Mountain of a Man.” We now refer to Silver as A Mountain of a Cat.

My favorite part was all the animals. There were your standard cows and horses, and tons of bunnies! We saw a sleepy one and this hairy guy:

Sheep! This guy was very chill and let Rob rub his super-wooly head.

Does anyone know what breed of sheep this is?

I was in search of alpacas and llamas, but they weren’t in their designated area. This was the last weekend of the rodeo, so they probably got to go home early. I did ask someone from the Contemporary Handweavers of Houston if she knew where I could find an alpaca, and she was full of local spinning information – I may have found a local connection for renting a spinning wheel.

Naturally, there was knitting. I totally geeked out and knit while watching the rodeo.

Astute readers will recognize Nate’s dear Koigu. This is a swatch for the Leyburn sock pattern from pepperknit. I think this is a really cool pattern – it’s really simple and suits the subtley-variegated Koigu well. I’m not in a huge rush to make socks right now (it’s been in the high 70’s here), but I’m definitely putting these on my to-knit list (along with the sculptural Twisted Flower pattern, swoon!).

ETA: The colorway is P335, for all you Koigu diehards out there.

These cats:

Are clearly in need of a soft place to sleep! When I unpacked my yarn after the move, I found a bunch of Knitpicks Wool of the Andes that were slated for a cat bed. My stash is totally at storage capacity, so I finally got cracking on the bed to make some room for more yarn.

I’m all about the blue lately. I first saw the stitch pattern in the Mason Dixon book, but you can also find it in the first Barbara Walker treasury. Circles!

I put my cutie swatch in a zippered pillowcase, tossed in a little pillow for some good agitation action, and set it off. 10 minutes later I checked on the felting progress, and imagine my surprise when I found that the pillow had a hole in it, and its guts had EXPLODED into the washing machine and were floating in the water. Ack! That was the second time I’ve run the washer – Wally and his bro Dan the dryer are brand freaking new. I very, very carefully fished out all that crap (which was shredded poufs of fiberfill), and it royally sucked.

Wally made it through and felted the swatch like a champ. The swatch felted more in length than width, so I’m knitting a narrower version of the pattern in the final cat bed, so hopefully it will felt into circles rather than ovals.

I’ve made a bit more progress than this – the sides of the bed are done, and I’m about halfway done with the bottom. The cats have been chasing the yarn and gnawing on it, so here’s hoping that they’ll dig the finished product!

I like Stefanie Japel’s style and asthetics, and I’ve knit a couple of her patterns, and I ordered Fitted Knits pretty much sight-unseen. I haven’t seen much info on the book out on the internets, so here’s my review.

The concept behind the book is well-fitting sweater patterns, and that’s an idea that I can so get behind. No boxy, unflattering knits in this book – everything has very modern styling. If you follow Stefanie’s blog, you’ll recognize a few of her patterns here – both the Bulky Mini Cardi and Angelica are in the book. I also like the focus on sweater patterns – no filler hat or scarf patterns here. From a quick skim of the introduction, it looks like most of the patterns are worked top-down. There’s a quick, two-page walk-through on customizing a sweater to your body, and then the book dives in to the 24 patterns.

The book is divided in to four sections based on garment type, but you can really classify the sweaters into three categories:

1. The Chunky.

There are some pretty sweaters in this section, but they call for some thick yarn. The sweater coat is gorgeous, but clearly impractical for Houston.

2. The knits where there’s some pattern on top, two or three rows of reverse stockinette stripes, then some different pattern underneath the reverse stockinette action.

There’s a lot of these – Stefanie really, really, really adores that reverse stockinette detail. It’s in a couple of her previous designs (Forecast, Simple Knitted Bodice), and there are 9 designs in this book that feature it. That doesn’t even include the cover sweater or the pink wrap below, which only have one row of the reverse stockinette thingy. Even the suit uses it as a border! I’m not really feeling the textured stripey action (especially when there’s a vertical pattern below it) but there are still some great sweaters above. The green tunic is simple and beautiful, but I would modify the floppy sleeves. I also really like the poofy-sleeved red cardigan, which puts those textured stripes to good use.

3. Sweaters that don’t fit into either of the two previous categories.

This is where the book really shines – the unique sweaters that don’t follow the above formulas are really interesting and wearable. The photos above are my four faves. The lavender wrap is awesome – I had seen a photo of it before I bought the book and I totally want one. The two-tone shrug is both an extension and improvement of the One Skein Wonder pattern. I even like the dress – it has some lovely detailing, but I’ll probably chop off the skirt portion and knit it into a regular sweater.

Overall, I like the book. It definitely contains some contenders for my to-knit list this summer, and I think it’s worth buying. However, it really left me wanting a pattern for that faboo sweater that Stefanie is wearing in her author photos – a really gorgeous, textured cardigan!

I’m back! I effectively hid away from the internets and email for a couple of weeks, getting my ass whomped at work and unpacking like a fiend. Rob did most of the heavy packing for us, so I’ve been in charge of unloading everything into the house. We also hit Ikea, and bought an awesome rug, I can’t wait to set it up. It’s so easy to spend lots of money there in very small increments – ooh, a cheap photo frame! And a garlic press! And a shower curtain! And a hamper! So much fun!

There has been some knitting:

A full sleeve of the Cambridge Jacket, doubling as my gauge swatch. Swatches lie, people, and that sucks. I also have the back knit up to the arm shaping, but I may have to reknit it due to the horrid lies that my gauge swatch was telling.

But mostly, we’ve been spending a lot of time out here:

Our front porch, completely worth the many zeros that it cost. So awesome. The weather has been in the high 70’s here, and we’ve been putting lots of quality porch time in before the weather turns to humid hell and the mosquitoes show up.

I have lots to post about, like a proper FO post for the Asymmetrical Cardigan and for Sarcelle (it’s finally complete and blocked, horray!). And of course some house photos, once all the boxes are long gone!