Ever since finishing the Endpaper Mitts (photos coming soon, once I’m home when Mr. Sun is out), I’ve been trying to tackle the holiday knitting. I’m only making a few things, but they’ve been All Wrong thus far.

I knit a Utopia hat. Too small. Now I’m knitting another straight from the too-small version. I’m using Malabrigo + a smallish needle (US 5) for a warm, cozy hat, and had originally cast on one extra pattern repeat. This would have worked fine for me, but my brother has a gigantic head. Boo.

Pooling, my nemesis. These were going to be Marina Piccola socks for my mother-in-law, and now I’m stumped for a pattern. Double-boo.

I also have a goal of finishing all of my wips before the end of the year, so I decided to revisit Petal. I set in the one remaining sleeve and tried it on, and it’s too short. I’ve been in a state of denial about this, hoping that the fit would miraculously change once I set in the sleeves. No dice.

I’ve already reknit the front and back pieces due to fit issues, and there’s no way I’m doing that again. It was time to take drastic measures.

I cut my sweater in half a couple of days ago! Well, I actually snipped a strand and carefully unraveled one row, but it was just as fun. Will Petal be complete before cold arrives in Houston? Probably, given the weather as of late!

I’ve been meaning to pile up all my works in progress and blog about them here to guilt myself into action, but I have been completely unmotivated to do so. So much for finishing most of them before the end of summer. But, summer doesn’t really end in Texas until some time in November, so I guess I’ve got a few months to actually finish something.

Before:

Petal used to look like an almost-complete sweater. I even seamed everything except for one sleeve, and all the ends were woven in.

Now:

The fit was bad enough to frog pretty much the whole sweater. The worst offender was completely my fault – I went up a size for the hip measurement, because I thought that my hips Are Not Shaped Like That. But as it turns out? They are! You knit the bottom band sideways, and then pick up stitches for the body. The picked-up-stitches measurement seemed pretty small, so I went up a size. However, that bottom band is a few inches wide, so the picked-up-stitches location was a few inches up from the bottom of the sweater, and going up a size made the sweater seem baggy and kind of frumpy.

I’d rather rip and redo this sweater than create yet another sweater that I never wear. I’ve already reknit the front, and the crumply yarn above is the back, waiting its turn. I did salvage the bottom band – it has less stretch (because it’s knit sideways) than the body of the sweater, so the size larger band feels like it fits perfectly.

In addition to knitting the right freaking size, I added about an inch of short row bust shaping (and could have done more), and fixed the top triangles. The sweater as knit is not going to cover my bra straps – they stick out where the top of the front piece meets the bottom of the triangles. I decided to work the triangles attached to the front piece, and they are 8 stitches wider at their base than the pattern calls for.

This is my main project right now, so hopefully I can finish it before the theoretical winter comes to this state.

Cambridge Jacket for Rob. Meh. I have a sleeve and a back and a half knit. I think my gauge was off, hence the back reknitting, but it’s been so long that I really don’t remember. I think this is going to get frogged in favor of a seamless hybrid. Those always turn out nice. The cool thing about digging this out is that I found my size 8 knitpicks tips and two 24 inch cords. I thought I had a monster in my closet eating all my 24″ cords, but here they were the whole time.

The new kid on the block: the Tangled Yoke Cardigan. I’ll be using Rowan Cashcotton DK for this – from the stash! Boo yah, no yarn buying for me! I was thisclose to buying some of the big Webs Jaeger closeout, but I recently reorganized my stash and remembered how many sweater amounts of yarn I have. I think I’m going to provisionally cast on the yoke stitches and knit the yoke first because it’s the fun part!

Questions for y’all (see, I’m texan, right?):

1. How much ease do you put into cardigans? I’m between two sizes of the Tangled Yoke, and I’m wondering how little ease I can go before the buttonband is going to gape. I’ll likely be wearing this with a very light layer underneath, so I’m not too worried about it being a layering piece over something bulky.

2. Have you submitted your goods to Yarnival! yet?

Oh, and I’ve also suddenly stopped receiving my wordpress comment emails. Wah! So if you don’t hear from me (like I’m ever on top of my email in the first place), now you know why. !@#$!

Hi! It’s been a week, and I’ve got nothing to show except for some photos of squished up knitting.

Will you trust me that this sock looks 100% better when blocked and stretched out on one’s foot? Thanks. I’m almost done with sock #1, which will give me about two weeks to knit the other sock and do some serious blocking. I think we’re in good shape here, especially since a certain Petal is in Time Out.

Petal is thisclose to becoming a sweater. I don’t seem to own a size 1 circular needle, so I had to chain a number of straight needles to knit the edging ribbing, which is extremely annoying. I finished the ribbing and seamed the sides and one sleeve yesterday, and the result was not so good. The body fit great, the neckline not so much. I dropped the neckline about an inch, because I thought it hit in a bad location on the modeled photo, but that causes my bra straps to show in the corners where the upper triangles hit the lower neckline. So now I’m going to frog back the lower neckline and reknit to pattern and really, really hope that I don’t have to frog the upper ribbing to reknit the triangles. Fingers crossed!

Then there’s the question of crocheting some buttonholes for the glass buttons that came with the kit. I’m considering reusing the buttons for a different, handwash-only, project after reading this:

Oh, come on.

Hello! It is so Friday, and I am in serious need of a weekend. Rob and I are off to the Robparents for some serious R+R in… New Jersey. Woo. Gifting of the shawl will occur, and I’m hoping for a jaunt into NYC if we can spare the time. Rob asked me what I wanted to do in the city if we do go, and I had a list already prepared. Now, Purl or Habu? Decisions, decisions. Habu is pretty cool, but I’m not supposed to be buying yarn, remember? Fabric is fair game, though.

There will be plenty of hanging out and car trip time this weekend, so I’m bringing all sorts of crafty goodness.

Petal! I have two sleeves and two bottom borders complete, and I’ve started the back. I may leave this home to motivate myself to work on other projects.

I really, really need to bust a move on the Sockpalooza socks. T-minus 32 days, and I haven’t even started them yet. The swatch is a modified stitch pattern from a japanese craft book, but I need to add about 4 more stitches per pattern repeat to make it doable. This swatch was truly a labor of love – every traveling stitch and double decrease was worked on the wrong side.

I have confirmed that the sock yarn doesn’t bleed – it’s Tess (just like the bleedy laceweight), a prize from Jess for winning her blog contest, yay!

Remember the Counterpane Clutch? Ugh, neither did I. This thing has been sitting around since August. At some point I grafted the bottom together (I had started with a provisional CO to avoid a seam), but the rest was unfinished. I picked it up about a month ago and made what you see here. You see how the zipper is pinned to a separate lining? That was version 1.0, which was about an inch too narrow. Practice makes perfect, right? All I need to do is hand-sew the thing together and I’ll be done.

I started Petal yesterday. You may think that knitting on teeny size 2 3 (tight knitters unite) needles would be slow going, but I’ve already finished a sleeve. How can that be? Well, I thought I broke my toe last weekend by dropping something very heavy on it, and my standby orthopedic appointment took two hours. Normally this would make me cranky (well, I was a wee bit crankola), but I was pretty psyched to get all that knitting done in the office. The ladies with poor bone density dug the knitting, too! And $20 later, I found out that my toe is not broken, just “colorful,” which is doctor speak for, “Ew. Gross.”

The edging is interesting, it’s knit sideways with these oddball picots on the one edge. You’re supposed to work the picots every right side row, but that was making my edging flare unattractively, so I’m working them every other RS row. My modification looks painfully obvious in this photo, but it’s really much less apparent when viewed in a non-macro way. Hopefully no one will be staring this closely at my upper arms, eek!

I forgot how rope-like the Rowan 4 ply cotton is. It really exacerbates any knitting wonkiness, like my hideous ssk’s. I’d love to hear if anyone has any advice on how to neaten them up – click on the photo to read some good pointers, including a link to this awesome ssk comparison. I think I need to go swatch some decreases now…

So the plan is to work on this sweater exclusively until it’s done, which is bo-ring blog fodder. I do have a few WIPS that need simple finishing details, so hopefully we can motivate a bit here in camp kelly to finish them. And then there’s sockpalooza – I seem to have misplaced my sock knitting mojo, and that August deadline is looming in the distance. I’m sure I’ll get sick of Petal soon enough and welcome the distraction of a shiny new pair of socks in soft, squishy, non-rope-like wool!

Whoo, I didn’t mean to be so Debbie Downer in the last post. Looking ahead, things are much greener and happier!

Sockpalooza

You know, knitting from stash isn’t so bad when your stash ROCKS! Rock on, little yarnys! I’m trying to decide on what yarn to use for my Sockpalooza socks, and I’m working my gemini indecisiveness to the max here. Top to bottom: Spirit Trail sock yarn, Yarn Pirate BFL in Merlot, and Brooks Farm Acero. I had originally purchased the Spirit Trail yarn for my sockpal, but I can see from her blog that she digs brights, so the Yarn Pirate might be a better choice. I plan designing something textured for these socks, where designing means pulling a stitch pattern from a book and knitting it in the round. I see lots of swatching in my future.

Speaking of swatches, I was looking for a flickr group to display all of my swatchy madness, and I couldn’t find one. Well, now there is. Show off your 4×4 inch squares of love!

Petal

So Petal has these beads. Lots of beads. I’m not much of an everyday bead wearer, so I’m going to replace them with purl stitches. However, the bead stitch in pattern takes up two stitches, and the purl bumps only take up one, so I have to regigger the chart a bit to make things line up correctly. The swatch has a sparser pattern at the top (one stitch wider than the original chart), and denser (one stitch smaller than the original) at the bottom. I think I like the sparser patterning better. I’m all ready to start the sweater – I decided to hold off until the big birthday since this is a gift from me to me. My 20’s are gone as of today, I bid them a fond farewell!

Garnstudio baby jacket

So. cute. I even love the waste yarn color with the greens, so I plan on buying sky blue buttons for the sweater. And also for Saarjte’s Booties, which are next on the list.

Ugh, have you seen that Destash has closed in the bitchiest way ever – no warning, no discussion about having someone else maintain it, all user info is deleted, nothing? So, so lame. I see that someone’s registered a new Destash on wordpress, hopefully this really useful resource can continue to exist.

I have received the most kickass mail this week!

First up, remember me begging for some of the discontinued Rowan 4 ply cotton? Well Caro heard my cries and we did a little swappy action for these 5+ balls. How cool is that? Answer: Very! I think this yarn is going to become a Phyllo Yoked Pullover from Knitting Nature, with (hopefully) a shorter yoke so I can wear it sans cami.

Then, Ashley offered to take some unexpectedly-variegated Koigu off my hands (I swear, the Yarnzilla photo made it look like a semisolid) in exchange for this lovely box bag. How cool is that? You already know the answer. The box bag is the perfect size for two balls of yarn and my in-progress Garnstudio baby jacket.

The baby jacket is such an awesome pattern – simple to execute, yet very cool looking. I never thought I could love garter stitch so much, but in the RYC Cashsoft, it’s downright delicious. Baby-in-law is going to be one pampered boy. However, I’m feeling a bit eh about the colors of this – I’ve had the olive yarn for a while, and just purchased the celery color last week. I was going for a tonal color scheme for the sweater, but I’m afraid that I’m imparting my drab color scheme on sister-in-law’s unborn child. Well, at least it will be a cushy, soft, and luxurious drab sweater.

I also have a swap in progress with NanC, for a subset of my oodles of Lang Fantomas. I really need to complain about my yarn more often, these swaps have been great.

Lastly, I got my Petal package in the mail yesterday. Happy early birthday to me! Yes, I already own that color of 4 ply cotton. I’m warming up my size 2 needles for this puppy!