FO: Shipwreck Cove

What better subject for my first post of the new year than my biggest (and I do mean biggest) accomplishment of the last?  For lo, I picked up the scissors and brought the yarn to its knees.  Behold!  The finished Shipwreck Cove!

Slope by Cookie A in Dragonfly Fibers Selkie, Black Pearl

So I am feeling just a wee bit over dramatic, but I am super stoked about this sweater.  I finished it mid December and wore it twice before I finally got around to taking pictures.  If I say that this is the sweater that makes me feel stylish and sexy will you think I'm over doing it?  I did not do much in the way of styling for this picture but I love pairing this with black leggings, tall black boots, a chunky ring, and dangly earrings.  It is also fun to pair with a boldly colored beret and matching eye shadow.

The ingenuity of this sweater is what makes it so great.  Though, it is the way in which the body is knit in a single piece that results in tired wrists and a frustratingly large amount of fabric in one's lap.  But it is so worth it!  The construction also really leveled up my finishing technique.  My seaming may still need a bit of work, but it has improved so much over the last year since I decided that I was just going to have to bite the bullet and improve.

This is the sweater that suffered from the giant sleeve debacle, in which my sleeve was a good 8-10 inches too long and had to be cut and reknit back down.

Can you tell?  (If you can, please don't tell me.  My ego is too fragile and I'm just too darned proud)

If I was not already sold on Cookie A designs, this would do it.  I wrote before about trying to refocus my knitting on things that actually make me feel and look good, rather than things that are just in my budget.  This yarn is clearly not a budget yarn at $50 a skein, but I earned it in trade and waited until this pattern came along.  It used about two and a half skeins for the size 40, but that did include a swatch and the giant sleeve.

End result?  Five stars, two thumbs, a partridge and a pear tree.  Now, I just need to find more reasons to go out because I have not worn it yet this week.

For more exciting FOs, check out the gang over at Tami's Amis.

No Sweaters Here

I bet you were expecting there to be a finished sweater.  I bet you thought that Vivianne's goading in the comments of Wednesday's post would spur me on to power through just so I could stand proud as a sweater seaming machine.  And you know what?  I thought there would be a sweater too.  Until I was forced to do this.

Let me back up.  Wednesday night Chris and I had grand plans of putting up our cheapy fake tree that we found at the evil Wal-Mart for an absolute steal.  Only when we opened the box we found, to our horror, a glaringly white tree.  No green, no fake pine for us.  No, a hideous white monstrosity.  While Chris dealt with this unfortunate incident I decided to use the time to catch up on some podcasts and work on the sweater.  It was a giant mess of ends and too much fabric.

I started attaching the sleeve to the body of the sweater, reasoning that I could examine the grafting of the sleeve after it was secured into place.  I seamed one side to what looked like a reasonable length.  The sleeve itself appeared to be made to fit further down the body, but I did not want a sleeve that took up the entire length of the side, so I decided to start seaming the body where it made sense to me and see what happened.

By the time I finished the body I just knew something was wrong.  With a sinking in my stomach I realized that the sleeve was too long.  Way, way too long.  So long that when I tried it on I looked like the blue fairy in Sleeping Beauty when the other fairies use her as a dress form to make Aurora's ball gown.

See?  That strained smile is saying "What do I do? I knit this to pattern and this sleeve is just  way too long!"

Which brings us back to this rather distressing photo.  I initially tried to unravel the cast on and frog up the sleeve.  People talk about doing that all the time, right?  No such luck.  The nature of the stitch pattern made the yarn a near impossible tangle every three stitches.  So, on my second glass of wine, and by this time making Chris fearful for my sanity, I pulled out the scissors.

I am surprised at how well this turned out.  Maybe I was born to cut knitting.  Maybe now that I have done it I won't be afraid to try a steeking pattern.  Maybe I was just tipsy enough to not remember the terror yet still keep a steady hand.  Who knows?  But now I have to try to get the stitch count down fast and make it look something like the sleeve in the picture.  So you know what happened next, right?  Yep.  It is back in the time out corner and my hat and I have decided to run away together.

What sweater?  I don't see any sweaters here.

Postcards From The Couch

There has been something going around the office.  Some people have had flue like symptoms, some people have one night of physical illness and then are fine.  Me, I've had this crazy congestion for over a week that makes it hard to do anything but sleep when not at work (and sometimes even at work).  Every night I come home planning all the things I want to do.  I'm going to bake, I'm going to work out, I'm going to blast through some of my obligation kitting.  And then I get home and find myself asleep on the couch several hours later.

And then, because you know knitting has a sense of humor, this happened.

Oh yes, that is yarn barf.  On one of the two strands of lace weight I am using to knit these mitts decided to turn itself inside out.  And boy but is that a tangle.  Because I'm holding two strands together I am pretty sure I will have to cut the yarn to find the end of the snarl.

This was so frustrating that yesterday I decided to knit selfishly and picked up my Slope once again.  I have seemed up the side with the drop shoulder sleeve and am knitting the rest of the way down the cuff.  Maybe it will actually get cold by the time I finish.  In the meantime I overcame my congestion and managed to make my new favorite peanut butter chocolate cupcakes.

Yum.

Sparkled Progress

I finished my sleeve!  I did!  I also made it through the first episode of Damages season four and I was really unimpressed.  Is it just me or is there just no way to recap the shocking magic of who killed her fiance or is she really going to pull the trigger?  I can only hope that the magical world of litigation will strike our household soon.  Though if I could be spared the personal blood shed, that would be wonderful.

But I get myself sidetracked.  There is a completed sleeve drying here on the floor.  It has been drying for well over 24 hours.  I was thinking about wearing this sweater on Friday but thanks to this scary warm weather not only is my head getting congested but nothing will dry.  Nothing.  It is seriously like the middle of April around here.  So I have not been able to seam any of it, let alone complete the drop shoulder.

Because of this and because I have been very uncharacteristically dedicated to my sweater and only my sweater, I was at a bit of a loss as to what to knit last night.  Usually I save my tv knitting time for something that requires a bit more detailed thought.  So I ended up pulling out a pair of mitts that I need to finish up for a friend.  Honestly, though, this skein of Gnome Acres sparkly lace weight she sent to me is so decadent that I'm not sure I want to give it back.

This gorgeous yarn will one day grow up to be Ellie.  Yes, the ones the Yarn Harlot raved about. I am knitting the smallest size on size US 1 needles with the yarn held double (my friend has very slender hands). Sadly I am not very far because halfway through watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind with Cogsworth (dude, that movie is a total who's who of 2004) I discovered that I was decreasing incorrectly, so I had to rip the whole thing completely out and start over.  Have you ever tried to rip out laceweight held double?  I ended up with two balls of yarn leading into a third ball of yarn that then led to my needles.  It was insanity, but I managed to recoup most of my losses by the end of Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (A little under two hours for those keeping score at home).

Instead of pondering what crazy thing I will watch on Netflix next, why not head over to Tami's Amis and check out what everyone else has been knitting.  They are almost guaranteed to be less cinematic.

Blazing New Trails

Am I the only one freaked out by how unnaturally warm the weather has been?  The calendars (all of them, evidently they conspire together) insist that it is indeed December, when the temperature is so warm I had to turn on the air conditioning in my car, something I try to avoid except for months like July and August.  So warm is it that this morning I convinced Chris to get out of bed early and go with me to check out a new-to-us nature park.  And we wore shorts!

This park just further confounded my homesickness.  We ran and walked in what felt like complete isolation  but is in fact in the middle of several expensive neighborhoods.  The terrain gave the option for bike paths, but we quickly detoured down steep inclines and vindictive root systems.  And then we found a pond!  (I'm sure locals around here call it a lake, but I firmly believe that if you can see all sides there is no way it can be a lake)

Even though he got me to move to the city, I am pretty sure I am bringing this city-boy over to the wonders of rural life.  Which, I must say are even more wonderful when you can then drive from your apartment to Trader Joe's in under half an hour.

We have already made a date to go back on my day off this weekend.  Maybe it will get cold enough for me to wear my running tights?  I miss them.

In the meantime I have managed to convince myself to skip yoga tonight and stay home to finish my sleeve and paint my nails.  There might even be some Damages in there.  Season four did just go up on Netflix after all.

It was not a tough argument.

Of Robots and Nail Polish

With Chris' new work schedule putting him on second shift, I have been spending a lot of time alone.  During the week I often find myself going to the gym, but my Y is closed after work on the weekends, so I have to find other things to pass the time.  Last night I decided to do what I always talk about wanting to do but never seem to make time for -- a spa night.

So, maybe I am not the most traditional girly girl.  Yes, my spa night consists of wine, foot scrub, and some nice nail polish (Julep Michelle).  But it also involved one of my all time favorite movies, Terminator 2.  I had the best time!  The movie may change, but I am pretty sure I will make this a weekend tradition.  I spend the majority of my day on my feet at work and then I come home and go run or cook or do something else that ultimately involves standing.  So to take an evening to soak and smooth my feet felt like the ultimate decadence.  It reminds me that I have such a blessed life to be able to take that time to pamper myself.

And then?  I finished the body of Slope, which I have taken to calling Shipwreck Cove, because it reminds me of a stormy ocean at night.  Plus the yarn colorway is Black Pearl.

I am working on the raglan sleeve now.  The end is in sight!  Now if I can just figure out how to style it.  Shopping may be the only solution.

And Then There Was Crazy

There has been a lot of talk in the knitting podcast community about the concept of "crazy."  The question, "What's your crazy?" has been popping up a lot thanks to The Fat Squirrel Speaks and The Stockinette Zombies.  It was a question I had not really considered until I was faced with the reality of what November has done -- I cast on all the things.  And I mean all the things.  I currently have on the needles one shawl, one pair of mitts, one hat, three pairs of socks, and three, yes three, sweaters.  Clearly I have lost my mind.  Add to the insanity that I have to talk myself out of casting on a new hat pretty much every time I sit down to knit and you have a pretty good idea of the state of my knitting mojo.  I am not knitting holiday gifts this year, and I think as a reaction to this my brain has decided that this means I get to knit everything that pops into my brain.

To try to stem the crazy (see?  I can define my crazy after all), I am trying to focus on knitting through individual projects.  Not knitting monogamously, but focusing specific time around specific knitting.  For example, keeping the same pair of socks in my purse and spending all my at-home knitting time focused on this sweater.

This is Slope, by Cookie A, from her ebook Shapes + Form, knit in Dragonfly Fibers Selkie (Look familiar?  It is the compensation yarn for when I knit the epic Lonicera in the spring) I am in love with this sweater, and the yarn, but with only a few body chart repeats left, I am about to lose it.  The good news is that it is definitely not going to be too tight.  I was really worried about halfway up the front, but then I read the pattern all the way through for the five millionth time and on the five million and first read through the schematic suddenly made sense.  It meant I had more than double the amount of knitting left, but I am excited to see how it turns out.

I will reserve final judgement for when I get to actually wear the sweater, but I feel it is safe to say that I love it and will probably recommend that you knit everything in this ebook.  The construction is that good.

Now, if you will excuse me, I have another chart repeat to knock out.  Why don't you go check out the gang at Tami's Amis while I do so?