More sewing than knitting

Rachel has already finished her KAL sweater but I'm still plugging away at the yoke on mine. After miles of stockinette, I'm having a blast with the color work.

I had some extra time over the holiday weekend and put together a dress for Tadpole that I've had my eye on for the last year:

This is the Geranium pattern from Made by Rae. Once I have another kiddo project or two under my belt, I'm itching to try some of her adult patterns.

For the life of me, I couldn't get the buttonhole stitch to work on my machine (not the first time that I've tried to talk myself into the necessity of trading up my machine on a whim). After much grumbling, Tadpole and I embarked on a trek to Joann Fabrics. She came away with a bright rainbow button and I had a nifty little tool for putting in snaps.

That same weekend, my local quilt shop called to say they were done quilting my quilt! I've attached the binding by machine but am sewing the reverse side by hand. It's by no means a fast process but I'm nevertheless enjoying both the process and the emerging product. Can't wait to see this one finished!

FO: Kuura

Blocking lace always amazes me. Intellectually, I know how it works - how a short bath and some stretching and pinning can drastically change knitted fabric. But I really wasn't expecting my nice, thick, cushy polwarth/silk blend handspun to transform from this:

into this:

The drape! Clearly the silk is doing its job here. I had been envisioning a cozy neck warmer and wasn't expecting this slinky little piece to come off the blocking wires.

The striping in the handspun works really well with this pattern. (Note to self for future handspun projects).

Pattern: Kuura
Yarn: polwarth/silk 2-ply handspun (418 yards/4oz). I used all but maybe a yard of the skein.
Needles: size 6
Mods: Kuura comes with two lace charts - a simple base for the shawl body and a lacier version for the edging. Using this project as inspiration, I had planned to flip the charts (using the edging chart for the body and the body chart for the edging). But I ran out of yarn before I was ready to work an edging section so I just stopped after an eyelet row and worked the lacier chart throughout. I had been debating whether I had enough yarn to work an extra row and then use a sewn bind-off but didn't want to chance it. Instead I used k2tog through the back of the loop bind-off and it came out just fine.

I loved knitting this one (the handspun was a dream to work with). Now for the real test: will I wear it? It's not exactly office appropriate. And it's a bit too delicate for weekend wear (I have two small kids, after all). Who knows, maybe Tadpole will put in a request for it next fall. She was having fun with it during our photo shoot.

Yellow and Green

Yellow is a big hit in our household - it's Tadpole's favorite color. So it was no surprise that when she and I were looking at yarn a few months ago for a new sweater for her, she automatically picked a bright yellow for her Wee Wildflower. The last sweater I knit her was a dud (I don't think she's worn it voluntarily). But to say this one's a hit would be the understatement of the year.

(I think that's supposed to be a pirate face.)

For starters, she stayed relatively still and looked in the general direction of the camera while wearing it, which almost never happens. And she wears it all the time. Voluntarily!

I used Quince & Co. Finch for this one (three skeins and a little bit for a size 4/6 hybrid). My gauge was a bit looser than the recommended yarn so I was able to follow the size 4 directions to get a roughly size 6 sweater. I think it'll still fit this fall (fingers crossed).

The pockets come in handy! I asked her the other day whether she wanted another sweater and the response was "Yes, please. In bright yellow." I have my eye on this pattern (maybe even matching sweaters for the girls). Yarn thoughts? I'm tempted to go with another Quince yarn but am all ears for suggestions.

I've also started my KAL sweater. This was my swatch:

I had read a blog post a few weeks ago mentioning not just knitting a sleeve as a swatch but dunking the whole thing (needles and all) to see how the fabric changes after wet blocking and thought that would be perfect for this sweater. (In case you're wondering, Addi lace needles do just fine getting dropped in the sink.)

By this point in my sleeve/swatch, I was pretty sure that I'd need to frog the whole thing and start over. The ribbing at the bottom wasn't as tidy as I wanted. The tubular cast-on edge looked a bit loose and wonky. And the color work section seemed to be pulling in too much to maintain the even tension I needed.

But I hadn't realized what miracles wet blocking would work on this yarn.

After a soak in the sink, the yarn fulled ever so slightly to create a beautiful, soft fabric. All of a sudden my ribbing looked cleaner (not perfect, but something I can live with). The cast on edge looked tighter. And I was able to gently massage the color work section into roughly the the same gauge as the stockinette portion.  (Look at the right edge of the sleeve in the picture above - the increases on the left make it difficult to judge the line).

Dare I say I'm hoping the weather stays cool enough I'll get to wear this one at least once this spring?

Because

Our snow is all gone; crocuses, daffodils, and tulips are starting to make an appearance; and I'm ready to break out my brand new cowl.

Something seems a bit off here. Not the cowl - it's lovely - but this year in particular I'm having trouble keeping my knitting in sync with the seasons.

In my defense, it was bitterly cold in January when I started this one. My second Scrollwork feels wonderful. I used 1.25 (ish) skeins of Malabrigo Rios so I have plenty left in the stash to work the matching hat and whip up some coordinating mitts. I used the same needles as last time: size 4 for the top ribbing and 7 for the main part of the cowl. I had been planning to work up the hat right away but, given the weather, I'll put that one on the back burner for a while.

Instead, I'm going to start a new sweater. Because March is the perfect time to start a fingering weight stranded color work sweater? Because.

Rachel and I have been throwing around ideas for a Wool People KAL for a few weeks now and we've both settled on yoked designs in BrooklynTweed yarn. I've had the Stasis Pullover on my mental list for a while and I already had the main color in my stash. Let's just say Rachel didn't need to twist my arm before I went ahead and ordered the contrast color. Does it count as a new yarn purchase if it helps you use 5 skeins from the stash?

If I'm being perfectly honest, I'm actually about to start two sweaters. I've wanted to make Gable since it first came out and I found the perfect sweatshirt-sweater yarn: Quince & Co. chickadee heather.

Now I just need to finish up Tadpole's (belated) birthday sweater. Two fingering weight sweaters in March may be questionable ambitious. Three is a bit much, even in my book

 Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some sleeves to finish.

Birthday Sweater

Sprout turned one last week (I have no idea where the last year has gone - somewhere between work and sleep deprivation, probably). And in honor of her birthday, I finished up a sweater for the son of a dear friend of mine who had turned one in January.

Pattern: Lucky (you)

Size: 2T

Yarn: Malabrigo Rios (2 skeins)

Needles: size 6 and 7 addi lace circulars

Sprout helped me with the FO shots (and confirmed that I had worked the right size).

This sweater is all about big squishy cables, which look fantastic in Rios. I don't remember using a cable needle on this one (see earlier comment on sleep deprivation) so I'm pretty sure even the largest crosses are doable without a cable needle.

And did you see that zipper in the first picture? I won't make you scroll back up - here it is again:

I'm enormously proud of it. I should be - I sewed in a zipper about 4 times on this project. Ok, maybe 2 and a half. But that's still 1 and a half times more than you really want to do.

Note to self - check to see if the zipper is a separating zipper before sewing it all the way in. That put me back a couple of hours (you'll notice I said "a" zipper rather than "the" zipper above).

I hadn't planned to use a zipper in the first place but I ran out of yarn about halfway down the second sleeve and, since I had bought the yarn over a year ago, I doubted I'd be able to find any that matched. So I had to borrow some from somewhere. Half the button band got me to the cuff and then stealing a few rows from the other cuff let me get two full sleeves.

Second note to self - yarn does not magically regenerate. 

When I see that I'm running out of yarn, I tend to set the project aside and hope that if I don't look at it directly, more yarn will somehow appear. My knitting life would be so much easier if I just frogged the first sleeve cuff right away and got the piece out of my WIP pile. Somehow stealing yarn from the button band doesn't seem quite as traumatizing as ripping back the sleeves so this zipper trick may be my saving grace. Especially now that I have lots of practice at sewing in zippers.

Third note to self - try to buy enough yarn next time. Maybe it's time to check out the stashbot app.

Alaska and back

Do you remember the shawl I've been working on for over a year now? Yeah, I'd forgotten about it, too, for a while there. Sometime last year my grandmother mentioned that she'd like another shawl so I kept my eye out for a nice wool/silk blend yarn in a color I thought she'd enjoy and settled on a Romi Hill design. I brought the yarn along on our vacation last year and cast on while sailing somewhere in the north Pacific. After assorted fits and spurts of knitting (including one mad dash when I thought I might have a chance of finishing the shawl before my grandparents came to visit earlier in the summer), I finally had this to show:

It strikes a dramatic pose well, don't you think?

The pattern is Romi Hill's Fiori di Sole, worked in Miss Babs Yasmin (I used approximately 3/4 of the skein) on size 4 needles.

I absolutely love the edging pattern - so much fun to knit! After the clever beginning, you can zoom through the leaf lace body of the shawl while you look forward to the edging chart. The crochet bind-off took forever but was well worth the effort.

I really like how the designer took a basic stitch pattern that many of us have seen and knit several times before and layered on clever details to make the project worthwhile. The petals at the top of the shawl are gorgeous. And I especially appreciate details like having you knit the center stitch through the back of the loop for a nice clean line down the middle of the shawl.

Hopefully my grandmother likes it! (It would probably help if I actually packed up the shawl and mailed it to her, don't you think? That's on my to-do list for this week.)

I had a lot of fun blocking this one - more than I had expected. You see, my helper decided she'd rather play in my office than take a decent nap the morning I decided to block. Of course she woke up after I'd started soaking the shawl so there was no turning back at that point.

At first, she thought we should be spinning instead of playing with finished yarn.

But then she discovered the T-pins -

Discovering this little person was suddenly mobile on a floor with sharp pointy objects was not how I intended to finish this project. Like a good parent, I grabbed my phone and snapped a picture before moving her out of harm's way. Let's just say it was an exciting morning and, thankfully, the only thing that got stabbed was the carpet.

And just in case you thought I was going to be a tease and not share a picture of Alaska, since that is where this all started, here is the Dawes glacier just after dawn:

What a way to kick off the day.

Instant Gratification

That's really what sewing projects feel like to me, especially when most of my knitting projects seem to be stalled (that's a topic for another post when I have pictures to share with it).

A few weeks ago I shared the quilt top that I pieced in an hour. I'm still blown away by how quickly that went. I'm a reasonably speedy knitter but you just can't make something that big that quickly with knitting needles and yarn.

The rest of the quilt took a bit longer but I think I finished it the next weekend (these last few weeks have gone by in a blur - I know I finished the quilt on a weekend but I can't remember which one at this point). And now I have a lovely baby-sized free-motion-quilted quilt.

See? Baby-sized. Six-month-old baby sized, to be exact.

Although technically it fits a three year old, too, if you don't mind doubling up.

The top is made with assorted purple batiks I received as a gift ages ago (although I still don't think I'm old enough to have received something "ages ago"). I used an Alison Glass print for the back and a coordinating Kona solid for the binding, which is machine stitched. I just didn't have the patience to do this binding by hand, not when I was so close to having a finished product to play with.

And by "play with," I mean run outside, put the baby on it, and start snapping pictures. Let's just pretend that this shot was another attempt to show the backing fabric.

Just like we'll pretend that I was trying to capture my quilting stitches in this one rather than someone's baby blues. 

I think I'm hooked on free motion quilting - there's this heady feeling like you could do anything with the stitching. At this point I need to start practicing better control over the stitches. That's for the next project. I'll definitely need to buy more fabric!

In which one of my daughters models her new hand knit garment

Why yes, Tadpole and I have been reading Winnie the Pooh together. Those chapter headings must be rubbing off on me.

Both of my girls have new hand knits. One of them has tried hers on. That would be the immobile one, currently lacking the words to say "I'll try it on later, mommy."

Tadpole has a lovely new dress - the Goldilocks pattern - and I think it will fit. Hopefully she will be up for trying it on before she outgrows it.

Sprout was a more cooperative model in her new sweater, although she wriggled so much I had to switch to auto focus on the camera. Try telling a two-month-old to hold still - it just doesn't work. But happy, energetic babies are delightful creatures so we still had a lot of fun. Before I get distracted with the baby shots, here is the sweater itself:

Now for my model:

See why I wanted to make sure I showed you the sweater first? I kept getting distracted by those baby blues. Ok, now you can see how the sweater fits. It's still a bit big on her so I'm hoping it will fit for another couple of months - at least through the cool early summer evenings.

Now that I have you thoroughly distracted by the baby pics, I'm thinking of writing up the pattern. Any interest? This version was knit on size 1 needles using Sundara fingering merino yarn. Yes, there were lots of tiny stitches. But the stitch pattern would also look lovely in a heavier sock or even sport weight yarn on larger needles.

So if I were to write this up, would you prefer a free pattern with just one size or would you rather have multiple size and yarn weight options for a fee? And, perhaps more importantly, would you be interested in test knitting the pattern? I can promise an interesting knit, some clever details, and a satisfying FO. But you'll have to supply the baby.

New Addition

Two weeks ago we welcomed a new addition to the Tinks and Frogs family:

Sprout arrived on February 17 and was quickly garbed in hand knits. She's wrapped in an Hourglass Blanket and is wearing a hat loosely based on one her sister wore home from the hospital.

We're all home and doing well. I've even managed to finish up a few projects over the last couple of weeks. But more on that later - I've got a diaper to change.

It's been a while

Hello, there. It's been a little while, hasn't it? We've had lots of exciting things going on. We went on vacation on a "big white boat" as Tadpole puts it. Then we came back and moved into our new house a couple of weeks later. Yes, the pictures will look a little different - we've left our city apartment and moved to a house in the 'burbs. We're all enjoying the extra space. There's been plenty of knitting, too, on all sorts of things. But I've only got one FO to show, and I think it is worth the wait.

It took over a year to finish my Rams and Yowes blanket but this project was well worth the time and effort.

And I'm not the only one who wanted to photograph the finished product.

Blocking gave the fabric a beautiful drape that I did not expect from the work in progress. I decided not to work the applied i-cord edging around the outside of the border. In retrospect, it might have made blocking a bit cleaner (but not so much that I'd want to go back and add it now). But tacking down the underside of the border took so long that I just didn't have the heart to work several yards of i-cord after that.

Now for the money shots:

This one's a keeper. Who gets to keep it is still TBD.