Introducing Ivelet

I think this is the first time in quite a while that I have finished a pattern that is current. Usually it takes me 6 months to a year to decide whether or not I like the new patterns that have come out (the Tangled Yoke Cardigan is a good example). Naturally, I was really tickled to see ivelet mentioned in this week's Knitter's Review.

Well, two football games after I sat down at the couch to do some seaming, I can happily say that Ivelet is done. Ravelry does not have this pattern up yet so here is the pertinent info:

Pattern Name: Ivelet
Source: The British Sheep Breeds Collection
Yarn: Rowan Purelife British Sheep Breeds

Size: M (36-38")
Yarn Used: 10 skeins of Rowan Purelife British Sheep Breeds in color 951, Black Welsh
Needles: 10 and 10 1/2 circulars
Mods: I used short-rows for the shoulder shaping instead of the stepped bind-offs in the pattern (I find this quick and easy mod helpful when seaming up the shoulders. I like this article on Knitty for directions on how to convert to short-rows.

Made for: a shop sample for My Sister's Knits

Before I forget, here is the sweater.







I only had one minor issue when knitting this sweater: the publisher forgot to include the chart for the sleeve pattern. I remember a few frantic minutes in the yarn shop flipping back and forth through the booklet after reading the words "cont in patt from chart for sleeve . . . " and not finding any chart. Happily, Rowan has the chart in the errata page on its website and you can find it here.

The sweater is warm and cozy, which I definitely appreciated while doing a photo shoot in the wind by the lake. I might just have to make one of these for me.

Where did the summer go?

One answer to that question is spinning. I finally was able to enjoy some quality time with my wheel over the last few weeks and produced this:



310 yards of sport-weight superwash Corriedale 2-ply in color Burning Bush from Spunky Eclectic.

This week I have slowly been turning that ball into socks for a Christmas present for my FIL. I have learned my lesson: if I want to give knitted Christmas gifts, I have to start in August.



Before the Corriedale, I spun up 950 yards of merino/tencel laceweight in a gorgeous purple that is now becoming the petite version of Anne Hanson's Cluaranach (Ravelry link). Pictures of that to come later when I can get some sun.

Oh, I also started Kate Gilbert's Wisteria a couple of days ago. I was knitting happily along the collar chart yesterday morning when I realized that I had twisted the second set of 2x2 crosses in the wrong direction 6 rows back. I thought for a brief moment about leaving it and calling it a design element but my perfectionist side got the better of me and I ripped. It was a good thing I did since I learned something pretty nifty about the Malabrigo worsted single that I am using. In addition to spit-splicing incredibly well, Malabrigo is also easy to rip! The stitches do not drop at all; they just sit right where they are supposed to be until you put them back on the needle. Hopefully I will not have to take advantage of that particular property of the yarn too much more.

Pictures of Wisteria? Not yet - still waiting for the sun to come in.

Stash Enhancement

The darling husband and I had a lovely weekend with his parents at the Midwest Fiber & Folk Festival. My previous fiber festival experience consists of two trips to Maryland Sheep & Wool and while this festival was no where near the size of Maryland, it was delightful just the same.

I am going to be completely shameless with this post and try to distract you from the lack of new knitting or spinning content with pictures of what I bought this weekend.

The first purchase of the day went to Frontier Fiber Mill, husband and wife alpaca venture in Indiana where they not only raise the alpacas but run their own mill. The quality of the fiber was superb and I cannot wait to start spinning. (The yarn looked lovely also but I was too captivated by the roving to venture much to that side of the booth). I liked their wares so much that I got about 6oz destined to be a scarf for the darling husband:



And another 3+oz for me!



Then I made my way over to the Briar Rose booth, which I have been looking forward to for months ever since seeing the beautiful dye jobs featured on Knitspot. After displaying an impressive showing of self restraint, since the entire booth was to die for, I came away with this skein of alpaca laceweight, destined to be a Frost Flowers and Leaves shawl (Ravelry link).



Next comes just over a pound of 80/20 Coopworth/Silk roving from a lovely farm whose name I cannot remember, destined to be a February Lady Sweater.



Last, but certainly not least, I stopped by the Knitting Notions booth. Actually, this was the first booth that I looked at on Saturday but every color and yarn was just too beautiful to take in all at once and I knew that for the sake of my bank account I would have to look a couple of times to prevent purchasing the entire inventory on impulse. After my second trip back to the booth, I came away with three skeins of laceweight for a Wing o' the Moth shawl (Ravelry link) and some sock yarn for the next pair of husband socks.





That's all I've got for tonight. I'm almost done with a Tangled Yoke Cardigan (Ravelry link) - I just need to graft the underarms, weave in some ends, and find buttons. Hopefully I'll have a finished object post later this week.

Oh my

Darling husband and I moved to a new apartment last weekend and boy does packing/unpacking/etc. put a damper on blogging. Surprisingly, I have managed to get a fair amount of knitting done over the last couple of weeks (mostly socks) and even have a few pictures. Now, if only I could find the USB cord for the camera I would even upload and post them.

Spinning? The poor wheel has been sitting unused and neglected for the last week or so and both flyers (original and WooLee Winder) are resting in the bin full of fiber. Once we get the air conditioner set up, I'll think about getting the spinning wheel going again. It's just too hot and muggy to spin without it.

That's it for now. I just thought I'd write up a quick post to say that I haven't fallen off the face of the earth and that more interesting stuff is coming (just as soon as I find that USB).

Returning to Normal

Or Not.

Husband and I got back from TNNA last night and I have been trying to get my head out of the wool fumes. Wow, that was an amazing experience. I got to meet Anne from Knitspot, Pam Allen from Classic Elite, Linda Cortright from Wild Fibers Magazine, just to name a few. Plus, the Yarn Harlot was kind enough to hold my sock.



(Apologies for the slightly blurry photo, Stephanie).

Husband and I were there with My Sister's Knits and I had a blast helping choose yarns and colors for the shop. Carol, the shop owner gave me excellent advice when she said to bring layers since the convention center was freezing. It certainly was and so I could happily debut the Green Blob, now a beautiful shawl all grown up and blocked (pleasantly warm, too). Sadly, no finished object shots yet - those will have to wait until the weekend when hopefully I can convince the darling husband to come outside and play photographer.

Now that we are home again, I spent the day knitting up sleeve #2 of the Debbie Bliss sweater that I have been working on for the shop. I hate to confess that some minor math difficulties have made this project take longer than I would really like. This afternoon I recalculated the sleeve cap (my row gauge is off - always is) for the second time. Apparently trying to do some fairly basic calculations after getting home from class at 9:30 at night makes me think that 25 stitches over 4 inches equals 5 stitches per inch. Let's just say that my initial numbers were a bit off. Now my numbers are correct and sleeve cap #2 is half-way done. Of course, I still need to rip and re-knit sleeve cap #1. Maybe this was just my subconscious trying to tell me that I do not tink nearly enough to justify my blog title.

In other wool adventures, I decided to wash a bunch of the darling husband's sweaters so that I can get them packed away for summer. It turns out that my washing machine actually does a phenomenal job. Fill the tub with lukewarm water, pour in some Soak (love that stuff), let it sit for 20+ minutes, run the spin cycle, and then lay out the sweaters to dry. It turns out that finding space for six giant sweaters was by far the hardest part of the process. It is pretty hard to get to our dining table at the moment after what I did to the living/dining room.

First, I have two sweaters from four or five years ago. The one on the left was slated to be the second sweater I ever made for the darling husband (then darling boyfriend) and I had planned to gift it to him on our first anniversary. It actually turned into sweater #3 when I realized that the big fisherman cabled mass was not going to be ready in time. The sweater on the right is one that I made during the summer and fall in the year that we were engaged (two independent occurrences, I swear).



Again, apologies for the blurry photo - the flash obliterated all the detail.

You may recognize the space in the next picture as the former home of my blocking apparatus, now doing double-duty as the sweater drying area. I had originally thought I could fit all six sweaters there - don't know what I was thinking. At the bottom we have Cobblestone, this year's birthday present. Moving clockwise to the left, we have the second finished sweater I ever gave my husband. It turns out that lopi yarns knit up at 3 and a half stitches per inch make for much faster sweaters than cables knit in dk weight yarn. At the top is a hooded sweater that I designed using the wonderful book, The Sweater Workshop. Finally on the right we have a basic raglan that I knit at least 3 years ago - I remember the apartment we were in when I knit it but can't pinpoint the time much better than that (we were there for two years).



Well, I turned the air conditioning on to try and get some of the humidity out of the air in here. I think I am just going to have to get used to the scent of wet wool for the next few days.

Tough Choice

Husband and I are off to TNNA in a few hours. Both he and my bank account are very grateful that I will not be able to purchase any of the lovelies that we see. However, I do have another dilemma: what knitting to bring? You know the deal - I want something that I can whip out of my bag and knit a few stitches here and there but it also has to be suitably impressive. I dug the front of Cromarty out of the bottom of my knitting basket to work on when knitting with a friend last weekend. I was a bit too distracted chatting while trying to figure out where I was in the chart that I had to frog the rows that I had knit and go back to where I had stopped months ago (and I honestly could not tell you when I last worked on this piece.

Here is a picture of the back from last summer. Subtract a row or two and that is about how far along I am on the front.



After last weekend, Cromarty will not be my bag knitting on this trip; rather, it will stay in the hotel. So, back to the drawing board. The perfect carry-around knitting is, after all, socks. So I thought I would bring this along to play with.



Remember my dyeing adventures from a couple weeks ago? This is the final product. I kept trying to get out on the deck and take a picture in unfiltered sunlight but we seem to have attracted a very large bee whose sole purpose in life appears to be zooming around our deck. Perhaps it likes residual fumes of furniture stain from when we refinished a couple of tables a few weeks ago. In any case, it has taken over the deck and I have stopped trying to venture out since it zooms at the door whenever I open it.

If you will excuse me, I am off to pull out Barbara Walker and swatch.

Busy Weekend

Wow, the weekend just flew right by. There was visiting (no pictures, unfortunately), pie baking, and plenty of knitting. Since this is a knitting blog, after all, I'll jump straight to that.

First off, I blocked the green blob. Here is a teaser photo until I can get some good F/O shots (probably this weekend):



Since our current apartment has hardwood floors instead of carpet, this is my blocking apparatus:



Two sets of 2x2 foam exercise mats - about $30 for the pair from Target. The packaging has a picture of a man lifting weights and helpfully says "weight bench not included." Since the mats come wrapped in plastic with a cardboard sleeve, I wonder where one might hide the weight bench. But I digress . . .

The darling husband has been working on a felted bag for me off and on for over a year. Under the guise of helping him finish it up on Saturday, I somehow managed to tack down the handles, weave in the ends, and sew up the bottom seam and gussets. I'm not quite sure how that all happened, since all I sat down to do was untangle the yarn. Probably that whirlwind pace is what made the straps end up being slightly off center (I distinctly remember calculating stitch counts so that they would line up properly). Oh well. I'm calling it a design feature. Still a little damp, but here it is:



One last thing - this weekend I got together with a good friend from college and during the visit was presented with a beautiful birthday present: a lovely handmade quilt.



I'm hoping that this will spur me on in my own never-ending quilt project. We'll just have to see.