It's always lovely when a plan comes together. :)
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Sunday, September 30, 2007
A Sweater's Worth of Decadence
So I decided that I really wanted to make myself an alpaca sweater, and because I am an instant gratification kind of knitter, I wanted it out of bulky yarn. Unfortunately, bulky alpaca runs $13-$15 for 100-120 yards, and with approximately 1200 yards needed for a sweater, that gets pricey really fast.
But! thought I, there is always Decadence over at Knitpicks: yummy alpaca yarn, bulky weight, about 120 yards for $5.99 in lots of great colors, right? Wrong. They discontinued Decadence (the thought of this still makes me want to cry) and the only three colors remaining were pink, purple, and tan. I am not a pink or purple kind of girl. That left tan, and some Jacquard acid dye in Chestnut.
Unfortunately this elevates the 5ish skeins of Decadence lurking in my stash to handspun status: There Is No More. So if I want to use them, I must find the PERFECT pattern, because... There Is No More. Which means, in turn, that those skeins are going to sit in my stash FOREVER and a day. Argh. Do you suppose Knitpicks would respond well to a barrage of fevered pleas for this yarn to come back?
But! thought I, there is always Decadence over at Knitpicks: yummy alpaca yarn, bulky weight, about 120 yards for $5.99 in lots of great colors, right? Wrong. They discontinued Decadence (the thought of this still makes me want to cry) and the only three colors remaining were pink, purple, and tan. I am not a pink or purple kind of girl. That left tan, and some Jacquard acid dye in Chestnut.
Unfortunately this elevates the 5ish skeins of Decadence lurking in my stash to handspun status: There Is No More. So if I want to use them, I must find the PERFECT pattern, because... There Is No More. Which means, in turn, that those skeins are going to sit in my stash FOREVER and a day. Argh. Do you suppose Knitpicks would respond well to a barrage of fevered pleas for this yarn to come back?
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Pile o' items to be sold
These are the items I'm sending off with the Mom for sale at some big craft/garage sale thing she and the Auntie are doing. I may try to go along so I can tell people about the wonderfulness of them myself, except the dogs would be problematic since I doubt my Dad wants to watch them for three days.
Individual pics & descriptions below!
Garter stitch scarf in acrylic and mohair.
Glittery Green scarf, 3 rows garter stitch, one row long stitches. Acrylic.
Wool short/accessory scarf from some skein I had lying around. Stockinette stitch.
All items of course have been washed between being put on the model and being bagged up to sell.
Individual pics & descriptions below!
Garter stitch scarf in acrylic and mohair.
Glittery Green scarf, 3 rows garter stitch, one row long stitches. Acrylic.
Wool short/accessory scarf from some skein I had lying around. Stockinette stitch.
All items of course have been washed between being put on the model and being bagged up to sell.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
The hard part is over, now the boring part starts...
Yay! The body is done on Mom's Sweater v2.0. Also, thanks to the lovely folks at Color Song Yarns, I have the last skein of Blue Face Leicester Aran in Wildflower that I needed for the sleeves. The long, boring, stockinette sleeves that I need to start this week. Fun. Except, you know, not really.
Monday, September 17, 2007
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Mom's Sweater, v2.0
Here we are, with the yoke completed and the sleeves split off onto waste yarn. The bitch of the pattern (Spincraft's custom top-down raglan, if you're interested) is that while it works out really well I suspect for GUY body types, by the time you get the seam to the point where it meets under the arms, you've got funky stuff going on. If you keep going in-pattern to the point where the chest fits, the arms will be ridiculously huge and the armholes insanely baggy.
So instead of doing it that way, I worked it til the seam was long enough, split off the sleeves, then calculated how big around the front and back were at that point, and cast-on new stitches under the arm to make it big enough around the chest. Voila, reasonable armholes and arm size, and a chest that hopefully fits.
So instead of doing it that way, I worked it til the seam was long enough, split off the sleeves, then calculated how big around the front and back were at that point, and cast-on new stitches under the arm to make it big enough around the chest. Voila, reasonable armholes and arm size, and a chest that hopefully fits.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
The Problem with Perfectionism
The problem with my knitting life is that if I'm using good yarn and knitting for someone I really like (like, say, my Mom), then I want everything to be perfect.
This would explain why yesterday I frogged part of the sweater I had well underway that is being knitted for my mother, and started all over, all the while hoping desperately that I'm going to have enough yarn to do both the body, with a very nice cable pattern from Viking Patterns for Knitting and at the very least put some sort of finishing on cap sleeves.
Because the only thing I hate more than, say, making my mother an inferior sweater is sewing, I am making it using the custom raglan pattern at SpinCraft. This makes the whole yarn question slightly problematic. Also problematic is the fact that I'm using Fleece Artists Blue Face Aran in Rose Garden, and I bought it back in the spring from the LYS, except that they don't carry a whole heck of a lot of Fleece Artists (which makes me want to scream) and the odds of me getting more of the stuff are slim to none.
So here's hoping.
This would explain why yesterday I frogged part of the sweater I had well underway that is being knitted for my mother, and started all over, all the while hoping desperately that I'm going to have enough yarn to do both the body, with a very nice cable pattern from Viking Patterns for Knitting and at the very least put some sort of finishing on cap sleeves.
Because the only thing I hate more than, say, making my mother an inferior sweater is sewing, I am making it using the custom raglan pattern at SpinCraft. This makes the whole yarn question slightly problematic. Also problematic is the fact that I'm using Fleece Artists Blue Face Aran in Rose Garden, and I bought it back in the spring from the LYS, except that they don't carry a whole heck of a lot of Fleece Artists (which makes me want to scream) and the odds of me getting more of the stuff are slim to none.
So here's hoping.
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