for now, that's good enough for me

Here's the finished version of that sweater from a few weeks ago. I still have a ways to go in making my floats actually float, but I'm enjoying this nonetheless. It's the Paper Dolls pattern, with the yoke pattern borrowed from Spilly Jane's quo vadis mittens.

While I quite love many of Kate Davies' designs (all that beautiful colorwork!) (and lovelies without colorwork!), I hadn't thought much about this particular design until I saw her blog post about all the different custom yokes. (Go read it! But only if you want to find yourself slightly obsessed with the idea of knitting a paper dolls, too.) Two particularly caught my attention: a beautiful adaptation of a mitten pattern to sweater size; and one featuring an animal that has always been dear to my heart. (Respectively, on Ravelry, those are andiknit's Paper Flowers Pullover and jettshin's Paper Dolls-Hedgehog Version.)

I wanted something a little more subdued for my first attempt, so I had my mind set on replicating the Paper Flowers Pullover. However, the Plucky Knitter just kept sending classics that I liked with my background color. And I couldn't quite picture how to adapt that pattern to be multi-colored.
Luckily, knitting the body of the sweater gave me a long time to dither about yoke options. I finally decided to go with the quo vadis pattern as I was packing for a week's vacation and needed to print out *some* pattern to work from. The quo vadis pattern led to some interesting decreases during the yoke, since it does not have large sections of background color to hide the decreases. Nonetheless, I'm quite happy about the end result and think it is very wearable.

All the yarn used is the Plucky Knitter Primo Fingering, in Hoity Toity (main color), Memories (the purple), Backwards and in High Heels (the teal), and Sterling. (All but Sterling were Plucky Classics.) I could have finished this sweater with just two skeins of Hoity Toity, but I wanted to make it longer than the pattern suggested. So, about 3/4 of the way through the body, I purchased an extra skein through an ISO on Ravelry. The new skein was much more rust-colored than the skeins I already had, but I alternated skeins, so I don't think that you can tell the difference.
However, I neglected to do so during the short row shaping at the back neck, so it turned out much more rust-colored than the rest of the sweater, as you can sort-of see in the picture of the back. (To my credit, it's harder to alternate skeins when you're doing short rows because you never get back to your other skein. However, if I had thought it through, I would have used one of the other skeins for the short row section.)

One note about the primo: it's a dream to knit with but blocks out very large! I have found that I need to put this sweater into the dryer to get it back to normal size, but it also fuzzes in the dryer. I've defuzzed most of the sweater, but it is definitely something that I'll plan for in any future primo sweaters.

Given how much I enjoyed knitting this sweater, and how I look forward to wearing it this fall, I expect that there's another one with hedgehogs not too far in my future.

This is my Metro vest - lost and found.

I started this vest on our trip to Scotland/England last spring, but when I was over half finished with the back, last I left my bag in the Metro one morning in June (along with my Blackberry, a confidential grant proposal, and a $4000 tax refund check). Of course I was most upset about the knitting! I reported to Lost and Found but gave it up for lost when I got no response and replaced everything, including buying new yarn for the sweater, which I had become attached to. On the thirtieth day I decided to call, despite the message they had sent when I filed the Lost report, saying don't call us, we'll call you if we find it. They said they had sent me an email 4 days after I lost it, but I never received it. My bag and I were joyfully reunited, but I didn't resume work on the vest until after the county fair projects were complete. This was much easier and faster than the Ladybug sweater, because there were never more than two colors in a row, the yarn was heavier, and the pattern was repeated and symmetrical. If anyone really loves it, I have enough yarn for another!

Isabella in the Ladybug Sweater

I didn't need to worry that the ladybug sweater would be too small! Here is my grandneice Isabella wearing the sweater. It should fit next winter, and maybe winter after that! (She is about 10 months old in the picture, and the sweater is size two.)

what I knit for Christmas

Not much this year, as it turns out. I'll post about a Christmas-y hostess gift that I knit, but, otherwise, I only knit two Christmas presents this year. I don't have any good pictures of the one, but here's the other: a pillow for my mother. The yarn is some lovely Rowan tweed that I think has been discontinued. (I'd been hoarding it for a long time without being able to decide what to do with it....) The flower intarsia pattern is from Kaffe Fassett's Pattern Library, which I got free with Lexis points. It was even a signed copy. (I definitely think more highly of Lexis points now.) I had a lot of fun planning and knitting this pillow. Fassett's Pattern Library is a really inspiring book: 180 beautiful color charts that you can incorporate in whatever patterns you please. I'm sure it would take some thinking to figure out how to work them into sweaters and the like, but a pillow was a great easy project since it required minimal modification of the intarsia chart. It also let me practice my intarsia technique, which is definitely still a work in progress.

Here's a shot of the back of the pillow. I did the bands surrounding the buttonholes and buttons in k3, p1 rib so that it would avoid the stockinette curling while still sort of looking like the rest of the pillow. You can definitely tell that it's rib if you look closely enough, but I think it's not bad at a distance.
(My mother didn't like the buttons that I originally used so we went out after Christmas and found these to replace them.)

I'm looking forward to seeing what you all knit for the holidays!

And now it's back to the studying. Anyone want to quiz me on the federal rules of evidence?

thumbs up!

So I almost finished these mittens at the beginning of September but, after doing one thumb, I chickened out because of how ridiculous they looked and had to bring them along on a visit to Keren for moral support. I almost believed the pep talk that the mitten czar gave me, but I still didn't work up the courage to finish the second one until yesterday, one day before I needed to wrap and give them away.

I think these mittens are a really strong argument for why I need to use a pattern-- even if it's one I've made up. I just started knitting with these and I think it clearly shows. Especially in how weird the thumbs look. And how totally asymmetrical they are. And how the cuffs aren't really cuffs at all. Oh well. When they're on, they don't look that bad. But compare to source of these mittens' color pattern: the sweater I knit last year for my nephew (straight from a published pattern). Relatively symmetrical. Cuffs that function as cuffs. And no weird thumbs.

I will add, though, that this diamond color pattern is so, so much easier to knit in wool (the mittens, made out of Shepherd Colour 4 Me) than in cotton/acrylic (the sweater, Plymouth Wildflower DK). The stretchiness of the wool really does make a difference.