it's the same old circle going round, but

This hat is an amalgam of the Turn-A-Square pattern, which I've greatly enjoyed knitting before, the Purl Soho Simple Pleasures brim, and the Dessine-Moi Un Mouton sleeve stripe pattern.  I was concerned with fit, and my diagonally-upstairs neighbor suggested that I could knit in some flexibility by giving the recipient an option to wear the hat slouchy or to fold the brim and have a more fitted look.  She recommended a Purl Bee pattern with a long stretch of ribbing to start, which led me to the Simple Pleasures.

Because I was using fingering weight yarn (Plucky Knitter Bello in Pollen with stripes of Heartstrings, Old Copper, Fisherman's Wharf and Bastille), I cast on 140 stitches and then did almost three inches of 2 by 2 rib.  After that, I pretty much followed the Turn-a-Square pattern exactly, except that I used an idea for striping from the Dessine-Moi Un Mouton Pattern.  I'm in the midst of knitting a Dessine-Moi sweater and have loved the combo of stripes with blocks of the main color.  (I actually meant to follow the Dessine-Moi stripe pattern more closely, with some sections of 5 stripes and some sections of 3 stripes, but I forgot to switch to 3 when I started my second group of stripes and decided there were too few stripe sections to make it look intentional if I switched for the third group.)

All together, I'm pretty happy with how this turned out and the recipient seems to enjoy it as well, so I'll call the amalgam a success!

 To slouch or not to slouch?

Slouchy back view

why do my fingers ache for the cold?

Here's some actual knitting for the knitting blog.  When I stumbled upon a skein of the Plucky Knitter's much-beloved and now-discontinued Well Read colorway, I couldn't help but finally knit something for someone who has been pestering me for handknit goods since, oh, approximately our fourth date.   Knitting for him does, of course, break all of my rules about who I'm willing to knit for: he isn't another knitter, a small child or an elderly relative.  (Truth be told, he did briefly learn to knit so that he could gift me the world's most ridiculous scarf and then declare that he was now a knitter so he fit within the categories of people I was willing to knit for.  But I had a hard time thinking of him as a knitter when I couldn't get him to start a second project.)

However, he has made up for it by showing a degree of appreciation that I never expect from people who don't fall into those categories, and, until we hit a spell of 80-degree weather, was pretty much wearing this hat every day.  Even if it made him look a little bit crazy, it did mean that I got to look at this pretty yarn every day, so I didn't argue.  And when he brought the hat back out for our trip to Madison last week, I realized that I had missed seeing it a little bit in our unseasonably warm weather.  (I know, I know, I could still live on the East Coast if I wanted to have snow showers over Easter.)

It's the One Bourbon pattern from Thea Coleman, knit with six pattern repeats rather than seven, and ravelry details are here.  Here's hoping that you all have non-hat-wearing weather soon!

and I made a promise to California

So it turns out that the Bay Area might be the perfect knitting climate.  I wouldn't have imagined that I could wear a wool-and-cashmere sweater in August anywhere but, delightfully, I have been proven wrong.

(photo credit: Wamps)

This is another iteration of the Paulie cardigan although this one managed to go much faster than the last.  It's again in Plucky Primo Fingering, colors Childhood Memories (teal); Thornfield Hall (gray); The Hills are Alive (green); and Dandy Lion (yellow).  I'm especially thrilled to get to wear something with Dandy Lion since I've loved knitting gifts out of this color but it's not one that usually works for me.  More details are on Ravelry.

Now if I could only figure out a ribbon backing for the button band.  Anyone have any pointers for that?

and I envy their consistency; it seems so priceless

As will probably surprise no one who knows my knitting, all my spring knitting plans were put aside on a whim as soon as I put these skeins next to each other.  Thanks to a long weekend where I had plenty of knitting-on-transport time, I've made quite a bit of progress on a Paulie that I plan to keep.   (I'm not following the paulie stripe pattern because I don't have enough of any of these colors to do so.  And I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I won't run out of the gray, but I think it's likely that I'll be ISOing on Ravelry for more.)

But my current dilemma is that I am a little smitten with the reverse stockinette side.  So I have *almost* decided that I'm going to make it the front side.

But then I see the stockinette side from a distance, and I think maybe it should be the front after all.

Since I'm not doing a very good job of deciding myself, any and all input is welcome!  I don't have any long weekends coming up, so I probably have a while yet before I really have to decide...

the future was wide open

As I near completion on Christmas 2011 gifts, I'm letting myself daydream about some upcoming knits.

This yarn is destined to be a celebratory wisp of a project, which I'm very much looking forward to knitting.
And I've got a design in my head for these beauties.... Here's hoping I can translate what's in my head to reality! I also need to come up with a plan for completing some long-lingering WIPs. (My current thought is that I may take a break from all Christmas knitting this year, and focus on long overdue years, but we'll see if I can stick to that plan.)

And, just in case you were longing for a shot of my poor continental knitting, here you go:

It's not a trick of the photo: those stitches really are that wonky. They're getting better as I go along, however, and I'm hopeful that they will all block out in the end.

What are your spring knitting plans?

until I'm proven wrong

So I have one Christmas gift (yes, 2011) that's ready to be shared with you all. It's a Paulie with a few mods, which I made for my mother.

I made the sleeves long instead of three-quarters length. Of course, I ended up making them a little too long so perhaps I should have stuck with three-quarters....

I left off the shawl color because I thought my mother would find it fiddly.

And I added a second color to the stripes, knitting it with Plucky Knitter Primo Fingering in Flying Monkeys with stripes of Dandy Lion and Faded Grandeur. In the skein, these colors were much more distinct, but I enjoyed how they blended together once knit. Flying Monkeys is an incredibly interesting gray-brown and I may have mentioned before that I think Dandy Lion is the perfect yellow.

I really enjoyed this knit and my only complaint is that I started it in September with the expectation of being able to finish it for her birthday in October. When that failed, I still thought that I'd easily finish it for Christmas. Well, at least she was able to wear it as driving me to the airport after Easter.

PS: Thanks for the advice on continental knitting! After taking a look at my sister-in-law's hands during knitting, I've concluded that I was wrapping the yarn around my fingers too much. It's been easier going since I cut out a few wraps, but it's still pretty sloppy.

you act like you're hip to their tricks

I actually finished the knitting of this gift in time for the recipient's birthday, but then it languished as I thought that I had messed up the grafting. After deciding that it had to be finished over Thanksgiving, I realized that I had just pulled the grafting too tight, so it was actually fine after being loosened. (Apologies for everything that I said about the Knitty grafting garter stitch tutorial before that realization.)

Two attempts at weaving in the ends and I finally had a finished product that I liked well enough to gift.

It's the Millwater eternity cowl, made out of Plucky Knitter Primo Worsted in Dandy Lion colorway. I love this color and wish that it were one that I could wear. But gifting it is second best. Rav details here.
(wrapped double)

I am actually working on another gift that uses Dandy Lion in Primo fingering so I've had the chance to enjoy this color a little longer.

And now in a color I can wear, the Narragansett sweater in Primo Worsted Narragansett Gray.
I've yet to get a good picture of this one, but it is wonderfully soft to wear, even if it does fall off my shoulders all the time. I loved knitting this pattern, despite its long hiatus due to the summer heat, and expect that I will enjoy wearing it as well. I made the sleeves full length, although I'm not entirely sure that they shouldn't be three-quarters length for proportion's-sake, and I left off the hip detail. Rav details here.

And, finally, because handknits-in-action always make me happy: an action shot of that cardigan where it fits much better and where you get to see MRB's newly-discovered fish face.
Hope you all had lovely Thanksgivings!

if you get an invitation

You'd think that I've now been knitting long enough to learn how to set realistic goals for my knitting. Clearly not.

What unrealistic goals are you all working on? And is my unrealistic goal enough of an excuse to ask to knit during my office's staff meeting? (The last question was rhetorical, but the first one was genuine. I know I pay better attention when I knit, but I don't think others really believe this.)

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.

watched the mile markers passing

A week's vacation let me finish the yoke on this sweater. Now if only I could get my act together to graft the underarms, sew in the ends, and block! (I have a few flights later this month and plan on only bringing this along so I can force myself to do so. Someone on this blog suggested that strategy to me once, and it has served me well since. Unfortunately, the timing of these flights may mean that I'm not awake for much of them.) Before blocking, I think it looks way prettier inside out, without all that distracting puckering. Will post details when it's actually wearable!

we'd better stop before this story begins

Once again, I am neglecting all the knitting I need to do simply because I'm too fascinated by watching this sweater grow. So hold me accountable, blog: I will not knit another row on this sweater until all the finishing is done on the knitting that I'm supposed to gift tomorrow. I will not.

Or, at least, I'll only let myself knit rows as a reward for filing my taxes...

so lost on a trail walked by so many

I took more pictures of sheep in the last week than I have in the rest of my life combined. (And all of them were basically in one day.) However, since this is a knitting blog, I'll try to limit the pictures to the ones that are slightly less tangential to knitting.
Despite its clear proximity to our hiking trail, Wamps did not pick up any of this fiber to spin at home.

(Apparently, animals are allowed to graze on the National Parks lands during the winter.)

Even almost on-point: That's a cowl that you've seen briefly before, knit out of Plucky Cashmere Fingering Weight in an improvised pattern (colorway: London Calling). (I did sew in the ends just so I could wear it on this trip.) And a Wispy Cardy in Plucky Merino Lace (colorway: Summer at the Shore). Plus the wristwarmers that Wamps made me years ago. (See their first trip to the UK here.) Here's to traveling knitwear!

yes, I know it's pretty here

I know that, this week, many of you had worse weather than I did. But I also know that some of you still view the massive snowfall as wondrous and beautiful. And that was me about 50 inches ago. Maybe I'm more whiny (always a possibility) or maybe I've run by too many post office boxes buried with feet of snow on top of them or maybe I just live in a city that has decided that the best use of its rapidly-dwindling snow-removal budget is ONE "special snow melting truck" rather than actually plowing the streets when it snows. Whatever the cause, I've spent my spare time knitting this to avoid going totally crazy:

So, yes, the point of all that was that I've put aside all the things that I should be knitting to knit something that I don't need to knit but that makes me incredibly happy. And I don't even feel (that) guilty about it. Because, really, what's the point of knitting if you can't use it to stave off a potential nervous breakdown? Particularly when the cause is too much winter precipitation, knitting seems well-suited as a preventative measure. And my father wasn't the only one who wanted a hat like my grandpa's Christmas hat. So that's what I did: another turn-a-square, although absent the stripes, in a size more appropriate for my grandpa than me.
I don't have any modeled shots, but trust me that this hat is huge on me: it covers my forehead and most of my neck. It looks pretty ridiculous. I don't care. I love it and plan to wear it for the remainder of the winter. It's Plucky primo fingering, held doubled, in Nordic. I knit the whole thing on 3s and started with 108 stitches for the rib, increasing to 116 for the body of the hat. It's a very tight knit which means some of the decreases were very difficult to do, but that makes it all the better for facing the rest of the winter. (Rav details here.)

Another thing that has reminded me that we will survive this winter: sewing in the ends on spring break! socks:

Wamps told you about this project: I knit hers and she knit mine. (I asked her to block hers and she "asked" me to sew in the ends on mine.) But she didn't show you the freaky inspiration for the project, which I can do.
(Manicures done before stumbling into the yarn store and finding this yarn. How could we walk away from those skeins?)

Maybe the next time that you hear from me, I'll have some non-selfish knitting to show off. But I've been pretty glad for selfish knitting these last few weeks, just as I've been pretty thankful that my landlord takes care of most of our snow removal and even plows our street as a public service with his plow; that I have a car that might not be able to get over some of the snow but is still pretty likely to start each morning; that I've been able to go cross country skiing multiple times this winter; and that, unlike others in my state, so far, all the roofs that I've been under have held. Here's hoping that you all are staying safe and warm, wherever you are, and doing whatever you need to do to stay sane in this weather!

running out of yarn hasn't stopped me yet

I actually finished some of my Christmas gifts by Epiphany this year, largely because I didn't put as many on my list as last year. (We'll see about some of those last-year-gifts getting done by Valentine's Day, okay? Okay?) But I didn't manage to finish these two in time to gift them in person, which really disappointed me. Luckily, the recipients didn't mind as much.

For my grandma, I was so inspired by this cowl that I forgot that I have a really hard time finishing garter stitch log cabin squares.
Albers Cowl, knit in various colors of Plucky MCN fingering. Ravelry details here. I ran out of several colors of yarn, leading to interesting (and time-consuming) modifications. I am glad that my grandma likes it as much as she does, because that was the only thought that got me through it.

For my grandpa, I knit the popular Turn A Square pattern out of Plucky Cashmere fingering. (Ravelry details here) I had to modify the pattern for the thinner yarn and then had to modify again when it became clear that I was going to run out of Rustica, the brown yarn. But every grandpa loves an ombre, right?
(And thanks to both my parents for modeling these before they were mailed off. After my dad modeled the hat, it was strongly suggested that he probably needed a similar one to line his Christmas hat from last year... I accepted this as the price for asking someone to model cashmere and did knit a liner out of the leftover blue yarn, but got no pictures before sewing it in the old hat and returning it to my dad.)

hello, blackbird

I somehow managed to not get very good photos of this scarf, despite it being one of the more photogenic things I have knit and having the most photogenic model come visit Hartford to help me out.
Regardless, I'm quite pleased with it (and, more importantly, my mother seems pleased with it as a birthday gift). It's the Dipped Infinity circle scarf, a pattern by CosmicPluto. I now want to knit lots of patterns by CosmicPluto, since this one came along at a time when I was feeling very disengaged from knitting and it was fun and exciting and completely turned me back into a knitter. (Plus, she went to David Berkeley's Boston show the night after my DB house concert. I'm not quite sure why that makes me want to knit her patterns, but it sort-of does.)


The yarn is the Plucky Knitter superwash merino fingering, sold as a kit for the dipped infinity pattern, in Retro Infinity.
I've started putting skeins of sock yarn aside in the hopes of knitting one of these for me someday!