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!

Ain't Got No Silver

What to do when you run out of yarn and aren't sure if more exists in the world?

I started knitting this version of Ysolda's Peaks Island Hoodie at the beginning of October and am about halfway through the hood decreases (meaning, maybe three quarters of the way done), and I am TOTALLY out of yarn.

I used two skeins of Plucky MCN in finger, held double, and got gauge pretty well with size 9 needles, and while I thought that the combination of my generally tight knitting + two skeins of yarn would get me through, but clearly no.  Sigh.

So I posted to Ravelry asking for yarn, but I think the best may be to either find a colorway that is pretty close OR a colorway that is totally different.  Neither option appeals.  I could also rip it out, but there's really nothing I hate more.

'cause in the winter weather, I'll lend you my warmest sweater

When this is the view from my window (on October 30, no less), is it any wonder that I've made quite a bit of progress on a sweater long abandoned through a sticky-summer-without-air-conditioning? It's been like an extra blanket while I knit it.
Luckily, I have quite a few other things that I should be knitting which should serve the same purpose, once I get this one out of my system.

A little this and that

First up, some knitting that has been sitting around, waiting for me to mail it to its future owners.

     

Baby hats!

And the silliest socks ever. (Yoga socks, missing the heal and the toe.)  Apologies for the flashy picture.

And finally, a proud moment for me, the quilt top is done!  I still need to make a back (I am tempted to just go and buy an appropriately sized single length of fabric.  Actually, I may just do that....), and then do the sandwiching and the quilting and the binding, but I feel more confident that this will be done before its intended baby grows up entirely.  I am less confident I will start and finish the other quilt I want to make before that baby is born, but we'll see.

the streetlights, not the stars, now

Let this serve as a warning to any parents planning on "productive quiet time" for their overactive child:

11-year-old girl: The worst part about my week was yesterday when I had to sit in my bed all day and knit! Just knit. Or read. Knit or read. But just sit in my bed and only knit or read!

HEB: Hey, hey, hey: knitting isn't bad. Why would that be the worst part of your week?

11yog: Knitting is torture! When all you can do is knit and the whole house is silent, it's the worst thing in the world!

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.