Remember the striped sweater I am knitting? Progress has been slow because my day job is a lot of work, but when is it not? Also, I’m reluctant to work on it on the commute because the yarn is a really special hand-dyed 100% Merino and I don’t want to spill my morning coffee on it or something.
Well, the back side is fully done, and so is the part below the armholes because it was knit in the round. Have a look.
knitting
Now that is what I have been doing, This is the sweater I tested for Mona NicLeòid, as you see, the buttons at the neck are still missing and my photographer was less than competent. In real life, the colours are much warmer.
I did a few modifications, for Example I botched one pattern in the front yoke. Also, I mad the neck band wider and introduced decreases to make it lie flat.
One of the reasons I don’t get to stitch these days is that I’m knitting like mad. I’ve done socks for a gazillion of people for christmass and tested a few patterns for designers. I did two fingering weight sweaters between Christmass and end of March! So I give in and post about boring knitting when I have nothing else to post about.
Now I’m knitting another fingering weight sweater, 286 stitches in the round this time. This is my own design, or let’s better say no design. I’m curious how it’ll turn out.
The wool for this sweater was on special offer, I bought it almost 4 years ago, and have been working on it on and off for about a year. I couldn’t find a design that fits the bulky, hairy yarn and my petite figure, so I swatched and designed until I thought I knew what to do. Today I finally finished it. I love the colours and the sweater. It took so long because I didn’t want to work on it on the commute, because the yarn is hand-washing only and the pattern complicated.
This is the pattern close up. It is an old pattern, called grape vine, trees (where I live) or print o’ the waves.
The only problem: the sweater doesn’t fit me. At all. That’s what the title of the posting is about. It looks actually worse on me than the photograph suggests. I’m small and skinny, so overly big and bulky sweaters do not exactly look flattering on me.
The stuff is really hairy and has a lot of wool and mohair, frogging it would ruin the yarn. So I’ll probably sell or gift it, although it’s breaking my heart.
I just keep doing what I do…
This time, I’m knitting no socks but a fingerless mitts/scharf set. The are “Merletto” pattern from ravelry.com. The scharf is an improvised bias knit triangle with the merletto pattern. Maybe more on that when it’s finished. I want something that keeps me warm but is not looking like i’m wrapping myself for deepest winter.
Last weekend would have been sketch crawl. I had family visiting and was exhausted from a hard week at work, so I didn’t make it there. I did a little sketch anyway. It is a charcoal sketch illuminated with watercolours. I realized again how much I love natural chacoal. I will have to do more of that.
I love knittting socks, and I’ve done a lot of them over the last year. So I show you socks today.
The first picture shows the heap of baby/young child socks I have done during winter. Most went to aquaintances or coworkers who got new babies.
These two pairs of socks were knit for the newborn of a coworker. I hope they keep the little one warm. Pink is the mother’s favourite colour, and she told us upfront it was going to be a girl.
This is the heap of baby/child socks I knit the last two or three months. Again for relatives and aquaitances with little ones.
This is the first sock on one of the pairs for me I currently work on. The safety pin holds a lost stitch which I will secure when the sock is done. I only saw the lost stitch a few row above it so I fudged a new one instead of working this one up through the cables. I’m not going into all the other adult socks I knit because you want only so many pics in one posting.
I need to have some more structure to my blogging if I want to do it more regularly. So I’m going to try and show you what I actually do every wednesday, no matter how boring it is.
Since last wednesday, I have been working on that doily pattern again. This time, I used Nr 20 crochet yarn, not 10, which I like much, much better. It does lay flat this time round.
the knitted stuff is supposed to be Victorian Lace. I felt I needed a new challenge in knitting, so my christmas present to myself was the book Victorian Lace Today as recommended by my friend at textiledreamer. Thanks to her, I also bought knit pro knitting needles which seem to be very good for this. Since then I’m busy trying out all the patterns so I’ll learn how to do it and can decide which complete project I want to do.
I also tried to come to grips with a certain knot stitch, ponto grilhao, not very successful so far.
The last thing I have to show is progress of a very different sort. Some time ago, I oderered a male roborowski hamster from a breeder to mach the female I already had. I got a female cambpell hamster, and the poor thing went into labor as soon as she arrived at my place. It is a wonder that she raised 2 pubs after that stress. The first pic shows one at about 20 days, the next at three weeks. Didn’t they come a long way since their birth, naked and blind? They are almost adult size by now. I will keep poor mom and give her a good home although she bites, but I will try to find new homes for the young.
Tenar's cave 