I’m traveling by train this weekend. You know what that means, folks…who needs clothes, my bags are packed with yarn. New projects. Old projects. Eleventy billion needles. I can’t wait!
My iPod is stocked with 11 of 12 discs of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, one of the best books I’ve read in a long time. Even if it continues to make a fool of me. Damn failed cheese. I’ve read over half but my sister raved about the audiobook, so it’s coming along.
See you Sunday! 😀
Why I dread booties:
I was sucked in by the overpowering cuteness and allure of Saartje’s Booties. As soon as I saw Stacey’s, it was all over — I knew I must cast on as soon as possible. The knitting? A snap. Two hours tops. The finishing? Let’s just say my track record isn’t stellar.
The first version of the Cabled Earflap Hat pattern is ready to test! For starters, it’s infant-sized…about 15″ around when finished, to fit a 16″ head. You can download the PDF here…but please don’t link to it yet!
The eleven-cable (cables all over) version will follow soon.
Yarn Ahoy is having a contest! Please go take a look and vote for me if you like my gorgeous socks…or just leave a cheeky comment of some sort, it will make me feel all warm and fuzzy. 😉
Really, you can vote for someone else if you want, but I’d love to win because her yarn is faaaaabulous.
Seriously…yum: yarnahoy
…to everyone who offered to test-knit the hat pattern. I really am almost done writing it up, but I am knitting it (again!) at the same time because I’ve run into a few things that looked iffy to me while transferring my notes. It’s a Big Crazy Birthday Weekend at our house, so I might not finish until Sunday.
Aside from dyeing gobs of fiber and mildly stressing about the possibility of moving, here’s what I’ve been up to:
I’m pleased to say that it only took five tries to get the earflaps right. It’s interesting how cables affect the shape of the flap, and you have to put the increases in the right places or they look reeeeally wonky.
I’m in the process of transforming the pages of scribbled notes to a coherent and readable pattern — if you’ve always wanted to knit a cabled earflap hat and wouldn’t be scared to test it for me, leave a comment and I’ll send it your way. As with the earflapless cable hats, there’s a few-cabled and a many-cabled version.
You get lots of traffic, even when you don’t post for a whole month. Seriously, am I a rotten blogger or what?
In general I haven’t been slacking, though, just here. In the last few weeks we’ve had a smattering of Mystery Illness, the beginning of school, a web site launch, intermittent knitting and dyestock mixing, and a death in the family. So the blog, it suffers.
So what’s been on the needles? First up, another Shetland Triangle, very handy for those times when one is curled up in the fetal position, shivering and wishing for death due to said mystery illness:
I love this pattern, and I love this yarn. There’s another pic here — no, it’s not that big, it’s being modeled by my six-year old.
A little more progress on the loosely-modeled-after-the-Chinese-Lace-Pullover:
I’m not so sure about that edging. But for now, I’m not going to worry about it. This is the part where I knit the sleeves, then decide the whole thing is wonky (despite having tried it on a zillion times) and rip it all out. Stay tuned.
And this week’s progress on the STR socks:
I’m through the gusset decreases on both of them, so this is now smooth-sailing, no-concentration-required knitting for soccer practice on Friday evening. Yup, I said soccer practice. Lots of that coming up, and games too. My first thought was, “awwwesome, that’s gonna be some great knitting time.”
Coming soon: a cabled earflap hat pattern. Swatching is in progress!
The allure of lace knitting, that is…the magic of blocking….
I luuuurve it.
The boring details:
Shetland Triangle from Wrap Style
Knit with my own handspun (BFL/silk) on US10 needles.
I think I started with a little over 300 yards. Or something like that. DK-ish. I only did 7 body repeats because I was nearing the end of the yarn. And was I ever…I had 3g of yarn left when I was finished!
I did something courageous, too — well, I didn’t have anything to lose, so maybe courageous isn’t the word, but still — I had knit the 8th repeat without moving my lifeline. When I started the edge chart and realized I’d be short, I didn’t want to have to rip back to the 6th repeat, so I carefully ripped ten rows and actually got all the stitches back on the needles. All seventy-billion of them, yarn-overs and everything. Go me.
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