Final FOs of 2007

I got my knitting mojo back at the last minute this holiday season and cranked out a few last minute gifts.

Up first is Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's one row scarf, knit in the familiar Noro Kureyon, colourway 157. I think I finally accepted that it was going to be a long time before I bought the 14 additional skeins necessary for a Lizard Ridge. Maybe I'll get back to that...sometime in 2009.



Yarn: Noro
Skeins: 2 + a bit of a third
Needle Size: 4.5mm
Firsts: Not a one. This is not exactly a challenging knit, though it is a nice variation on the typical ribbed scarf.

Up next: Wisp. Yes, at long last, I finished the damn thing. It only took an hour or so from when I tackled the mess I created back in August. I had to be very zen when dealing with all the torn threads. Wine probably helped.



I got bored of pinning it and took a photo halfway through blocking. Seriously, there are fruit flies with longer attention spans than me. As you can see, it's about the length of a full-size ironing board. As you probably can't see, what with my gift for shaking the camera, is how pretty the simple fishnet lace pattern is with the Kidsilk Haze. Now that I know one must cast off very loosely, I'll probably make another one. Especially since I was planning on making this for me and ended up needing it for a last-minute gift.

Yarn: Rowan Kidsilk Haze, Colour Liqueur
Skeins: Only 1. It's almost a budget scarf!
Needles: 4.5mm
Firsts: You know, I started this so long ago that I don't even remember. I think it was my first time using anything below a DK.

And last, I sewed in the ends of the Clapotis that's been done for months and blocked it. Here it is, blocking with the scarf:



I locked my mom out of her own bedroom and blocked it the day before Christmas. Procrastinator? Me? Strangely, my mom also has crap lighting in her house. It seems to run in the family.

And here it is on me, in my attempt at a flash-in-the-mirror type shot. The only reason I'm including it is to show off my kicky new shorter hair.



Yarn used: Araucania Atacama. No idea what colourway.
Skeins: About 5. There is no dye lot with these, so I would frequently discover that one skein was much darker and switch to a different one. Gorgeous wool, but I think I'll be sticking to one skein projects with my remaining skeins.
First: Deliberately dropped stitches. I only panicked for the first ones.

And that should round out 2007. I currently have two cardigans and one jumper on the needles, so I'm hoping to be a bit more productive in 2008. I'm also probably going to be switching blogs. It occurs to me that I still need a place to babble on about knitting, and I plan to have a much less crazy life sometime after May. Sure, it's five months off still, but I'll take what I can get. Um, point. Yes, I'll be switching, because I've been working with Wordpress so much for Pop Vultures that it feels far more comfortable than Blogger to me. I've been knitting a year now; why not graduate to a new blog? I'll post about it when it's ready.

Progress report

Although I am, deep down, terribly lazy, I do occasionally have fits of productivity in which I finish projects I have been procrastinating on for weeks. Such was the case last night, when I finally grabbed the summertime tunic and wove in all the ends. There were a TON of ends, because the yarn was very knotty and needed to be cut far too often. It took me well over an hour, but this morning she was washed and is now christening my blocking board:


I also bought ribbon and beads for the straps, so this one should get a proper FO post soon -- only two months after I finished knitting it. I was hoping it would be done by this evening, but today turned out to be a cold, rainy day, and nothing is drying quickly in this weather.

Clapotis has been teaching me very a important lesson about hand-dyed yarn. And that lesson is: never use it again for projects that require more than one skein. The first two I used were perfectly matched. Then I started happily knitting with the third, only to discover (after knitting about three inches, of course) that it was noticeably darker than the rest. Frog frog frog. Next skein was better, but seemed to be missing most of the red tones. Snip that yarn, start a new ball. The one after was fine. The next one had a perfect blend of colours, but the overall tone was a bit darker. So now, as I enter the home stretch, I'm alternating the two balls that were only a bit off in order to produce a more even effect overall. And, once again, creating too many damn ends that I'll have to weave in.


The next time I feel productive, that is. Not now, for goodness sake.

Always a WIP, never a FO

I am beginning to wonder whether I will ever finish another project. Forget the sweater curse; I have the curse of the never-ending WIP. This is another way of saying that the ends on the summertime tunic still have not been woven in and Wisp, well, Wisp is having issues. I was finished. FINISHED, I tell you. However, despite going up a needle size and binding off loosely, the cast-off edge was still too tight. And the yarn knotted when I undid it. Until, eventually, in a fit of rage, I cut off the cast-off edge and tried to recreate my stitches. I managed to pick them all up -- no dropped ones, it seems, but I didn't manage to pick them all up from the same row and still need to find a loose end of yarn to start the actual knitting. It is in time out for the moment.

So, instead of dealing with these two projects, I became one of the last knitters in the world to knit Clapotis.


Here it is, halfway done. I'm using Araucania alpaca which, despite being unseasonal, is so soft that I am really enjoying knitting with it. I'm not sure yet if this will be for me; I suspect it will go in the pile of knitted Christmas gifts, and I'll figure out who gets what in December.