Queued

I owe you guys a FO post... I finished a hat recently, but I need to take photos, so stay tuned to (tomorrow?) for those.

I've happened upon some lovely new things for my queue, recently. Some have come from the new Recommendations feature on Ravelry. If you go to http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/recommended, custom patterns will pop up for you! I'm sure most of you have already found this, and I don't tend to look at mine so often, but perhaps I should. I tend to rely more on my Ravelry friend network to expose me to greatness.

Cookie A. has won me over with Slide, a geometric sock pattern. I normally don't look twice at sock patterns, opting to knit plain socks as infrequently as possible, but these really catch me. At $6.50, the price seems steep (I've bought whole cardigan patterns for that amount!), but I find myself looking through the finished projects quite happily.

Fantome cowl, by Anne Kuo Lukito, is a gorgeous cowl project that has so much potential for color exploration. Unlike the plethora of traditional cowls on Ravelry, this has great graphic panels and looks like something I might pick up at Nordstrom. A pretty, giftable little thing.

Finally, I'm utterly in love with SC.1. Alison Brookbanks has managed to make a sweater similar to the things I'm always knitting for myself, but unique enough to be worth the effort. Imagine knitting this in a neutral and putting super neon camis under it. Love love love:

We're almost halfway through February! Get some lovely wool wash and balm in my giveaway!
- YX

FO: The green socks

So excited to show you my latest FO... Remember that skein of green and gray sock yarn I got from Sunrise Fiber Co? And the resulting sock project?

Well, I finally finished them:

The toes are a figure 8 cast on, which I can never seem to make nice and tight:

I always have to go back in and reinforce the toes with more yarn on the insides. Probably not a terrible thing, though.

Although I don't knit socks often, I'm a big fan of the toe-up method. For one thing, I'm forever fickle about what length my socks should be. These are a bit higher than mid-calf, but I kept knitting until I decided enough was enough. Toe-ups also allow me to try on my socks frequently, without stretching the knitting across my heel as often. That keeps the stitches from popping off the needles.

I also love short row toes... I know this is a point of contention among sock knitters, but I love the traditional look of the short row over the flap. Especially with a self-striping or variegated yarn like this one, the heels end up amplifying the pattern:

I'm super happy to have them off the needles and on my feet! Next time, I'll show you what I'm working on now. :)

- YX
(Have you entered November's giveaway? Two winners will be chosen!)

WIPS

I've been working on a few things lately, but nothing "big" that has been fancy enough to post about.

Like these socks. Remember them?

Neither did I, until I started working on my other WIP, which is not an easily-traveling project. (More on that in a minute).

We were about to leave for New England last weekend when, through various unfortunate events, we missed our first flight and were cancelled on the second. We ended up staying home for the weekend, but the 7 hours we were in the airport were filled with intermittent naps and working on the sock. I finished the first one and started the second one before we were informed that our plans were cancelled and we should go home.

So at least I have the socks to work on during my morning commute, which has been fiber-free recently. Kind of hard to work on something like Pinctada in a car. Especially when you're the type to get Exorcist-style carsick in the presence of the written word. Reading patterns is not an option for me.

Great, I have a sock. But I also have this:

Okay, I am super embarrassed that this is the only photo I have of this. It's the En Pointe Wrap Sweater by Erin Archer. Her website is freaking adorable, though, so you should go check it out if you're into crafty, cute, Anthropologie-style stuff. It's supposed to look like this:

Cute, right? The sweater calls for a dk-weight yarn, but I decided to use my Artisan Yarns Baby Camel/Silk that I bought from Loop back in May. It looks like this:

This is a sock yarn, but seems to be working pretty well with the pattern, which I'm knitting on size 8 needles. The fabric is drapey and open, and feels reeeeeeally good. I keep rubbing it on my face. Like actually stopping my knitting to rub it on my face. Really.

The sweater is knitted from left to right, so the stripes are vertical, which is kind of neat. Except it requires both yarn cakes at the same time, so traveling with it is more challenging. Especially in a car. Especially because it has silk content. Especially because ever silk yarn cake I've wound has this charming way of falling apart, even when I knit from the outside, unless I keep it in some kind of super secure pantyhose cage thing. Regular project bags become a tangled mess...

ANYWAY, back to the sweater. The back is really pretty and scooped, too, which you can't see in the above photo. I'm finished with all but one sleeve, so I should be doing a FO post of that soon.

Then, it's challenge to see what will win out: my desire to use up all of my stashed black alpaca, or my interest in designing a sweater I've had a concept for since last summer... Hmmm... Your opinions are always welcome in the comments. :)

- YX

PS- In the meantime, how about you enter to win this awesome yarn and make an ombre en pointe sweater like the one above? I haven't even used 100g of yarn yet on mine....

WIP it good

Well, after a short break, I started on Andrew's Brownstone:

It's not much to look at now, but I've already used up two balls of the Sublime Organic merino I got for the project, which is kind of scary. I have 13 total, which will hopefully be enough to complete the sweater... The yardage on the pattern suggests that I have more than enough.

Whenever I try to photograph this sweater, it always looks super yellow, even when I dramatically reduce the K value on my camera. Here's a shot of the yarn to show you the "true" color:

I love the yarn, and the fabric is super soft. I was lucky enough to grab it during the last sale at the yarn shop, for $5/ball. It's normally twice that! Andrew seems excited about the final product, too, which makes it even more exciting to knit. Also, he's a men's small/medium, so maybe I'll get a shot or two at wearing it, myself. Mwahahaaaa-- always a secret motive for me!

Since I can't bear the thought of slogging through another sweater without a few distractions, I looked through my leftovers and settled on the rest of the Little Red Bicycle dk to make a quick pair of fingerless mitts for absolutely no reason:

And I've started a pair of socks with that Sunrise Fiber Co yarn I bought:

I like the striping! I'm knitting these on threes, with a starting count of 16 stitches for my figure-8 cast on. Total circumference, 48 stitches. I have a narrow foot, and I really like to have my socks stretch a bit when I put them on. Aside from a pair of pink cashmere socks I made for myself (which met an untimely mothy demise), I don't really have other handknit socks for myself. I'm not much of a sock knitter, but maybe it's just because I've failed at picking fun yarns.

So that's what's going on right now... I also have a dress design that is close to test knitting time, so there will be more on that at some point! Exciting!

Have a good weekend, and don't forget to enter!
- YX