falling ahead

So, since Kati posted a current state of projects, and I haven't done that since April, I thought I would do so as well.

Still in progress:
- Birch (more than halfway finished, needs to be finished and blocked)
- Peacock Feathers (needs to be blocked)
- Magnolia (needs to be seamed)
- everything I started at the beginning of the spring/summer that is not Orangina (put aside until spring -- this includes Rosa, which may or may not be abandoned, and Salt Peanuts, which may or may not be abandoned. We'll see how I feel in the spring.)

Just started:

- Ballet Camisole in Wool Cotton.

In the plans for fall/winter:
- A mod turtleneck in Beaverslide merino (red)
- Parka from Rowan 34 in Rowan Polar (brown)
- Marsha from Rowan 34 in stretch merino (grey)
- Salina from Rowan Vintage Knits in Rowanspun DK (grey)
- Diamond Fantasy Shawl in either wool/silk leftover from Peacock Feathers or in Nature's Palette in Indian Paintbrush (either way, red)
- self-designed tunic vest in Yorkshire Tweed Aran (black)

Either way, most of that stuff is stash from last fall/this spring, with only the Yorkshire Tweed being a new addition.

I'm pretty excited! Fall knitting (from stash, no less!), yay!

Stash management

I'm moving apartments today after work, which is a task that fills me with more dread than crocheting. (we're going on three weeks now with no crochet edging for the Ballet Camisole?) So since my camera has been packed for three days, and will likely not be unpacked for another week, a pictureless post it must be. Of course, the fact that any pictures would just be of a giant grey blob doesn't hurt this decision.

But going through my room packing and sorting made me think about what I want to knit next and what I really need to finish finishing already. So, here is is, my public shaming.

UFOS!:
-Schoeller Stahl Cabled Jacket: needs zipper.
-Essential Stripe: Take in Sleeves. (...I have to face my fear of the sewing machine.)
-Lace-up Pullover: finish seaming, weaving in ends. Debate over collar. Find lacings.
-Zeeby's bag: Finish seaming, reenforce straps somehow, line, add embrodery
-Tasha: Finish seaming.
-Thrill: undo seams, redo back/armholes, reseam.
-Tammy (aka the mod pirate sweater): Block, seam, collar, etc..
-Ballet Cami: crochet edge, block, gather.
-Dream Swatches: Block
-Debbie Bliss Tennis Sweater: finish seaming, weave in ends, reblock.
-Purple Scarf: Bind off and fringe. Possibly redo in seed stitch instead?

Dead in the water:
-Tempting: Rippppppppp. Wash & reball yarn.
-Tempting II: Ripppppppp. Wash and reball yarn.
-Shapely Tank: Rip, wash yarn, reskein for dying.


Upcoming projects (and this is just using stash yarn:)
-Satchel with tempting yarn (on the needles)
cabled hat with leftover cotton cashmere (waiting until the tennis sweater is fully seamed)
-Knucks with wool cotton (where is the wool cotton in the stash?)
-topdown vneck raglan with tempting II yarn (time to go a-riping)
-Silk Corset with bamboo (might change the project for the bamboo. We'll see.)
-Saturday Market Bag with Cotton Fleece (waiting to actually finish some other bags. Or I could just do a post with like, twelve bags ALL AT ONCE.)
-Self Designed Top with Elann Espirt (...I haven't started this because I don't know if I want it in brown or in black. Seriously. I am that lame.)
-Something similar to this Lace Panel Jacket on craftster with some cotton from my sister's stash.

And there might be a box of yarn from elann that I haven't opened yet since I am moving, with about five projects worth of yarn. But we don't need to talk about that until I get some of these other projects done.

A few more that are super-cute but don't have yarn for/may make someday if I get through the queue and have room in the stash for new yarn:
-Something similar to Katie's latest, Twist and Shimmer, (How cute is that! and it's inspired by the really cute phildar one. So maybe just the really cute phildar one.)
-Gwenabe Tank, (possibly. It is cute. ALSO she designed Judy Jetson which is way cute.)
-#29 in the new Phildar (although without the giant tassels.)
-#13 in the '06 Summer Phildar. (how sweet is that?)
-This cabled thing of hotness or #6 in the '05 Autumn Phildar
-Something with sideways ribbing on the button band, long ribbing on the cuffs, and lots of plastic-y buttons.

I think I need to learn how to speed knit.

mmm, delicious!

Today I had an Orangina with my lunch, and tonight I finished the knitting and seaming on Orangina!



I've discovered that it doesn't work with jeans or my jean skirt, which has either recently shrunk (!) or I have grown slightly too big for (!!!!!). Surely this cannot BE. But it works with my new black (Kati is going to kill me for this) bubble skirt, and the skirt I originally decided it would look adorable with, which is a cream and red toile-esque-print skirt (typo: squirt. It's almost midnight!). Also, I'm wearing a nude camisole underneath it, which is a good thing. Yay, camisoles!

Another shot:



Modifications: I followed Domesticat's advice to take some repeats out for a tighter fit, so I believe I took out two repeats.

I used about two and a half balls of 4-ply Cotton in "Bluebell" -- each panel took exactly one ball (with the ends used for seaming), and I used the third ball for the ribbing. In those three balls, I found two knots, which makes me cranky, but what can you do.

I still need to weave in the ends, which I will probably do tomorrow so I can wear this to work by the end of the week and out this weekend when I go to the beach!

And, with that, months and months of in-front-of-TV knitting is done. Finally!

Is it autumn yet?

For some reason, I'm really, really looking forward to the fall this year. I've got four five projects lined up for fall/winter knitting, mostly with stash yarn, and that's exciting.

But since there's still a tiny bit of summer left, I'm almost finished with...



Orangina! I'm about ten rows of ribbing away from the end. Then I have to block it, seam it, and weave in the ends. So I'm almost done. Sort of. Maybe. (The picture is not-so-good because I have yet to find a good light in my room and so I have to fiddle with Photoshop.)

But I'm really excited for autumn. Wool sweaters! That will knit up faster than Orangina because they won't be in 4-ply! Attacking the stash head-on! Yeah! Go team!

Or something like that.

a Finished Bamboo Ballerina

Or the first in a series of ballet-named camisoles:


Pattern: Bamboo Ballerina, size medium
Yarn: Sirdar Snuggly DK, color 355 "Chocolate," 3 skeins.
Needles: Denise 6s

Mods: No. But there should've been many.

I have a love-hate relationship with this pattern. It is so sexy coming off the needles, and I feel pretty with it on. But oh, oh, how they have you knit it! The finishing details! It's all very bizarre. It would be just as easy to make a "wrong side as right side" ribbed tank with waist shaping in the round, and it would avoid certain issues I had, such as: seaming on the wrong side (there's a reason you will see no closeups on the seams. I am not in love.) which is actually the right side, placement of the decreases on the wrong side (again, actually the right side,) the straps.

Everything about the straps is so strange. They fall in an odd place, perhaps being due to lack of binding off for the armholes, so the straps are knit on the edges of the piece, and then the pattern calls for the back of the straps to be shorter than the front so the seam on the straps is on my back instead of the top of my shoulders.

It just seems very odd for a pattern obsessed with little details (not just paired decreases, but paired increases! and a hem!) in making a beautiful knit garment, isn't also concerned with the straps. The arm holes and the straps just seem like after-thoughts.

If I was to make another Bamboo Ballerina, I would work it in the round up to the armholes, cast off stitches underneath the armholes which would allow the straps to be moved in, and either work the straps in one long piece, grafting to the back, or adjust the placement of the straps so the graft or 3 needle bindoff was squarely on my shoulders.

Although, I must disclaim that I printed off this pattern when it was still offered as a free without purchase pattern, and it may have been revised since then. Hopefully it has, and the straps are no longer wonky.

(A better view of the wonkyness of straps. Look at how happy I am about them!)


And why yes, that may be a finished Dream Swatch on my head! I'll write more about that pattern after the scarf-length one is blocked, but I'll leave you with this scary antm-style passport photo/mug shot until there are better pictures of it.



Fierce, right? ...yeah, I'm sorry too, you guys.

Almost to the finish-line does not a good blog make.

Things I have been working on, but not blogging about:


(hmm, what is that Knitscene doing there? ...I am not looking for a new project to knit, noooo.)

From left to right: Bamboo Ballerina (the big dark blob,) Ballet Camisole (green,) Knitty's Satchel (grey blob,) and Dream Swatch that is scarf length. Not picutred is head wrap length Dream Swatch, because that has been on my head for two days straight. I attempted photos, but the light was horrible (as you can tell from the first shot,) so now I am waiting for Monday and my very patient photographer.

Bamboo Ballerina: One seam and the seam ends away from being done! Excitement. I'll have more to say on the pattern and everything on the fo post (possibly Tuesday, depending on Photographer.) provided I actually finish. You never know.

Ballet Camisole: I started this on the 28th, I think, and it's been done with the knitting and the ends have been woven in for over a week. It's just been waiting on a crochet hook for the edging. Why haven't you seen it before? Because there is nothing to blog about with the pattern. It is pretty much a perfect pattern. Now that I have the right size crochet hook, I am off to pretend I know how to crochet, and then after some blocking it will be done! So look for that in a week or two.

Satchel: Man. Felted bags. I finished up the dream swatches, so I wanted something on the needles for when I couldn't take seaming or weaving in ends anymore. A felted bag seemed the perfect way to use the highland wool that has been sitting in my yarn stash for almost two years. Now I just have to rip out the body of the original tempting that half of this yarn went into, and I'll be off and away on this.

Dream Swatch: I cast on for this after I finished up the knitting on the Ballet Camisole because I needed something simple to work on while I focused on finishing all the projects in my "needs to be finished" box. Then I made it really long, so it was a scarf/belt blob that I need to block (waiting for my tennis sweater sleeves to finish) and so I cut out a cable repeat and made a smaller one for my hair with the rest of the yarn left.

And that's basically what's been going on the past two weeks. I will be back on Tuesday with a FO post of one of these. I have no idea which one, but I am guessing it will not be the Satchel.

zombies!

I live! And I am knitting again!

I had a week off last week, so I took my knitting up with me. I didn't get too much done there (up in Tahoe), but I sure got a lot done once I came back to work and the internet was down:



Soon, soon, I too will have a cute lace top like Kati.

I've visited four yarn stores in the past two weeks -- Three Dog Knit in Tahoe City, Jimmy Beans Wool in Truckee (it's right at the Amtrak/Greyhound station! How convenient!), and the two Los Altos stores (Full Thread Ahead and Uncommon Threads) today.

Also, I've officially broken my yarn diet, which I've been on since Black Sheep Gathering (the end of June!) to buy some discontinued and discounted Yorkshire Tweed Aran from Jannette's Rare Yarns on eBay. I'm going to design something of my own. Because hey, why not? It's an experiment, and hopefully it'll look cool.

Besides, my mom bought yarn today too. We went to get a pom-pon maker and she walked out with two skeins of mohair from each store. So there.

It's the end of the world as we know it:

So I was going to make a post a few days ago about all my unfinished projects and call it the "land of the ufos," but... I finished something!


My Razor Cami to be exact!

Pattern: Ohmystars' Razor Cami
Yarn: Sirdar Snuggly 4ply, color 377 or "putty," just over two skeins.*
Needles: Clover Bamboo size 5

Mods: Cast on 204 stitches, added an inch to the ribbing, divided stitches so more were in the back than the front when splitting for the front, moved straps in.

*Without adding the extra ribbing, and being prepared to use r2 sparkle or other yarn for the straps, you could probably make the 38-42" bust (204 stitches) with just two balls.

Also I joined a knitalong! Kati's first knitalong, aww. ...Maybe that's how I managed to finish this. *l*

Most people have been asking about the straps of the cami, concerned that they're too far out. I figured that I could avoid this problem by having more stitches belong to the "back" of the cami, thus making the front less wide. Even after that, I though the straps would be too wide at the edges. So I tried on the cami and figured out where the straps should go from there, picking up stitches where I wanted the straps to be.

Because of how I split the stitches for the front and back, to stay in pattern I had to decrease on the edges every pattern row. If I worked the cami again, I would do double decreases on some rows so that I wouldn't have to move the straps in.



A shot of the back.

I still may go back and move in the straps on the back so they don't go straight across, but follow the line of the other straps, but we'll see.


Seated shot of the back with celebratory beer.


And one last shot, for my lovely photographer, who insisted that the pizza needed to be in the shot. Since she took like seven million photos for me, in various locations, she can have her pizza shot. But not eat it, because I already did. Ha.