Knitting Pharm

Naughty, knotty Koigu

That is all.

Cake can undo any ill

Thank you for all of the birthday wishes and comments.  I had a wonderful, cake-filled, butter-frosted day, despite a few changes in plans.  Nothing like a birthday to bring out the Febrile UpChucking Kid.  (capitalization intended; look a little closer, and know that I'm not nearly as upset as the flowery language may imply.)

With my sweet Laurel in her sad state, I opted to stay home with the people I love last night.  We oinked on nachos with the best guac I've ever tasted, cake and chocolate.  Not a glamourous evening by any stretch, but a ton of fun.

Amy, at 4 1/2, is starting to get interested in knitting, so I figured no time like the present.  I have a knit-in-round stockinette project going on a large needle, which seemed perfect for her beginning fingers.  She took to it like a duck to water!

It warms my heart to see her so excited about it, and I'm certain Laurel will follow in her footsteps in no time at all.

The sweater for little West Coast Sarah is coming along, with just the sleeves left.  I worked a 3x3 brioche rib a la Grumperina's Roza's socks pattern on the bottom edge, and will do the same on the sleeves.

Sort-of-secret baby project is now finished.  Kindly avoid my Ravelry notebook if you're presently with child.  You likely know who you are.

Rounding out my month of sweaters is another pair of socks, Becca "Anticraft" Compton's Vinnland.  My only mods so far were to work gussets and a heel flap, adding the fun and addictive stitch pattern to the flap.  I love the effect.

I'm using some Koigu I purchased in Toronto last fall, and I got yet another joint-laden yarn skein!  My mom suggested, and I think she's right, that I don't get more joins per skein than the average person, I just go through far more skeins.  In any case, with the short yardage of Koigu, I didn't have the luxury of not using the wee yarn bits, so there will be lots of working in ends.

Looking at those photos, I think I'd prefer for the front surface of the toe to be ribbed.  Much frogging may ensue.

In 3.....2.....1.....

Come on in, the sweaters are fine

When I let my blogging go as long as I did this time, I always wonder where to begin.  This time, I'll dispense with the excuses and dive right in!

The finishing of Thermal sent me into a sweater frenzy that has yet to abate.  With about eleventy thousand friends "up the stump" (thanks Dad, for the charming, I suspect British, reference to pregnancy) and many neglected little folk in my circle of friends, I started with the small sweaters and just kept going.

Amy's Cascade 220 sweater was the first one done, and she loves it.

The whole point of this sweater was for her to have buttons to match the ones on my Thermal, so I made a twisted rib faux placket (look ma, no buttonholes!) as I worked the upper body.

BFF Nancy's son Charlie has turned two, and has also not received a holiday present from Aunt Fun, so a lil' letterman sweater was in order for him.

[I can't wait to see him in it.]

Wee Tyler will be 3 in the spring, just after his baby brother or sister arrives, so he gets to be a letterman too.

Both of the sweaters are worked in Sirdar Denim Tweed DK from a bargain bin.  Nice to work with, and a bit of cotton content, so it makes a nice, soft fabric.  I worked the two sweaters in different gauge and actually preferred the firmer gauge of the 3.5 mm needle I used for Tyler's.

Next was the fulfillment of a request from a dear old friend who will welcome her second child, a baby girl, in the spring.  Little Lauren will look just ducky in this.  I especially like the little fairy buttons.

[Yarn is Bernat Naturals Soy.  Surprisingly pleasant knit.]

Little Sarah was born last year, but she lives on the opposite coast, so I rarely get to see her parents.  (Mum is a high school friend.)  This has put me terribly behind on kid knitting, so this is a toddler sweater that I hope will fit her in the fall.  The yarn is Cherry Tree Hill Supersock and I'll post a more up-to-date progress photo in the next day or 2.  For now, you get this:

[Solid colour is Navy, variegated is Dusk.]

One last sweater is a secret, and I've set a crazy deadline for it, so there will hopefully be photos on my next post.

To round things out, I finished Jason's socks.  I'm not in the mood for socks these days, but I think he'll like them.

So, the magic formula for the sweaters, beyond blind obsession, is my persistent tinkering with the top-down raglan formula I've used many times before.  I've made a major change to the method:  when casting on for the neckline, I cast on the stitches prescribed within the worksheet PLUS one stitch for every row that will be worked before changing to the round PLUS the stitches that are intended to be cast on at centre front to complete the circle.

I join in the round immediately after casting on, work the neckband, then work short rows to shape the neck's front.  Instead of increasing at the end of each row, I work one more stitch than on the previous row, wrap and turn.  This creates a clean neckline, no raw edges, and one less step, as the sweater grows from a completed neckband.  Does this make sense in the least?

Tomorrow I'll be busy turning 36, celebrating today's surgeon visit, my resulting clean bill of health, and my weather permitting return to KOL.  My wish is for a healthy year, a comment from each lurker who reads this post, and 100 public Bloglines subscribers by the end of January.  Little help?

Thermalicious

With a gentle nudge from my pal Wendy to both finish the sweater and to blog it, I am pleased to present my finished Thermal, aka The Nicest Piece I've Ever Handknitted For Myself.

Click for bigger versions of the teeny ones.

  

[Apologies for the dorky photo.]

This is the best fitting, most squishy-soft, comfy piece ever.  I love everything about it, even the cutesy buttons I've been reclaiming from garments ever since the original sweater purchase of 1996.  (Those buttons are a very well-traveled bunch.)

The photos don't do it justice at all.  The set-in sleeves, the deep, scoopy neck, the just-right sleeve length and abundant twisted rib...

All of this has set me into sweater mode.  I've already started and finished one for BFF Nancy's son for his 2nd birthday / late holiday gift.  I'll post photos once I remember to take some in daylight.

Next sweater is for DD Amy in Cascade 220, a top-down raglan that I'll also post photos of later on.  It's really flying off the needles, and she's sure to wear it by month's end.  After that will be another one in the same colour for DD Laurel.  (They haven't yet rebelled against the matchy-matchy clothing, so I still indulge in it more than occasionally.)

In other knits, I cast on a bag so I'd have some plain knitting to do at the theatre while I watched the best new movie I've seen in years.  The yarn is the Bernat felting stuff, which isn't too bad, very Lopi-like.

Also, the first handknitted socks for my BIL, whose wife has had her holiday socks on every day and is making him very jealous.  These are in SR Kertzer On Your Toes, the sock yarn with a smidge of aloe.  It's an awful yarn, very scratchy for one with aloe.  It also had a very, very awkward join, where the patterning actually reversed!  After much winding I managed to salvage enough for the pair, but I'm quite annoyed and won't bother with the yarn again.

And socks for the other BIL are done and awaiting their postal trip west.

And just one more,a  secret project that went off in the mail to the States today.

Yesterday I had a wonderful visit from Ms. Yes and her littlest kids.  She was sporting the most awesome pair of Back to Basics socks, and we caffeinated, kvetched and, of course, knitted.  Now I'm dying to get my hands on some CotLin from Knitpicks so I can work a Tussie Mussie just like hers!

The girls (my 2, her 1) had a great play and got along famously.  Wee Gabriel?  Maybe it was the yarn fumes.  Maybe it was the lure of the squishy bean bag chair.

   

Or maybe, just maybe, he was just bored.

It just felt(ed) right

No sick talk anymore, just reports on smokin' fast knitting!  I have found my groove, then frogged it and knitted myself another one, all at my former blistering pace.

It wasn't really a resolution, as I've long since given up making them, but my UFOs were starting to bother me, taking up room and taunting me from the corners of my living room.  My revenge was to finish, finish and finish some more!

First was the swirly felted bag, oversized, boxy and about eleventy billion kinds of awesome.

Steph is right, she's awesome enough to deserve a lining, but that didn't stop me from using her today.  When I get the urge to sew a bit, I think I'll line her in chocolate brown.  Isn't she darling?

One last yarn run allowed me to finish David's clogs, not in time for the holiday but at least before his January birthday.  While on a yarn run at Michael's in the city, I had a chat with a random fellow knitter in the book section, and she turned out to be a blog reader (Hi Kim!).  She promises to get a blog or to at least delurk in 2008, so let's encourage her.

Here are David's finished clogs, denim blue and denim/baby blue twist.

I have officially graduated from Rockin' Sock Club 2007, with a perfect 6.0 GPA (all pairs completed).  I'd really put me more at a 5.0, since it took me a few kits to get into the groove of using other designer's construction methods.  Thanks to a loving husband who despises shopping for birthday pressies for the wife who has everything and needs nothing, I'm back in the Club for 2008.  Here are the Salish Sea Socks, in the exclusive colourway Bella Coola, medium weight.

While clearing out the UFO bin, I couldn't leave a second sock hanging, so I worked the other Retro Rib in Panda Wool.  These were simply a pleasure to work, and the resulting socks are very squishy and have nice elasticity.  I have 3 skeins in another colourway in the Panda Wool, probably enough for knee highs, so I'll be playing with it in the fairly near future.  The colourway below is Red Cinnamon.

And for the brother-in-law with the misfortune of moving west to Edmonton in January (brrrrrrrrrr!), socks are in progress, in Trekking.  His size 12 feet mean an endless, plain knit.  I'm working them toe-up in 4x2 rib, and the photo is a bit behind the times, as I completed the leg of the first sock this morning en route to a meeting, and worked about half of sock #2 over the course of said meeting.

Off to write and backdate a post with some (scary) promised stats from 2007.  I won't do a full round-up of 2007, but if you click here, there are monthly tallies starting last January.  It's a little nuts.  You've been warned.

Sock stats 2007

As promised, the sock stats for the year 2007.

Total pairs completed:  79

Total pairs completed during the 52 pair plunge part of 2007 (April 1 - December 31):  63

Average pairs per month in 2007:  6.5

Average pairs per month during the 52 pair plunge:  7

Fewest pairs completed in a given month:  2 in December

Most pairs completed in a given month:  9 each in June and August

Breakdown by month:

• January - 8
• February - 3
• March - 5
• April - 9
• May - 8
• June - 9
• July - 5
• August - 9
• September - 7
• October - 7
• November - 7
• December - 2

Phew!  Someone needs to take break and knit a sweater!

Head to Toe Catch-up

Now that things are back to reasonably normal, I'm trying to close off 2007 by finishing up my head to toes for the year.

October 2007

For the feet:

• Online socks
• Jeweled Steps in Koigu KPPPM
• Hybrid Bartholomew/Marina Piccolo socks in Cherry Tree Hill Supersock
• Spiraling Coriolis in Natural Dye Studios yarn from KOL swap
• Sea Wool Anklets with mock-cabled gussets
• Undulating Rib in STR lightweight
• Lenore (club sock) in STR lightweight

For little people:

• Silken Slippers in Fleece Artist Merino and Handmaiden Sea Silk

For the head:

• Tiny hat in handspun
• Adult hat in handspun

November 2007:

For the feet:

• Roza's socks in Lorna's Laces
• Anita's Online socks
• Loksins in Fleece Artist Sea Wool
• Loksins in off-white Kroy
• Pomatomus in off-white Kroy
• Skacel Lifestyle socks
• Pomatomus in purple Opal

For the body:

• Harriet's Flower shawl in Knitpicks Shadow
• Helen's shawl in Louet Gems Opal
• Amy's shawl in London-Wul mohair

December 2007:

For the feet:

• Bartholomew's Tantalizing socks in Black Bunny Fibers merino
• Charade socks in Fleece Artist Merino
• Clogs for David P.

Other:

• Swirly felted bag in Patons Classic

I'm now off to do some sock tallies, which I'll post shortly.  Happy 2008, all!