Fresh and New Adventures

I did some knitting yesterday but my brother came for a quick overnight stop.  He is fun to sit and talk with about geography and the many ways there are to experience a place while travelling and kids and grandkids (though he has no grandkids yet, he is familiar with mine) and things from when we were kids and things we did and places we lived and so much more.  I just enjoy talking to him.   

He did go for a walk to downtown Mundare and stopped by Lori's Eats and Treats  and he brought some of her great food home.  We have had her wonderful Jamaican patties before and some of her jerk chicken too.  She is a great cook and you can find her at the Ardrossan Farmers Market, the Morinville Farmers Market and the Farmers Market at the Terwillegar Rec Center parking lot in Edmonton as well as here in Mundare.  Lionel, my brother picked up some soup that I can't wait to try for lunch and a taste of her Jamacan yam pudding.  The pudding is a little bit like my yam pie/pudding but gentler and more complex.  There a raisins in it too and let me tell you, it is magical.  He brought back some of her fresh bread too and some of her amazing onion and cheese buns.  You haven't had onion buns till you have tried hers.  Lori is amazing. 

Because I had to tidy up some to get the spare bedroom/sewing room/storage room ready for an overnight, I spent part of my day taking a good long look at my skirt patterns before I folded them up to set away for a bit.  Like usual, I have been avoiding them because I have no confidence in my ability to draft and measure.  I should have a belief in me because after measuring them against my body once again, they should work.  Plus, I have fabric, that old sheet to try them out on.  

I only have one sheet though so, I will only be able to try one pattern on complete waster material. I have to decide between the basic A line, a 200% A line suitable for soft gathers or pleats and a half circle skirt.  The one that will have most value to me (I think) will be the 200% A line because it deals with some of the fit issues I have. I am very hopeful that I can make an A line or the half circle skirt to accommodate my body shape though. It would be nice to have a smooth fitting waist. I am very interested in the other patterns because they could easily be adapted to pants or culotte style pants as well.  

I am going to hit the sewing room to see what other fabrics I have that I can use for a trial skirts and see what happens.  Plus I have to invent a pocket/skirt opening so that I can still avoid zippers.  I have lots of pattern paper and a good idea of what I want. I just need to make it work in real life.

So off on another adventure with knitting tucked into corners of the day.  The sky is clear and promises to be warm.  After our rain earlier this week, the grass is green everywhere and the trees are fully budding.  The world is all fresh and new and it looks like it is going to be a very good day.

Monogamous Stripes

Yes, still working on this top.  I know that the main colour is a plain greige (and therefore already a complex colour) but the rose pinks and greens and golden say spring. 

I seem to be able to do one stripe sequence a day so not a lot but acceptable.  Each sequence is 4 cc, 2 mc, 7 cc, 2 mc, 4 cc, 4 mc.  That seems to be keeping my dream of a greige top with multi colour stripes alive.  I am only on the second ball of the greige yarn ight now, so I should have at least enough for solid greige sleeve cuffs.  If the bottom needs some sort of striping, that will be fine.

The really interesting thing is how far the Adam and Eve multi colour is going.  This particular skein is a very soft set of the colours of Bird of Paradise.  The tones are delicate and muted.  

The skein I am working with is the top left skein on this pile of yarn.  See how soft the greens are?  They are the palest dusty green and that is why this is working so well.  As you can see on the skein and the sweater, the pink is the power colour.  The other skeins all vary, with one where the strongest colour is the golden tones and the others where the teal speaks volumes.  

I am in the very merry middle of this top.  I am just going to keep working on the body because I don't want to have to cut yarns and if I can, I want the entire top make with this palest skein of multi colour.  

It isn't often that I am project monogamous  but  this top is really moving along.  Stripes help.  Just sayin'.

Problem Solver

And this morning I have plenty of pep.  Life is weird.  It may have had something to do with an all day rain yesterday.  I love the sounds of rain.

I knit a fair bit yesterday.  

When I started, I was two or three rows above the arm hole.  I had to try it on first to be sure that it was long enough and that my math wouldn't fail me.  All is well.  Now it is just knitting till it is time to do some body increasing in my usual manner.  It is striped so it feels like it is knitting up fast.  It is happy knitting.

Happy knitting means lots of good thinking time.

I was wearing this very simple top that I made a few years ago and thinking about how much I enjoy wearing it. It is Blanche by Veronica Jobe.  

  

I made it straight across at the back neck and gave it a bit of hip shaping but that was it for mods.

The sleeves are just right and the fit is perfect.  It is so comfortable to wear.  

In my meandering thoughts, I asked myself why I wasn't using this as the basis for the shaping of the teal top.  I actually stopped knitting, it was so an earth shattering.  I asked myself that again.

All along, the plan for the teal sweater was to use the sort of short row shaping that the Elysium vest has.   It would work so well for how this sweater is knit, with it's vertical garter stitch, but I was having such trouble getting the stitch counts right.  I spent way too much time fussing with that already.  The project is currently in a corner.  BUT, if I use the dimensions from the green top and do all the shaping at the side 'seams', I can just keep knitting and not worry.  I don't have to set up arm holes.  I don't have to try to match short rows.  I don't have to worry about matching the longer back hem.  I can just knit.  This is simpler shape is exactly what I needed.

So that resolves that conflict.  And I can get back to that sweet top.  After this greige one is complete.  Of course.

Not peppy this morning.

I worked hard on the little greige striped top yesterday.  I did do a lot of thinking about all the other things on my needles and why on earth I am not knitting on them.  The answer is, most of them are thinking things or are at the thinking stage.  Counting, deciding shaping, and a dozen other details are in the way of free and easy knitting on them and that is why I am knitting on a little uncomplicated raglan top. No matter.  I am still knitting and in the end, that is really all that matters.

The little top is about to be divided for the armholes and then, for a little while the knitting will go fast again.  I am debating knitting the sleeves before finishing the body again.  I really would like to see proposed short sleeves finish off with a greige ribbing.  If I do them first, then I don't have to think about it while I work on the body.  

I am thinking about sewing.  I would love to be finished sewing but even there, I am practising avoidance.  I have my skirt patterns to test and I think I am chicken.  Correct that.  I know I am chicken.  I am not sure what I am chicken about.  Learning that my pattern drafting wasn't as good as it felt like it would be?  Learning that the thinking behind what I did is not perfect for my body?  Learning that I still have to factor in a side closure because I really don't want to sew in zippers?   Worry that I will waste fabric?  It isn't any one thing.  It is all the things.  I just need to push myself to do it.  

In the meantime, I did a bit of baking. 

I love pumpkin pie but I really didn't feel like making a crust.  I did my next favourite thing and just made pumpkin pudding.  I love the spices and the rich taste of it.  I don't even miss the crust.  

Not sure what I will focus my energy on today.  I am not even sure if I really have any energy today.  It is just one of those days.  So be it. I wll focus on the success of my pumpkin pudding. I will knit on little greige tops till I feel peppy.  That greige.  The rose and oranges and golds and greens will be my salvation.    

Magic

One of the last steps making the kitty, was to embroider his nose, eyes and mouth as well as to mark his toes.  I needed a finer black yarn so I was off to search in the leftovers bin.  I found what I wanted, but then something magical happened.

One of the first things I saw in the bin was this lovely yarn.  It is RCYs Adam and Eve in the Bird of Paradise colourway.  When I bought it, I had hoped that the colours would be closer because I wanted to make a fun summer top but you can just see the dye bath exhaust through the skeins.  I didn't know it at the time, but it was the last of the yarn they had so it was what it was.  Most of it was the strong clear colours but two balls were quite different in tone.  It wouldn't do quite what I wanted. That can happen with hand dyes.  I used some of it for a hood and wrist warmers for Olga and I knew there would be lots of things I could do with the rest.

Sitting right beside it in the bin was some griege yarn.

There were five balls left after making a tunic with it a few years ago.  It is listed as green but reads as the greyest of greens ever.  It is such a wonderfully neutral green and beside the bright colours of the Bird of Paradise, it was stunning.  Magic.

I had to knit with both.  The need consumed me so I cast on a Tolsta Tee.  My stripe sequence is set to use as little of the griege as I can get away with.  I have tons of the multi colour but not so much of the griege. 

And I just knit and knit.  It is a lot of fun.  My hope is that by knitting something striped, the hue changes will matter less and be the perky colour that I need right now.  So far I love it.  The hues just don't look close to what is in front of me. It does not photograph particularly well but in real life, yummy yummy, yummy. I hope to be able to do solid greige for the cuffs and bottom ribbing.  I would like to pretend that it is my main colour and the stripes the accent.  I want a griege t shirt with coloured stripes and not the other way around.   

Sometimes you might have plans for knitting.  Sometimes the plans don't happen and you follow an different path.  It's okay.  It is your knitting after all and there are no knitting police.

And in case you were wondering where the kitty went, it went to my Owen who claimed both ball and kitty right out of the mystery box.  

And now on to a couple more kittys and much more work on the striped tee. 

Finished Things!

Finished things! I want to run around and shout because of finished things! 

Yesterday while pondering if I wanted to redo the kitty body, I was doing a bit of reading through patterns and one of them said ' If you can make a ball, you can make this'.  I have never crocheted a ball so I thought maybe it's time.

I have no idea how to actually make a ball.  Most of my crochet, ok, all of my crochet has been flat, not structural.  I made baskets once but still.  I used the pattern A Large Fluffy Stress Ball by Maegatrons Market, a free on Ravelry and made only one change.  With the Blanket yarn, I found I needed to use eight stitches to make the right shape at the start.  Six stitches would have been great if you wanted a football.  That probably has more to do with my tension and personal crochet gauge than anything else. I stuffed it with what I had on hand, ahem, the remainders of the yarn from last years blankets.  

I decided to just keep going on the kitty.  This is just the test kitty and I wanted to see it all complete.

I am thrilled.

I did make a few mods on this kitty.  I shortened the legs by one round and I made the tail differently.  I used a simple 20 stitch chain (or 14.  I can't remember) and then slipped stitch back.  It gave his wee tail the littlest bit of curl naturally.

Because of the yarn choice he is about 8 inches long without the tail.  Its a really cute pattern and now I have to do it again with Marcus' yarn for a kitty that looks like his beloved Casper.

Kitty, Day Two

The kitty continues.  

It looks just the smallest bit gruesome at this point. (It may be influenced by the book I am reading.  Very good but hard in a psychological thriller/mystery sort of way rather than my usual cozy mystery) I need to redo the fist leg.  It is too long so I will take out one row and I want to redo to make it sit a nicer angle to the body.  

The pattern I am using is the Mittens the Realistic Cat.  I would link to the website but the website is so full of ads that you cannot see any content.  And now I am going to have to get the powers that be to run a virus thingy on my laptop.  

With respect to the designer.  I do not have her permission but considering her website...

The pattern is really sweet and according to her Ravelry page, the designer has a lot of nice little things. This pattern is only recently released and has no makes yet but I will give it a go.  I am struggling with the way the pattern is written but that is most likely because I learned to crochet eons ago and my familiarity with terms and processes is not quite how patterns are written today.  I will insert a dadgummit and plea age. 

She gives a stitch count for each row but my counts are not matching.  This doesn't bother me at all and the shapes are coming out as the pattern, which is heavily photographed, seems to be.  The leg holes look different and I figured out why just now as I was writing. It will mean going back to redo much of the body, but I am okay with that.

This whole kitty is a test kitty anyway so I am not bothered by it.  Plus, I know what to do instead.  Someone has to make a thing first and post it publicly so it may as well be me.  

In the mean time, I made a little funny for Marcus.   

Cat slippers for his kitty Mochi.  

Insert loony grandmotherly laughter here. Bahahahaha

1, 2, 3...

This is going to be a busy day.  

I am making this.  

In case you are not seeing it, it is a kitty.  A sweet little kitty made with very thick yarn.  I am having huge fun but for one thing.  

Counting.  

Nobody tod me there was so much counting or math in yarn things back when I started.  (1970 ish with respect to crochet)

Maybe knitting and crochet should come with a math aversion warning?  

Still it is cute and it is working up fast.

Brilliant Yellow Things

This is a very behind sort of morning.  My roomie is on vacation and I mean to leave him sleep in. I may have taken that farther than I planned today because by the clock and the standards of my usual day, I am two cups of coffee behind.

I found it a bit too much for my hands to work on the Linger sweater and though I spent a whole day trying to sort out the next step on the top I am working on (setting up for sleeves and hip line increases), the math defeated me.  I cannot count. Math?  My nemesis.  I will defeat it but I needed something as a balm for my wounded ego. 

The balm for that wound needed to be something bright a shiny and lovely.  Luckily I have just the thing on my needles.    

This brilliant yellow made me feel so much better.  

The yarns are from Arcane Fibre Works  , an Alberta dyer with the most brilliant multi colours on the market and semi solids that compare in sheer vibrancy.  The two I have here are Sun Yellow and Prairie Storm. I think.  I am not going to double check because they have tons of multi colours but I urge you to check them out.

The pattern is by a Danish knitter and writer who is no longer selling the pattern.  I had it in my deep computer stash because I knit one a good long time ago.  It was one of my favourite things to wear and I am looking forward to having it in my wardrobe again.  I love those little pops of colour between the brilliant semi solid yellow.

I have a bunch of things to do today and with the late start on all the things, it is time to get a move on it. More knitting?  You bet.

Practise, Practise

I didn't sew yesterday. i think it was holdover stress from the pattern drafting.  My heart wanted socks so I did socks.

My April pair is finished and I couldn't be happier.  I am wearing them right now and they are perfect.   

I was going to cast on another pair with the yarn I wound last week but I ended up pulling out one of the other pairs of socks on my needles.

I bought Operation Sock Drawer a few years ago.  It's a great book for every sock knitter.  

In a blast of new book-itis, I cast on a couple pairs from it and then never got back to working on them.  

This is the A Drawer Full pattern from it.  I am using a patterned sock yarn from Meilienweit for the colours and a plain grey Trekking yarn from Lana Grossa.  As you can see, it is a sock of socks, which makes me happy.

I picked these up because I taught myself to knit colourwork with the yarns held in one hand and it felt like a good time to practise the technique making a thing where the results are something no one ever looks at closely.  My hope is that by the time this pair of socks are done, I will be ready to put it into practise working on this vest

and on a whole host of other stranded things.  I have some beautiful things planned. Plus my blanket of blue yarn from my grandkids.

A math headache

The whole day yesterday was spent in the sewing room.  NOT SEWING.

But I was very engaged with the process of sewing.  I was drafting a skirt pattern.  From scratch.  A skirt can be made from a basic rectangle of fabric gathered and at its most simple, tied front and back at your waist with ties.  This was how most skirts for ordinary people were sewn for centuries.  Today elastic is a great closure solution for a skirt.  A casing at the waist makes it simple,  

The trouble with this sort of skirt is that there is a lot of fabric at the waist.  Whatever the bottom of your skirt is in width is bunched up, gathered or pleated at your waist.  It works but it is not optimal if your fabric is anything but the lightest.  Even a plain poplin or gingham is almost too thick for really good results.  I wanted something a bit different without quite so much weight.

Since I started knitting, I have become very daring about making comfortably fitting garments. I have no fear about trying to make a pattern for myself that fits how I want it to fit.  I have been watching some of the very talented people on youtube and I found something I could work with, a video on the math of skirt making by the very talented and wise Mariah Pattie. Yesterday was all about putting that math into practise.   

Because math, by the end of the day, I had three basic skirt patterns, and a worn out brain.  I couldn't put two thoughts together, so I retreated to my old standby, socks.

I knew I was getting close to the cuff.    

The fourth blue stripe was supposed to be the start of the ribbing.  Or not.  I just knit and knit.

I put it down and went to bed.  

Today the sun is shining bright and the air is fresh and crisp and everything is new.  I will sort out the socks today and am going to try out skirt pattern one with an old sheet to see if my pattern works. I am looking forward to the challenge.  

Still Dreaming

Sock knitting is progressing and I am approaching readiness to sew.  I am still in the thinking stage, which is nice because some other stuff is moving past the thinking stage into the how to do a thing stage.  

I have been planning of working on my miniature house again.  Not the house precisely.  The garden. I have been dreaming and thinking about a miniature garden since forever.  I have the books to prove it.  

Lots of good ideas long before I learned to knit.  The Embroidered Garden by Owen Davies.    Once I started knitting, there was lots of support.  

Hannelore Wernhard's The Knitted Farmyard and Jan Messent's Knitted Farmyard and lastly

the Mini Knitted Farmyard by Sachiyo Ishi

My mini house is in a cabinet  and it has a fairly thick base.  It is up on a table so I can work on it easily and for a long time, the table was going to be all the space I could use for a garden.  Recently, with all the moving and sorting I have been doing, I managed to find a bit more room.    

Since then I have been planning and figuring out how to get what I wanted out of the space I have and my head is full of plans.  I have been preparing by watching all sorts of youtube videos about all sorts of weird model making techniques.  So much to learn.  

Today is not the day to do though.  Today is the day to get my sewing in order.  The room is ready.  The repair pile is all done.  And it is time to put pattern and fabric together.  

Staying Strong

Its time to do some sewing again.  I have been thinking abut what my wardrobe needs and what I want to wear and am comfortable wearing for a good long while, all winter really, and it is time to get to it.  There has been a long absence of sewing here and it really is time for some.

To that end, I have been looking at my sewing fabric stash. I know pretty well what I have on hand, and most of it is very useable and desirable.  A few of the things are not quite what I would buy again though my luck buying online has been really really good.  

Still, just like knitting and yarn, even though I have some on hand, I like to play fabric store shopping.  I enjoy seeing what is out there for me to play with.  Yesterday was hard.  There is a good sale on fabrics right now at my favourite online vendor and the hard part is not buying any.  There are so many interesting things that would be lovely to wear and make.  It gets my imagination going and I am free to dream about how I would use all those lovely things.  

Just like shopping in store though, you can't take everything home, and even if you could, would you want it? When and where would I wear it all?  And when would I make it all?  I have enough trouble using all my yarn, so leaving fabric at the fabric store takes practise but I am getting better at it.  

I fill my cart online and then leave it for  the rest of the day while I think about it.  I dig in my fabric and look and dream with what I can touch and feel and I feel good.  Usually, I can leave the cart be and I empty it in the morning.

The sale (one of many) goes on for another day or two and till then I am just going to be strong and work with what I have.  But when it is mostly used, then oh then...

Linger and I are getting along quite nicely, though we did not get as far along as we hoped.  Half Fisherman's rib takes a good long time to look like progress. After a good day with heavy fabric, it seemed wise to take it easier.

I picked up socks because I am a bit behind on my loose target of a pair a month.  I wanted to catch up so that I will get a pair done this month.  It was a race weekend so I wanted something easy too.

It was time for a heel flap.  I am knitting the heel flap double stranded and that is part of the trouble with heel flaps.  It is a tightly knit fabric knit with a small needle and my heart wanted something easy and in the round.  I know I have the Musselburgh hat but I did not feel a hat in me right then.  I persevered and before you know it...

Heel!

After that success, I pulled out something I had been thinking about a lot.  It was time to decide exactly how I want the sleeves and where I want the shaping done.

I think I have it.  The markers are placed but it will take a few more rows till I have them just how I want it.  That is what I will focus on today.  

I will knit socks too, just ten rows a day.  Now that the heel is done, it becomes that thing that makes socks so much fun.  It is going to be a good day.

Moving Right Along

I knit a bit more on the body of the Linger sweater to get to the end of the grey skein but then it was time to switch over to sleeves. I will work those up and then go back to the body till the sweater is long enough.

The interesting part of sleeves is going to be the mental adjustment that I have to make between knitting the Half Fisherman's Rib fat versus knitting it in the round.  It is mentally easy flat.  There is a nice rest row and no trouble remembering just where you are.  In the round, it gets trickier.  The rest row remains but you are always on the right side and it is going to take much more work to be sure if it is a rest row or a pattern stitch row.

Still, it ought to go fast.  The rows add up fast.  Inches happen even when it seems like you have hardly knit at all.  

With a bit of luck, there will be at least one sleeve done before Monday and with a bit of effort, two.   

Cozy

I was cold yesterday.  I had on a light sweater and an Icelandic yarn shawl and I could have gone and put on another warmer sweater but chilly was just the impetus I needed to finish the rest of the details on Utkiek.  It was waiting for buttons and ends woven in making an otherwise finished sweater unwearable.  Silly as working on warm sweater might seem as a method of feeling warm, it worked.  

I was finishing up weaving in ends when I made a snap decision about the sleeves.  The last green section made them longer than I liked and rather than weaving in ends, I pulled back the whole of that last green part of the cuff.

I reknit a plain ribbed cuff on a much smaller needle.

The cuff fit the way an open sort of cuff usually does, but I  needed to shorten things a couple inches and I want it to fit close so that when the sweater is washed and in regular wear, the sleeves and cuffs will stay out of the way, even though they are full length. I rarely use a smaller needle. I don't worry about it because my usual is a three quarter length sleeve.   

And perfect.  I am really pleased with it.  That done, I slipped the sweater on.  

It was like a warm hug. And all encompassing hug.  A sigh of warm and cozy.  It put away the chill on my back and I was surrounded by warmth. 

I already love this sweater, and I only wore it for a small part of the day.  I am wearing it again today.  That wind may be les this morning but there still is a good early spring cold in the air.  And the sweater?  Still a warm kind of hug.

Linger not Lingering.

Socks done for the day.  It feels good to know that I am on track for my very generalized target.  My next up socks will not be simple plain socks, but they are not going to be my proposed Monkey socks either.  I am thinking of doing a pair of Broken Seed Stitch Socks .  I could use another pair.

As much as I am feeling spring, the weather sounds like winter. The wind howled like it wanted to be a blizzard, though it was not.  I picked up the Linger sweater yesterday.  Knitting it made me feel warmer.

Good news!  It is starting to feel like it is moving along briskly. It feels like a sweater.

It is a very simple knit and I am having a lot of fun with it even though the yarn combo I am using makes it heavy in my hands.  I have to knit only a few rows a day to take care of my hands but even so it is coming along.  

I am getting about four inches for each of the Galway Heather skeins.  

I should easily be able to get to the length I wanted.  

I am debating about knitting the sleeves at the end of this Galway skein because of this.

I have only four of the grey left and I have no idea how much each sleeve will use.  Half Fisherman's Rib, like its compatriot, brioche and patentsteek, takes more yarn than a plain rib.  I am allotting one full skein for each sleeve and I do hope that is enough.

I have tons of the blue teal.  I think I had twenty four balls of it and I have fifteen remaining.  Any ribbing I do, can easily be in the teal held double. No worry about running out of it.

The wind is howling again today and there was a skiff of snow over night.  I want to knit on Linger again but I am not sure my hands can take much.  Not sure I feel like the Noro and Silky Wool creation I am working on so I may knit on another little something today.  I do have choices.  Lots of choices in the WIPs bin.  I might surprise myself.

Getting There

I have made thee pairs of socks in 2024.  That equals the number of pairs that I completed last year. So far, it hasn't taken much of an effort to get socks going or to finish them.  I have managed to complete each pair without a lot of effort and it has been the usual sort of fun that socks are to me.

But lately, socks have not been on my radar at all.  It isn't that I am not interested in socks.  Not at all.  I remain a deeply devoted sock knitter and wearer.  It is just that there are so many other ideas and knits that are in my head it is hard to find the sock corner.

I am going to go back to the basics and knit seven and three each day till I get Aprils sock done 

and get Mays sock under way.

Just ten rows a day.  That will do it.  And then maybe some Monkey Socks.  

Mash up

 I sat down to start working on a something the other day.  I wanted to work on Linger, but did not have the feels for it.  I was feeling summery and light.  It is spring and I want to knit spring too.

I started working on the top that I made the Noro panels for.  I picked up and worked a few rows, and then...

Do you see it.  A twist.  Now this is not a circle.  It is a straight side of both panels, but it was twisted and there were yarn ends everywhere.  I wasn't feeling very positive.  I picked up my cup of tea which had been steeping for ten minutes.

And saw this.

I had forgotten to put the water in the cup.  I put the knitting down for the rest of the day.  I did not even knit on a sock because if things are going weird, it was time to walk away.

I putzed around but picked up the top Saturday morning. I untwisted the panels and set to work.  While I had put myself in the corner, I did figure out how to use my odd dyelot without really being able to see it.  

I knit four garter ridges of the teal and then knit one with the lighter dye lot.  Then I decided to do a row of the alternate Noro yarn I have and another ridge of the lighter dye lot before going back to a section of the darker teal.

I have two balls of the darker teal dyelot for each side of the top and one of the lighter.  That leaves me with one ball of the lighter dyelot for the neckband and any other finishing. By adding that Noro in, I should have lots to make a nice top.  Because the top is a winging it sort of thing, I do worry a bit as I work.  I have limited amounts of yarn and that always is a problem in my head.  

Because I have just had a good stash dive and because I have all my lovely things fresh in my head, I know that I have two other teal colour family yarns that could be used to finish this top and I have some purple that would work well too, depending how I do the sides.  There are also other colours of Noro that could be used.  If it is a colour mash top, then mashing as needed is good, right?

I am setting aside the worry about using yarns and running out of them and am just going to play.  Its garter stitch and that makes everything all right.

Nothing Much

I did sweet nothing yesterday.  I looked at the yarns.  I touched the yarns.  I wound yarns.  Beyond this, not a lot.  

The winding was sort of fun. I had one sock yarn to wind and it was time to wind the Midknit Cravings Comfort Sport Dk for a something.  It may yet be an Anyday Sweatshirt.   Winding is always fun but I kept wanting to see the Comfort Sport London Fog set beside the Tosh Dk.  

Interesting, right? Okay, maybe my fascination with both is mine alone, but it's cool.  

The sock yarn is something I picked up a few years ago on my epic adventure.  I do not remember where I found it.  I have never quite been sure about it.  It is a good sturdy tightly spun sock yarn, so that's what it will be.

 

And that was it for the day.  But there was lots of dreaming and thinking.  I just let it happen and you know what?  The usual post project slump is gone.  I am thinking I am going to focus on the Linger Cardigan again, so it is ready for cool rainy spring days and chilly summer mornings.

The Good, The Bad and the Problems

 Utkiek is finished.  

And I am thrilled and not so thrilled.  

I love it but I am a bit worried.  The back neck is wide. I may have started with too many stitches cast on so the back yoke seems too big.  The sleeves are a bit long too, but that is an easy fix.  Everything else is really great and I quite pleased.

Right now I am pondering redoing the cast off.  That would probably help to tighten up the back neck.  I could do a line of slip stitch  or single crochet across the cast on stitches just where the pickup row for the collar and button band is, to give the edge a bit more oomph.  Either way, I won't really know what will be best till after I give it a good blocking. I think that is particularly important for Lett Lopi.  This yarn loves to relax after a good water bath.

If you are interested in making a sweater like Utkiek, with its many texture stitches, do consider making a proper swatch with all the different stitches in it so you can see just how the gauges will work together.  The pattern suggests that you switch needles sizes as needed to ensure your chosen stitch designs end up being the same gauge.  I think that is part of the problem at the back of my neckline and you can see it in the bit of a wave at the seed stitch bottom.  Did I swatch them all?  Heck no and I regret it.  Enough to rip back?  Not at all.

I tried to be responsible this morning and picked up a sweater I have been avoiding.

This is round three, I think, for this yarn and I am just not enjoying it.  Because I am using four (or 5) different skeins of hand dyed yarns, I have been trying to avoid pooling by switching skeins every two rows, and I hate it.  I hate it so much that it is hard to pick it up to work on it.  I would much rather be knitting the Noro top 

or the pretty yellow sweater 

or the Anyday Sweatshirt in the Madelinetosh Tosh DK.  Or in the gorgeous London Fog colourway from Midknit Cravings. (That would be a bold move for me considering yarn quantities.) Or almost anything else in my stash.

I knit a few rows on the top this morning and made a decision.  I am not enjoying it so it is going to get ripped out.  And the yarn will be put away for a while. I made myself promise to do this.  This is a hard yarn to put back because I love the colours and I love the way it feels.  Plus it would be such a pretty top. I want it but life is too short to have a project and a yarn make me anxious.

The next time I use this yarn, it is going to be for a top where I do not care if it pools, where I will adopt the simple pleasure of letting it happen as it is.  I like that idea.

I am going to read the Anyday Sweatshirt pattern today and do a good gauge swatch.  I might think about starting it but no pressure.  I might work on socks.  I have some yarn from the stash to wind too. Plenty to keep me going till I get over this sweater hangover**.

**Sweater hangover  That hollow feeling you get after you completed a big project and know you can't knit on it any more.

Closer

Casting off the body.

It ended up taking all day between excursions to the yarn inspiration cabinet for other yarns to play with but it is done.  All that remains is to do a button band  

and weaving in ends and putting on buttons and so on, but it is done and I love it. Picking up for the button band has already begun.