One month, two conferences, and two countries later...

I did a LOT of running around, and had nearly no time for knitting except on ridiculously long
train rides, but I managed to make decent progress on my cape. Here's the full-body-so-far shot:
I am using the vague-ish instructions from Barbara Walker's Knitting from the top.
The idea is that a cape/cloak is just a raglan that does not separate at the underarm for sleeves.
Simple enough, I wrote out instructions for a top-down raglan cloak that includes some cable panels from Elsebeth Lavold's Viking Patterns for Knitting on the front edges, (s-hitches from Arde, p. 73), raglan non-sleeve (wide panel with little lattice, p. 51), and the back (Vigdis pattern, p.81 over 24 stitches). Here's some detail shots of the cables in the order listed above.


I am finding that the Lamb's Pride Worsted has great stitch definition even though I am knitting at a ridiculously loose gauge in order to felt this sucker, so I feel confident that the
cables will survive the felting process. I never realized what a good-value cable-knitting yarn this was, and I'll probably use it again for sweaters. I just wish the mohair was less scratchy, but I can put up with a bit of scratch.

One good (or bad) thing about conferences is that the organizers tend to put random people of the same gender together in my hotel room. Imagine my surprise when I arrived in my hotel room in a tiny university town in the Netherlands to a pile of stuff on one bed including a pair of 3.5 mm straight needles with some fingering weight pink merino knitted into perfect teeny tiny stitches. A knitter! Of all the random conference attendees I was paired with, they put me up with another knitter. Needless to say, some yarn browsing took place in the 2 hours between the end of the conferences and catching our trains back. I finally saw some Hanne Falkenberg kits up close, and they are gorgeous! Too bad I can't justify spending 100 euros (about 150 dollars) on a kit. My favourites in the shop were Gloria shown in the colors I linked to, and Jazz. The pictures do not do the kits justice. But still, they are prohibitively expensive, so my new shopping buddy said I should take the mental picture for inspiration, and knit my own version with what I've got available.

I also had the good fortune of sharing a room with a knitter in Berlin, and we went to a yarn shop on Oranienstrasse (in the very cool Kreuzberg district) and I picked up a few balls of some no-name single ply lambswool in order to make my take on Gloria. On the overly long train ride from Berlin to Hannover (my roomie's transfer point) she taught me how to purl continental style. I was on a purl row. It took me 2 hours (!) to do one row. I guess I'll have to practice, and track her down for lessons on how to knit continental style. She watched me knit 'British-style' and shook her head and said "I just don't see how you can do that." Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

Here's a picture of my circular jacket yarns all nestled together:

I think it'll work (I hope!) and I'll cast on after I try a kiddie-version for the soon to be expected
cousin's kid. They are two different colors of no-name-provided German lambswool in an aran weight from somewhere near Hamburg (according to the shop employee) in a greyish lavender and petrol blue solid, paired with some Fleece Artist Kid Aran in the Marine colorway.
I'll be basing the construction on one of the 8-million free pinwheel jackets from the Elann website by Shelley Mackie but I may throw in a texture pattern like on Gloria. And I will make the sleeves striped. I particularly like this version of the pinwheel jacket, so I'll just let the ideas mingle until I have the time to cast on. I'll test texture patterns in my collection of purpley Soft Shetland balls and medium gray merino for the kiddie version.

Ivanova

Christmas Stash Enhancement

I finished the Kitty Hat well before Christmas and never posted about it. This is the third time I've made myself this hat. The first one was made from the recommended black Mission Falls wool, and I quite liked it but it got lost in the move to Europe. The second one was made out of Noro Kureyon (without ears) and I look kind of goofy and like a 12-year-old in it. This one is made from a 'more serious' yarn - Mercredi et Companie 100% laine - some stuff I picked up in Grenoble in the fall. The colors are beautiful - a nice heathered burgundy with flecks of grey and black, and it's EXTREMELY soft. But this yarn is horrible to knit with. It's completely inelastic and too loosely spun to knit easily. For fun I tried swatching cables with this stuff - big disaster. Frankly I have no use for a yarn I can't cable with in the stash. I would not recommend this stuff for anything other than fancy baby knits. After a month of wear it's fuzzed up horribly and will lose all stitch definition soon. No pills though. While this hat looks OK laid out on the bed, I still look like a big dork in in. The good points for this hat are that it fits over by giant hair and keeps my ears nice and warm. But I don't really want to look like a big dork. So I'll investigate more hat options soon. The hats made so far are Shedir which looked beautiful but didn't fit my head at all, and the Ragna cap which doesn't fit over my hair. I'm totally bummed. There has to be a nice big hat design somewhere that will fit over my hair and ears! And preferably with cables too ;).

I got lots of nice yarns from myself and others for Christmas, as well as books. Thrace gave me the Knitter's Almanac by Elizabeth Zimmermann and I will cast on for the February Baby sweater soon. I will need to modify the design a bit because the baby will be a boy, but I think I can swap out the lace and stick in some cables instead. I will also make it as written for a friend who really really loved the Baby Surprise Jacket. I just hope that I have enough time! Maybe I'll have to upsize it for a toddler by the time I get to casting on. I also got the latest Viking Knitting book by Elsebeth Lavold and a book of selected color plates from the Book of Kells. Thanks Thrace, you rock! I've already charted a new celtic knot from it and am currently swatching it. Maybe it'll be done by next weekend...

So now for the yarn...
Carloway Mills Shetland Aran, colorway Mallard. It's a beautiful tweed, and I'm still trying to decide what to do with it. When I ordered it from elann I wanted to make a shawl-collared cabled cardigan, but now I can't decide between the original idea and this (with celtic knots instead of viking knots) - it is someone's brilliant idea to modify Stefanie Japel's forecast. I was never drawn to the original cables in the design but liked the shaping. I love the modified design even more!

This is some Fleece Artist Kid Aran, and I think it will become the Sunrise Circle Jacket at some point. It's by Kate Gilbert and available for free from Knitting Daily.




Now for some more greenhouse eye-candy...

Another year gone by...

And now that I think about it, I have knit a lot of sweaters this year! Guess that makes me a 'sweater knitter' now, and not so much of a lace knitter. In my last post I promised some better pics of the fully finished Garnstudio Drops Sing Jacket, so here is one (though done in crappy light).
I've been wearing it constantly since it's been finished and I like it a lot! The Yorkshire Tweed Chunky blocked into a nice soft drapey fabric, though it was a royal pain in the butt to wash in a bucket. It was huge and wet and dripping all over the bathroom floor, and one sleeve would hang over my sweater-filled arms and stretch out like crazy! Luckily some pulling and patting got it to be more-or-less the same length as the other sleeve. Guess which one from the photo!

Anyways, the sweater was a huge hit at the 8 million or so holiday parties I attended. One lady asked my if it was very expensive because it looked very expensive (i.e. it cost a fortune or I made it myself). Yay! I think this would make it the best sweater yet. Now, being a perfectionist, I would always change those little details that I think are less than perfect. I would definitely add more buttons, and make them a touch closer together. I also deviated from the instructions on the collar, and having picked up more stitches along the neckline, I should have skipped increasing the number of stitches on the second row because the collar is too wide for my neck. I fold it over in half (inwards) and I find it annoys me less, but it doesn't really look like the original collar either. Oh well, not worth ripping over.

This sweater also nearly convinced my mother to take up knitting. If I were to do it again, I'd use Istex Lopi because it comes in such beautiful colors if I (or the recipient) could handle the scratch factor. I pawed lots of Lopi at North American LYSs over the break!

Now for a FO report for a baby sweater I gave to a friend, and has been successfully received so I can blog about it now.

Pattern: Ripples in Time by Fiona Ellis from Inspired Cable Knits
Yarn: Rowan 4 Ply Cotton, colorway Fennel

Mods: I made it into a cardigan by omitting the center wide cable panel and adding a 7 stitch wide seed stitch button/buttonhole band on each side. I also was not aware of the errata published for the pattern (even though I googled it several times and came up with nothing) so I knitted the wide cable panel WRONG (boo hiss!). If you are going to do this number, GO HERE FOR THE ERRATA. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and look for the 'download errata' link. And thanks to Ravelry editors of this pattern page for providing a link to the errata. Yay! All in all, I don't think that the error is so noticeable. I also remember being quite confused about the cable panel placement in the written instructions and had to figure it out from the not-full-body photo. The neckline instructions were also confusing, so I looked at photographs and Thrace went to a baby clothing store in order to figure out the assembly. Thanks Thrace, you rock!

Comments on the yarn: this is a nice soft cotton to knit with. I don't usually use cotton because I am always freezing and prefer wool garments for myself. But some people are cautious about giving wools to babies and this yarn is a very good option for fine gauge baby knits. It also comes in fantastic colors that are not babyish, and there are lots of gender-neutral options. Now can you tell there's a 'but' coming? There were about 4 knots in EACH BALL. Boo! Hiss!
I've said it before, I'll say it again. Rowan yarn is expensive, especially if you don't live in the UK. If I pay more I expect to get more, and I'm not getting more. I would only buy this yarn again if someone on eBay were to have a serious 50% off sale.

If I were to knit this sweater again... I would use a wool yarn. I had to knit at such a tight gauge (and I got row gauge but not stitch gauge, so I followed the instructions for the largest size to end up with finished dimensions for the second largest size) and the cables were so difficult to knit that I cannot recommend using cotton for this one. Maybe a cotton-cashmere, cotton-acrylic or cotton-merino blend would be better. But either way the recipient is happy, so I'm happy. No word yet on the baby liking it because he won't fit it for at least another 6 months or more. Here's a back shot so you folks won't have a heck of a time figuring out the assembly details.

On the needles...Trud by Elsebeth Lavold from the Viking Knits Collection Volume 1.
It's unblocked and the peplum is unseamed. I sure hope it fits! It's quite a relaxing knit with all of that (reverse) stockinette, but that peplum sure eats yarn. I'm currently working on the sleeve, so I can be sure I'll have enough to finish. And the yarn is as soft as buttah... yummy ;).
The cables pop out nicely, so I'm quite pleased with this Frankengarn undyed merino. It also comes at a nice price, and I'm considering their undyed dark brown for future DK weight knits.

Now for some eye candy, captured along the way while I went pretty much everywhere this holiday season.
This was taken from the tallest peak in the Black Forest - Feldberg. It was very very pretty and I have tons more photos of mountains and trees which I may upload to my Flickr account.
I also dashed into a North American greenhouse to escape the chill and saw some GORGEOUS flowers in some very nice arrangements. I want a yarn in this color...
The black and pink combo is spectacular. It would look very good in a variegated yarn, I think!
Funny how it always comes down to yarn! I also like these pinks and purples...
Happy New Year!

Ivanova

Nearly FO

That cute Drops Jacket is nearly finished! All that's left is to weave in the ends, sew on the buttons, and block. This was a quick knit, but not as easy as I thought it would be.

Pattern: 103-1 Jacket in Eskimo or Silke-Alpaca with A-shape and ¾-long or long sleeves

by DROPS design

Modifications:
1. Shortened the sleeves because I'm short. I also extended the double seed stitch on the sleeves by an inch or so because I liked it and wanted it to be a bit more prominent.
2. Completely changed the sleeve caps. The caps as written would not fit into the armhole! As cosmicpluto recently observed, how can a 9 cm deep cap result in a set-in-sleeve sweater?
Instead of casting off 2 stitches every row until the sleeve was X cm long, I decreased one stitch each side every second row until it fit into the armhole, then cast off the cap according to the pattern. I'm really glad I followed my gut on this one because I achieved a very nice fitting set-in-sleeve sweater and not a modified drop sleeve others got by following the instructions.
See? Nice!
3. The collar was messed up too. The instructions said to pick up 24-28 stitches across the neckline excluding the front sides' cast-off parts (this is clear if you have the pattern in front of you). This was physically impossible for me to do unless I left huge gaps along the neckline pick-up row. So I picked up as many stitches as I normally would on any other sweater following the generic instructions of pick up stitch ratios along collars from the Knitters' Handy book of Sweater Patterns, and followed the pattern instructions from there until it was the right length to be sewed to the front sides' cast-off parts, then I cast off and sewed. I think it looks enough like the picture that I'm not sweating over this detail, and it'll probably sit nicer once it's blocked.
I think it looks OK.
4. A note on the yardage: the pattern says to use about 900 meters of yarn, and I used a touch over 600 meters. Go figure.

The yarn: Rowan Yorkshire Tweed Chunky, colorway Damp. It's a nice gray-blue with blue, cream, and celery green flecks. What do I think of it? I definitely like it better than the aran weight version. As with all Rowan yarns I've tried so far, it's definitely NOT worth paying full price for, but I got a great deal on eBay because it's discontinued. So this time, I feel that I got what I paid for and then some. It was filled with vegetable matter, but luckily there were no knots anywhere. And each ply snaps extremely easily, but luckily this is a 2-ply yarn so no problems there. And it's reasonably soft. So, good for 5 bucks a ball, but definitely not for 15 bucks a ball. I think my policy on Rowan products is to only buy discontinued stuff. There's certainly enough of it floating around...

Well, this is my last post of the year because of a conference with no internet access, and going back home to visit parents and in-laws with no internet access, so happy holidays to all and a happy New Year!

Ivanova

p.s. I leave you with some husband knitting humour!

Me: Hey honey, how does this collar look?
Him: Hmmmm.... I don't know...... I think it's more of an anti-collar.
Me: What's that supposed to mean?

Baby Surprise #2 is done... will there be a #3?

Here's the photos; the front...
and the back.
I think it turned out pretty well, and while the striping isn't as striking as I originally imagined,
this subtler effect looks nice too. Maybe if I had chosen much different colorways the striping effect would have been stronger.
Details:
Pattern: Babies' Garter Stitch Surprise Jacket by Elizabeth Zimmerman from Knitting Workshop.
Yarn: Lang Yarns Mille Colori, a 50/50 wool acrylic blend
Modifications: None, except I extended the sleeves by 1 inch, and knitted 3 rows in garter stitch around the neckline, to tie in the colors a bit better. I manually striped 3 different colorways of Mille Colori this time, with the blue-grey-brown mix being the 'main color' (2 balls), and a brown-grey (1 ball) and purple-grey (1 ball) being the 'secondary colors'. I knit 4 rows from the blue, then 4 from the brown ball repeatedly until the brown ran out, then knit 4 rows from blue and 4 rows from the purple ball. I knitted the 6 ridges of the button band and neckline finishing in blue, and extended the sleeves with the purple. The finished dimensions are 19.5 inches across the chest (pre-blocked).
Notes on the yarn: I HATE it and will never use it again. It's too fuzzy! It looks so fragile! But, after seaming last night, I tugged and tugged on a long scrap piece and... nothing happened. Then my husband did it and... nothing hapened. So it's stronger than it looks and is a decent seaming yarn, except for the fuzziness. Too bad it looks so pretty, taunting me from the LYS shelf. Never again!

Now for the pressing question - will there be another BSJ? The answer is yes. I found out last weekend from mom that the cousin and wiife are expecting their third child in April. Gender to be determined at a later date. So, I stood by my promise of only making quick and easy BSJs from now on (so I can have more knitting time for me!) and went to the LYS yesterday. I say a gorgeous red and black variegated yarn last time I was there, but unfortunately it had mohair in it. Mohair + Babies = BAD!!! Also mohair + cats = bad. Something about a choke hazard. I haven't heard anything about angora, or alpaca though. Either way, I think machine washable yarns for baby knits is best, so I picked up some Lang Yarns Soft Shetland in two purpley tweedy colorways. I think I'll be doing color blocks again, like for BSJ 1, but I have lots of time to decide. I'll cast on after Christmas, I think. Or I'll knit it on the plane ride home and present it to my mom to deliver with her gifts in March. Why did I buy the yarn so early? Well, when stuff is off the shelves here, who knows how long it'll take to reappear? The Lana Grossa Royal Tweed only showed up recently, and it's been off the shelves for 8 months! But shopping at LYSs is fun here. The service is good, but they want to know what you'll do with it! I brought my BSJ 1 to the store in anticipation of the question, and the LYS lady raised an eyebrow, petted it, identified the yarn correctly (Lana Grossa Mega Stoppino), said that my new yarn choice would work, and said it was very nice. Hopefully she won't think I'm some crazy 'kid' anymore when I come in to see what's on the shelves!

Now for the next project... Klaralund, to be knitted with this:
Noro Kureyon color 157 lot E. I bought it on Ebay, and hunted down many many pictures before buying a bag (10 balls) at a very reasonable price (about 60 bucks). It dosen't look exactly the way I thought it would, but with Noro, I know to expect that by now. I like most of it, and it looks OK on me (tested by holding it up to my face in a mirror), but I don't really like the brown. I guess I'll have to sort the balls to make sure the brown doesn't end up near my face. The pattern (Klaralund from Cornelia Tuttle Hamilton's Noro Hand Knitting Collection Book Number 2) looks very simple. One rectangle for front, back, and each sleeve. Here's a flickr picture or two of the sweater. I think I'll knit the body in the round, with waist shaping because I hate seaming (and overly boxy sweaters). And I'll do the sleeves in the round to the armpit, to keep the stripes the same width and to be sure they don't come out too long. All in all, I think it'll work. The colors remind me of south asia... check out these pictures!

Ivanova

BSJ 2 is flying by...

It's so easy and so fast, I'll probably be done by the weekend. Then it's time to mail off all these baby things I've been knitting. This time I'm using Lang Yarns Mille Colori, but I'm manually striping the yarns instead of leaving them to form large color blocks like with BSJ 1. Instead of swapping colorways of these self striping yarns every 2 rows (like many people have done beautifully with stockinette or ribbing patterns and Noro yarns, as can be seen here and here) I decided to swap every 4 rows so I get 2 ridges of each colorway uninterrupted. But, this is not Noro. The color stretches are shorter, so it dosen't look quite so stripey. But I like it anyways, that is the sweater, not the yarn. It is a 50/50 wool acrylic blend, and while it is very soft, it's too fragile for me to knit with. It's a single loose ply, and my needle tends to miss some stray fuzzy bits so I have to knit quite carefully. It just spreads out and fuzzes too much for my liking. I even went out and got a new pair of ADDIS because my good old trusty cheapo aluminum needles were too pointy for this stuff. Overall, I wished that this yarn was a baby-friendly version of a Noro yarn, but it's just not as pretty as Noro yarns. I dislike the fuzzing and spreading even less than pulling out stray threads from Silk Garden. I will probably not use it again.

Why do I love and hate Noro so much? Sitting here working on this sweater made me wish I had a self striping sweater for myself, so I bought some Noro Kureyon for this sweater. Once this baby knitting is done, it's time to knit for myself again! And I'll need a(nother) nice warm sweater because it's dark, cold and wet already!

Ivanova

Baby Surprise #1 is off the needles...

This little sweater was sheer pleasure to knit, and it went on and off the needles very quickly. The only part that took me a while to get to was weaving in the ends and finishing the collar. I came across this blog post about weaving in ends when I made it to the last color change, and the information was EXTREMELY useful. Go read it NOW, you'll thank me for pointing this wonderful blog post out.
Now for the details:
Pattern: Babies' Garter-Stitch Surprise Jacket by Elizabeth Zimmerman
Source: Knitting Workshop (page 157).
Yarn: Lana Grossa Mega Stoppino (65 % wool, 35% acryl, 98 yards/50 g) in 3 different greenish colorways, and one ball of Lana Grossa Furetto (76% wool, 14% acryl, 10% alpaca, 110 yards/50 g) in a greyish green colorway to finish it off. Mega Stoppino has been discontinued so I couldn't find any good colors to finish this off with, hence the fiber change.
Total yardage: 400 yards
Size: 20 inches across the chest.
Needles: US 8 (5 mm)
Buttons: Coconut wood

Notes:
First, the sizing. I read on KnitWiki that you can change the size by changing your knitting gauge. I went for an Aran weight (or heavier) yarn on US 8 needles in the hopes of getting a jacket that would be big enough for a 1-year old. I fell a bit short of that, but it's still OK because the baby will fit it at some point, considering it hasn't been born yet. I found that the sleeves came in 1 inch short for a 20-inch baby sweater by consuting my few knitting books that contain baby patters, so I picked up stitches at the cuffs and knit an extra inch of garter stitch on each side. I also picked up stitches around the neck opening and knitted 3 rows in garter stitch, and cast off loosely. It didn't really NEED a collar, but I wanted to have the button band color around the collar too. I think it looks neater this way.

Next up: the fibers. I guess it's kind of moot because Mega Stoppino is discontinued, but I am not used to using yarns with acrylic in them. I am a yarn snob, I admit it. But a washable yarn has definite advantages for baby garments. While I would not use this fuzzy acrylicy yarn for myself, I would definitely make things for other people with it, this stuff is not half bad, easy to knit with, and came in some very nice colors. But I can't get it in town anymore except in some very ugly colors. Oh well. Now, when I ran out (haven't I learned the fiber insurance lesson yet?) I picked up another yarn only using color and gauge as the criteria, not washability. I picked up the Furetto. Whoops, it's not superwash! But it's a very nice yarn, and I would use it for myself (even with the acrylic) if I could dream up a good project to incorporate the color mottling, though not self-striping. This yarn is very easy to knit with! Sorry, I don't think it's made it to other countries yet, but keep an eye out for it when it shows up.

The pattern? Loved it. I admit it's weird to see an entire pattern fit on one page, but row by row instructions are not included. I wrote it out in the margins of my photocopy of the tiny little page. And it's easy to work out, no heavy duty math needed. And I didn't need a picture to figure out the assembly, I must have good spatial skills! (That will be put to the test if I ever learn how to parallel park a car.) It was very neat to knit a garment in one piece that isn't circular. Here's some more shots:
Here's the back. How come no one ever shows the back? It's very cool, especially with the color change. I dig the way those double decreases make corners. Here's a close up of my decreases...
Neat right angles. Very cool. I know I shouldn't be so thrilled by it, having been a knitter for all of three years, but very few patterns make use of the ability of double decreases lined up properly to form a sharp 90 degree angle. And increases, for that matter. Here are my increases...
I love it, and am already making another one!

Ivanova

I present the latest FO....

Yes, it's a heap of lovely cashmery silky lace! Here's the full-body shot of my Tara stole.
It came in at about 75 inches long by 22 inches wide with a gentle blocking. One of the joys of working a lace pattern in big yarn with big needles is that you don't have to sweat the final dimensions so much! It's big! And it was a relatively quick knit too. The last rectangular shawl I made took me about 4 months to knit. This one took about 3 months, but I've been working on other stuff too. Now for the details:

Yarns: The variegated stuff is Hand Maiden 4 ply silk cashmere. I LOVE IT! It is the nicest softest least scratchy yarn I have ever used, and it has really nice drape too. Gorgeous colors. Thanks Delenn! The solid colored yarn is a DK weight cashmere from colourmart, purchased in a light blue color, then overdyed by me. I wanted a darker blue, and I ended up with a smoky purple, either way I like it. I was annoyed by how loosely the plies were spun, but once I got used to going a little slower, and checking the problem areas (sk2p decreases) it all went OK. Once washed the yarn softened up a lot, and has a very nice drape too. I have no issues wearing this against bare skin, unlike some alpaca yarns I have tried in the past, which still have some guard hairs in there which poke me in the neck! To make a long story short, the 500 or so yards was more than worth the 35 US dollars I paid for it. I will definitely consider this yarn for future luxury knits (without the luxury price! Since when can you get 100 % cashmere for 7 bucks/100 yard ball?).

Pattern: by me. I will post it once I have the time and dig myself out from the ever growing heap of things I need to do.

Now for the camera-held-in-a-mirror-shot:
and the stitch-detail shot:
Cheers,

Ivanova

Knitting progress?

This pretty much illustrates it! I went on a nice little trip to Hannover on a very cheap group ticket, with a knitter/crocheter colleague and a visiting scientist from our research group. I found this cool statue outside the city hall. I have actually made significant progress on a gift project so I can't blog it. Pfft! The old town part of Hannover is very pretty, and we went a bit out of the way to look up a yarn shop.
Me in a yarn shop is like uncaging the beast, or in this case, releasing it from the column.
I came away with a little giftie for Delenn (sorry, no pics, you'll just have to wait till I send it in the mail) and a little something to swatch for a future project, and also knit up into a Christmas present I think. Unless I like it too much, and then I'll just keep it.
It's tweedy, and it's red... it's Garnstudio Silke-Tweed, purchased for about 1/2 the price of the average North-American retailer, which would make it feasible for a large project, like this one. I also saw lots of old buildings, narrow winding streets, beautifully manicured ponds,
and LOTS of ducks. They were easier to photograph than my town's ducks, probably because they're more used to people feeding them.
This guy let me get real close and he didn't even twitch a feather!

Now for the knitting progress...
Tara's coming along, I think I've cleared about 2 feet by now. However, knitting all those SK2P decreases was really driving me crazy, they're everywhere, and it really slows me down to slip a stitch then pass it over the two knitted together. I came up with a better way, to do it all in one motion, and I'll post about that at some future date, when I can get my DH to photograph my hands while I'm doing it, without getting all cranky about it. Here's a close-up shot of my "new way" of doing the decreases
Not bad, huh?

Ivanova

Phew! What a trip!

Last week, my husband and I decided to go to Berlin for the long weekend. What a trip! We had a blast, and some interesting weather...
first there was the torrential rain on the first day, Friday.
Then there was the hail on Saturday. In between the rain and hail, we wandered around the cute old streets of former East Berlin, ate at some nice restauraunts, including the best Mexican food I've had since leaving North America, and found a very nice yarn store (Loop) in a very cute neighborhood with a nice open air market where the vendors were selling all sorts of things from handmade baby shoes to candy. Mmmm. I succumbed to the tourist's need to buy something to commemorate the trip...
Dare I say it? It's YUMMY, so yummy. I saw it shining at me in Loop, and it was SO SOFT! I had to have it! I think it's a domestically produced handspun, no label. Another mystery wool... heh heh. I did some research on the internet, and I believe it's a 50/50 mulberry silk merino blend, the weight (100g), stated yardage (300m) and recommended needle size (3-4 mm) and color is very similar to a product I found at a 'natural crafts' site in Germany. Same price too, so there ya go. Now I know, yarn diet, but this is the only thing I bought for me ( I also got one gift for someone) and I'm supporting the domestic economy, so there. That's how I justify it to myself anyways. I think that it will become fetching. I already find it quite fetching in the skein. Heh heh bad joke. Anyways, we had very nice weather on Sunday, here's a shot of Neptune and his maidens.
See that? Blue skies... Now I really want to go back, and have one of the maidens model the Tara Stole when it's done, I got a fair bit done on the train.
The handpaint is Hand Maiden 4 ply Silk Cashmere, and I decided on an Old Spanish Lace Border. The body is being knit from a DK weight cashmere purchased on the net from the UK for a criminally low price because none of my stash yarns were the right weight or texture. I found the right stitch pattern, an alternating small and large bead pattern to go with the small beads in the Old Spanish Lace. Unfortunately, I don't like the way the colors look together, so I'll rip back, put the yarn into 50 g hanks, and dye it a darker shade of blue. Then it'll be PERFECT. I hope.

The hubby and I went to the zoo on Monday before taking the train back, and I ran around like a crazy person snapping photos of the fiber-bearing animals like this bactrian camel.
The fiber is literally falling off him! (Or is it her...?) There were large tufts of it all over the place. Now I leave you with this adorable sleeping baby bear who is not the star, but I think maybe he could be... so cute!

Ivanova

Stash-busting

I know it's practically summer (over here anyways), but I finally figured out what to do with some gorgeous yarn that's been sitting in the stash for too long.
It's Lorna's Laces Bullfrogs and Butterflies in the Black Purl colorway. I originally wanted it to be a lacy and cabled cardigan from the Holiday 2005 issue of Vogue Knitting, but I just couldn't get gauge. So I shoved it into the stash, and thought about it from time to time... 'could I get gauge today?' was the thought always running trough my head. Well, I give up on that idea (do I really want a cardigan with a worsted/aran weight yarn knitted on US11 needles? ) when I saw this ad in the Holiday 2006 issue of Vogue Knitting.
Click on it to make it bigger - that cardi is BEAUTIFUL and well suited towards handpaints because Alchemy Yarns of Transformation make beautiful handpainted yarns. [Sidenote - I don't think scanning a magazine ad is copyright infringement, because I included all the info in the ad, and, well, it's an ad. It's meant to get people interested in their product and I'm posting it for free. If I'm wrong, let me know and I'll remove it.] So I checked out the company's website (not having written down the name of the pattern) and I couldn't find it! Later, with the ad in front of me, I found it. I did not recognize it (the Naturalist) because the picture on the pattern was crap. Look at it on their website, or here. Click on the link for the Naturalist Cardigan and you'll get a bigger picture.

Same cardigan, same yarn, but it looks totally sloppy and unsophisticated in the picture! Why did they do that? I wouldn't buy the pattern, looking at THAT picture!! To be sure about the style I googled it and came up with a non-modelled picture form the designer's website. Here's the flickr picture. Again, it looks clean and sopisticated. So I'm going for it, but with only 2 inches of ease, and not the 4 or 6 modelled above. Even the sleeves look too big on her! Now I'm using a different yarn at a different gauge so I'll make it up myself, but this isn't IP theft, because frankly, no one can own the idea for a raglan sweater with waist shaping and seed stitch hems, collars, cuffs and buttonbands, and I may make it a v-neck. It looks sort of like a v-neck in the ad, because the top buttons are undone, and the scarf obscures the neckline, but I think I like it better anyways. But I won't cast on until the fall, so that's all for now.

I've gotten pretty far on the lace and cables capelet:
I knitted an applied i-cord on the right side, and have started on the collar. the number of stitches increases rather quickly, so it will be wider the area decreased by the v-neck shaping. I hope it looks okay, because I'm thinking about using a similar style of collar on an original project, and I have a lot to learn about collars, and finishing techniques in general. So I'm going to knit as the instructions indicate and hope that it all works out in the end. Note that I added the i-cord to tie in the black yarn with the red handpaint, it's not in the instructions. I'm thrilled about the placemet of the double decreases in the pattern, because it makes the capelet shoulder-shaped! Cool!

Ivanova