Valour

I started the back of my Valour Friday night, and finished it today on the way home from Virginia.  How's that for fast! 

 I really love this yarn - so quick to work up, but it really doesn't feel bulky or heavy.  And the colors - so bright and fresh, but not at all in your face. I have the "wrong side" up in this photo.  The pattern calls for a 3x1 rib with the purl 3 side as the right side.  You get a strong sense of the texture in the photo here. 

I think I prefer the smoother side up--just not a big fan of reverse stockinette in great quantities.  I am picturing this with a pair of grey trousers, a white blouse and this belt. 

Always looking for an excuse to wear this belt.  

Willow

Finished my Willow sweater last week.  I really love the way it turned out.  I made it an inch longer, gave it a scoop neckline, and moved the lace panel to the other side on the front so that it would match up with the back.  It's fabulous to wear, and so quick to work up.  The lace panel was a really fun addition that kept the knitting interesting.  I would make this again! 

Gyrid

This is the back, obviously.  I decided not to do the cable motif on the back because I needed a very easy, straightforward piece to work.  You know, the calming, mindless knitting that we do simply to relax?  This has been the one, and it's been great.  I love the Mulberry Silk.  I love knitting with it, I love the way it shines, and I love the way I can throw it in the washing machine.   Oh yes, I love it très beaucoup.

Willow progress

The one side is done, and I have 7 inches done on the other.  I moved the lace panel on the back so that when the two pieces are sewn up at the shoulder, the lace panel will be on the same side of both the front and the back.  Make sense?  It will when you see the thing all done, which I hope will be this weekend.  Probably not the sleeves, but at least the front and back.  I'm still toying with my thoughts on the neckline - not a big fan of the bateau neckline.

Best weekend ever

Wednesday in La Plata, I was feeling kind of down about missing the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival.  But we had tons of family stuff to do, and it just wasn't going to work out for me this year.  Turns out that we had such a great time this weekend that I wouldn't have traded for anything.

Saturday morning, Johnny was confirmed at the National Cathedral.  Here he is with the other kids from St. Andrews. 

with The Rev. Christopher Wilkins who was so amazing in helping him make his decision to be confirmed

 

And all of us together afterwards 

Then we all went out for a fabulous lunch at Petit Plats in DC. 

Elizabeth was not with us because her prom was that night, so we got home in time to help her get ready for the big night.  Elizabeth's best girlfriends all came to the house to get ready

and have pictures taken.  Here's Elizabeth and Ben

and the beautiful girls

When the group finally got off to their dinner reservations and the big dance, Bill and I settled in for the best homemade pizza in the history of the universe and some excellent wine. Then it was early to bed because Sunday

Was Colton's birthday and party

Whew!  but it really was a wonderful weekend!

Willow is addictive

 

I've made good progress on Willow.  Even though I'm really focused on finishing my wrap sweater, the little lace pattern on Willow is makes it substantially more interesting to knit.  I will probably make the body 12-14 inches long and increase the armhole depth as well.  Nothing worse than a too short sweater, except perhaps a too tight armhole...

Love working with this yarn.  Great hand and wonderful stitch definition. 

Finally Fringed

I've had the Lady Eleanor finished for three years now, but for some reason I'd never done the fringe.  I originally put on all the fringes, but never tied them because I thought it was too much fringe.  I took out half the fringe and thought I'd put beads on the remaining strands and resurrect my 70s macrame fetish. Then I read that someone had gone the macrame route and that the square knots were unstable (oh yeah, forgot about that part).  So on Earth Day I sat in the shop and tied the stupid overhand knots.  I only did half as many as the pattern called for, but I think more would have been too many. I'm really happy with it now.  Maybe I need a cotton Lady Eleanor for the summer...

Neck down to the waist

 
Been working on the April KAL top-down wrap sweater.  It's very mindless to knit, but the yarn is lovely - aqua seems to be my new favorite color.  I'm finally at the point where you make a tiny opening in the side for the wrap tie and you stop increasing for the neckline and begin the garter stitch edge.  I'm toying with doing a 5-stitch seed stitch edging instead of the garter.  Tomorrow I will take it into the Leonardtown shop and ask the oracle (Ginni and the Friday morning coffee group) for an opinion.

Willow and Fleurie

Swatched this Friday so that I could knit it Monday when I knew I had some time to kill.  The ball band said 16 stitches to 4 inches on a 10.  I figured it was pretty unlikely that I'd get 4 stitches to the inch on a 10, so I started with a size 9.  After working a fairly large swatch, I was getting 14 stitches, so I decided to try an 8.  Perfect!  I will say that the yarn still looked good at 3.5 stitches per inch, and I would totally use it in a project that called for that gauge - like maybe this Sharon Stone sweater by Sally Melville.  I've wanted to knit this for years. 

But back to Willow - Willow is a beautiful design by Louisa Harding in her new book Chinoiserie. 

 

It's going to be our next Fit and Finish class, so I wanted to knit it up and see if there were any problems with the garment or the pattern.  The yarn is really nice to work with, and boy does it knit up quick.  I did this in less than an hour

Here's a close-up of the lace portion - not hard, but not boring either.  

 

Coco Vee all wrapped up

I don't know what it was about this project that compelled me.  I just had to get it done.  Mitered squares have this addictive quality to them the same way entrelac does.  Interesting but still easy.  I guess the fabulous Silk Garden colors are also exciting to watch as they emerge. 

I plan to wear it to Colton's lacrosse game today because the weather is sunny, but it's going to be windy and cool.  I like it wrapped up this way so the points hang at a diagonal, but it's also a great ruana-looking style worn straight.

Tessa is finished

and it's actually even better than I expected.  I've worn it three times already. 

Here it is on the blocking board.  It really does need to block so that bottom border doesn't flip up.

There was quite a bit of re-knitting on Tessa Wednesday because when I tried it on, I decided that I would really like to be able to wear it alone as a summer top, so the armholes needed to be shortened about an inch and a half..  I love the way the shoulders cut in.

It's a really flattering kinda' sexy halter look.  I could be persuaded to knit another one.  Maybe in white.  Lynne had a fabulous idea to do one with sequined yarn along the ruffle.  Wouldn't that be just fabulous!

Last day of spring break

It was a really wonderful spring break.  I love having the kids home so we can go and do lots of great things.  It's especially nice to know that my phenomenal team keeps all things moving along in the shop equally well whether I am here or not.

Yesterday was the last day of spring break for the kids, and we'd made a reservation for Katie to visit UMD College Park.  It was a quick and uneventful trip up there as we were a good distance behind the commuting traffic.  The presentation by the admissions officer was informative - get that application in early!  Fortunately Katie is just a sophomore, and she tends to be on top of things she wants.  After the 90 minute walking tour around campus she has decided that she really wants this.  Good for her.

The trip home was somewhat more stressful.  I was exhausted; it was hot, and we were in the thick of the commuting traffic.  We got home around 6, and had leftover Honeybaked Ham sandwiches for dinner.  I could eat those every day for the rest of my life and never get tired of them.

Tessa is coming along

I am dying to wear this vest.  It's been a pleasure to knit - the yarn is fabulous (Tupa silk and wool) and the color is so spring time. The fronts are done, and I've worked about an inch or so up the back.  I have 6 more rows with a single stitch bind off and then it's just straight stockinette on 62 stitches for 6 inches or so. The ruffled lapel stitches continue around the back of the sweater and meet in the center, rather like Chris Bylsma's Solo.  It's a beautifully smooth back neckline treatment. 

Blocking is definitely in order as the edge of this thing rolls like crazy--

Rather than using the steamer on it, though, I think I'll do a cold water block.  Takes more time, but it's just safer.  Can't start my Wickle-West until Tessa's done, so I need to get a move on.  This Wednesday is my goal. 

Eastscarf

I finished my Eastscarf last week.  The pattern called for you to work the lovely leafy lace section over the first 100 or so rows at the beginning and then work the remainder of the scarf in simple repeat on the 16 center stitches.  I worked the 100 rows of the pattern (which took almost exactly one skein of gorgeous Inca Gold), and several repeats of the boring part when I realized that the boring part was not going to be in my future.  

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy mindless knitting as much as the next guy, but this boring part was just different enough to require that I carry the pattern with me (yes, I know, lots of you can keep a 30-row lace repeat in your head, but my brain is already too full of other details on kid schedules and such to remember).  So I decided to cast on again with a new skein and worked the 100 row pattern over again.  My thought was to have a symmetrical scarf with an attractive leaf motif at each end.  I was going to graft the two halves together in the center.  Here's how it looks.  I like it. 

Here is a close-up of the center join.  You will notice that the scarf is NOT grafted.  That is not to say that I didn't try to graft it.  If you'd been in La Plata last Thursday, you would have seen my valiant attempt at grafting 2x2 ribbing, reverse stockinette and yarn-overs to one another.  After about an hour, I decided that the return on investment for a grafted join was way too low, so I bound off both ends and seamed them.  Not bad, and that part took less than 15 minutes. 

Petra complete

Really do like this garment. Petra is perfect in Noro because it's knit all in one piece so the stripes on the body match up perfectly. The shaping in the front biases the fabric so you get diagonal rather than horizontal striping. I had hoped it would look as good as the ones I'd seen on Ravelry, and I'm genuinely pleased with the results.

Outer space, rockets, and UFOs

Yesterday we took Colton up to DC to see the National Air and Space Museum. He is really into the planets, and he and Bill spend quite a bit of time looking at the NASA's astronomy picture of the day. For Christmas Colton's Uncle Ralph and Aunt Karen sent him a model of the solar system, a puzzle of the planets, and a very cool book on space. We've been having a great time with it, so this seemed like a perfect outing....apparently a few hundred dozen other families and several small countries thought so too.

The museum was a mob scene, but we we managed to score tickets to the Imax 3D movie on the international space station narrated by Tom Cruise. It was really amazing to see how it all worked, and quite inspiring to see how different nations collaborated to build this enormous orbiting ship.

The scale of these things is just amazing.



It was a long and full day, so my usually chatty boy was very quiet on the way home.


Since this is a knitting blog, you're probably wondering about the UFO I mentioned in the title of this post. Perhaps some of you remember Petra, the beautiful jacket from CocoKnits that's worked in one piece. I started mine about a year ago, and then got distracted by other projects (yes, it happens to the best of us). So yesterday morning, I pulled it out and knit on it while Bill drove up to the museum. Size 11 needles, it goes really fast. I only had a few inches done, but by the time it got dark I had done this much. It doesn't look like much in the photo, but as I mentioned, it's worked all in one piece, so this is the length on the back and the fronts.

Last night I bound off for the armhole, and today I started the sleeve. I hope to have it done by the time I re-open the shop Tuesday.

French Press Felted Slippers

I thought these little slippers were just about the cutest thing ever, and I ordered the pattern through Ravelry. This is the first pattern I've bought this way, and I must say that I really like it. They use Paypal, and you can use your credit card even if you don't have a Paypal account. Ravelry stores the pattern PDF in your Ravelry library for you to access wherever you are!

I picked up a skein of Shepherd's Wool in hot pink for my Katie and one in navy for my Elizabeth. The pattern is really easy and goes very quickly, as you might imagine, on size 15 needles. I happened to have a set of size 15 dpns in my bag (no idea why), and since you never have more than 15 or so stitches on your needle at a time, I decided they'd be perfect. You could, of course, use longer needles and work two sets at the same time if you wanted.

The Yarn Harlot says that it took her 90 minutes to knit a pair. While I didn't time myself on the complete set, I did find that I knit one of the sides in 20 minutes while I waited for Johnny at physical therapy. So, even if you consider yourself a slow knitter, it's fair to say that you could probably whip out the pieces for one slipper in about 90 minutes.

Here's a picture of Katie's right after they came out of the washer before I sewed on the strap.

Here I've pinned the strap and button in place. When I sewed the strap on, I placed it a little further down, over the vamp a bit as shown in the first picture of this post. I like it better this way.

Here's are Elizabeth's in navy with red buttons.

I made the pink one in the second size (7/8) and the navy in the largest size (9/10). Not a huge difference. You can control the size by stretching the slippers while they are still wet from the felting. I had each of the girls try on the slippers and let them stretch to fit their feet.


Each pair took less than a whole skein of Shepherd's wool, even though the pattern calls for 33o yards of yarn. I checked my gauge before felting, and it was correct, but even so, perhaps I knit a bit tighter than the designer. A very loose gauge is tricky to measure. Anyway, both girls are happy with their slippers. Now I need to knit a pair for myself - maybe rhinestone buttons are in order...

Bleaklow Vest

I love this vest, but I wondered how it might look with a rounded neck - here's my modified version. I think it's going to be more flattering for me.

Top-down and in the round cardigan

Is done. Honestly, this is the quickest thing I've ever made. Got my next one picked out already!

How about a quickie?

No, not like that...even better. I cast on for this little gem Friday night after dinner. I didn't have much chance to knit on it during the day Saturday because I had the Tweed Waistcoat class in the morning, and we were busy with customers and trick-or-treaters in the afternoon. After dinner Saturday, I did the rest. Honest. This represents maybe four full hours of knitting. The pattern says to work 5 rows of ribbing around then sleeves and then bind off, but I think I'd like a three-quarter sleeve on this. I've got another one planned in a finer yarn with a smart front edging. This is the project we'll be doing on November 4th in La Plata and 7th in Leonardtown. Call the shop to join us.