The photo says it all. I’m consumed with knitting The Plucky Knitter’s new Paint By Numbers Hat.
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This Weekend In Knitting
Look, they made a meme just for me!
I don't really think it's accurate, at least not all the time.
This weekend, I'm definitely not crabby, because: good knitting.
Leuntje's gorgeous Winter Blumen hat, knit in Elliebelly Talia Sport, showed up in my mailbox from Holland this week. It's a gorgeous fairisle pattern, and I love it knit up in this yarn.
This stunning beautiful aran weight cashmere from The Plucky Knitter arrived too. I don't think it will last in stash for very long. I'm itching to cast on with it. The color is stunning and the yarn is the proverbial to-die-for spin.
And, I am ever so slowly, knitting ribbing on 1.5 needles and looking forward to moving on to short row shoulder shaping for Sjølingstadkofta. It's a beautiful, almost-fall weekend, and I'm going to sneak in as much knitting as possible.
Good Knitting Mojo
You know it's going to be a great week, despite needing to be out of town for work, when this is around the corner from you hotel.
I cast on two new projects in one day, my Sjølingstadkofta sweater and the new Paint By Numbers hat from Plucky. I haven't made a lot of progress so far, but it feels great to have them started.
And, I'm especially happy to be using a favorite new stitch marker.
For the next few weeks, I'll be knitting three projects at once, the Grannie Annie shawl I've been working on for several weeks, along with the two new ones.
Did you laugh when you read next few WEEKS? Sjølingstadkofta is a fairisle, fingering weight sweater. I'm knitting the ribbing on size 1.5 needles and it's a slow, but very enjoyable, slog. I'm guessing it will be months (if not years) before I finish it, but I love the pattern, so I'm going to soldier on. I hope to finish the hat and the shawl in the next month or so, alternating between the three projects.
There won't be any knitting for me tonight, though. I polished off this guy, along with a bunch of mussels and some corn on the cob for dinner. I'm so full that I'm not sure I can keep my eyes open any longer! So, knitting will have to wait for tomorrow.
Linen & Lace
One of the Ravelry knitters who is testing knitting my yarn is currently working on a lace sweater using Elliebelly Chemise, the sport weight linen and silk blend. I used this yarn to knit my Mithril Sweater earlier this year.
But Gail is using the yarn in a very different pattern than the one I chose, defined by columns of lace, called The Secret Life of Trees. It's exciting to see the yarn used successfully for such a different purpose.
© GGailG
This fragment gives you some idea of how the lace patterning looks.
And here's a full sleeve. Even unblocked, you can see the lace pattern and tell that the linen yarn is perfect here.
© GGailG
Gail is one of those fabulously experienced knitters who seems to be able to pull off complicated patterns with the same ease with which I would knit a garter stitch scarf. You should take a look at her projects on Ravelry (in the link to her name). In particular, her lace shawls are incredibly beautiful.
I often buy yarn because it looks beautiful in the skein. Thanks to knitters like Gail, I'm getting a much better sense of how those beautiful skeins knit up and what they most want to become. There is definitely a lacey project in Chemise coming in my future!
Knitting Slugs & New Hats
After my very sad swatching fail in linen earlier this week, I consoled myself with some silly knitting.
This little guy is a Pacific Northwest Banana Slug. I'm heading out that direction for a knitting retreat later this month, and the group is planning to leave a rout of snails behind for the retreat facility to remember us by. I used some leftover yarn from various projects, holding two different worsted weights together for the shell to match the gauge of the bulky yarn I used for the slug itself. The Banana Slug-Snail pattern I used was a little bit confusing, possibly because I was knitting while watching TV in the middle of the night to see if Hurricane Hermine was coming near us, so instead of following the directions for the shell, I knit a 6 stitch I cord, rolled it up and stitched it in place.
Next up? Swatching for a new striped hat pattern The Plucky Knitter has coming out early next week. I have lots of great yarn to choose from.
And then, I've got to search in my studio for some size 1 or 2 needles so I can make a second attempt at getting gauge for my linen hand towel. I hope I have something in wood on hand, because I find it to be incredibly difficult to run in and out of my local yarn shop just to purchase needles without picking up some new yarn!
Swatch Fail
This is the swatch for my Mason Dixon Moss Grid Hand Towel and it is, sadly, a fail.
I'm a loose knitter. I know this. I routinely go down two needle sizes from what a pattern calls for. Routinely.
For some reason, I thought I could get away with this one on size 4 needles. The pattern calls for 5. I convinced myself I would tighten up a little. And clearly, that didn't work. I can't even see the pattern in the swatch. It's just a loose mass of yarn.
Swatch fail. I hate that.
But it's so much better to acknowledge it now and swatch a size or two down than end up with that bad feeling in the pit of your stomach midway through the project. You know, the one where you put the project down, knowing you will never pick it up again even though it was once your beloved.
I had hoped to get a start on this project later this week, but I'm going to have to wait until I can get my hands on some size 2 needles and swatch again.
What Comes Next?
In 2006, I bought Kay Gardiner and Ann Shayne's Mason Dixon Knitting book the week it came out. I read it cover to cover, like a novel. I had been back to knitting casually: a hat here, a scarf there, perhaps a baby sweater, since my third child turned five in 2003 and was given a knitting kit for her birthday. And it was nothing like the knitting I had done as a child when my Grandmother taught me, or even as a teenager, or more rarely, in college. It was easy to find great yarn and books of patterns I couldn't wait to knit. I constantly had a project on the needles. I had gone through the holding two or three different yarns together to knit a scarf phase, a felting phase, and a regrettable exercise with some questionable yarn that resulted in a confetti textured baby sweater for a friend's daughter that I still have serious pangs of guilt about. I was ready to move on, but not quite sure what to.
Ravelry, the knitter's Mecca, wasn't in existence when I purchased my copy of Mason Dixon Knitting. It was that long ago! And the book changed my entire approach to knitting. The patterns were useful, lovely, even heirloom quality items. I was instantly drawn to all of them. I was particularly drawn to the afghans, but the projects seemed to large for a working mom with three young children. The Bubbly Curtain called my name as well, but seemed similarly large and unmanageable, despite its practical appeal. So I settled on a much smaller Moss Stitch Linen hand towel, and purchased the yarn for it, Louet's Euroflax Original sport weight 100% linen.
I moved on to new projects, but I never knit the hand towel. Inspired by Kay and Ann and their adventurous approach to knitting, I made a cotton dress for my daughter and designed a simple skirt pattern in a riotous array of Be Sweet yarn that my daughter wore every day for a month after I finished it. Seriously. Every day. I was made brave as I read and reread sections of the Mason Dixon knitting book. The casual can-do approach to knitting inspired me to pick up projects that had previously seemed out of reach. I knit my first pair of socks, fell in love, and knit several more. I knit a Clapotis, even though it took me months. It was a wonderful time for me as a knitter! But still, I never picked up the linen yarn, which was dazzlingly white and very pretty.
Earlier this month, I went searching for that yarn. Suddenly, I had to knit the hand towel. I reorganized all of my yarn, which lives in cubbies in a walk in closet in my studio. There it was, in the back of one of the cubbies with my Sanguine Gryphon, waiting for me.
It's wound now, and ready to be my September 1 project. I know from experience that knitting with linen can be a bit slow for me, so I suspect I'll knit this on and off with other projects. But I am so excited to be knitting it at long last. And so grateful to the long ago discovery of a book that his given me so much and continues to give.