FO: Noemi

It's the middle of August and we've had a stretch of hot weather and thunder-storms ... but all I want to do is knit scarves. I had designated this sweater season, to see if I could finish a last summer garment and start on a couple warmer tops for the winter, but all that sweater yarn is now hiding out in my closet so I don't cannibalize it for enormous winter wraps. I've been dreaming of thick winter scarves made from 1400 or so yards of worsted weight, and there isn't much out there to convince me that this is not a good idea.

So I'm writing this sunburnt from an afternoon spent paddle-boating on the lake, and a night spent watching trashy movies and thunderstorms. My apartment thinks it's an oven, which means I knit all the more because I don't have the concentration ability for anything else when I'm inside it (perhaps I should head out to a cafe so I can get something useful done).

The scarf is "Noemi," from the first Norah Gaughan collection. I knit it on US 9s with three skeins of Cash Vero in a cranberry color-- about 300 yds, which makes for a 7 foot scarf in this lace pattern. The booklet has some very nice charts in it, and this was one of them. I still need to block it, but that's going to wait until it's cooler.

Salon des Refuses...

Truth be told, I'm actually quite happy with these socks. It took a bit of a voyage getting to this point, though: I knit the first sock on US1s, which turned out to make the heel so tight I could barely force it up to my ankles. Then, after working it again on US2s I found that my picot bind-off was too tight, so I undid it, worked a sewn bind-off, and then sewed it down to form the picot. Then, of course, the office cat had a great deal to say about how I was photographing them, and would usually interfere so much as to completely obscure the socks, until I posed in such a way that he was satisfied.

But, you know. Overall, these are fairly awesome little summer socks.

Pattern: Impressionist Socks
Designer: Closca de nou
Origin: nunanit.blogspot.com
Yarn: Regia Mosaik Color
Needles: US2, double-points

FO: Lace Ribbon Scarf

Lace Ribbon Scarf
Designer: Veronik Avery
Source: Knitty
Yarn: Colinette Jitterbug colorway "Velvet Bilberry," 320 yards
Length: about 4 feet

First of all, a correction: the yarn used is a deep purple verging on black. I couldn't get a good shot of the scarf that was also color-accurate, and I didn't want to bother for a long time in Photoshop.

I love this pattern; I'd do it again, longer, and perhaps a little wider as well. It's mindless lace, perfect for working on while, well, working, and it has a great dramatic result.

I am unlikely to buy Jitterbug again without unskeining and combing over the entire skein carefully. It's not a horrendous yarn, but for a yarn meant to have a smooth consistency it had far too many slubs and, also, the connection of a different -and very strikingly different- dye lot. I don't think the difference is visible in the picture; it's more striking when the color is accurate. It also didn't feel like it would hold up to feet (I'd initially planned to knit a pair of socks from it). These problems are common in the yarn and I'd heard about them before but conveniently forgot about it when I saw the colorway. I like the scarf quite well regardless, but if I ever want consistency from something, Jitterbug's clearly not the way to go.

C'est la vie, and a rather lovely life it is, too.

My favorite top...

Pattern: Green Gables
Designers: Sarah & Rachel (zephyrstyle.com)
Yarn: Hempathy
Needles: US6 and 4

I'm delighted by the way this knit up. It was more or less a mindless knit, kept alongside my laptop while I read or worked on other things. In the way of things, this means it took me longer to finish than it otherwise might; I tend to prioritize more exciting knits. But it's a perfect look for me, which I'll some day prove when I can pin someone down to give me a photo shoot.

Modifications: I knit for the size 40-43, but had to rip back to a slightly smaller size because I would have swum in it at the 43-inch mark. I left off the ribbing on the bottom edge in the interest of a stockinette roll, to mimic the slight roll on the back of the neck.

Maneki Neko

One of my blogging motifs, I know, is the amount of time I spend vexing about how I knit pranks and gifts and end up feeling that in nine out of ten instances, my effort was expected, or not appreciated, or, hell, not even understood. Another motif I'm sure everyone easily recognizes is how I then belabor the point.

But -you don't have to hold your breath!- this is not one of those cases. This is a gift for someone I know I can knit for.

This doesn't mean he's easy to knit for, mind. Not a scarf guy. Not a hat man. Socks and sweaters? I'm too lazy. This leaves me two options: fingerless gloves and cat-themed miscellany. And they have been appreciated, by which I mean worn out and worn some more, and he gets the time, and the effort, and thinks that that I did it in the first place is worth compliments years later.

The look on his face when I handed him this was deeply cheering. He's waiting to find out whether he's gotten into grad school, and the results are coming in right around his birthday, so I figure it was a gift of necessity. I don't believe in luck as a force, but well wishes are well wishes.

The pattern, by the way, is by Justine Turner, and can be found here (pdf). I worked it on 10s with bulky Armytage, carried with Merino Stripes for the stripes along the back. The accents are done in some FrogTree Alpaca (ears), Sunday Best by Reynolds (collar), and a blue single ply (fish) I think was put out by Karabella yarns but lost the label since it was scrap for a hat for my mother a few years back. The face is embroidered with cotton crochet thread. I made a few changes to the pattern, knitting the crown of the head differently, and knitting the pink panels on the ears.

When There Are Just Too Many Choices In Life

I am the kind of person who gets annoyed in grocery stores because she's been asked to pick up a bag of chips for a party, and then soon after finds herself standing in an aisle lined wall to wall with not only twelve different brands but a hundred different flavors among them. Often this results in panic and departure without chips, followed by a trip to the tiniest gas station convenience store known in the hope that they will only have two or three varieties.

I used to think that meant I had some ingrained taboo against variety, but that's actually rather far from the case. In fact, if I don't get enough of it, I get a little rabid and start developing nervous twitches and a sudden yen to travel miles on foot.

This has been damaging my creative life recently. I multi-task as a matter of due course, so it's pretty typical for me to have two or three knitting projects and two or three active fiction pieces going all at once, and maybe a linoleum block print under the knife, too. My hobbies abound, but I'm used to it, and once one of the stories/knitting projects hit critical mass, I stop working on the others until I've finished that one.

Not right now. Oh god, not right now. My life has been stalled by too many options. My knitting queue is all a tangle. Example: the yarn I wanted to use for something of my own design would look simply splendid in another pattern, unlike the yarn that I was actually going to use in that other pattern, which is for all other practical reasons perfectly good yarn well-suited to that design, but it's just not striking me the right way even though it did two months ago when I chose it after three weeks of deliberations for that design. And, of course, that yarn would be sadly inadequate in the design I have planned. Now, take that example and multiply it by three different sweaters.

To top it off, this problem is so painfully irrelevant in the long or short of things that it's embarrassing just to admit to it.

But! I keep knitting.



Pattern: Clover
Designer: Kate Blackburn
Source: The Inside Loop
Yarn: Happy Feet
Needles: US1s

A quick and pleasant knit. I didn't have any conflicts about this one, except now that it's done, and I'm no longer certain it should be the appointed partner sock to the Fruitloops sock I finished in antique denim Claudia handpaint.

That said, it's a good pattern and was a fun knit. It should not be blamed for my indecision.

Summery Scarves

My mother is chronically cold. Always, always, always cold. Half the time I think I've inherited her base temperature, but fortunately for the rest of the time I seem to get along fairly well in normal people clothing. For the best, because otherwise I would have to knit summer scarves for two people.



Half a Haruha
Pattern: Haruha
Designer: Tikru
Source: Made by Myself
Yarn: Frog Tree Pima Cotton/Silk
Needles: US6/4mm

Since the original pattern called for fingering weight, and the yarn I used is most definitely not, I reduced the stitch pattern to just one repetition. It's a short thing, too-- only wraps around one. Anathema to my idea of a scarf, but, well, if it makes mum happy...

Edited to add: err, and here's the direct link to the English version of the pattern. Despite perusing the blog occasionally, I'd managed to blank that it's largely in Finnish.