Category: FO Page 44 of 48

Happy 2004! I haven’t completely disappeared. I’ve been busy doing a whole lot of nothing, and it feels great. A little spinning, a little knitting, a little swatching, and a lot of sleeping and spending time with my sweetie. I finished off a bunch of little knitted Christmas presents.

Here’s one …

Can you tell what it is? And which is the real one?

Of course, real is relative. The second photo is provided by my very gracious model, Rosie Toes. The first photo is the tail of the Davie Crockett hat, courtesy of Knitty. Believe it or not, I was wandering around the yarn store the day before Knitty came out, and came across a felted fur bag. I looked at it and kept seeing a felted ‘coon skin hat. I bought some Cascade 220 and, get this, exactly the same fur as described in the Knitty pattern. Of course, when Knitty came out, I decided that I would skip a whole lot of work (swatching, felt the swatch, make up a pattern), and just use the pattern in Knitty. It was FUN! But not an experience that I want to try again. It is impossible to see the stitches in the fur. It was not an enjoyable experience.

Of course, since it’s a present for Martin’s great nephew, we didn’t really have a hat model of the appropriate size, until I came across our Hedgehog.

Not much to update, except that I finally pulled all the pictures off of the old digital camera. Sigh. I really have to finish unpacking those boxes and finish putting the office together.

Anyhoo, we have pictures, and more pictures!

Okay, remember these rovings that I bought at the NwRSA conference? Well, they now look like this …

These were navajo plied. And I have about 1100 yards of this loveliness. I bought some Cascade 220 in a dark green heather to go with it. I’ve decided to make a sweater vest for Martin using the Seaweed vest from Sweaters from Camp.

The color stripes will consist of fewer rows, since the vest will be knitted in the round. Hopefully, it will look much more subtle. I noticed while I was spinning this next to the pond, that the yarn is the color of the pond, with all the colors of the plant life, in their varying stages of the life cycle, from new to dying leaves. That was when I decided that something marine related would be best. Besides, what else would you make for a (former) marine biologist?

A few more finished projects. Here is the vest. I still haven’t blocked it, nor have I found the zippers yet, but here’s what it’s looking like these days, along with the finished Crusoe socks. Here’s proof that Martin is too familiar with my knitting projects. He didn’t even bat an eye lash when I told him it was the third sock I’ve knitted of this pair.

Ooh! I mattress seamed the vest. It’s the first time I’ve successfully used mattress seam. I’ve always been disgusted with my efforts and ripped it out in favor of one of the other methods. Any methods. As long as it wasn’t mattress. I can see where being meticulous about counting your rows would come in handy (yes, I know it’s not necessary, but it does look a lot neater).

On the needles… a 3/4 sleeve raglan sweater with the yarn that I spun nearly a year ago. This will be the first sweater that I’m making with handspun. There is quite a bit of overspun in this yarn, and I can feel the little “knots” in the yarn, where the overspun single kinked up on itself in a hard little bump in the ply. Is there a term for this? It’s kind of yucky as it flows through my hand, but once knitted, you really can’t tell. The knitted fabric is still pretty soft. It’s one of those things that only I will know (and anyone who reads this blog) and it will probably bother me to no end every time I wear it. But hey! It’s a learning experience, right?