Sunday, April 16, 2006

FO, more inspiration, and new cast ons!

Yup, it's been a loaded day. I managed to clean even more of my apartment (which is happy - YAY!) and even managed to meet Burhan at some sweet cafe in Chelsea. Even ran into one of the Dougs there! As Burhan battled with the entrelac of the strap to the purse he's making for his mother, I finished up the Ballet Tee I'd been working on. Yay for weekend knits!! Here she is, in all her blocking glory!


Ok, so forget about the fact that I have no idea how to block anything (yes, those are safety pins). The idea is that i knit four extra rows than the pattern called for, and I'm hoping that this will block a bit more stretched out vertically than it normally would. My gauge was off by two stitches per inch (I got 12sts for 4" whereas the pattern got 10 and I have no idea how I would wear a shirt with a gauge of 10sts for 4" unless I was walking around the red light district near my apartment) and I was worried how that was going to work, but it seems to not have made too much of a difference. I'm also surprised because the pattern said it would use 3 skeins and mine only took up two. I think I'll return the other two to Downtown Yarns sometime tomorrow or later and trade them for some sort of light blue (Burhan's color idea - which is odd cause we never agree on anything, but yes, blue would be good). Anyway, I'm going to make the below out of it.


It's the One-Shoulder Tunic also from Teva Durham's Loop-D-Loop. It seems like I'm finally getting my money's worth out of this book, which is a blessing because I've had it for a while and hadn't yet made anything out of it even though I liked the patterns.

I'm still working (kinda) on the jaywalkers, but I'm wound all the Euroflax Linen yarn in colors natural, willow, eggplant and aqua for my friend's wedding present and plan to cast on for that project from Mason Dixon Knitting. I'm still excited for my first attempt at working with linen yarn, though I imagine this is going to be painful from the feel of the yarn as I was winding it.

9 comments:

Beta said...

Oh that is gorgeous. But did you just cast on for that on Friday? For real? You're a goddess.
I finished the anthropologie-inspired capelet at the end of last week and spent Saturday night seaming the sleeves and weaving in ends so I could wear it for Easter. Will post pics soon.

Passionknitly said...

I did nothing but clean and knit that shirt this weekend. And life was blissful.

And yes, if you come up sometime we'll do the yarn crawl dealy, but we won't fit it all in a weekend, so you're going to have to come up multiple times. And bring that appendage of yours...we can have fun with borad games or something.

Anonymous said...

I just cast-on for your wedding present project from MDK. Linen isn't super painful, I've got a little rubbed place on my finger from about an hours' work. This won't be the Thing I Work On All Day but I don't think I'll loose a finger from it either. Getting gauge was tricky, I had it and then my project was too big and I dropped another needle size.
The tops are coming out really nice!

Anonymous said...

That Ballet Tee is gorgeous -- if you had gotten the 10 sts for 4" gauge, you could have worn a bikini top over the mesh top and gone all Gwen Stefani on us. It worked for her!

I love the Loop-d-Loop book. It's almost worth the price just for the new techniques (or the technique re-thinking) that I've learned. Your color choice for the tee is excellent!

Don't worry about the "sexy devil" comment -- I thought it was cute, and agree with you completely!

Melissa said...

the ballet tee looks great! linen definately isn't the most fun to work with. it softens a lot after washing, but that doesn't help during the actual knitting.

Rebecca said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Rebecca said...

The ballet tee came out great and it looked fantastic on you!

(Can you tell me how to do the nifty progress bars on the side of your page? I'd love to put them up on my blog...)

Anonymous said...

Oh, your ballet tee is gorgeous! I love it, you've done such a great job on it!

Amanda said...

I stumbled upon your blog today and I fell in love with this ballet tee. Congrats on finsihing something so beautiful!