I've been a busy knitter!

So many FOs!

Firstly, the hand towels for Zoe's wedding were finished and given to her on her wedding the fifteenth. Yay Zoe and Jason - congratulations!


Here they are with their fancy tags sewn on. That's the backside though. Here's the front side:



They came out really well and are highly absorbent based upon the fact that they took forever to dry once I washed them. But Mom was awesome and waited till they were dry then dropped them off at the reception for me! She even wrapped them individually and then put them in the gift bag I had prepared. Mom's great!

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I had cast on for the Mobius Capelet from the Spring/Summer issue of Vogue Knitting before I left for Rhode Island. The idea was to have something to wear in the chill of the evening for the reception which was held outdoors. Well, I didn't quite make it. But I did finish it last week. It's extremely soft because I knit it with Misti Cotton which is Pima cotton and Silk. I changed the gauge a bit for it to account for the yarn, but it still came out quite well. I only had to dip into a smidge of the third ball of yarn - leaving me with enough for a baby hat for a co-worker's newborn babe.


Isn't it cute? Hell of a project though. Threw me for a loop (literally) when I tried joining for the non mobius part, and I never knew it had a mobius in it until I started knitting it (thanks to VK's impeccable design team). All in all, it was pretty simple, fun and different to knit. I enjoyed the project, but seriously think twice about it if you want a "quick knit" or a brainless project. The beginning will seriously throw you off, and you'll want to kill the designer.

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I haven't done a thing on the Mod Dress from Knit 1. All I have to do is steam block the edges (cause I'm lazy and don't block anything) and sew it up, but I've been so busy with the bachelorette party and the wedding, then work picked up a ton and I've been really busy there (staying really late). I had a week from hell last week from which my leg is still recovering, and by the time last weekend rolled around I wasn't going to do anything but knit - not even seam!

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However, I did cast on for a new project because after the capelet I didn't have anything going on. A while back I got Knitting Nature by Norah Gaughan. It's got a TON of patterns inside that I really want to knit. It seems like this book was practically created for me. So many of the patterns are inspired by the beach, water, shells and fields - which is pretty much all Rhode Island is when it comes down to it. There are beautiful sweaters in the book that I really want to knit - and soon!




For the first project from this book, I settled on the Roundabout Leaf tank. You may recall that it looks something like that on the side. The cast on edge is the side you see that's perpendicular to the bottom of the garment. Yup, it's knit in a spiral.


I haven't quite gotten to the point where I have to join the strip I'm working on to itself to start the tube effect, but I'm getting there. It's a pretty easy knit anyway. I'm actually using the suggested yarn, as I believe I showed in an earlier post. It's Berroco Denim Silk. I kinda like the feel of it. I'm curious to see if it will feel as soft against my tummy as it does against my fingers as I'm knitting it. It's exciting to knit because it's so different!

I guess that's my kick right now. Different ways of knitting. It's fun!

It's interesting to see what the Mod Dress is doing to my blog. It seems to be the thing that people recognize from me. I ran into Illana at The Point (obligatory post link! heh) sometime last week (was it the week before?) and we instantly recognized each other. Anyway, she remembered the dress. Everyone remembers the dress...and it kills me that it's not done yet!

Regardless, you should all go check out Illana's blog because she's uber cool. One of those people that I met and was just like, we totally click and if you didn't live in Arizona for most of the year, we'd probably be awesome friends. heh.

I'm getting a little tired, so I think I'll just post this beautiful picture of the beach at night and imagine I'm there knitting....

Mobius Whaaa??!!

First things first, I finished the front of the Mod Dress from Knit 1. Proof:



All I need to do is steam block it and sew up the edges. I'm going to try it on to see if I really need a slip underneath it. It's pretty heavy though. I'm uber excited! I need to see if I can rope someone into taking action shots for me...

Also, I started working on the Mobius Capelet from the Spring/Summer Vogue Knitting

I think it's going to end up looking something like this:


Right now, all I've got is this:



You'll notice that this is a circle with two sets of live stitches. The Yarnharlot has described this as "crazy" I believe in this post. I had a lot of fun doing the mobius part. It twisted my mind a bit, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. I'm ready to continue now. I'm at the point where I start a picot bind off. This is the part where I get a bit tripped up.

I think it's mostly a math issue. Before you suggest it, the corrections page for the pattern does not specify any changes. Forgetting the fact that I'm knitting at a larger gauge and am using 3/4 as many stitches, let's check it out.

You start with 120 stitches, then you pick up a stitch for all these stitche so you end up with 240 stitches (that creates the whole mobius thing). So we've got 240 stitches. We're supposed to knit 60 stitches, then do a picot bind off for 120 stitches, which will leave us with 120 stitches to work over a different sized needle (this is the part where we move from the edge to the actual capelet I'm assuming). Let's run that math through again:

240
-60
-120
60
I didn't even need the TI-85 to tell me that. Please tell me how I'm supposed to bind off 120 stitches and still be able to have the right number of stitches left over to work the rest of it.

I'm also having issues trying to figure out how to do the whole picot bind off. I think I have to cast on to the left needle so that I can bind off the right number of stitches. It's just a really odd pattern though. I have a bit more than a week to go to finish it. I'm going to have to start internalizing the pattern so I can knit it on the subway...

Back in full effect!

I've been going through this general phase of apathy. I haven't really wanted to knit or to even read recently. Instead, I've been busying myself with social activities (which is odd for me since I'm usually not the social type). I think part of this apathy was caused by working on the same few projects for months on end (since around April I'd say). I'm still working on the Mod Dress (I'm going to update the progress bar after I finish writing this post), I canned the African Grey Jaywalkers for the moment while I get over my frustration with them, and I'm almost done with the last installment of Zoe's Wedding gift.

The positive news of all this is that I haven't really bought a lot of yarn. My credit card thanks me for that because it was starting to feel like a woman of the street recently (red lipstick and low cut dresses if you know what I mean). This week, however, I managed to whip it out again, and gently abuse it with future projects.

At Stitchn' Bitch this week I found a nice new color of the Misti Alpaca laceweight I was planning to make Icarus out of. I'm not really planning on joining the KAL, although I'll probably post a link to it because I'll want to check out fellow Icarus knitters' progress. Katy and I are planning to start a knit along at SNB on tuesdays. We'll probably start at the next SNB. I've never knit lace before, so I feel a bit better that Katy's going to be knitting the same shawl. The yarn I'm using is a nice denim color:


Those needles actually aren't for Icarus. They're for the African Grey Jaywalkers. I'm sick of knitting socks on DPNs. Unless I'm really going to be on a plane with them, I say screw it. I have to do some swatching for Icarus to see how I the stockinette portions work up (which will determine my needle size).

Also, since I'm almost finished with the wedding gift for Zoe, and since I found a nifty strapless dress, I realized that I might actually want a shrug or capelet or something to put on over the dress for when i start to freeze and am beginning to be bitten by bugs (ahh...Rhody!).


I decided on the Moibus Capelet in the spring issue of Vogue Knitting. Now, I've got about two weeks to get this done. I think I can do it because it looks like a small enough project. I'm going to swatch for gauge tonight and see if I can't start working on it tomorrow after I get back from the beach. Or - if the weather doesn't cooperate, maybe I'll just start it tomorrow at the laundromat. I'll be knitting it with Misti Cotton which is partly pima cotton and partly silk. It's divinely soft!

I'm really happy I went to the Point today. It jolted me out of whatever apathy I've been experiencing as of late, and it was great to just sit and chat with Alexis, Sandy and Rebecca. I also met Carrie of Every Word's a Purl there today. I've been reading her blog for a year now and commenting every so often and it was great to meet her face to face. Unfortunately, you're just going to have to believe me because there are no pictures. She noticed the Mod Dress from Knit 1 that i was working on and put two and two together...she's what us Rhode Islanders would call "wicked smaht" (that's a compliment Carrie!). But she's also really sweet and pretty nifty too. You should check her blog out if you don't believe me.

So between meeting Carrie, chatting with the Point laidies and searching for a pattern for a capelet (something Beth (we're full of links today eh?) might call an "overy thingey" cause it goes over a dress...get it?) I feel quite regenerated and ready to take the knitting world on by storm! Which is exactly what it's doing outside, so all of this is quite apt isn't it?