I'm still alive, still knitting, and still working on that f*@#&%!@#(%&^ing thesis. I turned in the first draft last week but then I went out of town for a few days to visit the fam, who I haven't seen in nine months since I moved out here. It was a nice, relaxing weekend. I got to go to my brothers' play (they carved out the two male leads for themselves, thank you very much), I got to be around for my youngest sister's 8th birthday (and the even more fun family barbecue that accompanied it), and I got to see my older sister's seriously cute 9-month-old baby, and my younger sister's seriously weird-looking 2-month-old baby. (He's getting cuter, but newborns often look kinda strange.)
I have been doing some small knitting, in between working on my research and throwing myself on the office floor in some kind of rebellious, flailing "movement piece" (if I pretend it's art, it can't be called a tantrum, right?). Thank you to everyone who filled out my lengthy survey. You have my gratitude.
But you don't care about that stuff. You want to see some knitting, right?
I started the
Hanami Stole a couple weeks ago, and last night finished up the last repeat of the first chart:
I am using Malabrigo lace in the Cactus Flower colorway. I'm not normally a huge fan of pink, but since it's supposed to represent the cherry blossoms and all, I thought I would play along. I really wish I would have gone with my gut instincts and picked up two skeins that matched each other more closely in color (they are from the same dye lot though). But the women in the yarn shop
insisted that the colors would blend better than they really are, and I'm not too excited about the stripey look. Plus I wish I had used a gray color (Polar Morn, maybe?) instead of pink because I feel like I'm knitting spun Pepto Bismol and that's just no fun for anyone.
I'm adding beads to the pattern too, but you can't see them because my camera is pretty much dead and I have been taking all my photos with my iPhone. The phone is lovely, but it has no zoom or flash so what you see is what you get.
While I was out of town, I also started working on my
Something Red.
It's a super easy knit, and I wanted to get the Cascade 220 out of my stash. Last night I got down to the ribbing of the lower half, and I should be able to finish this off over the weekend. Nothing like a quick and dirty sweater to make you feel like you're accomplishing something!
I also went shopping while I was out of town and came back with these:
Malabrigo lace in Stone Chat, Pearl Ten, and Paris Night. I have no idea what these will be for, but this stuff is the softest, squooshiest lace I have ever worked with and I just
needed some.
OK, enough indulging in my blog. Back to the thesis. *sigh*
In other finishing news, I went back to my Buck Fifty earlier this week in a fit of finish-it-upitis. I really really like the pattern, and I really really wanted this sweater to work out, but last November I stitched the front and side pieces together and discovered that it was too small. So it sat in the bottom of my UFO basket for months, nagging at the back of my mind. I'm not one of those people who can just abandon a project that isn't working out for me. I spent money on that yarn! Plus, I still really like it, I just couldn't seem to get it to work.
So I ripped out the side seams and added 2" panels of reverse stockinette running up each side. Now I have to knit the sleeves at the very largest size just to fit them into those arm holes. That wouldn't be so bad, except that I only have 4 balls of the yarn left and I have a feeling that the sleeves will take up all of them. The problem there is that I knit the button band according to the pattern directions, even though my row gauge was way off so I have waaaay more rows than were indicated in the pattern. But I went ahead with the pattern count anyway. (This was before I ever heard the 2/3 button band ratio.) The result is an ugly, too-short button band that pulls the fronts up. They need to be re-done, but I have a feeling I will end up ordering another ball of yarn for that and it will be in a different dye lot. Oh well, some things can't be helped. I'm finishing the damn thing, and that's all that matters.
In other exciting news, the Knitty surprises went up today and I am totally in love with the Tempest sweater! I have been reading Ann Weaver's blog for a while and really like her funky take on things. The funny thing is that I knit up some swatches for my next 2 projects last weekend, and they have been lying around on the arm of my couch all week. I keep thinking, "Ooh...I really like those colors together. It would be really neat to have a sweater in those colors." And then one pops up online and it's super cute! I'm a little puzzled by the yarn though. She says it's lace weight, but other places say it's fingering weight. Hmmm...must investigate some more.
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