Larch is finished

My Larch cardi is finished..as a colleague of mine said yesterday,"Great - just in time for the hot weather..." as it was 78F on Tuesday for Canada Day. yep, probably too hot to wear a long-sleeve bugga cardigan. The collar turned out lovely.

and I swatched this yarn - Cephalopodyarns Bugga in Discontinued colorway Man of War.



The yarn really puffs up with washing.

My swatch measures 23st and 32R on US 6 after blocking.
My target gauge is 22st and 28R on US 7 for the pattern Capricious (which is a 3/4 length sleeve cardi with a twisted cable running down the outside of the arms, and contiguous set-in sleeves (first time I'll be trying this technique). I like the material on the US 6 and know it would be way too loose on a US7, so I'm going to try to knit the S2 size. There's no schematic though so that's kind of annoying.

Larch collar

ok, yay..i'm finally (drumroll, please) on the collar of my Larch cardi..the one i've been slowly, diligently, and patiently plodding along on since February (!) yep, lots of changes in my personal life since then. Still in a transformational period pretty much..and I'm holding back a little from my normal yarn splurges. Need to save.

I am on the last few pickups on the front bind-offs, and then, to pick up the entire twisted rib edge for an inch. so very close. Then, to seam.

I've been wearing my other larch quite a bit, since the evenings cool off after the sun goes down.

Second round of csm socks

My second round of CSM socks arrived and they are amazing.

These 2 are from White Birch Fiber Arts - they're her rainbow gradient stripey yarns...

(a) Nothing Says Screw You like a Rainbow:



(b) Does this Rainbow make my black look big?



These are the others from the yarn I sent to redknitz

(c) Verdant Gryphon Eidos in The Morrigan (Universal colorway is Eye of Newt)





She added black from Wandering Cat Yarns for the Heels and Toes, and the color is very striking!

(d) Canon Hand Dyes MCN Jane in valentine 2012 colorway:
“When I saw you I fell in love, and you smiled because you knew” ~ Hamlet.”
which is a Black with orange, purple and pink stripey..



(e) Wollmeise in Verhext and Verratzt
(redpurple and dark gray together)



(f) Wollmeise in Igor:
(redpurple and gray)



and here



 (g) Sanguine Gryphon Skinny Bugga in Milkweed Beetle
(blue-green teal colorway):



(h) Tri'Coterie Sock MCN In Finnick (Hunger Games colorway series):

June

I've been kind of awol, I know.

I've been superbusy in the last 2 weeks and haven't had time to post.
My other cranked socks are in the mail and I hope to see them soon.
I'm still working on my Larch Cardi - and now, I have the body done, and Sleeve 1 is done.

I've started sleeve 2, and after that, still the collar to do.

My socks arrived ::happy dance::

Woohoo! - My cranked socks arrived...Look at these beauties...

The Wollmeise Pure 100% in Mon Cheri:



This was one of the first skeins I owned..that I convinced a longtime WM-hoar to part with.
The socks are very very comfy..and I'm very pleased with them.

Ribbed body (5 x 1) with a ribbed cuff:





Sanguine Gryphon Eidos in Nuit (Blue Poison Dart Frog equivalent):



One sock is more red-purple, and the other has more green.
The body is plain stockinette; and the cuff is a picot cuff.



Here's a close-up of the feet:



Third pair is Verdant Gryphon Bugga in Blue Stick Insect:





Plain stockinette body and ribbed cuff:





and I re-discovered that my feet are indeed smaller in the eve/late night than morning.
The ribbed socks fit the best, and the others fit better in the morning, and become more loose as the day wears on.

Small detour: Beautiful Brass & Steam Shawl

I took a small detour by signing up for a contest to fast knit a shawl using a particular colorway in the Verdant Gryphon Group. The colorway - Orchids for Miss Blandish.

The yarn looked like this -



It's a lovely combination of blues, turquoise, and redpink / redpurple, with ranges of pastels in between - lavender, and periwinkle, light blues, and light greens. Really, a very pretty mix.

Based on this inspiration photo:

The planned project The Age of Brass and Steam Shawl with an additional section of 14 rows.
Mods: 7R, 10R, 12R, 14R, and jssbo for bind-off.

It ended up taking more like a week than a couple of hours. I guess I'm just not a fast knitter anymore..and I need to focus on other things these days..

Here's the finished pic (pre-block, as per the contest instructions). Unfortunately, my deck door was casting an odd shadow:

April

First few days of April and the weather is gorgeous today - low 50s..and very pleasant. I could have worn short sleeves. I frogged back to the first stitch marker yesterday and re-wound the yarn around itself. I determined I had only knit 3 of the 8 decreases I was going to do, hence way more fabric than intended. Hopefully, second time is a charm. On the decluttering front, I went through and recycled/shredded the contents of 3 file boxes, and 2 small boxes on Sunday..and packed 13 boxes for Kim's fundraising work. I am letting go of a lot of old baggage which is great.. It's weird the stuff I kept for so long. Next to review clothes for donation, and do some organizing. Also, more yardage out, as I've sent away some skeins to be cranked into Circular Sock Machine (CSM) socks. Postage was reasonable (!). It'll end up being about $3 out of pocket for postage for a pair of socks. I'll post later a pic of the pretties.

Larch II in a lurch..

So, I measured my Larch II this week. It was going along pretty swimmingly..until I re-measured, and measured it against both my first Larch, and also my normal felted wool jacket. The good news is that I followed my previous mods exactly. The bad news is that I knit looser now than I did back then. So, this...

must now be re-visited. I think I'll have to rip back about 1/2 of it, and re-knit so that I follow the designer's plan for the decreases. for some reason time, although my gauge was closer to 24st/4" instead of the 23st/4" called for in the pattern, there was a slight growth, and so it just fit. Now, as per the gauge calculation, I'm dead on with an extra 9st/4" 9 of 24 is almost 1/2 of the 4", so almost 2" of extra. ok, I should just believe the math, next time. and..I'm not really working on anything else for knitting. I did today though go through and get rid of a bunch of old stuff that I've been moving around from place to place. these are the last few boxes that always get moved with my move. essentially old files and there was a lot there..now, it's in recycling and set to be shredded. Also, I packed 4 more boxes for Kim for her fundraising efforts, 1 more bag of plastic bags for recyling, and 1 bag of books for our United Way fundraiser at work...and onwards and upwards.

Come back spring!

Whew - weird weather we've been having...It was just beautiful Sunday, Monday this week, then, yesterday morning, I was scraping my windshield. Luckily, it warmed up in the afternoon.

I can't believe it's been a month since I put Rapunzel aside. I have made some measurements but need to get back to the designer's instructions to make sure I got them all. I have almost lost my knitting mojo..except that yarns still call to me to make lovely things.

My yarn buying is definitely slowing down though..thankfully. Although one can never have too much yarn, I think I'm heading towards SABLE (Stash Acquisition Beyond Life Expectancy)..well, maybe more like SANLE, with the N being for near. I imagine I'll be knitting into retirement years, and I don't have that much yarn.

I am still clearing stuff at home. My work is doing a mini book sale as a precursor to the T-C book sale that occurs in April-May timeframe. I brought 3 grocery bags full to work of books for donation, and fundraising. Destashed a bunch of older Interweave mags last week, and culled my needles the month before. Will go through again before my birthday to see if there's more yarn to destash. I have been getting rid of the lys yarn to Kim to sell. For a lot of things, I'm just closing my eyes, and putting it in the boxes for Kim. There's a lot I can't access right away, so that's an indicator of what I really use. I finally got rid of boxes of photo paper as I long since retired the hp printer that uses the photo paper. I'm not printing as much these days anyway.

Everything Old will be closing soon (see her blog here), and will be taking a last custom order following Fibres West. It's nice to have a dyer in the group, and I think there will be another one starting again, so there will be possibilities for more yarn (heh, which I definitely do not need).

Larch II is continuing but boring stockinette. I am about half way on the stockinette rows before I am decreasing. I need 36 to match my other Larch. It looks beautiful. Will have to take a better pic. I too a couple photos on my ipad and they turned out great - much more accurate once the photo was loaded to iphoto than on the screen, as there is no light meter. I have an older model, so there's no adjustments. I will have to check out if Yarma is available for ipad.

For ebooks, I read the "first phone call from heaven" by mitch albom..I would say skip this if you are thinking about it..not as good as his "five people you meet in heaven" book. Feels like I got ripped off, actually. I don't like feeling like a manipulated reader. I am mid-way through the biography on Steve Jobs. It's interesting to read the historical parts. Compelling People was a good read, and I also read "The Night Circus" which was a fascinating-couldn't-put-it-down read.






 

Starting something new...

I blocked the body of Rapunzel yesterday and need to settle down and count stitches to see if the designer can recalc the sleeve cap. It's a lot of work but will hopefully be worthwhile since the body is so beautiful and the yarn is just scrumptious. Bugga. Strawberry Crab.

In the meanwhile, it had been 2 or so weeks since I'd knit since I was busy with other activities. Although my job is good and stable right now, I feel like I'm in flux in the rest of my life, and it's definitely a transition period. It's 2 weeks in on the Year of the Horse, and it shows.  I'm going through my stuff and getting rid of stuff to my friend Kim for her fundraising efforts ($3K they are trying to raise this year for chicken farming in Cote d'Ivoire)...and still outstanding for me to work through some old grief work, and get rid of emotional and physical baggage. It's been really freeing.

At Christmas time, I let go of some older hobbies - silk painting, some scrapbooking, rubber stamping, confetti I'd collected over the years; also, pared down collectibles, even some old LYS yarn. I'm no longer keeping tins. I also took my tree down which freed up some space.
I also reduced my addi needle collection by destashing to one of the gals in my group. I had collected a lot of odd sizes of needles and shorter ones before using the Magic Loop Method.

February's work is about clearing paper clutter. in a big way. I have moved so many times, and just shoved paper in boxes. It's probably the most expensive paper collection on the planet - old bills, old reference sheets, printed patterns etc. It will have to be sorted, recycled, shredded. My eyes are open now...and I'm loving the space created from being freed up. Mostly what's driving it is that I can't find things when I do need them; so, that makes it easier to let go of them.

I also expect I'll be getting rid of books for the T-C book sale when that rolls around as I am just moving like a lot of people towards e-books. I'm currently reading "Compelling People" which is a very interesting read, and I'm loving getting the latest news and tech. news through Flipboard. It has changed the way I approach and read news. I'm also thinking of finally cancelling my newspaper (I know, it's so old school). In my previous job, I was forced to be extroverted for 90% of my day, and I had no control over my time at work, so I found it was soothing to read at lunch and restore my energies. Now, I'm in a position where I'm using my skills to work more cross-organizationally which suits my abilities and needs, and I have more control over my time.  Way fewer and more productive meetings. I'm much happier in it. It's the one thing I hope will stay constant in the next few months.
People comment to me at the office about how they can hear me laughing, it's pretty amazing.

I also have started wearing more of my sweaters - Larch which was made from SG Bugga Blue Stink Bug. It's pilling a lot, and I've been using the Gleener to reduce the pills (essentially fine sand paper on a handle),

and Audrey which has turned out to be a very flattering sweater. I'm not sure I'm too keen on the arms not being set-in sleeves, but they seem to be ok. Ironically, of the 2 sleeves, the left one is kind of tight which was the instructions I followed from the designer (who probably has different arms than me), and my right arm seems ok (which I adapted from instructions on the web for a top-down sleeve cap). On wednesday, I wore Audrey buttoned up and I had a lot of compliments about it. A friend mentioned that it looks "store bought", so perhaps I've arrived. I joked about it being a luxury cardi though...no cheap chinese labour, since I spent probably 6 weeks knitting it.

The something new is that I decided because I was getting so antsy from only bare minimum knitting at knit night to swatch and cast-on a new project..while I was waiting for Rapunzel to dry and to be motivated to count the stitches etc. I broked into a stashed Sweater Quantity (SQ) of SG Milkweed Beetle. Here is a pic that shows the skeins in natural light (looking very variegated):



Inside, the yarn is very much a teal colorway and so beautiful.

So, progress on that is that I've swatched, and knit the first twisted rib rows. I'm ready to bind-off and pick up for the bottom of the cardi and I'm re-looking at the mods I made the last time. I think I didn't do a lot of decreasing at the waist last time but it's a very comfortable sweater, so I'll have to do a try on and see what's going on. I'd weighed myself in January, and the last time I think had been summer..seems I dropped 10 lbs..but I think it was a bit of stress and running around. 
I feel more energetic these days and I'm generally sleeping better.

The milkweed beetle skeins are all over the map in terms of weight. One skein is 150g, one is 125g, and the other is 130g, so I hope I'll have enough yardage amongst the 3 skeins to do the larch. I do have a fourth skein but it is more green. So, I'll have that as stand-by. Last time, I had to break into the fourth skein for seaming.

I'm also under no illusions this year for any competitive or KAL knitting. The olympics is on right now, but I'm just too busy to try to control that aspect of my life or put myself under more pressure to get things done. It'll happen as it happens, and I'm enjoying the fruits of my labour in a lot of ways these days. I have a lot of SQs and I'll start them as I'm inspired to do so.

Add-in Victoria Film Festival is on right now...so I watched Linsanity last Monday, and caught up on loony tunes at the Jammies and Toons show. Both feel good films.

February

I was kicking along with my Rapunzel quite nicely..I had knit the chart of sleeve 1 then, pulled it out to re knit 2" smaller because I have small wrists. I increased up to the armhole..trying it on, taking into account the fact that the arm stretches out and becomes shorter. Then, forgot that following the instructions for the cap sleeve wouldn't work because I'd mod'd both the arm hole (4 stitches smaller because of the pointy triangles), and the 10 stitches smaller on the sleeve.

So, to console myself, I knit the chart for the 2nd sleeve, and I'm ruminating. Need to block the body, and do measurements. The designer has kindly agreed that I can send her them and she will try to calculate the cap sleeve. It's so beautiful. I hope I can finish this before the end of the Olympics.


January just blew by. Lots of activity, clean up, getting rid of emotional and physical baggage; also, playing with devices, and doing reading. I have read books for a long time - went through the Shades of Grey series (way too sappy and romanticized) but a light read; also Thinking Fast & Slow by Daniel Kahnemann, and now, Compelling People. There is a comment in there about women in HR not wanting to hire attractive women..could explain the number of attractive guys in my office.

Sun is out, but it's very cold here.

I'm in a bit of a knitting funk as my knitting has stalled. hope to pick it up again soon.