Mending

Yesterday was the first day in I don't know how long where I wasn't in crisis mode. There wasn't any homework to be caught up on, no supplies needing to be bought, no promises that I needed to make good on; it felt rather weird.

I looked around, trying to figure out what would be the best use of my time when my eye caught my Dad's sweater. Both sleeves needed some mending and I had finally found some yarn that matched it. It was tough to fix because it was a double knit. Eventually I was victorious... but not before I texted my Dad telling him what a miserable experience it was going to be mending it.

Since I had all my mending stuff out, I looked around again and realized that I had a stack of socks that have been waiting for some attention for maybe more than a year. Some needed duplicate stitching, some needed a woven darn, some needed a combination.

I don't know what possessed me, but I mended the lot.

There is still studying to do and other things that will need my attention in the coming days, but I haven't felt this much peace in a while. Who knew that mending all the knits might mend me a bit too.

Arrowhead Cardigan

I finished my Arrowhead Cardigan a few days ago, and it was just in time. We've been at Connor's parents' farm and the temperatures have gotten down to 15°F/-9°C during the day. Brrrrr. I was in desperate need of a warm coat that would allow me to layer underneath it.

Like many of my knits, I modified a huge amount. The smallest size was 49"/125cm. I didn't want such an oversized jacket, so I resized it to 42"/106cm. There is no shaping in the jacket and the new size didn't leave me with much ease for my hips, I steeked in 5"/ 13cm side vents.

The original jacket didn't have any closures, so I added four toggles. I also gave the jacket a slight v-neck by decreasing 3 stitches on each side and adding a big shawl collar.

Originally I had done a crochet steek. Even thought the yarn I used is sticky (Fancy Tiger Crafts Heirloom Romney in Poppyseed and Spincycle Yarns Independence in Payback), I was manipulating the jacket so much that the steek started coming apart. No matter. I sewed the steek and made sure to add all the facings, including along my vents.

I'm really pleased with how this jacket came out. It's been warm and wonderful.

My Duderino

But sometimes, there's a man. And I'm talkin' about the Dude here. Sometimes, there's a man, well, he's the man for his time and place. He fits right in there.

I'd seen the movie "The Big Lebowski" before, but Connor hadn't, so a few months ago we watched it. Connor immediately identified with the main character, The Dude.

Not long after I came across Andrea Rangel's The Knitter's Dude pattern. It was clear that Connor needed his own Dude Sweater.

This is the first sweater I've knit for Connor. I told him hand knit sweaters are like a knitter's hug. He agrees.

Connor did ask for a slight modification. The pattern's instructions are for a button closure. Connor wanted to have a zipper instead. It took me two different zippers to get it to work. I cut the first zipper too short and then had a bit of a meltdown because I didn't realize I cut it too short until it was fully installed... four hours after I started. The second zipper went in much faster.

Connor is planning to channel his inner Dude for the foreseeable future.

Iceland Sweater And First Woven Scarf

I think it is a tradition for me to finish a sweater just in time for the hot weather. I attached the last button on the last day of sweater weather we are going to have for awhile.

Pattern: Iceland from Rowan 42; Yarn: Naturally Harmony 10 Ply in color 803

I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out though. I made quite a few modifications to transform the sweater being shaped like an oversized bag to something a bit more flattering. Most of the modifications I made had to do with the ribbed body portion of the sweater; I added length and shaping. The details are more in depth on my ravelry page.

I'm also pleased to say that I have managed to complete goal #4 of this year's goal list: knitting sweater out of stash. 

I also finished my first woven project: a scarf!

Pattern: Made up by yours truly; Yarn: Little Wool Company 4-Ply 100% Pure Wool in White, Oatmeal, and Silver

Connor immediately swooped in and claimed it as his. I suppose that is fair; I claimed his first knitted scarf.

I'm really pleased to have finally finished some big projects.... but I'm already looking at what I can weave and knit next. I think it might be time to give the ole' stash a good tossing (like a salad, not to the garbage... as I explained to Connor) and see what treasures I might turn up.

Has anyone else finished something that has been on your list for a long time? And how many of you have given (or thought about giving) your stash a good tossing?

Yarn Chicken

I wish I could show off a finished sweater. Alas, with three stripes left to go, I've made the classic rookie mistake and run out of yarn. (Note: It doesn't matter how long you've been knitting, sometime when you play yarn chicken, you crash and burn.) 

When I bought the yarn I hadn't planned to make any modifications. But when knitting, I thought I'd extend the sleeves to full length rather than three quarter.

Thanks to ravelry, I was able to get another skein out of someone's destash. It isn't the same dye lot, but I've noticed that Brooklyn Tweed does a pretty good job blending their yarns. Like Cascade, it seems to be pretty consistent between skeins.

Hopefully I'll be done with this sweater (Pente) soon!

A Day In The Life - 5KCBWDAY1

It's that time of year again. It's knit/crochet blog week. I've participated the last few years, so I thought I'd give it a go again. Today's topic is: Talk about the day in the life of a project, completed or still being worked on. Without further ado, I give you the day in the life of my Pomme De Pin from the point of view of the Pomme de Pin.

So there I was, minding my own business whilst being knit upon. I was almost asleep when I vaguely heard something about "checking to see how big I really was". Usually that just means being measured. But not today.

Next thing I know I'm being dragged outside. Things weren't looking so good on the nap front.

I started to shout, "Hey, n- blub blub blub..." Since I was busy drowning, I protested by staining the water green.

After being dragged out of the water, I was shoved roughly into a towel and pressed until my stitches were flattened. This knitter was quite determined not to give me a breath of air.

All that was followed by a good stretching and pinning. If it was information the knitter wanted, I would have given it freely. I already knew that I was 15 inches long. There was no need for all the rough treatment.

Although I will admit that I do look quite attractive now.

Scooter's Sweater

Every year I say I'm not going to do holiday knitting. And every year, a week or so before Christmas, I start feeling bad that I haven't made Scooter anything. I know what you all think; dogs don't care about knits. Well, Scooter is a dog after my own heart. He loves knits. He seeks them out. Nothing makes him happier than cuddling in something knitted. (Of course this is a problem when I'm actively knitting the thing he'd like to be sitting on.)

This is Scooter's new trick, "Wave." I'm teaching him to wave with his left and right paws on command.

Scooter has been without a sweater that fits for several years now. He has outgrown the one he has and gets upset when we put it on him. He looked a bit like a stuffed sausage when it was on. But he's 10 years old now, and I think he gets a bit colder than he used to.

There were various family theories over whether he hated sweaters or if he didn't like the one that was too small. I was on the side that felt that he would like a sweater if it fitted him. So I sunk some money and bought three skeins of Cascade 128. I knew he liked that yarn because last year's present was made of it. 

Since Scooter could care less if it is Christmas or not, I went ahead and put it on him as soon as I was done with it. He appears to like it! As he should. I measured him and custom knit it to his sizing. And I added extra leg room so he could run all he wanted without sleeves feeling funny. Here is the project's ravelry page if you want yarn and needle details.

 

He's catching a treat in this photo. It does a good job of showing the shaping I put into the chest.

There's one last thing to note. I made the sweater to match mine. Yes, that's a bit dorky, but I don't care. He's my little buddy.

"Give me the treat, human."

Solving Problems One Skein At A Time

Those of you who have followed the blog may remember the time that I had some yarnesia. I did renew my pledge not to buy more yarn before my birthday. But I have a confession to make. I did buy more yarn before my birthday and I just couldn't bring myself to admitting it until now. A shipment of Tosh came in and I may have bought a sweater's worth in the Tosh DK. Two skeins in Dustbowl and six skeins in Cove for anyone who is wondering. I plan on using it for a sweater design. I'm not really well versed in sweater design, so I'm trading some photo lessons for sweater making lessons.

But I noticed that I wasn't terribly enthusiastic about my design idea. It wasn't the design. It wasn't the yarn. It was that the design was a bit too complicated to be a "first sweater design." I solved that problem though. I bought more yarn for my first sweater design. It is much simpler and I'm pretty excited about it. I hope it turns out as well as the swatches are indicating. 

The yarn is Cascade's Eco Cloud in 1801, 1809, and 1810.

Rocky Coast Cardigan

It's done! I've finished the Rocky Coast Cardigan from Coastal Knits. It really is beautiful.

It was fun to knit and I love the color. The yarn is Malabrigo Worsted in Bobby Blue.

A bunch of people have had trouble getting the fit right. I did have to do some adjustments. Fortunately, the designer has added some notes on how to get the sweater to fit better. Unfortunately for me, this happened after I finished it. I've worn it around, and like several other people, it does slide off my shoulders. I plan on getting a shawl pin to pin the center. I think that will help out a bunch. If I were to make this again, I might cast on fewer stitches for the back. I have reasonable wide shoulders, but the back is a bit too wide, which contributes to the slipping.

If it stayed on my shoulders, I might be wearing it every day. But for now it has not displaced my favorite sweater. I still would recommend making this cardigan. But it is worth reading the designer's notes and following them for the smaller sizes.

The Zipper Is In

And now for the moment you've all been waiting for. My Émilien sweater now has a zipper! And I've been wearing the sweater a whole bunch. It is comfy, it is cozy and it is exactly what I wanted. A sweater to lounge in. 

I don't know if I had mentioned this before, but I chose the colors based on my favorite pair of socks. The socks are a bit more subdued, but I really love the color combination on both.

Thanks again to my brother for taking pictures for me. Rather than begging him, this time I told him I loved his style of picture taking. (Which in his own words is the "not giving a rat ass" style) He actually leapt out of his seat and jogged towards the door in order to take these pictures. He really likes the sock ones. I fell over for some of those. He laughed.

Boom. Sweater.

Boom. The sweater is done. I even started work on a sock. It's kind of a relief to have hit a bit of a knitting groove after having a week of blah. I wonder how long it will last...

I'm not normally into baby stuff, but making little clothes does appeal to me. I'm sure the little mooseling it's intended for will be quite cozy. The pattern I added to the sweater is intended to be stars above the moose herd and a river below them. I would have added more white, but it's a baby thing. I though grey would conceal stains more effectively. 

I kinda wish this sweater was me-sized

Mooseling

I had an incredibly productive day yesterday. I went on a hike, finished reading a book, finished a sock, and started my very first baby knit. For a friend, not for me. She hasn't told me if it's a boy or girl, so she gets a grey sweater. I'm using Petite Purls Beach Baby sweater as the base. Although I am making the sweater Moose-themed per request.

The yarn is lovely as well. I'm using Cascade 220 Superwash Sport. It's superwash merino. Very soft, very shiny. Everything has gone reasonable well except that the grey ball has decided to explode. I'm hoping that I can knit fast enough before that becomes a problem.

Counting Conundrum

How many things do you see wrong in this picture? Well, for one, we can see that I have trouble counting when I'm knitting at 2:30AM and I've had a beer. It looks like I gave up counting when I got to the grey stripe. At least the decreases look correct, right?

Wrong. The decreases are going the right direction, but the top of the hood has a kind of short row thing going on. I just put in random decreases. Although that had more to do with misunderstanding what the directions meant than being up late. At least I had enough sense to see that it looked weird. I put the knitting down and went to bed.

Stop, Sweatertime

The other night I was enjoying a beer and knitting my Émilien sweater. I got to the last row, did the fancy "decrease x number of stitches evenly" bit and somehow ended up with 50 extra stitches. I checked my math, had my Dad check my math, and still had extra stitches. Weird. So I counted my total number of stitches and found out that I am an idiot.

When I worked on the pocket modification, where you increase stitches and put them on some sort of stitch holder, I managed to knit those stitches too... somehow. Note how the fabric is smooth above the orange yarn and puckered underneath. A tell-tale sign that there was a rapid increase. (Also a tell-tale sign that I'm dumb) I was thinking that rows seemed to be taking longer and that there was less room on my circular needles. The good news is that I won't have to buy extra skeins of yarn like I thought.

Has anyone else had any "Why am I dumb" moments lately?

Sweating In The Sweater

I have officially finished my very first sweater! The pattern is The Fireside Sweater by Amber Allison. The pattern is written fairly well. But what I like about it best is how easy it was to modify it to fit me better. If you want super specific details about what modifications I made, check out my Fireside Project Page on ravelry.

I used Tui by Zealana. 70% NZ Merino, 15% Cashmere, 15% Possum. I asked kiwipurler to send me an extra skein because half-way through, it looked like I was going to need 11 skeins. I only had ten and I don't live in NZ. Of course I ended up using only 9 skeins. But I don't think I would have even bothered finishing the sweater if I hadn't had the extra skein. It was like a security skein.

The buttons are dark wood. I chose them because I wanted them to blend in with the sweater. All in all, I'm fairly pleased with the sweater.

Of course, in an entirely predictable turn of events, it is too hot to wear the sweater.