WIP Wednesday: My first sweater :O

I'm finally working on my first me-sized sweater! After all my angst and worries, it has so far been... very uneventful (not that I've gotten that far, as you can see). I made and washed my gauge swatch, so I'm reasonably sure that I'm producing something that will more-or-less fit me, which is about the highest I'm aiming for my first attempt.

The pattern is Laura Aylor's Serra. Although the construction is a little unusual, her instructions are very clear, and everything seems to be working out so far. I'm knitting it in Berroco Vintage - a nice yarn to work with, but inexpensive, so that I'm not sinking a major investment into my first sweater.

All of this is an exercise in serenely accepting the truth that my first attempt at anything new will never be my best attempt, as much as that fact annoys me.

WIP Wednesday

Well hey, what is this? A blog post?! And a WIP Wednesday post, no less, for the first time since early April! As usual, I have no good excuse for my absence, so let's just skip that part.

I have four things on the needles, all of which are taking turns with each other, and therefore taking their time. Usually I only have one or two projects going, but a few weeks ago I had 6+ WIPs, which was strange and exhilarating! Now I'm back down to the more tedious projects - not to say I'm not enjoying them.

For the past month, I've been working on a pair of socks for my boyfriend - my first socks for someone other than me. Calling it "a pair" is optimistic at this point, because I'm only about halfway done with the first one. They are an experiment in many ways, plus they are for giant man feet, so they're going quite slowly. I'm using leftover GnomeAcres yarn in the Naruto colorway for the cuffs, heels, and toes, and black Cascade Heritage sock yarn for the rest. Three by three rib, nothing exciting until the heel, where I finally ventured beyond heel flaps and learned to make a short-row heel. I wasn't happy with how it was looking until I discovered the shadow wrap method, and now I'm past the heel and well into the foot. The rest should be easy!

I have also been working bit by bit on this little guy. The pattern is Joris by Annita Wilschut, and I have been wanting a Joris of my own since before I could knit. I'm so happy with how he's turning out in this yarn, which is Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sport in Child's Play. The pattern is not that difficult, but a little too complicated for tv-knitting, so I work on him when I'm in the mood to listen to a podcast or something.

There is also this shawl, Zilver by Lisa Mutch. It's currently my tv-knitting for whenever I'm tired of the Naruto socks. The pattern doesn't require too much attention, so it's a nice project for relaxing and just zoning out. The yarn I'm using is Miss Babs Yummy sock yarn, in the Swan Princess colorway, which I picked up at Loopy Yarns during my visit to Chicago a few months ago. This color... I don't know how I feel about it. I loved it in the skein and in the cake, but every time I see it now, it looks different to me. I'll think it's gorgeous, then two minutes later it looks kind of moldy to me. Probably the color variations will even out in the full-sized piece, and if I'm still ambivalent about it, it can be my only-wear-in-low-light shawl.

And finally, my Tempest Shawlette by Tabetha Hedrick, which I'm knitting in Malabrigo Sock, in the Azules colorway. It's grown a lot since this picture - I'm now on the 18th repeat of the tempest stitch pattern - but it's slow going. The pattern is a little too complicated to memorize, but not too hard, so by this point it's starting to get a bit boring. I'm also only working on this project a few days a week, because it's my at-work project, because - surprise! I work at my local yarn store now. I don't think I've mentioned that yet, but yes, I now have a part-time job sitting amongst huge quantities of wonderful yarn with other addicted knitters and crocheters and trying to keep myself from spending my entire paycheck before I even earn it.

WIP Wednesday: cables and charts

Glorious Cabled Mitts by Karen Adams caught my eye on Ravelry before I even knew how to knit, and it's been in my queue for a while, waiting for me to feel ready to tackle cables. Learning new techniques is one of my knitting goals now that I feel pretty comfortable with the basics, and now that I've tried cabling on my secret rough-draft project, it was time to cast on the mitts.

I'm using The Fibre Co. Canopy Fingering in Plum, using a US 1 needle. This combination is mostly due to my stubbornness. The pattern calls for a light fingering, which the Canopy Fingering is not, and for a US 0 needle, which I translate to "at least US 1". Since the yarn is a little heavy for this pattern, I feel like I should have used a US 0, but I don't have one and didn't want to go buy one. Or, since I wanted to use the needles I had, I could have bought a more appropriate yarn, but I really wanted to use the Canopy Fingering. Conclusion: I'm knitting stupidly tight, again, because I'm worried about the mitts turning out too big.

Now that I've gotten as far as the thumb gusset increases, I think the fit is fine for me. All those cables are driving me nuts, though, and I would like to do them without a cable needle, but it's too tricky. Not only are my stitches too tight and tiny, but the yarn is a little fuzzy and splitty, so it's hard to get it all back on the needle.

Whining aside, I really like this pattern. I'll probably make it again, using different yarn - these mitts might make nice gifts.

In the spirit of trying different things, I also picked out a pattern from this amigurumi book that I bought in Japan last November. Japanese patterns are given as charts, which is nice if you can't read Japanese, but I'm not a huge fan of charts. It's going pretty well, though, and I can definitely see the advantage of charts. They make me a little dizzy, but it's easier to visualize what you're doing and where to put your increases and decreases, than it is when you're trying to mentally transfer written instructions into a three-dimensional object.

I'm making the tanuki, which is the little guy in the third row down, second column from the right on the book's cover. As you can see, I've got about half of his bits and pieces done. I'm not super thrilled with how he's turning out, but again, this is because I'm using yarn that doesn't feel quite right for the project. I don't really have the appropriate colors, and this brown is a little too "blah" for him. I actually really want to make the maneki neko (the waving cats), and I do have yarn that works for them, but I thought I should do a warm-up project first. Not a great idea, since this guy will probably go into hibernation soon. Still, it's nice to get this book out and actually use it, not just let it sit around as a souvenir.

Check out more work-in-progress posts at Tami's Amis!

WIP Wednesday: Socks and a secret

I skipped WIP Wednesday last week, partly because these socks were giving me such a hard time. I'm not sure I can even call them these socks, because I restarted and ripped them out so many times that I had to throw away the first few yards of yarn from this skein. I don't know what it was, but for some reason I had a huge crisis of confidence about whether my gauge was right. As I've mentioned before, I've been trying not to knit so tightly, so I'm making these socks on US 1 1/2 needles from Knit Picks, down from my usual 2s. Now that I've gotten this far, I think I can say that I will either switch back to size 2 needles for my next pair, and/or go back to the ChiaoGoo RED Lace ones that I have been pretty happy with before. I wanted to try some Knit Picks needles just to see if I liked them better, and I thought that slicker needles would help with my tension. But actually, I'm finding that I can't knit as loosely as I'd like because I feel like the yarn is getting away from me.

All that aside, I'm pretty happy with these socks now that they're behaving. The yarn is GnomeAcres House Gnome in Lucky Ewe and I love it, of course. I think it's meant as a St. Patrick's Day colorway, but to me it looks like the colors of daffodils just starting to bloom, so I'm calling these my Daffodil Socks. The pattern I'm using is Jeck, by Regina Satta, and I'm enjoying it too. Originally, I was using the Hermione's Everyday Socks pattern, but I didn't think the texture of that pattern was really working with this yarn. I'm glad I switched because I think the yarn suits Jeck nicely.

I'm also working on a secret project that I can't say too much about, because it's a present. This project involves a few techniques I haven't done before, including cables, and needs to come out a certain size. I think I've learned my lesson about making presents - I always want them to come out really nice, but if I'm learning something new while making the actual present, I usually end up feeling a little frustrated even if the recipient is happy with it. So, I'm doing a test run with some stash yarn in the same weight as the yarn I plan to use. It's going well, and I think a lot of that is due to not putting pressure on myself to make a brand-new-to-me project come out perfectly.

Check out more work-in-progress posts at Tami's Amis!

WIP Wednesday: Blinding blanket

Sometimes, stash-busting produces something surprisingly pretty, like my granny square afghan from last year. And sometimes, it produces this:

This is the majority of my surviving Caron Simply Soft collection, being turned into a lap blanket, because who doesn't need a crazy-loud lap blanket? I wasn't planning to use all of these colors in the same project, but I was reorganizing my stash box and they fell in a pile together. And I thought, "Why not?"

I'm using Mam'zelle Flo's instructions to make this, but it's just diagonal box stitch, which I used once before to make a (much more tasteful) scarf. I'll probably have enough red left over to make a border around the whole thing, which might make it look a little less crazy?

You know, I kind of like it. Yes, I'm trying to use up these skeins because they're not colors I really want to work with these days, and yes, I semi-intentionally chose the busiest possible pattern to put them in. But like my Garnet shawl, it's fun to use colors I don't usually work with, even when this is the result.

Check out more work-in-progress posts at Tami's Amis!