Sweater Progress

With the help of a meetup.com gathering, and a Knitting-N-the-City yarn swap night, I've made a little progress on the Knitty Top Secret Sweater:



I guess it's striping a little, but I don't really notice it while knitting or looking at the actual sweater as much as I do looking at those pictures. I should really be doing more craft fair stuff than sweater stuff right now, though...

tank girl

I had a lovely time at the meetup.com knitting night last night at Mayorga, and again suffered the guilt of ignoring my little blog. Big projects right now are gearing up for a potential craft fair in DC, and the continued card-spin-knit sort of yarn. I have a huge bag of fleece hanging out in the living room, and I am fascinated by the metamorphosis that the wool takes. So far, the yarn has been full of burrs, because I'm lazy and don't work that hard to get them out of the fluff, but the colors are lovely, and I like the feel of the natural sheepy oils on my hands.

In the world of knitting, the Berella sweater is coming along, as are a multitude of scarves and other smaller projects. Here's the finished tank, now that I remembered to take a picture of it:


I'm pretty pleased with it, especially since I was making up my pattern as I went along once I hit the neck.

new york bound

Life is busy. I have been away from home for the past two weekends (moving someone to NYC, tanning in Ocean City), and will be away again this weekend, moving another someone around in NYC. To this end, I have started a car-worthy knitting project. I'm knitting a variation on Knitty's Top Secret (the link's in the sidebar - I'm too lazy to html it again), with Berella Polar in Aqua/Sage/Denim. I've knit up hats in the yarn before, and it's quick, springily-textured, washable, and not too itchy. I swatched the thing on 10 1/2s straight, and the gauge was around 2.75 st/in, so I revised the pattern around that gauge and cast on 114 stitches, which would've been equivalent to the diameter of the pattern at a 36" bust. After a couple of inches on knitting in the round, I checked the gauge and it magically changed to 3 st/in, so rather than rip it and restart, I re-engineered it again to be a straight body rather than a-line. It'll still be lovely. I'm especially pleased to have a sweater with bell sleeves.

Am also knitting for a craft fair, and am back to working up some felted catnip mice. I inherited two fleeces from a friend of mine, and have also borrowed her combs and cards, so I can experiment with carding and spinning, and then working up mice, which are felted and don't have to be soft, so it's a nice combination. There are still 2 pounds of Finn to dye in my living room. If I'm ever around for a weekend, I'll get to that as well.

I miss knitting with people. I will have to make it to a local group some time soon.