Monthly Archives: February 2021

Zombified

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I am wiped out. Exhausted. Brain dead. Beat. Wrecked. Burned out. Zombified.

I want to keep this blog a happy place, so instead of writing about how over-worked and over-stressed and deeply bone-tired I am, I will show you a few photos of new stuff.

Here is some pretty new yarn:

I bought this yarn as a pre-order kit for Attitude [Ravelry link], a cowl by Julie Knits in Paris, which can double up as a hood. I’d show you a photo of the cowl, but the file won’t upload, and I am too brain dead to sort it out. But that’s okay, because pretty yarn is all we need to make us happy, right?

I ordered this in November, during the iKnit7 Holiday Extravaganza, and it didn’t arrive until this month. My guess is that the pre-order was much more over-subscribed than anticipated and it took a long time to dye all that wool. But I love Julie Knits in Paris – she does such great, funky designs – and I love Kettle Yarn, so I am not going to complain about the time lag. In fact, by Kelly’s Fantastic Accounting Principles, since I paid for it in 2020 but received it in 2021, it is in fact free.

I also treated myself to a couple of knitting magazines:

These are two excellent editions, and I am really enjoying reading them. For the past few years, I have been doing most of my pattern perusing on-line, and not buying many print publications, but now that I am zooming ALL DAY LONG for work, and sitting in ENDLESS ON-LINE MEETINGS, I don’t want to look at a screen any longer than ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. (Bad Kelly! Blog is Happy Place!)

The little wooden tube in the photo is a beautiful, carved needle case for tapestry needles. It is a little gift I bought to cheer myself up, and I love it. I purchased it from Tribe, here. (Doug and I spent a half hour trying to open it. We both failed. I had to look at the link and read the information. “Oh! It is a screw opening! We need to un-screw it, not pull it!” Head thunk! What did I say? Brain dead. Both of us.)

I also purchased some new project bags:

The small one is from Wild and Woolly, here, and the two larger ones from Knit with Attitude, here. They all come with lots of pockets, and are nice and roomy:

I have no more fun new things to show you. I’m going to go lie down. Stick a fork in me, I’m done!

Where I’m at – a WIP report

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I’ve currently got three projects on my needles. I feel as if I’m not making any progress at all. I am not a fast knitter in the best of times, and especially so these days. However, the photographic evidence suggests that progress is, in fact, taking place.

Dyemonds Pullover:

This is a great stranded pullover design by Josée Paquin (Ravelry link here). I am really enjoying knitting this. Once you get past the short rows at the beginning it is all smooth sailing, very intuitive, fun, and interesting. I have just separated the sleeves:

Ursula Vest:

I am mostly done with the body of this vest, and still have the steeking and miles of ribbing to go. I am using the Ursula Cardigan pattern (Ravelry link) by Kate Davies, and converting it into a vest for Doug.

I might be reasonably accused of procrastinating the steeking, but I am justifying this by telling myself that I need to get the buttons sorted before moving on to the next step. This is complicated because I can’t go shopping for them in person and have to rely on the internet to get a match. I’s hoped these forest green buttons would be perfect:

In this light, the colour doesn’t quite work, but in most lights it is a really good match. However, they are quite small:

What do you think? I had intended to put a button on every other colour band, but with buttons this small, it would have to be on every band, which would mean about 12 buttons instead of 6. Would it be better with many small buttons (as above) or fewer, larger buttons? The smaller buttons might prevent gapping, but would also be a pain to button and un-button. More importantly, I want them to look proportional. And maybe I should forget trying to match the green and go for a neutral? Decisions, decisions. This would be so much easier if I could take the vest with me to a shop (or better yet, a yarn fair).

Koko:

Koko (Ravelry link here) is a gorgeous three-dimensional shawl pattern by Olga Buraya-Kefelian. I haven’t commented on this lately, but it is still in the background and I knit on it here and there. I have about 26″/66cm of it knitted, which means I am about a third of the way done.

Where I’m at otherwise? Well, truth be told, we’ve been feeling pretty cranky around here. But Doug had his first vaccine this week, and I have mine scheduled for next week. So, I am trying hard to keep the crankiness contained. Spring is just around the corner.

And now for something new

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You know how sometimes, you just have to cast on something new? I really wanted to finish Doug’s vest before starting a new project, but it’s been sitting in the naughty corner since I realised my gauge had changed (argh!), and I had this new project ready to go.

Some months ago, Josée Paquin put up a photo of her prototype for a new design. She was looking for test knitters. I decided right then that I needed to make this sweater once the pattern was released. It is called Dyemonds (Ravelry link here):

© Josée Paquin

I loved it so much that I even ordered yarn for it. It uses Spincycle Dyed in the Wool, which seems to be on everyone’s needles at the moment. Right after seeing the above photo, I got an email from a local yarn store saying they just had a big delivery of Spincycle, and I realised that the colour called Devilish Grin was pretty cool. So I ordered it and put it away.

The example in the pattern photo was knit with two different shades of Spincycle, but I decided from the beginning to use a single-shade background colour in a cheaper yarn. This was partly due to the way I envisioned it looking, and partly to save some money. Hey, we are all on a budget this year, and I’m all for not blowing the whole budget on one sweater!

I spent some weeks thinking about what colour to use as the background – grey, green, purple, yellow – and also what type of yarn. It calls for sportweight and I wanted a nice bouncy wool with a good feel and a reasonable price tag. Last week, I suddenly woke up in the middle of the night with this thought: “I have 5 skeins of Quince & Co Chickadee in black in my stash!” And there you go Problem solved. Because the Chickadee has been in my stash since 2017, I can even count it as free (using Kelly’s Fantastical Accounting Principles). Yay me!

I cast on and was hooked right away. The pattern is genius! It is knit top-down with no steeking. It has some short rows at the top and those are very tricky. The point of the short rows is to make the back neck sit higher than the front, and those short rows are knitted back and forth, which takes some concentration when knitting in pattern.

Here you can see the start of the sweater, and you can see that the back is raised higher than the front. I like this photo because you can get a glimpse of the reverse side as well.

Below is a photo of the shoulder and the top of the raglan shapings. See how cleverly the increases on either side of the raglan are incorporated into the pattern? Oh, the genius of it gives me a shiver. It’s such a smart design.

Having the black for a background colour does take some of the zing out of the Devilish Grin. I am torn between wanting it more zingy (like maybe with a white background or a good strong yellow), and really adoring knitting something in black. Like many knitters of an (ahem) advancing age, I rarely knit with black because it’s hard on the eyes. But I like wearing it, and I think this is going to be a lovely finished project. It’s very hard to photograph as it changes quite a bit depending on the light. Here is an outside shot:

It’s a super interesting and fun knit, and I have zipped along on it. I can’t take any more photos at the moment because it is dark and gloomy here, but here is a shot from two nights ago. I put it on a long, spare needle so I could stretch it out for a photo.

Knitting with a yarn that changes colours like this, you want to keep knitting one more row just to see what happens next. But I am determined to be good. I am putting it away for the weekend, and am going to tackle the vest. Have a good weekend, everyone!