Knit Happens

And so it begins again. Once a project is bound off, blocked and ready to wear, I’m on a quest to start something new. Wait, you say I’ve already got projects on the needles? Well, of course I do!

Actually, after finishing my Featherweight Cardi (I’m so glad that my idea of a knitalong is taking on a life of its own… but I digress), I immediately got back to work on a Green Gable (Rav link) that I’d started ages ago in the Classic Elite Premiere – and finished it. Which left me floundering for another project… and I pulled one out of my UFO pile, but the Cotton Bamboo I was using was not being kind to my hands, so down it goes for a bit.

Again, that left me floundering for a project. Until I was reading blogs and saw Elspeth’s latest post and saw this beauty. (The shawl, although the model is gorgeous, too.) Lavalette (Rav link), by Through the Loops!’s Kirsten Kapur. A quick dive in my sock yarn stash, provided the ideal yarn (a recent acquisition from another shop, sorry! However, I might just make another one… or two…)

Lavalette is proving to be just what I’m looking for in a project right now: quick and easy. I cast on late this morning at the shop and that picture was taken after just a couple hours of knitting! (I’m actually much farther along than that, that’s how quick this knits!) Worked up on US7s, it has a great drapey feel that’s going to grow effortlessly when I block it out. So, as I’m knitting on this, I start to think about how the Featherweight Cardi became an informal knitalong (and is going really well – I can’t wait to see some of those finished!) and thought that for those who just need a quick and dirty project or want to give some easy lace a try, this would fit the bill perfectly!

Pattern available from Kirsten’s site. Go download it and join me!

P.S. The photo was totally bogarted from Elspeth’s site – go visit her and tell her how much you love the shawl. Just sayin’.

Now onto the technology portion of this post. Recently, I gave up my Blackberry for an iPhone again and have been having fun relearning the phone. I had forgotten how many ways that this simple phone can make my knitting life easier – there are row counter apps galore, knitting needle/project organizers (and hopefully there will be a Rav app sometime in the future)… But what I hadn’t anticipated was that iBooks would also be a HUGE help to the knitting life! No, I haven’t gone on there to see if there are knitting books available, however, I discovered that you can store PDFs on there. What does that mean? Well, if you have a PDF of a project (that you own legally, natch), you can email yourself a copy of it and open it using iBooks, keeping a copy with you on your phone (or iPod, or iPad), lessening the need to have a printed copy with you. I may have gotten a bit excited over discovering that – and I think that I’ll be emailing tons of my PDFs to myself just to have them in iBooks. 

You might think that, but I’m not.  Right now I’m knitting Hannah Fettig’s Featherweight Cardigan (Rav link) and the large size (a 43″ bust) calls for just 1410 yards of a laceweight yarn.  I know, amazing, right?

I’m using Filatura di Crosa’s Centolavaggi yarn in Ruby.  Gorgeous, no?  (That picture really doesn’t do the red justice.)  I know, I know, y’all are saying “But Holly, the Centolavaggi has 1531 yards – and is less than $40.  The math doesn’t add up.”  (Wait, y’all weren’t asking?  Humor me.)  Well, you’d be right – the math doesn’t add up for just one skein, but does if I’m doubling the yarn.  The Centolavaggi is ever so much lighter than a laceweight and I thought it wouldn’t make too much of a difference when swatched, but I just didn’t like the fabric I was getting.  (See, another reason to swatch!  Just sayin’.)  So, after discussing it with Carol and Rachelle, I decided to double the yarn.  LOVE the fabric now – and am still hitting gauge.

This is going to be an ideal, lightweight cardi for year-round use.  You know how I love those…  It’ll be really helpful here at the shop this summer while I’ve got the A/C blasting, or on a cool evening out (we get those occasionally).  It’s lots of stockinette stitch, which can get a little boring, but the thought of having this in my wardrobe is keeping me going.  Who wants to knit one along me?

The pattern is available for $4.95 on Ravelry or at Hannah’s website.

(Photo from Hannah’s Flickrstream for the Featherweight Cardigan.)

Ahhh, the age old question of which to get first if you can only get one: do I get a ball winder or a swift?  At Late Night Knitting this past Wednesday, we might have come up with the answer.  (Well, it’s always been my answer, but it convinced one of our customers!)

Arabella had picked up the last of the Araucania Lonco from the clearance bin – the Lonco is a gorgeous mercerized fingering weight cotton with amazing stitch definition, but it’s a bit of a b!#&% to wind.  I am convinced that drunken monkeys were hired to reskein up the yarn once it was dyed.  In almost every skein that I’ve wound, there has been an extra twist put into the hank, making it a tangle.  I gave Arabella some warning about it (probably not enough) and she was off winding.

Fast forward an hour: she’s got 5 ends to the yarn and she’s about ready to quit winding and just cut her losses and run. Bolstered by my fourth (very small) cup of wine, I tell her that we’re not going to cut the yarn, that we can save it.  Fast forward another hour or hour and a half: it’s after 9pm, we’re still hand-winding the yarn into 3 different balls, just trying to find the end that’s attached to the ball on the ball winder.  The entire time, we’re cracking jokes about the mutating ends of yarn and how we’re lucky we’ve got the swift because neither of us know anyone who’d be willing to hold the yarn for that long!  I offer to wind the rest of the skeins for her before Knit ‘n Nosh, so she doesn’t have to deal with it, besides, I’ve had decent luck with getting the Lonco wound before, right?

The next day, I spent another three hours with a tangled mess of yarn – the drunken monkeys have been at it again.  However, the next few skeins weren’t bad at all.  (Apparently, the drunken monkeys only work on about half of the dyelots.)  Yesterday I handed it all back to her, wound of course, and she told me that I had convinced her that she needed to get a swift to have at home. 

I got a ball winder about a year before I splurged on a swift and it was a huge pain in the rear to get anything wound into balls – I had to have someone standing right there holding my hank of yarn while I wound it, or laid it on the ground and wound slowly – not good when there are pets around…  Once I got my swift, life was a lot easier.  I could hand-wind or use the ball winder – and my yarn was (relatively) safe from my cats (who love to think of it as theirs).

So, weighing in on this debate, I’m going with get a swift first if you can’t get both.  However, if you can get both (or are dropping very last minute Mother’s Day hints to husbands and children) you can save 15% off of the set!

I was going through my blog reader tonight and saw a post on one of them that said that the new Knitty was up!  Of course, I immediately went over there and took a look… and now my queue is overflowing – again.  Oops.  I just may have added Torreyana, Inamorata (designed by my friend Mercedes!), Tappan Zee, and Tribute (you know I had to add a sock pattern in) to my queue.  This may just be the best Spring Knitty in a while – thanks Amy!

What are you thinking about knitting from this latest Knitty?  Post your answers in the comments – also, what yarns are you thinking of using with them?

Yes, that would be a lovely and gorgeous February Baby Sweater knit by our own lovely Elspeth for a friend’s baby.  Knit out of Rowan Wool Cotton, it’s a soft comfy sweater that any baby would look wonderful in and would love wearing.  The only problem?  The sweater is a wee bit big.  

Just a bit.  The sweater fits Elspeth, and she is a tiny person.  (Doesn’t she look adorable in it, though?)  I know you all have heard me say “it’s a baby sweater, they’ll grow into it one day,” and that’s what we were saying until Elspeth tried it on.  Then we had the bright idea to see how big it really was…

We discovered that it fit me.  (Actually, it does close on me, too – we all decided that it is now a February bolero.)  Now, as I’m a bit “less tiny” than Elspeth, we chalked it up to a lesson in gauge.

Kids, this is why we tell you to swatch, lest you end up with a very large baby sweater/very small adult bolero.  What about offering a class in gauge to learn what you should be looking for, you say?  I hear you and I’m on it.

(Photo of Elspeth totally bogarted from her Twitter – with her permission, of course, along with permission to use the story and sweater for a gauge lesson. Thank you Elspeth!)

Olga and I were looking at the calendar yesterday and realized that we’ve only got just over 2 months to Christmas! Eek! When did that happen? So, we started brainstorming quick gift ideas to stockpile for those last-minute gifts – or that last minute decision to make this a handknit holiday season.