Bulky Cowl FO

Two days after my last post, my Miss Babs order arrived. <3

As you can see in the picture, I didn't just receive the skein of Yowza! that I ordered. I got some gifties too! I love getting wee little gifties. And I particularly enjoy cute wee gifties such as the sample of Cosmic sock yarn and a Miss Babs stitch marker that I got. How sweet is that? Thank you nice ladies from Miss Babs!

I haven't yet thought of a project for the yarn, and honestly I haven't even looked. I wasn't hit by a bolt of inspiration, despite loving the look and feel of the yarn. In fact I was feeling kind of uninspired.

I have been knitting the V-neck sweater off and on, lots and lots of knitting in the round.

I've been feeling like I wasn't making much progress-though I obviously am progressing, I've separated the sleeves, put them on waste yarn, attached the front and the back and have knit about 7.5 inches from the underarm (roughly 7.5 left to go before ribbing, except I have a long torso and may add another inch or two before I rib) I did try it on after I put the sleeves on waste yarn and it seems to fit pretty well. I'm going to try it on again after I've knit 2 more inches, I want to do a couple of decreases for some waist shaping (eek-deviating from the pattern! proceed with caution!)

But apart from knitting half an inch here, an inch there, I wasn't really doing much knitting. I wasn't really all the interested in knitting. Worried I was losing my knitting mojo, I hopped onto Ravelry-to see if I could find a quick project to take away some of the monotony of all that stockinette from the v-neck sweater. Andi Satterlund to the rescue, with her pattern: a bulky cowl. Welp, dug through the stash, found some Knitpicks Bulky Swish in Hollyberry.  I don't know why I had two balls of Hollyberry in my stash as red is not usually a colour I buy, I must have had a reason, a pattern in mind, but damned if I can remember. So I started the cowl, did the first 4 rows just fine (as they were just knit and purl rows), lost a stitch in row 5, figured I'd fudge it for row 6, and by row 7 was missing 3 stitches, and had missed a repeat somewhere. Everything was just wonky and wrong.
I'm going to blame it on the fact that I was watching "Don Jon" and the two main actors had horrible, horrible Jersey accents-yeeesh. Anywhoo, frogged the whole damn thing (Swish Bulky frogs well, good to know) and restarted.

It went much better this time and I was able to get more than half of the cowl done while binge watching 3 episodes of the seventh season of SOA.

I finished the cowl while at KnitNight/Stitch & Bitch. So all told? I guess it took about 5.5- 6 hours? I'm pretty pleased with it. I like that it can be looped around the neck twice, or can be worn over the head like a hood, but I don't know if I'm going to keep it. I don't really wear red well. I'll see how I feel after I've washed it. I'll probably end up offering it up on facebook.

I'm not really that pale, camera washed me out. Both my camera, and phone have taken really shitty pics as of late. I think it's because we've had so much rainy weather/constantly grey skies and my place doesn't get a lot of light at the best of time-so even with all the lights on, my cameras need the flash...I suppose if I played with camera settings and looked into a proper set-up to take pics, it wouldn't be so bad. Ugh, why do I feel the need to keep explaining about my crappy pictures? I'm not selling my knits-just blogging about them.


I have nothing to knit now. Except the boring black sweater of doooom. And that sock that's still on the needles. And either of those two shrugs that I was working on a few weeks back. hrm...

Edited to add: whoops, some pictures were upside down-that's bad even for me!

FO hats!

I finished my weekender cap by Claire Crompton. I finished it last week, a day after I posted about hating the hat. I do not hate the hat. I like the hat. I like it very much. It's very cute on, and perfect for fall.

I've not picked up my Vanilla latte sock at all, but I have been working on the easy raglan V-neck. I'm working on the second set of increases now, and the next step will be to separate the sleeves from the body. I think at that point I can try on the sweater.

In order to knit more from the stash-and get some cold weather knitting done, I decided to knit toddler knitted helmet again. I made one for B last year. I had a skein of Spud and Chloe's Sweater that I bought from a discount bin. The green and grey striping was some Malabrigo (green) and Cascade 220 (grey). I didn't actually like knitting with the Spud & Chloe Sweater-it's not stretchy, but it was saggy, and baggy in the wrong spots.

I was still pretty bummed though, when he lost it at school about 2 weeks after I knit it for him. Anywhoo, I re-knit it.  And I'm sewing on a label this time.

I used stash yarn-some Madtosh in Betty Draper's Blues, some Malabrigo in Polar Morn and some Cascade 220 in Dark Grey.

The original pattern calls for dk yarn and smaller needles and the sizes are geared for toddlers. Obviously, I went for worsted weight yarn with larger needles to fit my 5yr old non-toddler sized head.

It's nifty (to me anyway) how much better I've gotten at knitting. the original hat I made took me about a week, this time around it took me a long weekend-a long weekend that included going apple and pumpkin picking on one of those days and spending hours baking/cooking for Thanksgiving on another day. It's nice to see improvement in yourself. It's hard to judge, for me anyway, unless I'm knitting the same pattern twice. But I don't often knit the same pattern twice. Because, boring! 

So now, except for the v-neck sweater (which is just straight knitting and therefore kind of boring) and the Vanilla Latte socks that I have no interest in, I have no wips. I may do a pair of mittens to match the helmet, but I don't think I have enough leftover yarn. The 5yr old has been asking me to make him some slippers and I have some bulky yarn in green (his current favourite colour) so I could start those, I guess,  I'm eagerly awaiting my Miss Babs order-I feel like inspiration will come to me when I get my yarn. I feel like I haven't had new yarn in forever. It's not true. It just feels that way. 

I think I'm going to stop posting my knitted items on Facebook. People have started posting knitted stuff on my wall. It's fine if they are sharing something that they think looks cool/difficult, or are sharing an adorable pattern with me or saying "I think this is right up your alley". But in the last several weeks I've had three people (acquaintances-not friends) straight up ask "can you make me this" with no offer of payment or trade. Rude! I just fob them off with a "too much winter/xmas knitting to do, sorry!"
I have to admit, it is flattering that people think of me when they want knitted items...

All the FOs!

Last entry, I was knitting a couple of different items. This entry, I've finished a few different items. For example, I had written about the one Leethal Mary Jane slipper I had knitted, but had not sown up or finished in any way.

So, I knit up the other slipper, sewed both of them,weaved in ends and voila! Slippers that are extra warm with possum fur! Ignore my weirdly creased leg plz.

I was worried I wouldn't have enough wool to finish, but I did! I did have to split my last ball of Swish into two balls to finish the last half of slipper two though. 

I really like that Zealana yarn. Sad to see it go, but glad to have knit from stash. Making room for my Babs haha!

Finallyyyyyyyy finished those plain  socks I that I call  the Celtic socks (because the name of the colourway is "Celtic" aren't I a clever knitter?)

I also finished the first Vanilla Latte sock. This sock had also been on hiatus for months.

I cast on for the second Vanilla Latte, knit 5 rows and promptly lost interest...but hopefully it won't take me another 4 months to work on it. I really do love the yarn-SweetGeorgia Tough Love sock in Stormchaser. I love it so much the little pooling doesn't even bother me. 

That concludes my FOs. Currently (ok, still) on the needles is the Weekender hat by Claire Crompton. I finially finished all the sections. Then I gave them a eucalan bath. 

Pinned them to a mat so they could dry.

It took a couple of days, but this morning the sections were dry enough that I was able to seam them. Seaming was a huge pain in the ass. So was weaving in all the ends. As I was seaming and weaving, all I could think was "this hat is a fucking pain in my ass". I don't know if I'll be able to wear this hat just because of how obnoxious it was to put together. Oh, and I didn't even use all the sections, it's huge! by the 6th section being sewn in, I realized that this is a big-ass hat. I left one section out and it's still roomy. Now I have to knit the brim section, which involves picking up stitches along three sections, knitting the brim, and then separately knitting the bottom of the brim and sewing it to the hat. I hate this hat. 

Oh! and I cast on easy raglan v-neck by Stephanie Japel! My first raglan for me! I do not expect this sweater to be done for many, many moons. I'm knitting it in Swish Worsted (Knitpicks) in Coal. Because that is the colour of my heart *dramatic hand to forehead*.

OH! Oh! I finally decided on a Yowza! Whatta Skein! I ordered (Saturday and I already got notification that it shipped-impressive Miss babs, impressive!) the Candied Pecan. It was sooo hard to choose-they have lovely, lovely colours-Moss, Coventry, Beachglass, Jonquil...Gosh I could go on and on.