Knitting on Aeris

Hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving! We went apple picking (and grabbed some wee pumpkins as well) and then I made a ton of food and dessert and everyone was full and thankful!

Needle drama: Sometimes needles that are 2.25mm and 2.50mm are both listed as US1. Sometimes 2.50mm is listed as US1.5. It just depends on the website that you are buying from. The website I ordered my two Knitter's Pride circulars has the 2.25mm and 2.50mm listed as size US1. I thought I had ordered the correct US1s, but alas, what I ordered and received were needles that were 2.25mm. I was very annoyed with myself. I am going to keep them though, they might come in handy at some point.
I re-ordered the correct size needles on my second attempt. I ordered from a different website this time around as well. Not because of any fault of the first company (fully admitting the mistake was mine) but because I was hoping this online yarn store would have a quicker delivery time being that it's only one province over, and i'm super impatient. And they did! Shout out to  Main St. Yarns and their super fast shipping!  I ordered them Thursday the 6th, in the evening, they came in on the Tuesday (the 11th) after Thanksgiving, which is pretty incredible.

Since my last post, I have finished the body of  Margot. When I was 3/4 of the way through the body  I realized I hadn't looked at the pattern in a long-ass while. So I grabbed the pattern, and guess what? There is actual waist shaping. Oh. Also, I had misread (or rather, read and misremembered) what the dividing round was, thinking it was referring to the bottom garter stitch of the pattern and not the round where the arms are divided from the sweater.
I tried it on, and I am quite pleased with the fit of the sweater even with the minimal waist shaping that I used; I decreased a little bit after knitting the bust for the waist, then increased a little for the hips. I lengthened the body by 2 inches (from 11 inches to 13 inches) and then split for the garter hem. I knit the garter hem for 2.5 inches instead of the 3 inches called for in the pattern. That all worked out well in the end.

Once I finished the body, I decided I deserved a break from knitting Margot, because next up is sleeves and I haaaate sleeves, so I cast on Aeris by Hilary Smith Callis. It calls for a worsted weight yarn, but I'm using the black Mericana Dk weight yarn I bought from the ARTFIL booth at TWIST! this summer.
I'm not sure how I feel about this shawl.  I love the shape of the asymetrical triangle, and it's a super easy pattern to follow...but there is an awful lot of seed stitch. I like how it looks, but I effing hate knitting it. I haven't been able to memorize the pattern either.
 It's possible that choosing a black yarn to knit a highly textured shawl might not have been the best choice.

Of course the further into the pattern I get, the more stitches there are, the longer the rows of seed stitch are. In terms of the pattern, I'm more than three quarters of the way done, but the rows are significantly longer now. I'm also thinking of knitting the entirety of  the  2nd section instead of the just the first 4 rows that are called for in the pattern, before starting the final (garter) section. That means an extra 14 rows. I certainly have enough yarn for it, but I don't know if I have the stamina for it. I'd like to have it finished by the end of this week, but that might not happen if I'm adding more rows. I'm eager to get the shawl finished, but apparently not eager enough if I'm adding more rows than I need.



I have only one FO to share, and that would be a pair of vanilla socks made with Biscotte&Cie in the Blue Pansy self striping colourway.

I waver in my opinion about Biscotte sock yarn. It's not super soft when you knit it up, and after washing, they don't soften much either. So I always think I like the yarn less than I do...but, yunno, they wear pretty well, and I like the self striping, they're really well done. For example; the Blue Pansy sock, has these deliberate, darker flecks. The Watermelon sock has little flecks of brown to mimic the seeds as well.

With my travel sock being finished, I needed to have something cast on and ready to go. I was envisioning a grey sock with a stripe of colour just under the ribbed cuff. Maybe even two stripes, and then solid the rest of the way down.
Instead, I opted to use some leftover self striping yarn from Biscotte&Cie called Arc en Ciel (french for rainbow) and for the grey, I'm using some deeply stashed Julie Asselin Piccolo in the colourway Shining Armour. Which is beautiful, but kind of splitty. I'm naming these socks Shining Rainbow because I'm cool like that.

It was finally cold enough this week to wear a hat, so I wore my Fractured Light and I love it! Typically though, I was bummed that I didn't have a pair of matching mitts, so I'm eventually going to cast those on as well. Perfect for cooler days. I feel like I should probably drop everything else I'm knitting and just knit the damn mitts. But I won't because I really feel the need to finish up these current projects on the needles.

In non-knitting, but also knitting related stuff; I picked up some lavender czech glass beads at Deserres  and some 8mm aluminum jumprings and made some stitch markers, perfect for small gauge projects, because those are the ones I lose the most.

I may have to buy some more beads and make a bunch in different colours!