Process over product

Posted on 14 February 2007 by Kris

And now, for the newest WIP.

I’ve never had any desire to knit mittens. Especially since I’ve never liked wearing them, I don’t have any use for them anyway, and so on and so forth. And yet…

What can I say, Eunny’s patterns are hard to resist. And these are way too much fun to knit!

I was kind of obssessed with purple and yellow by the time I bought some more Dale Baby Ull, and I actually really like how these shades work together. Even if they do vaguely remind Jessimuhka (and me!) of Easter.

And yes, the two mittens are the exact same colors in person. Unfortunately the lighting was a bit uneven, and the pictures taken the following day weren’t much better, so I kind of just gave up on getting a more color-accurate photo after that. (I promise I’ll try harder with the finished product!)

Anyway. I started this at the end of January and the first mitten knit up pretty quickly, but it took a bit of time before I started the second one. Oh well, this one’s going just as fast, now that I’ve actually started it.

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Version 2.0

Posted on 12 February 2007 by Kris

A couple of years back, I’d test knit Falling Leaves before Jessimuhka submitted the pattern to Knitty. At the time I’d knit it, the pattern wasn’t as fleshed out – there was only one size for it, and the yarn-over short row instructions weren’t quite as clear. As a result, the toes aren’t perfect and the socks are more than a bit loose.

I do still like the socks and do still wear them, but I’ve been wanting to make a better-fitting version for awhile. And since I needed a less attention-demanding pair of socks last month, I decided to start Falling Leaves v2.0.

The sock is still toe-up, but I modified it to include a Dutch heel, with an eye of partridge flap. Because while I like how short-row heels look, I don’t like how they fit me.

I did accidentally make the foot a hair too long, but it’s not that big of a deal. I’m not going to rip all the way back because I’m not quite that much of a perfectionist and I can totally live with a sock that’s a couple of rows too long in the foot.

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A scarf that didn’t drag

Posted on 10 February 2007 by Kris

Okay, so I lied about taking a bunch of pictures last weekend. But not on purpose! I really did mean to, but, well, life got in the way. I did finally take some pictures, though.

As I mentioned in my last post, for most of January I had this crazy time-consuming project that severely limited the knitting I could do. Not the amount of it, but the complexity of it. And at the beginning on that month, all of my WIPs would have distracted me from the real task at hand. So, I started a couple of simpler projects. And one of them is:

(The detail shot is truer to color.)

Pattern:
Clapotis by Kate Gilbert

Yarn:
Two skeins of Curious Creek Fibers’ Serengeti, in the “Sunset On Daffodils” colorway

Needles:
Two US 4 / 3.5mm Plymouth bamboo DPNs

Modifications:
I did only two full repeats of the increase/decrease sections to get a narrower scarf.

I know, I know, it’s shocking that I actually finished this. I generally find scarves excruciatingly boring, and under normal circumstances, this would have been no exception. However, Clapotis is actually great to work on if you just want to keep your hands busy and your real focus elsewhere. It went pretty quickly and I finished it in mid-January.

I bought the yarn at my hometown LYS’s liquidation sale, because it was pretty and it felt lovely in the skein, and it was definitely worth what I paid for it. I loved working with it, I’ll definitely have to do so again at some point!

I’m not entirely sure how I feel about the colors though. In the hank it was mostly pretty oranges with bits of red and rose. However, as you can see, it knits up with lots of yellows. (No, I didn’t consider this possibility when I saw the word “daffodils” in the colorway name. Not one of my brighter moments.) Not so good because I’d always intended to make a scarf with it, and with my skin’s undertones, daffodil yellow is not the best color to wear next to my face. Oh well.

On the plus side, the yarn didn’t bleed at all. Sure, it looks like there are less oranges and reds in one half of the scarf, but one of the skeins had a lot more yellow in it to begin with. The water didn’t change color at all during the soak.

I just went for a light blocking on this project. I got the project wet, then laid it out flat without any pins. So there’s still a tiny bit of curl, which I don’t actually mind, but at least the stitches have been evened out.

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February 2007 goals

Posted on 01 February 2007 by Kris

Okay, so January was clearly not the best time to set the monthly goals I did:

  1. Finish chart 7 of Peacock Feathers – Not done (I am, once again, a few rows short)
  2. Finish a pair of socks – Not done
  3. Finish at least one other WIP – Done! (And I love my Endpaper Mitts so, so much!)
  4. Work on all remaining WIPs – Not done

I was involved with a project that required lots of active listening for the better part of the month, and it’s kind of hard for me to focus on that when I’m swearing about my more complicated projects, you know? So I started some less-demanding projects. I’ll be taking lots of photos this weekend, so expect a fair number of posts over the next week or so!

My progress on my year goals was almost as pathetic:

  1. Have only one project of each type (socks, lace, fitted garment, etc.) in progress at any one time. – Yeah, I failed. Three pairs of socks, two scarves, and two colorwork projects were all on the needles at the same time. (Though the Fairways socks are counted as both socks and colorwork in that total.)
  2. Have a maximum of five projects on the needles at any given time. – Um, not done?
  3. Finish at least five pairs of socks. – Does having three of the five on the needles count as progress?
  4. Finish at least two shawls or stoles. – So far so good, I’m still on track to finish Peacock Feathers this month.
  5. Finish at least one of the two WIPs started in 2005, and rip out the remaining one if no progress has been made by the end of the year. – I’ve decided that I’m probably going to frog one of them early, actually.
  6. Decrease the amount of yarn in my stash. – Barely. Finished up two balls and broke into three more, but I bought four more. (Though two of them don’t actually count as “stash” because I started using them that same day.)
  7. Attend SnBs more regularly (at least once a month) – I went to three this month, so yay!

And now, time to set some goals for February:

  1. Finish Peacock Feathers
  2. Finish a pair of socks
  3. Finish at least one other WIP
  4. Work on all remaining WIPs
  5. Start a new lace project
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Mitts ahoy!

Posted on 21 January 2007 by Kris

I actually unpinned these from the blocking board last Monday morning before work, but I’ve just now been able to take decently lit pictures of them:

Pattern:
Endpaper Mitts by Eunny Jang

Yarn:
Dale Baby Ull in colors 7436 and 7502

Needles:
US0 / 2.00mm Plymouth bamboo DPNs for the ribbing
US3 / 3.25mm Crystal Palace bamboo DPNs for the colorwork

I didn’t make any modifications to the pattern, unless a different tubular bindoff counts as a modification (I don’t really think it does, but your mileage may vary).

This was a pretty fast project, even if I did have to knit three mitts to get a matching pair – I’d started the third one two Saturdays ago, just before I went to the knit-together at Rebecca’s, and I was weaving in the ends that night. I had a lot of fun with these, too. I don’t know if I’d knit a second pair, though, just because with my attention span, I’d get really bored knitting the same stitch pattern over and over.

These are slightly longer than I’d prefer; I’d probably have been fine doing just two repeats for the cuff. And these aren’t quite as snug as I’d like. But I still like them a lot and have used them pretty much every day since I finished blocking them.

Just for fun, mitt guts!

I like the insides almost as much as the outsides, and that’s saying something, considering how much I love them when worn right side out.

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