Fall travel knits

Posted on 15 October 2006 by Kris

As I suddenly had to go out of town for the second weekend in a row, my travel knits are seeing a lot more action than my other WIPs. Just as well, because I didn’t get anywhere near as much knitting as I thought I would while on the East Coast.

So, let’s say hello to my travelling projects:

Just when I thought I was done knitting scarves, too. This is a slightly modified version of Norah Gaughan’s Here and There Cables. Yes, it’s pretty skinny, but I prefer skinner scarves, especially when they’re as thick and squishy as this one is (ah, the magic of reversible cables). And besides, I live in San Diego, what do I really need a larger scarf for?

As pretty as Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock is in the skein, and as awesome as it looks in the ball, it pools like crazy when knitted up, at least in the Black Purl colorway, and I tried at least half a dozen stitch patterns and stitch counts before settling on this. At first I couldn’t decide whether I loved this one or loathed it, but now that I’ve completed the leg, I adore it, as busy as it is. (No accounting for taste, after all…) Yay for slipped stitch patterns!

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A real live top

Posted on 13 October 2006 by Kris

I’d meant to post about this before I left for my vacation last week, but I wasn’t feeling very photogenic at the time, so I put it off. And then the first two days after I got back from Rhode Island, I worked a little later than I’d planned and thus didn’t have enough natural light by the time I got home, so I put this off some more.

But today, I finally got time to take some pictures. I’m still not feeling very camera-happy (hence the lack of smiles), but whatever, I give up.

But I swear I’m happy with this project! Really! I even wore it to work on Wednesday.

Pattern: Tubey by Cassie Rovitti
Yarn: Lion Brand Cotton Ease in Licorice, approximately 2 1/2 balls
Needles: US3 Addi Natura circulars for the back and body, US3 Crystal Palace DPNs for the sleeves

Obviously, I chose to knit this as a short-sleeved top. I knit five rows of stockinette and three rows of 3×1 rib to finish the sleeves.

I knit the medium size back and the small size body. In retrospect, I probably could have knit the small back and the extra-small body. Because as you can see in the above picture, the top has definitely relaxed after 8+ hours of wear… even more than my swatches had indicated. Oh well. I still like it and will definitely get good use out of it.

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October 2006 goals

Posted on 01 October 2006 by Kris

I actually did pretty well with last month’s goals. Didn’t complete all of them, but hey, what else is new?

  1. Finish Tina – Done!
  2. Finish Tubey – Done! (It’s not quite dry yet, though; pictures to come!)
  3. Finish at least one toe sock – Not done.
  4. Work on Eris – Done. Just barely.
  5. Hold off on pipeline projects until completing at least one of the above goals. – Done!
  6. Start Peacock Feathers – Done!

And for this month’s goals:

  1. Finish chart 3 and at least part of chart 4 for Peacock Feathers
  2. Finish at least one toe sock
  3. Finish Eris again. (Hopefully it’ll be more wearable than the last time I’d “completed” it.)
  4. Finish at least one new WIP

Not quite as ambitious this time around, as I’ll be out of town for nearly a week, and I won’t be making progress on my older WIPs because they’re not great for travel knitting. I’m not even going to try taking Peacock Feathers onto the plane – the US0 Inox Express needles can cause injury, as I found out the hard way, so any screener with half a brain wouldn’t let them through. The toe socks involve three balls of yarn dangling from the needles, since I’m just carrying the yarn along the side of the foot. And Eris, being nearly a complete sweater, would take up more room than I’d like in my carry-on and I’m (admittedly very stubbornly) refusing to check in any baggage.

So, smaller projects are good; I’m swatching for a new pair of socks and I’ve started a scarf out of the Louisa Harding Grace I picked up when we did our mini yarn crawl a few weeks ago, though I may actually frog the scarf and start over with a new stitch pattern. Haven’t decided yet. But both projects will be coming to Rhode Island with me.

I’m really going to be focusing more on my family (the entire reason for my trip) and on seeing the sights, but of course, I’m not opposed to stopping by a good yarn shop if one is in the area. Any recommendations? I’ll be staying in Newport and will not have a car, so any shops I visit would have to be fairly accessible by public transportation.

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Watership Down

Posted on 25 September 2006 by Kris

Okay, so I’ve been totally slacking with BQ. I’m not entirely sure why. I know why I’ve been taking my time with The Big Money – I need to concentrate a bit more to keep the characters apart, and I haven’t had enough focus lately. But I don’t know why my most recent BQ read took me so long. I don’t know why it took me so long to get around to reading it, and I don’t know why it took so long for me to get through.

Because I really enjoyed Richard Adams’s Watership Down. It’s been one of the books on my “to be read” list for years. Since sixth or seventh grade, if you can believe it, as one of my fellow bookworms just could not get her nose out of that book one year. But it kept getting pushed down the list by other books until now.

It’s not completely a bad thing that it took me so long, though. Because I suspect I wouldn’t have been able to appreciate it quite as much as a ten- or eleven-year-old reader. It’s not a “children’s book,” per se, and it’s just so involved – you’ve got the main plotline, the informative bits about rabbit behavior, the underlying mythology, and so on.

And a big plus? The characters are nowhere as anthropomorphized as, say, Brian Jacques’s Redwall mice. Okay, so the rabbits talk, but they don’t wear clothes and swing swords and have the most improbable feasts; they do actually share instincts and behaviors with their real-life counterparts. They’re fully realized despite – or rather, because – of these behaviors.

Two enthusiastic thumbs up from me.

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And on to the next

Posted on 21 September 2006 by Kris

As those of you who know me have probably already guessed, I started Peacock Feathers on the very same day I unpinned Tina.

The picture isn’t true to color – offline, it’s not quite as bright and has slightly more green in it. But other than that, this is what my new WIP looked like as of yesterday afternoon (before I knit a few more rows on it) Then, I’d just barely finished chart 2; I’m now nearly half a chart past that point.

I’d always admired this shawl, but up until fairly recently, it wasn’t really high on my list of things to knit. I think a big part of that has to do with its size – Tina is really about as large a shawl as I can stand, and Peacock Feathers, knit with laceweight, is quite a bit bigger than that. Jessica took a picture of me wearing her Peacock Feathers Shawl (knit with the recommended yarn and needle size), and as you can see, it comes down to my knees. It’s a good size for Jess, but not so much for someone a foot shorter.

So I figured that, if I ever got around to knitting it, I would use cobweb weight yarn and smaller needles.

And then a little while ago, Jen and Kristen blogged about how The Grove had new colors of Lacey Lamb in stock (a yarn I could never resist touching, but which Susan had previously only stocked in some seriously lousy colors). So, that Saturday, I went in, was immediately drawn to the two remaining balls of turquoise Lacey Lamb, and knew right then and there that it was destined to become Peacock Feathers.

I really like working with this yarn so far. I’m knitting it on US0 Inox Express needles, and I think that, for me, it’s the perfect combination.

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