after felting

Thanks for all of your comments on the Noni bag! I got to felt it a few nights ago in my friend's felting machine or better known as the washing machine. Her washer is great because you can turn back the knob and extend the wash cycle for as long as you need without having use extra water. It took about 3 cycles or 40 minutes for this to felt down to it's proper size. It turned out nice and thick and the handles are very substantial - I was worried the handles were a bit wimpy but I was wrong. I blocked this bag with cardboard boxes cut to size to keep its nice rectangular shape. I know you want to see a pre/post felting size comparison:



specs:
Noni Green Earth Grocery Bag #407
7 skeins of Cascade 220 green 7414
2 skeins of Cascade 220 blue 7418
yarn held double and knit on size 11 needles

miles of stockinette stitch

Isn't this hilarious? It's an unfelted Noni grocery bag - specifically the Noni green earth grocery bag with recycle arrow (#407). I'm knitting it for Webs and while I got off to a good start, it seemed to take FORVER to reach the top of the bag. I thought I was done when you add extra stitches for the handle tabs and then I realized that I had to knit 10 EXTRA rows - ugh. But when I finally picked it up off my lap I had to laugh, cause look how freaking enormous it is! It's like knitting a giant sweater without sleeves.



I'm going to felt it tomorrow, so I'll let you know how small it ends up. It should be your basic grocery store bag size. I'm using Cascade 220 doubled knit on 11's - colors #7414 and 7418.



In other news I also finished another baby surprise jacket out of leftover sock yarn. It's proabaly good to have some spare baby goods in the gift drawer - you never know who is going to have a baby!



I've also finally started a(nother) sweater for Elliott. You may recall early on the blog that I was knitting Elliott a tiny yarn fair isle extravaganza that I designed. I had loads of trouble with the hem and made it about 8 inches before I petered out. While I would like to finish it someday, I just can't do it right now. I had to admit to Elliott a few months ago that it would be better to make a new simpler larger yarn sweater that I could actually finish before winter. So I took him to the great wall of Noro yarn and he picked some great colors. The new plan is to make a noro striped raglan sweater with a v-neck. And I'm motoring my way up the body at a rapid rate. I'm striping two colors of silk garden - 226 and 244 - and because the diameter of the sweater is man-sized, the stripes are a bit more subtle, sometimes changing color within the stripe. I like the looke very much and am sorting out how to keep this look on the sleeves with their smaller diameter. I might stripe 4 balls of yarn to at least get more colors in the sleeves like the body. Thoughts?

spinning goodness

Happy Mother's Day to whomever that applies to out there! Here are some of my favorite flowers for you to enjoy:


My upstairs neighbor gave me this cute little pot of lily of the valley after we had a lengthy discussion about how much we liked them, and if there were any vacant fields near by that we could steal some from. This have such an amazing fragrant, even this little pot fills this room with it's nice fragrance.

On Saturday I finished the last bit of one of the super huge projects I've been working on. The other one will wrap up on the 21st. Then, my friends, I am going to take a crafting vacation. I think this will involve sewing, gardening, painting some bookcases, spinning, dying roving, knitting, biking and sleeping. Hooray!

In the meanwhile I managed to finally spin some of the amazing fiber from Hello Yarn's fiber club. This is 4oz. of Shetland top in the March 08 colorway - Red Velvet. I ended up with about 200 yards of 2-ply worsted weight squishy goodness. I'm still squishing it, even time I walk past it.

baby surprise jacket and nachos but not together

Hi all,
Thank you all so much for all of the lovely comments on the handspun spiral yoke sweater. It completely made my week. Unfortunately since work is still convinced that I am it's full time plaything, I haven't been able to respond to any of the wonderful comments. Luckily the end is finally in site and things should slow down in the next couple of weeks. Of course that means not so much time for the knitting or blogging either. I did manage to whip out a Baby surprise jacket for my cousin who is expecting.



This is my first time knitting a BSJ and the construction blew me away - it's like origami for knitting! It's knit with Misti Alpaca hand painted sock yarn - color #07



In other news you may remember that Elliott and I were having a nacho-fest. We each made a version - I of course went the white trash route, but Elliott got all classy with homemade chips, slow cooked pork, layers of real melted cheddar, olives, jalapeños, green salsa, sour cream and cilantro. This was tasty as well, I have to say. Here's what mr. e had to say about it...

handspun spiral yoke all done!

She's all done! And just in time for this lovely April heat wave.



Specs:
Pattern: Loosely based off of Meg Swansen's spiral yoke sweater from the book Handknitting.
Yarn:
Yoke: five colors of handspun 2-ply romney and romney-mohair blend fiber from Fantom Farms - roughly sport weight.
Body: 5 balls of Rowan Kid Classic in color #846
Needles: 6's
Gauge: 5 stitches per inch



Notes: I knit this one top down so I could play with the yoke design as I went along. I also wasn't sure if I had enough handspun for the yoke, but of course there was a pile leftover. The handspun is pretty dense, and the stranded yoke is pretty bulletproof! I need to work on improving my spinning to make less dense yarn. I added hems to the bottom and sleeves by knitting a few rows in the green handspun, knitting a purl turning row, and knitting a hem with smaller needles in alpaca for softness. The kid classic ended up having a somewhat different gauge than the handspun and I had to decrease the number of body stitches to stay on track. You can guess I learned that the hard way. There was a fair bit of ripping and reknitting, but I'm happy with the final results.

Verdict: Thumbs up!

My friend kindly took these photos for me. I'm certainly not a very good model, I have no idea what to do with my hands and I always blink or have dreadfully worried looks on my face for 95% of the shots. Luckily my friend is great at coming up with poses and making me laugh. Just so you know she must have taken 50 photos to get these few decent ones. The sweater always looked great - but my results varied. Here are some outakes:



I'm calling this the Rowan magazine outake.



And the oh my gosh can we be done with this already outake.



And in other news Elliott and I are taking turns whipping up some nacho dinners. (Elliott insists that I blog about this - even though he has his own food blog). I went the old school "classic" route with cheese from a jar, green olives, jalapeños, sour cream, salsa from a jar, white corn chips, ground beef with taco seasoning - delicious! Elliott will certainly go a more classy upscale route with shredded beef, real cheese, homemade salsa... His turn is sometime this week, I'll let you know how they turn out.

knitting and unknitting and knitting

Long time no blog, eh blog? Work is trying to squish me - I'm thinking about that Kids in the Hall sketch "I'm crushing your head! I'm crushing your head - flatheads!!" (On a side note I had known that line for years as a cultural reference but thanks to the goodness of netflix, we got to see the original sketch with some friends last week). So brilliant, but I digress.



Here is where things stand on the handspun spiral yoke sweater. I think the last report on this was when I was knitting down from the yoke in the dark blue main body yarn for several inches only to have a reality check and realize that it was at least 4" too wide in the middle. I like a little ease, myself, but it would not be flattering at all to be adding 4+ inches to my waist. Plus think of the yarn I could save. So I ripped out all the blue, did another gauge swatch, actually washed it this time only to discover that the Rowan kid classic grew another 1/2 stitch or so. Yikes! Good thing for that swatch.

I finished the body, the lower hem, the neck hem and all sewing all the ends in and thought I was fairly home free. I knit one of the sleeves, only to discover that my math was way off and I had put in too many decreases on the sleeves too soon, to make a fabric resembling the qualities of spandex. Yikes! I ripped that sleeve out and used half the number of decreases and that seemed to do the trick.
Last night I finished the first sleeve and got the second (third?) one started.

The most exciting thing about this, other than I think I'm really going to like this sweater, is that I've got nothing else on the needles! Think about that for a second. The possibilities are endless and there is a giant sale going on at Webs... What should I make next? What are you all wanting to make?

happy easter!

Happy easter and spring my peeps! I hope you are all having a good celebration and it is warm and sunny wherever you happen to be.

Work is trying to swallow up all of my time, but I'm managing to stay one step ahead. That said I only have a few things to show for myself craft-wise. I just finished up a pile of knitting gifts for my friends expecting a little chick pea. You know who you are and your baby shower is next Saturday - so if you're reading this, close the browser and step away from the blog...

So one of these friends is descended from the pirate Henry Avery, which of course meant that this baby needed some pirate knitwear:









Ensemble:
-Anouk dress/tunic from Knitty Spring 2004, modified to have pirate pockets and embroidered label.
-Saartje's Bootees
- your basic stripy baby hat with I-cord loops
All knit with Cascade Pima Tencel

I've also been doing a wee bit of spinning:



This is corriedale in the watermelon colorway from Sakina Knits. Worsted weight 2-ply.

I'm going to be swallowed up by work for the next week or so, but I'll be back as soon as I can.
happy spring!