WIP: Orchid Cowl

It feels like forever since I had a real project on the needles. I've had this one planned for a while, but I kept putting it off. First it was because I had to finish my mother's mittens, then it was because I didn't have the right needles, then it was because I had lost the right size crochet hook for the provisional cast-on... Excuses excuses! I finally just decided to cast this one on for the RRG2014 on Ravelry (TEAM MEEN REPRESENT), hoping to at least get halfway through the pattern before the end of the Olympics but alas, no dice. I didn't even make it through the first lace section! I did, however, learn to do a provisional cast-on flawlessly. Casting on 3 times before making it through even the first repeat without mistakes will do that to you.

The lace part of the pattern is really easy to memorise, but despite that I keep messing up! Sad, really. I can't even pay attention to a pattern for 42 stitches a row. I blame the speed skating. Was way too exciting. I'm now done with the first lace section and can begin the stockinette and garter stitch sections now. So I should be able to speed things up a bit now! 

The yarn I'm using is Cascade 220 Heritage in maroon. It's soft, squishy, nicely saturated, smooth, and doesn't seem like it's splitty at all! I originally bought it, along with two skeins in black, for a cardigan to wear at my wedding, but that plan sort of fell by the wayside as 8 weeks was a little short on time for me to learn how to knit lace, not to mention a garment with armhole shaping, waist shaping and buttonholes, all things I hadn't (and still haven't) done before. So the yarn has been in my stash ever since, and I've been trying to come up with plans to use it for different projects. This should take exactly one skein, so one down, two to go!

WIP: Snowflake mittens

So, last week, I had to stop halfway through a knitting project because I was lacking in the yarn department. Don't you just hate it when that happens? You're working away, got a bit of a groove going, you can see the project take form before your eyes as your needles are flying... And then, BAM, grinding halt, because you're out of yarn!

Now imagine that, only with mystery stash yarn.

Terrifying, isn't it? I mean, you can always buy more if you run out of freshly bought yarn, but mystery stash yarn? Who knows what it is, where it came from, how old it is, or whether it's even still available! Now, I partially blame myself in this, because I just grabbed a ball and went with it, but I also definitely blame my kitchen scales for lying to me. Damned thing told me I had more grams in my hands than I actually had... About halfway through the mitten I started to get suspicious. So I weighed, and weighed, and weighed... And when the first mitten was done, I was 12 grams of yarn short for the second one.

I know, right?!

But it was a learning process and I'm glad I was at least able to finish the first mitten as it taught me how to knit a thumb gusset, and how to properly knit with the magic loop technique (it. is. GENIUS. GENIUS I TELL YOU.), techniques I was going to need for my next ambitious project! See, I was given the pattern for the Pixie Farts mittens by a lovely lovely lady on Ravelry in the spirit of the holidays! Aren't they adorable?! With those little puffs of pixie fart colourwork all around the mitten? But they're pretty damned ambitious for someone who has only done a tiny bit of colourwork in the round when I was making Christmas ornaments for my mother last year, and nothing since. So I decided I needed some more practice first. And since I promised the finished product of my test mittens to my mother, I asked her to pick what colour or colours and any details she wanted.

Luckily, she asked for mittens with colourwork! Two birds, one stone. She wanted dark purple mittens with a light blue snowflake on the back of her hands. So, yarn-shopping I went, and this is what I got: it's Phildar Phil'harmony in the colourways Myrtille and Jean Bleached. From what I can gather from the French Phildar website, this yarn is replacing Sport'laine. It's a wool-acrylic blend, super-soft on the hands, nice and warm, with amazing stitch definition and little to no fly-away fuzzies!

I couldn't wait to cast on, and to my delight the yarn is absolutely lovely to work with. This was about 75% into the k1p1-ribbing pattern, but look at the stitch definition! It's what you want when you want to add colourwork, right? And speaking of, the stranded colourwork section is very easy! I was afraid it would throw me for a bit of a loop as the pattern is worked flat and then seamed, so I had to do colourwork on the purl rows too, but that's ridiculously easy. Just follow the recipe!

And speaking of the pattern: After some deliberation I chose to use the Snowflake Mitts pattern by Elizabeth Lovick, but I changed the snowflake pattern slightly, to this:

It's a tiny alteration but I like it more. I also opted to alter the thumb slightly from a worked-in thumb where you work up to the thumb, work the thumb flat, cut the yarn, sew up the thumb seam, and then continue on the hand, to transferring the thumb stitches to scrap yarn and finishing the hand first before making the thumb. It made more sense to me to do it that way, as the pattern tells you to make the thumb while you're only halfway through the colourwork section. Plus, I got to use the magic loop again. I'm getting good at that.

One mitten took me roughly one evening, as it's a fairly quick pattern worked in thick yarn on 5 mm needles. I'll show you the finished project as soon as I can, which, hopefully, will be this week!

Not even a WIP: Maroo mitts

How often can you run into something before you give in to its lure and just buy the damned thing? I had that with the Maroo mitts. These gorgeous little knitted mitts, with a simple construction and colour-blocked scallops, I must have run into the ad on Ravelry for that pattern at least 20 times this past week alone. They're so cute! And they look snuggly and warm and adorable. And those colours! I've seen them look amazing in variations of green, a medley of red colours, and even a halloween-themed pair in black, orange and yellow. Very cute. But the original colours really caught my eye: dark grey, with a pop of bright honey-mustard yellow, followed by an edge of silver. Gorgeous! Not my usual colours, perhaps, but I figured it was high time I strayed from my blues and greys a bit. Too many accessories in the same colours can get dull.

So this week I finally caved and went to look at the pattern again for the yarn, and then it struck me that I have this pattern in my library already! I got it for free not too long ago (I think for the designer's birthday?) so all I had to do... was buy yarn! I need a relatively small amount for them because they're just mitts, so I didn't want to buy very expensive yarn just to use a tiny bit. The yarn I settled on is Lana Grossa Cool Wool Baby, it's 100% merino and it's supersupersoft. Because of my sensitive skin I can't wear normal wool close to my skin, and in some cases even acrylics can itch and scratch like a beast, but I have never had a problem with merino.

But I can't start, not just yet. I need to finish the Sunshine Shawl still! I'm getting there, I've got about 20 grams left, if not less. I'm hoping that when it's done, it'll be a decent-sized little shawlette that is perfect to wear in this current bout of weather we're having. It's sunny and warm, but as soon as the wind picks up slightly it cuts right through your sweater. And at night it cools off rapidly, too! We've already had temperatures below 0 degrees here too, so the cold is rapidly approaching. I need to get a move on on this shawl. Maybe I need to keep this yarn out on my desk as an incentive to knit faster, so I can start on my mitts!

WIP: Sunshine shawl

This lazy blogger went to the market, this lazy blogger went home, this lazy blogger...

You get the idea. I guess the summer got in the way again, like it does every year. This year though, I've mainly been working, and only had one week off! We went to a festival, like we do every year, we had a great time, saw a boatload of great bands (and a handful of not-so-great ones), had little to no sleep, and came back home with a ton of stories and a backpack full of laundry. You know, like every year.

In the mean time, though, I have been knitting. I'm working on a Sunlight Shawl for Sad People in, almost ironically, a moody, overcast-sky coloured yarn. I'm making it for a friend who gave me a whole bag full of her old clothes because we both lost a ton of weight and now I fit in her old clothes. That, plus the fact that she's a great person who is truly knitworthy (two years or so ago I made her a hat out of clownbarf babbymelting acrylic yarn that she still wears on occasion because it keeps her head incredibly warm), and the fact that her birthday was a month ago, meant I decided to knit something really nice and soft and warm for her.

It's the first time I've ever attempted to knit something of a decent size, and it's working up really well! The pattern is very simple and is basically the pattern for a standard triangular shawl with yarnover increases, and as a modification you can add ridges, or as some people who have made the shawl did, eyelet rows. I'm trying to space the modifications out evenly. I'm not sure what I want to do with the border yet, or how much yarn I need to have left over for a border, so that will be interesting. I have quite a bit of shawl to go still though, so I'll worry about that later.

This was my first attempt at adding an eyelet row to anything this size! It's pretty cool. (Yeah, yeah, I can hear the more experienced knitters snickering behind my back... There's a first time for everything, right?) And I didn't even miss a stitch! Dropped one, yes. No worries though, I picked it up again.

I promised to have it finished before the weather turned cold and as it was only 15 degrees yesterday and raining like crazy, I probably need to get a move on!