12 posts tagged “red cardigan”
I am now declaring the spinning for the red leaf wrap to be completed!
That's the red leaf singles for the weft on the left, and the two-ply merino for the warp on the right, finished just now. My next task is warping the loom, so I can take my weaving to a crafting date tomorrow :-)
And I've been making decent progress on the red cardigan too:
Notice that the arm holding the camera is clad in a finished sleeve, the other sleeve reaches the elbow, and the body is considerably longer than in the last photo I posted.
The first sekrit project is what many partners of knitters will have been given today, the heart from Knitty. This was loads of fun to knit, and small enough that R didn't even notice that for a couple of evenings, every time he looked in my direction, my hand 'happened to' cover what I was knitting. The yarns are Dream in Colour Smooshy in dark red, and Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in Valentine - luxury sock yarns for a luxury heart :-)
But my cardigan is very progressy :-)
Before:
After:
I have just derived a ridiculous amount of pleasure from recategorising two of my WIPs on Ravelry as hibernating instead of in progress. This means I officially now only have four WIPs, one of which (the scrap scarf) is deliberately a long-term project, so also doesn't count. Three things in progress! Hoorah!
Those things are:
- The Shadow and Ghost socks. I've made Shadow's sock and now have to cast on for Ghost's. I'm reasonably optimistic that it will go quickly once I begin - having the colours the other way round should solve some of my second sock syndrome, because I'll be watching eagerly to see how it looks reversed.
- The purple cable cardigan. No hurry on this - it's taken its time already, and at the moment my creative energy is going into spinning rather than designing. But the Harmony needles are calling me, so I'll probably take it up again soon.
- The red cardigan. I'm bored of this, which is ridiculous because (as I say every time I mention it), there's not long to go before the underarms, at which point it will become less unwieldy. More wieldly :-)
I've finished the first elegant ribbed stocking (photos later), and am very happy with it. I've even cast on and done the first six rows of the second, but my eye is wandering. I knit one needle of Pomatomus, but it needed too much attention, and that's not the kind of knitting I do in work crises (not feeling well this evening, hence knitting instead of working). Couldn't even bring myself to finish the round.
I knit the first elegant rib in a week, so I really shouldn't be bored yet, but I've been flipping through Favorite Socks, and my Ravelry queue, thinking about what other sock yarn I've got stashed, and wandering about what to make with it. Red smooshy is probably going to be the embossed leaves socks; purple Cherry Tree Hill for clessidra. The purple Knitwitches is variegated, so probably wants to be something plain, and is suggesting it might want to be the main colour for Ilga's socks, but they're Fair Isle and require other colours for the pattern. I've got ordinary black which would work for the dark colour, but the only other unassigned yarns I've got are Opal handpaint, which is too fussy, or ordinary dark green, which wouldn't go. One of the assigned yarns - the red smooshy or the purple CTH - would go better, but I'd have to knit their assigned socks first in case there's not enough yarn. And the purple colour would go better, but the red texture would be better, because the CTH has a really different texture from the others (tighter spun and less fluffy). I've got some purple CTH and some Lorna's Laces valentine left over from other things, but probably not enough :-(
If I don't want to knit the other elegant rib just now, what I should do is knit friend-R's other jaywalker, or even some of my stalled red cardigan. The cardigan's too boring, but if I can force myself to get through the next few inches, I'm at sleeve-splitting-off time, which is itself interesting, and which leaves me with shorter - therefore less boring - rows. But it's big and heavy and requires five balls of yarn at once, and just thinking about it makes me tired. And anyway, I really want to be knitting socks.
Jaywalker is probably the right level of interesting - something to do, but easy to remember and not at all taxing - but I'm all out of enthusiasm for the pattern.
I keep looking at the existing pairs of socks that I've made, and marvelling that I ever managed to finish both, let alone that in all cases I knit the second straight after the first (although I did have a shortish hiatus in knitting the triskell cable socks). What was it that kept me going? When did I lose it? And how do I get it back again?
Ahem. Seem to have turned into Carrie from Sex and the City for a moment there.
I'm knitting again :-) My wrist isn't completely recovered, but it's basically OK unless I use it a lot, or bear weight on it at certain angles. So I've actually worked on (counts) four different projects in the last week. Four! I should get round to taking some photos to prove this, but words will have to suffice in the mean time.
I've finished knitting the Urban Rustic gloves, with added cuffs to make them longer. The sticking point now is weaving in the approximately fifty million ends and closing up the holes. I've done about half of one glove, but can't quite bring myself to finish. I'm well aware that this is ridiculous.
I've finished the first Jaywalker, at last. I even took it over to female-friend-R's house to show her and get her to try it on before I made the second, but then I forgot about it and didn't show her. I'm taking a break before I make the next anyway, because I got very bored of knitting them.
I've picked up the red cardigan again, but it's hard going - it's top-down all-in-one raglan, and I'm approaching the point where I can split off the sleeves, so it's very long rows of boring boring stocking stitch, and it's on the Denise needles, which aren't really quite slippery enough for the yarn, so there's an awful lot of moving stitches around.
In an effort to make me knit the red cardigan, I've cast on something else. It does make sense, honestly. If my other project is complicated, I'll have to have the cardigan as TV knitting because it's simple and doesn't need looking at. The theory is that if I'm doing it while I'm thinking about something else, I might not notice the very, very long time it takes to knit a single row. So for this to work, the other project has to need me to look at it and think about it. And since the cardigan is large, the second project should probably be small: it's Pomatomus, knit with the tweedy blue Trekking I bought in Cornwall. I spent a while looking through sock patterns to find one that I thought would work with either the Trekking or the Opal handpaint, and this was the combination that grabbed me. God only knows what I'm going to do with the Opal. It might have been a poor purchasing decision - maybe I'll see if I can trade it with someone.
But in the most exciting knitting news, I'm going to the Knitting and Stitching Show this weekend with Frax and assorted other knitters, and I'm really looking forward to it. I need to spend some time with my Ravelry queue in preparation for the trip, so I know how much of different weights I 'need' for different things I'm considering - it would be a terrible calamity to find the perfect yarn for a project but not be able to remember how much it requires.
So, things I'm actively planning to make, that I need to look up before the show:
- Elegant ribbed stockings from Favorite Socks (plain or semi-solid sport weight)
- Embossed leaves socks, ditto (semi-solid or muted variegated sock yarn)
- Henry from Knitty (burgundy sock yarn, for large-male-friend-R)
- Entrelac shawl (something variegated)
I have needle wants, too. I want some 2.25mm circs to fill the gap in my sock tools; I need to check what size needles I've used for the random lace jumper and get some pointy lace needles for it to increase the chance of me ever going back to it (just too fiddly with blunt Denises), and I'd like some Addis to replace the Denises in the red cardigan too. Hell, who am I kidding? I'd like Addis in all sizes and all lengths, please. But no straight needles, even if they are the most beautiful thing ever, because I hate knitting with them. They can be made of beautifully carved amethyst and I won't buy them. Well, maybe if they really were amethyst I'd buy them as an ornament ;-)
Finally, I'd like some undyed yarn, probably just sock weight, because
I've had so much fun dyeing that I want to do more. But mostly I want
to spend the day with my friends talking about knitting and drooling
over all the shiny :-)
My blog may have been quiet, but my knitting has not been inactive, until this weekend, when I nearly came off my bicycle, and I think most of the force required to keep it to "nearly" went through my right wrist (I'm right handed). It's not broken, but it is splinted and painful, and the splint doesn't allow enough movement in my fingers to knit :-(
So now I can't knit, what I should be doing is photographing and documenting the things I've been working on, and writing about plans and schemes I'm considering. I've got things to say about the dyed-purple yarn (which is now, variously, in balls, a swatch, and the beginning of a project), and about Jaywalkers (approaching toe number one). I haven't done anything else with the red cardigan because I got bored of wrangling five balls of yarn while knitting long stretches of stocking stitch, but if I start a complicated pattern after I finish the Jaywalkers (or after I finish one of them, cos I think I'm too bored of the pattern to immediately start on number two) I'll have no choice but to take up the cardigan as TV knitting ;-)
I've got plenty of stashed sock yarn (oops, sorry, sock yarn doesn't
count as stash, does it?), and a new sock book. The world is my
oyster...
Earlier in the week, a tip off from brit_knits on LJ led me to a charity shop haul of 10 balls of slightly peculiar tweedy wool/mohair in black and 11 of the same in a weird petrol blue, for not very much money at all. I've no real idea what I'm going to do with them, and since they're only 50g balls, it's only enough to make a jumper if I use both colours, and I don't think that's going to work. This may have been a foolish buy, but I'm sure there are other things I could make with it...
While contemplating what to make, I starting looking around Knitty, and was inspired by Danica to try entrelac, which I've wanted to do for ages, because it looks really cool and fun to do. I was right, it is fun. I'm not intending to finish this as it is - I don't think it works that well with black, and I want to make something bigger than a scarf with this, but it's set me thinking that my next project might be one something like Lady Eleanor, the entrelac wrap. In variegated yarn, because I think it works really well in entrelac, and Bopeepsheep's Lady Eleanor (in Rowan Tapestry) is gorgeous.
Meanwhile, I frogged and started again on the red cardigan, which I think you'll agree is now much more cardigan-shaped (that's the collar and the beginning of the shoulders in the picture). I'm not sure the colours show up very well in these photos - they're not that bright in real life, although I'm slightly worried that they're too bright for me.
Finally, I'm contemplating a little dyeing-and-felting project as a last-minute gift plan. I've got some plain cream wool (bought in Northern Ireland on holiday last year) which will probably take dye nicely, and felt easily. I'll say no more on the wildly unlikely offchance that the recipient reads this.
