My Weeks In Stitches - The Easter Sweater Continues

When you are creating over 9 inches worth of stockinette, it can be hard to gauge your actual progress. The conversation in my head goes like, "This is going to be the  rest of my life, don't measure, you'll just get discouraged, okay now you can measure, holy cow only 1/2 inch left!" Yes, at the end of Friday night I only needed to knit 6 more rows on the front drape, then 4 shoulder-shaping rows, then a joining round, then 3 or 4 rows of ribbing (depending on how it looked and how tired I was) then I would be DONE.  With the body and ready to start the sleeves.

Saturday was a stay home and clean kind of day, and normally I would have the kids clean their rooms and hide in mine and knit. But this time I actually did something about the clutter I'd accumulated  (why do I keep so many plastic bags!)  I feel a little better about the state of my space - I cleared out my reading/writing/study corner again. It has to stay this way LOL  But I still managed to make progress and by Sunday afternoon I had finished the body and everything! Sunday night I started the sleeves!

I really hope to wear this thing to church next Sunday - stay tuned!

My Weeks In Stitches

Only one project to update this time - the Easter sweater.  I'll end the suspense right away - I didn't finish in time for Easter.  I found one in a really similar color on Amazon, which had a lacy pattern, and was on sale, and available for free Prime shipping.  It arrived the Thursday before Easter!  Shoulders properly covered - and I still plan to finish this sweater because:

Twist Pullover, the cover project from Knit.Wear Spring 2012

Look how cute!  And unique!  The long section in the front can be twisted around the neck like a scarf, too.

I had a hard time finding a pattern, until I had an e-mail from Interweave Press about magazines available for $1 - I ordered Spring and Fall 2012 of Knit.Wear (which both have beautiful patterns, and I'm really excited).  The downside was it took 10 days for the magazines to arrive.  So that left me with only 10 days before Easter.  I gave it a good go.  In 2 nights I got this far:

We had a brief power outage at work one day, and I thought maybe they would send us home, and I would get sooooo much done... and then the power came back on after about 30 minutes.  Oh well.  But that same night we had a craft night at church, so I managed to get about 4 hours of work in there:

It seemed like I got so much more accomplished that night than shows in this picture!  But at this point I'd finished the ribbing and started on the stockinette.  I worked really hard the whole next week, and managed to finish the seamless lower portion, then shape the back of the armholes and work the back up to the shoulder seam.  By the night before Easter, I'd attached a second ball of yarn and started shaping the front armholes.  But I was so happy for that back-up sweater!  It took all the stress off me, so hopefully I'll still love this one when it's done!  Here's the progress as of now - I'm working on the front drape:

Stay tuned, I will keep working on it and updating as I go!

My Weeks In Stitches

The past few weeks have been almost all Christmas gifts.  They are finished and (mostly) delivered now, so I can focus on other things!

Great Is Thy Faithfulness is finished!

 I've started on Doro Theos:

The plan when I started this was to stitch Doro Theos twice - once in each of the variegated threads I got to use in Great Is Thy Faithfulness.  These colors go nicely with the color scheme in my bedroom, and I want to hang them in the chair-corner where I do my Bible reading and blogging.  However.  The chocolate variegated thread is very subtle.  And the blue-tan thread blends too well into the fabric (you can see what I mean in the "finish" pic of Great Is Thy Faithfulness).  So I think I've decided to do mixed color schemes instead of mono.  I'm also thinking about stitching each motif and framing separately (maybe in hoops not frames), so there would be 6 circles around Great Is Thy Faithfulness - here's a pic of the intended design as charted:

What would you do?  6 separate motifs, or 2 vertical sets?  I need help deciding before I finish this motif - I need to know where to start the next one!

Finally, a peek at the hibernating sweater.  The designer calls it "$5 In Paris", but I call it Parisian Berries & Cream.  I really like these colors, and I'm glad I did the charcoal stripe in between the main colors:

This seemed like a very short holiday season to me, anyone else?  It seemed like I only really had 2 weekends to get everything done, and that meant everything!  I'm glad to be done with all the busy-ness, although there was a lot of enjoyment in the busyness.  For one thing, K played Mary in the church Christmas program (I think she did an amazing job).  And I had a great time hanging out with my coworkers at our annual holiday party.

Maybe the shortness of time was because I didn't do as many handmade gifts?  Since I didn't start working on secret projects in September, I experienced the season more like "normal" people who buy things pre-made in stores?

Have a great week everyone!

Wordless Weekend - She's 10 Now

(and after much parental wrestling wearing the sweater and beret lovingly handmade for her by her mother - parenthetical statements don't count as words, right?)

My Week In Stitches - a Finish!

*twirling, spinning happy dance*

I finished Hallie's sweater - before her birthday.  Ecstatic really does not describe how I feel.  I sure hope it fits her, lol.

This was made using the instructions for the Custom Fit Raglan.  Yarn is Caron Simply Soft, in Pagoda (the jade color) and White - I used the white striping to ensure I'd have enough of the jade for the entire sweater.  It was very close - I was nervous enough to go out last week and pick up another skein, which I ended up not needing at all.  Of course.  This is the color Hallie fell in love with when she was going through my yarn looking for a color for her friend's legwarmers.  This mama pays attention to things like that.  So, 2 skeins of jade and some of white.  The neck is unfinished because when I tried adding ribbing it got very small all of a sudden.  As it is right now, the neck will almost go over my head, so hers should fit through it just fine.  In the future I will modify the instructions using some of the v-neck technique to create a larger drop in the front.

So because I had a brand-new shiny skein of the Pagoda and so much White left over, I decided to make her a bonus piece - a beret I found on Ravelry.  See how cute it is?  It's crochet - I was hoping to work in a new stitch on the band instead of the seed stitch, but I couldn't figure out how to make it small enough to stay on her head and still do the specialty stitch (which you'll just have to wait until National Crochet Month to see).  The instructions were written for an adult head, and she's turning ten, so I did have to do some resizing.  I started by using smaller hooks than called for, then on the first round of the band I did sc-ch1-sk1-sc-sk1-sc (the instructions call for skipping every other stitch of the previous round and leaving a ch1 space, I decreased by removing every other ch1, if that makes sense).  I'll keep working on this idea because I think the band of a beret would be the perfect place to show off this stitch, and I'm determined to have projects to show the new crochet stitches for 2013.

And here they are together as an ensemble.  She's going to look so cute.  I hope she lets me get a picture of her wearing them, she's kind of weird about that right now.  Because she's almost ten.

The only other bit of work I accomplished this week was I-cord for the legwarmers.  I didn't even pull out Fairy Sisters, because I was really needing to get this sweater done.  I was going to start aprons today, but the almost-10-year-old is home sick, so it's back to my "decoy" project - since both girls requested legwarmers and even chose the colors, this is what I work on in front of them.  But with 3 weeks left until Christmas I'm starting to feel the pressure to get these done, too.

My Week In Stitches

A quick update on my WIPs:

Hallie's sweater is nearly done!  Hooray!  Her birthday is on the 7th.  I was getting worried about finishing it in time, mostly because I wasn't picking it up and working on it.  I'm on the second sleeve now.  Once this is done I'll be back to knitting legwarmers.  By the way, sleeves are kind of boring.

Fairy Sisters - I pulled this out quite a bit last week.  I finished the purple crater and started filling in more of the dark blue around the edge of the moon.

I'm starting work on coordinating ruffle aprons for myself and the girls - a gift from Santa this year (yes, I still lie to my children).  They love to help me in the kitchen, and I've never had an apron all my own.  So we will have cute ruffly aprons that go together.  Since they're supposed to be from Santa, I couldn't use any fabric I already had in the house - they might recognize it.  So, oh darn, I had to hit Jo-Ann's fabric sale on Saturday. Here are my fabric choices - I have such a hard time mixing prints, you guys.  And I see these aprons on the tutorials with wacky prints that just look so chic, and then I stand in front of that wall of fabric and think, "Where are the solids?"  I'm working on it, really.  My original plan was to make one kid-one with blue ruffles and the other kid-one with pink ruffles, and mine will have all 4.  But when I laid out the fabric to look at it, I decided I liked the pink flowers with the blue/green "bubbles" and the blue flowers with the ladybugs (who's heads are actually lime green, not yellow).  What do you think of this scheme?  The big flowers will be the waistband/ties and back.

Catch Up Post #4 - WIP

Now, finally, we get to current projects!  Thanks for bearing with me over the last week while I showed what I've been up to - there really were things I wanted to share with you, and I'm glad I'm able to do it now.

When the 9 year old was picking out yarn for her friend's legwarmers, she came across a skein of yarn that she really loved.  I mean she really loved the color.  So I decided to make a sweater for her out of it for her 10th birthday.  This was progress in October, when I'd gotten to the point of taking the sleeves off the circular needles.  I'm nearly finished with it, which is great because her birthday is in the first part of December.  The "pattern" is more of a technique for a top-down raglan.  (Link will take you to the very complete instructions.)  I was nervous about running out of the main color (Caron Simply Soft, Jade), so I decided to work in some white stripes.  I'm now onto the sleeves, so it's almost done!

This one is actually a finish, not a WIP, but it's from Halloween.  The 7 year old decided she wanted to be a princess at the last minute.  So we fished through the fabric tub and found an adult-sized floral dress someone gave me for a project just like this.  I cut the skirt off and cut a new bodice, then folded up the skirt to make it the right length.  I cut off the excess and eased the skirt onto the bodice.  Guess what - no hemming, no seaming except at the shoulders, sides and the waist.  The tulle came from her Southern Belle costume from a few years ago and solved the need to make a real sleeve (and also makes a cute peplum).  I glued some jewels and pearls onto the front and used sticky-back velcro for a closure.

Fairy Sisters - this picture was taken in August, and I think I've done a little bit more on it in the purple to the middle-left.  At some point I decided to stitch pages 3 and 4 at the same time.  I'm not sure now why I made that decision, it was probably not the best.  Especially because I've been so spotty on it, it's difficult to even remember which symbol I was stitching last.  I know some people stitch HAED in columns or squares in total.  But I just can't break the habit of stitching sections by color.  So once I start pulling a color I don't want to stop using that one until the section is done.  That's probably how the 2-page-at-once thing happened.

This is the progress on the legwarmers the girls requested for Christmas. They both chose to have the hot pink.  K wants pink laces, and H wants blue - the opposite of her friend's.  They're a pretty quick knit.  You can find the pattern here if you'd like to try for yourself!

I Hate Surprises

It's not really that I hate surprises.  I hate when I know there IS a surprise, but I'm not allowed to know any more than that.

Tomorrow is my birthday (#34 for me!) and hubby is taking me away somewhere for 2 nights.  All I know is I should bring warm jammies, my own shampoo-type stuff (which means no hotel), and I will be permitted to bring stitchy things in case I'm bored. What the???????????

So I'll take Fairy Sisters with me - since I am still trying to finish a sweater I started and didn't finish before Easter, I haven't done any work on it for several days.  I hope to finish page 2.  Maybe I'll take the biscornu, also.  I can do a lot of stitching in 2 days when I don't have anything else to do, lol.

Here's a peek at the sweater as of last Saturday evening - nowhere close to being finished:

It's Entrelac!  Of course she waited until ^this moment^ to remind me that she already had a sweater that would work - after I'd spent 3 days knitting in front of YouTube videos.  Surprise, mommy!  So I didn't feel as guilty about putting her sweater aside and whipping one up for the little one.  But I want to finish this one because I'm really enjoying the Entrelac!

I've put in another row of white since this picture was taken, then I'll be able to do the top triangles in yellow and finish the rest of the thing in white.  You know me and modifying patterns - which means there isn't one. I just started with a basic free pattern so I knew how much to cast on in the beginning.  I'm strongly considering switching to crochet once I'm done with the triangles because I know how to make sleeves and shape everything.  Less time in front of YouTube, more time finishing!  Yay!

My Week In Stitches

No pictures this week.  It's too dark in my house this evening, and I'm too lazy to turn lights on just for pictures.

Monday - I finish-finished my brown socks (you've already seen pictures of them).

Tuesday - I put in about 1.5 rows on Fairy Sisters.

Thursday-Friday - I finished the "skirt" portion of my blue sweater.  I wish I'd taken a picture earlier, because it's been a while since I posted any pictures of it.  I also started the sleeves, and I'll work on them some more tonight.

I'm feeling really good about my sweater progress - like I might actually finish it before snow flies (and sticks).  It's still a little big around the middle, and I'm trying to figure out where else to tweak it.  I was worried that it would be too heavy, but when it's on it doesn't feel bad.

It's true, I skipped BoInk this week.  I'm hoping that when I finish my sweater, I'll be motivated to finish BoInk, too.  I'm really close.  What would I do with only one real WIP????

My Week In Stitches

Fairy Sisters - I did the rest of the confetti on page one and one more row.  Because the main color right now is so dark, it's hard to see when I leave spaces for the confetti stitches.  So from now on I think I'll do them first.  At least that's what I think right now.

Blue Sweater - this received quite a bit of my attention this week.  I'm so happy with myself - I remembered to note on the pattern not only where I stopped, but how many more rows of that section I had left.  It saved me sooooooooo much frustration!  I still feel like it will need more reshaping, but I'm going to wait to do that until the skirt portion is finished.

Brown Sock(s) - I finished one!  I need more yarn to make the second one!  LOL - fortunately, the Etsy seller I purchased this yarn from still has the same dye lot in stock.  In my defense, I did the math based on the yardage of the yarn, and it was more than the pattern called for.  So, I was good.  Maybe the pattern only gave the amount of yarn needed for one sock instead of one pair, but that seems kind of silly.

My crochet pattern obsession continues...last night I downloaded 2 fingerless glove patterns one for DH and one for me - because sometimes you need to be able to use your fingertips when it's cold outside.  DH's birthday is coming up at the end of this month - I may try to surprise him with his.  Not hard, because he works evenings.  Honey, if you read my blog, now would NOT be the time to tell me. ;)