Mer Knits!

Hooray for air conditioning - otherwise there would be no knitting around these parts from May through October.  I guess I have to expect that Houston will be terribly hot from now until the fall.  Ugh!

Good thing I usually knit with cotton!  My current project is Cherry knit in Svale.  I'm loving it!

The top picture shows the actual color.  The bottom picture is a close up of the stitch pattern.  It's so cute and keeps things from getting too boring!

I'm also very excited to be taking a few sewing classes this summer.  A sewing lounge opened up in Houston and I think this will be a great way to finally find out if I'm doing things correctly when I sew!  I'm betting that I'm not. :)

Thank you all for your suggestions and sympathy on my dye lot issue.  I may have found someone with some extra yarn in the same dye lot on Ravelry--she's not sure but we bought it from the same place around the same time, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed!  In the meantime, I've moved on to a new project:

Hmm, not the best spot for a picture, but I'm lazy.

This is the Scoop Neck Vest from Blue Sky Alpacas, and I just have the back and the edgings to finish.  I modified it to knit the body in the round, and it's working up very quickly!

I'm planning on using this for the Debbie Bliss Cabled V-Neck Vest.  It's going to be a vest-filled spring, apparently!

I think that all of my knits in 2008 have been cursed.  First, the wrap sweater that I had to rip out (but it turned out ok in the end).  Even the hat I had to rip out in its entirety before getting it right.

And now this:

The Phyllo Yoked Pullover is looking slightly more like a sweater now:

I thought that instead of only posting when I have something done, I should probably let you in on my current projects.  Makes things a little more interesting, I hope!  First, the Phyllo Yoked Pullover from Knitting Nature:

Not much to see so far, but I'm enjoying my new Knit Picks wooden needles  and nifty chart holder.  They're both making the pattern so much easier!

 

I guess this post can't all be about WIPs, because I have a finished object!

Pattern: Kim's Hats from Last Minute Knitted Gifts

Yarn: Mission Falls 1824 Wool

Notes:  Someone in my husband's family, who shall remain nameless, has been bugging me for a hat.  Constantly.  So I caved and whipped this one up in just a little over a day.  Cute, huh?  If I were to do it again, I would move the checkerboard pattern down farther, but I had already ripped out the whole hat once and wasn't about to do it again!  And I don't feel bad giving this away as a gift, because it makes me look like I don't have any hair:

Reading directions, it turns out, is pretty important when knitting.  Which is why this:

became this today:

     I've had some bulky merino from handpaintedyarn.com in my stash for a while now and finally decided to cast on for the Ballet Wrap Cardigan from Interweave Knits Winter 2005.  Actually, it's a bit of a hybrid of the IK pattern and a wrap cardigan from Rebecca 32 (this one on the far left).  The ties and general idea of knitting the sweater in one piece are from the Rebecca pattern, while the rest it is from IK.

     My advice to everyone when you realize that your stitch count is off and something has gone horribly wrong is not to continue, like I did, but stop and re-read the pattern.  Turns out that I messed up the first group of decreases (did way too many of them) and had to frog back to pretty much the whole thing.

     I thought for a while that I might just leave it as is and wear a sweater that didn't really have useful fronts, but I decided to rip despite the fact that I may now miss Houston's winter entirely and not get to wear this for a while.  What finally convinced me was that I can now change the decreases, since I don't like the way they're written, and figure out a way to change the back neck.  I read through the pattern several times to try to find the finishing for the back neck area, but nope, there is none.  It's just a raw stockinette bind-off edge.  There has to be a better way to do that.  At least with bulky yarn re-knitting shouldn't take too long!

Actually, my holiday knitting plans aren't so grand this year.  I've decided not to make anything large and complicated for anyone and instead make lots of small Christmas ornaments as gifts.  I've found a lot of cute patterns - Liz just posted these little stockings, and there's also these nifty double-knit stockings, Julia's pretty leaf ornaments, and the Knitted Ornaments from Handknit Holidays.  In fact, I've already finished one of the Handknit Holidays ornaments:

I think they'd both be pretty quick knits if I had a bit more time to work on them!

     I had hoped to tell you about a nice relaxing weekend at the beach in celebration of our 5th wedding anniversary, but unfortunately that's not the way it worked out.  We drove down to Galveston Saturday for a mini-vacation and enjoyed an hour or so on the beach and a nice dinner before discovering that all of our cash had been stolen.  We had left our wallets in our hotel room thinking that they would be safer there than on the beach, but apparently that wasn't the case.  And when we finally got in touch with the hotel management today, they said their policy is that they're not responsible for anything stolen out of a hotel room.  Which I suppose I understand, but that sort of gives their employees the freedom to take anything they want, doesn't it?  Although the rest of the weekend was ok, it's hard not to let something like that ruin a trip.

      On a happier note, Sahara is nearly done!

The Bonita Shirt is getting there.  It does fit so far--I'm not taking chances after the last frogging incident!  And it's survived a missing yo and misplaced ssk thanks to this little tutorial. 

I'm still trying to decide if I should try the Silk Camisole again or look for a different pattern.  Any suggestions for a pattern (probably for a summer top--I don't seem to knit much else!) that could use around 700 yards of fingering/sport weight silk?

Sometimes close is not good enough:

The start of the Bonita Shirt from IK Summer 2006 in Knit Picks Shine Sport.  Let's hope this one doesn't give me quite as much trouble!