While I was away ...

... I managed to complete loads of stuff.

Such as, the beautiful but damned near unwearable Naga socks. Those babies have almost no ease at all. Once on they fit really well, but getting them on and off is a menace.






Made Cookie A's wonderful Monkey. They fitted me pretty well, but a friend was about to go to a university whose team colours I'd made the socks in, so I gave them to her.






Also continued my love affair with all things Noro, making the Noro Silk Garden Striped Scarf that was so much in evidence on ravelry and the knitting blogosphere last winter. The yarn was a delight to work with and the resulting colour changes were mesmerising. I am looking longingly at Noro Silk Garden sock yarn but those will be such spectacular socks I don't know who to make them for, or if I'd ever get enough wear out of them myself.


Perhaps my happiest bit of knitting was turning a truly awful crocheted scarf on which I'd squandered some terrific wool I'd bought in Reykjavik during one of the two visits I've made (so far, intend to go back) to Iceland. It was too big, itchy and never got used. Big scarves look good on Tom Baker-era Dr Who, not me.




















I frogged it and made it into a very useful felted bag, which I lined with and made handles out of some left over silk grosgrain that I'd bought for a client during my dress-making days. I may shave the wool slightly as it's a bit too fuzzy and starting to pill due to much use.

The Scot in me thoroughly approves of not giving up on good yarn just because it was in a bad project. I'm now looking at a few other vile dreadful useless ill-conceived projects that can be considered a waste of good yarn.













The Möbius wrap that sucked up three skeins of wool/silk has already been frogged. Such lovely (and expensive) yarn - I can't waste it on something that won't get used and I don't love. Thinking of making a cowl in the Monkey stitch from Cookie A's sock.

Big Bloke Sweater Part II

Finally finished it last weekend. One sleeve had been too long - more frogging. The second sleeve's decreases didn't look right - frogging. The ribbing at the neck - you guessed it.

However, it is done. Perhaps it needs a few canny stitches to fill in gaps and to make parts hang right, but it fits 'Im Indoors pretty well. I may or may not block it. Since it was knitted in the round blocking may not be too simple. Now I just have to persuade him to be photographed in it.

New techniques tried out during this project:

Top-down knitting
Magic loop (on lower part of sleeves)

Big Bloke Sweater

In a moment of weakness some time ago 'im Indoors expressed a liking for some yarn we saw in Yarn LLC's New Haven branch (Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Super chunky in a lovely deep red). I grabbed up every ball of it they had while he was still enthused, without telling him it wasn't enough for the sweater he wanted it to magically turn in to, and rushed home to e-Bay where I found more of it. The dye lot was different but when the batch arrived it was clearly good enough if worked in carefully.

Since I am trying to try something new with each project this one was to be knitted from the top down. I tracked down a top down raglan calculator online and starting doing gauges in the round, which took far longer than the more usual square, but since the pattern would be knitted in the round was necessary. Having settled on 6.5 mm needles (my gorgeous Harmony circular set came in to use) I did the required sums and cast on.


Things went well at first. The yarn is a pleasure to work with, despite every single ball having a knot in it, and with the size of needles things went quickly. Having got some inches past joining up below the V of the V-neck I finally compared it to a favourite sweater of the big lad's, rather than trying it on him, and confirmed it was far too big. Major frogging.




After a big drink, got knitting again and it was definitely worth all that ripping. I've got to end of body and have left it with the ball of yarn attached for the moment - don't want to commit to a length yet. It's pretty heavy and I think the whole thing may well stretch once it's in use, so the top-down technique's ability to be shortened may well come in handy.

The first attempt at a sleeve was slightly wrong. My initial decrease at both ends of every third row was making it too narrow too quickly. More frogging. Alternating between fourth and third seems to be working well. At this rate he'll get a hugely warm sweater just in time for the height of summer.

Hat

The first Koolhaas hat is finished and I'm pleased with it. The second one is not going so well, due to a mixture of arrogance, inattention and over-optimism.

There was some yarn left over from the ball I was using for the first hat, which I made in the woman's size, so I decided to make a man's size one. By the end of the ball it was clear that there would not be enough to finish at that size. Around the same time I realised I'd skipped a row about half way through the piece. I'm not quite A type enough to frog it back to the error and re-knit, but close.

I'm also trying to work out how to start the shaping for the crown at an in-between size, which means doing it half way through an eight row repeat. I'll cobble something reasonable together eventually, but at the moment there's a lot of frogging going on.