Persistent Knitter

I can’t believe it’s been 20 days since I posted last. Sorry if you’ve been checking back and finding the same post over and over again.  I do have a few posts lined up for this week; so it’s safe to check back more often than once every two weeks.   I’ve been super busy with starting a new job, and trying to get Knit Foundry’s website fully up and running.  (For those of you who haven’t seen it, there’s pictures of our products now! check out http://www.knitfoundry.com/products.html . I’m still working on getting the online shopping cart on there. For now if you really wanna order, you can email me at order@knitfoundry.com and we can work it out with paypal!)

Since I started a new job last week, and it’s a longer commute. To help keep my sanity (not to mention avoid the stress of driving in hideous traffic) I’m taking the bus most of the way.  This affords me some excellent knitting time.  I haven’t seen anyone else knitting on the bus in the week that I’ve been riding; maybe it’s just not popular around here?

Regardless, I will persist, as it’s about the only time I’ve been knitting lately. 

My first day I took a sock to work on. Small; portable and the pattern has already been memorized.  I found that using DPNs while wearing a coat isn’t the easiest. I always seem to catch the end of the DPN on my coat cuff. Wierd, I know. Plus I’m worried I’ll drop a needle and have it roll away into the abyss that is the floor of the bus.

The second day I thought I might try something that uses a circular; but was still portable. I cast on a new project (of course) that I’ve had waiting in the queue a while. It’s a lace weight scarf.  I soon realized that this was not the project to be worked on a moving bus with the bumps and jitters, stops and starts involved.  Maybe when I get much better at knitting laceweight yarn in a lace pattern; but not for a while.

Finally I settled on Alex’s cow/pig sweater.  It’s in the round, so all stockinette, and on a circular needle. Perfect! I do have to consult the chart occasionally; but the pattern is very short, so easily memorized. It has 240 stitches in each round, so that’s plenty of knitting time without having to look at the chart.

Here’s the first shot of the sweater, taken a few weeks ago:

And here’s where it is now (the fingers in this shot are Katie’s):

Notice a subtle difference in the very first pattern row? I had used the wrong color! I’m following the exact colors in the pattern, so I didn’t want to have to keep remembering that I had messed them up. They do look better with the darker yarn.  The next row up are pigs. They look a bit crazy right there. The white dots are their eyes, and I’ll embroider in a nose & black spots on their eyes later.

This is the body of the sweater; and it’s lots of fun to knit. The color changes and patterns are fun to watch develop.  It’s the largest size, and I’m not sure how big I’ll really end up making it. I haven’t even done a sanity check on the body size, except it’s probably bigger than the pattern calls for.  The yarn is super soft (Dale Baby Ull) and while the color palette seems limited when I look at the yarn in the shop; the sweater is turning out very nicely with the colors I’m using.

My mom’s sweater is still marinating in the knitting basket. I’ve got some serious thinking to do about how to make the sleeve the right size. I think just knitting it longer might do the trick; but needed to think about it more.