Persistent Knitter

On the left, we have the Debbie Sweater, about 1.5" (maybe) into the cabling. This one is using Cascade 220 (not the superwash version). The yarn is thick so in theory it knits quickly; but there is so much going on with each row, it doesn’t really go that fast.

On the right we have the lace sweater from Gathering of Lace. Shown here with the ribbing and one cable twist completed. 

So far both of them fit in my knitting bag to carry on the bus every day. I can pull out the one that appeals to me.  They are both cabled patterns; although the Debbie Sweater is really really cabled; and the lace one is only cabled occasionally. 

At some point I’ll have to stop working on both of them and neglect one in favor of finishing the other one.  Most likely (although I refuse to commit right now) that will be the lace sweater; as I’ll be able to wear that one much sooner.

Wouldn’t it be cool to actually finish TWO sweaters before winter came ’round again?

beautiful skeins of yarn. Four done; probably 10 or so more to go :)

I’ve been busy putting this together:

Isn’t she pretty?

It’s only the windows version on there so far – the mac version is out in beta test. Hopefully I’ll get feedback on that quickly. When the beta for that is done the CD will contain both PC and Mac versions (saves me on trying to figure out how many to print of each, and they will both easily fit).  Pretty soon (hopefully tonite) I’ll have the CD version up on the website for sale; if you’re really anxious to get it on CD; you can email me :)

Blog Note

I finally figured out why it was squishing all my pictures on my blog page and made them look wierd until you clicked on them.  There was a sneaky setting in my styles.css file (generated for me by typepad) that set all images to width 320 no matter what. HMPH!  I tried to change it to 400 by default; but something is regenrating that annoying .css file each time. I have to manually set the width of pictures to 400 if I want to avoid the squishing.   Time to submit a "Hey – stop DOING that" to typepad. :)

A new sweater is in the works.  This one is for me!! It’s a cabled sweater designed by a friend of a friend. Her name is Debbie, hence the Debbie Sweater. (No, not this Debbie. Another one).

So far I’ve swatched. (Shut up)

I’ve wound some yarn into balls. See here the helpers:

During this winding session, my swift broke three different ties holding it together.  I maintained my cool and got some carpet warp to retie the pieces together.  (I knew all those years of pretending to be a weaver would pay off. Carpet Warp also makes great spinning wheel drive bands in an emergency)  The audience was as fascinated by my swift-fixing skills as watching me wind yarn.

The finished yarn, waiting (hoping. crying) to become a sweater:

Somehow the yarn thinks that if it has the needle stuck in it like that, magic knitting elves will show up and start the sweater.  Hmpf.

I’ve been working on getting Knit Visualizer ported to the mac. It has nothing to do with the functionality of the application; it’s all about the LOOK of the application.  So far everything I’ve done with the app works beautifully.  As for the porting/conversion,  Some of it’s easy, and most of it’s a PITA*

Here’s a screenshot of my latest effort:

(click on image for a larger version. You know you want to)

I just have to say – WOW that looks cool.

This will be a gift for a friend’s child. It’s sort of a secret so I don’t want to name names at this point :)  It has been in progress for a while – here’s the body of the sweater. It’s a raglan style and I need to re-calculate the sleeve increases to match with the changes I made on the Raglan decreases in the body.

It needs some blocking, but probably not until the sleeves are done so that I can match them up together.

After a quick bath, and hanging to dry, here’s approx 5oz of spun yarn:

I’ve started spinning the next bobbinful already and am excited to get enough done to make something with it.

Tonite I finished winding a skein from the second half of the plying I did last night.  The fiber is Merino/Cashmere.  Each skein is approx 2.5 ounces; and they are coming out lovely!   No pictures now; the sun is down and they are hanging to dry in my icky laundry room – not fit for picture taking!  Debbie would be proud of me, I even snapped them in the shower a few times before hanging them to dry.

Originally I was going to do a three ply, but ~10 yard washed samples
of both told me I’d like the thinner yarn better. I want to make a
sweater, and I tend to get warm fairly quickly; so a thinner yarn will
work out better for me.   In both forms the yarn stayed super bouncy;
and is soooooooooo soft.  I thought about knitting up a swatch, but
that would have told me the same thing – I like the thinner yarn
better. 

When it comes time to make the sweater I’ll swatch several
stitch patterns to see what I like best.  My main concern with a two ply was it looking consistent, but I don’t think that’ll be too much of a problem as it looks pretty good even now.

Since the singles have been on the bobbin for a while I couldn’t depend on seeing if it twisted back onto itself in order to get a balanced ply; I just did what seemed right, and what I liked the looks of, and what matched the sample I made a few weeks ago when the twist in the singles was more active.

I have one bobbin left that is still mostly full; so I only have to spin one more bobbin before I can ply again. I’m looking forward to getting back to spinning it.