Flowers from a farmer’s market. A guy I work with is going to create a Pastel painting from this image.

to distract you from lack of knitting content :)

Proof I’m still alive, and still knitting!

This was a knitty pattern, Helena, knit top down. I made a few modifications (of course!). The yarn I used said it would meet gauge, but my gauge was tighter than the ball band; and I was rather pleased with it so I stuck with it. As a result I made the larger size to come out about a 6-9 month (up to 12 month maybe). I also did i-cord for the ties instead of simple garter stitch that was only 3 sts across.

I used Dale Lerke, a wool-cotton that is super soft. It has a tendency to split when knitting so you really have to watch the strands when you do decreases or other fancy maneuvers.

In a desperate attempt to show that this blog is not dead; here is a picture of my wheel on the left; and another pocket wheel (older vintage) on the right. Someday the singles on mine will be yarn and I will knit with it.

Someday.

Finished! And before the next kit is here. Which means I need to cast on a pair of socks for my son. I let him dig through my sock yarn stash and pick what he liked. They’ll be bright.. that’s for sure :)

I have been working on socks, baby sweaters, spinning some stuff; but nothing picture worthy lately since I finished my daughter’s lilac rose cardigan (which she wears All. The. Time, I’m proud to say).

So since my blog fodder is non-existant, I’m going to leech off my mom’s spinning.

First, we see some yarn that she sent me a picture of:

The colors are nice, but to me, it really didn’t have enough twist in it. So we talked about it. How it might be splitty when knit with; what she might want to knit with it, and so on. She decided to add more twist to the yarn.

Here’s the result:

I really like the 2nd one better.  I think she does too.  I haven’t been able to see how the yarn feels; but I would bet it has a bit of bounce to it. :)

It’s done! It’s beautiful. I’m very pleased I worked so hard to get this done so she can wear it before she outgrows it.

While knitting I was hoping I’d be able to block this out to around 15″ across total; it was measuring around 14″ across when I was knitting it. A quick dunk in the sink; gentle squeezing out in a towel and I laid it out to be 15″ across.

I finished the first sleeve last night too – but won’t block that until it’s mate is done. I did a sample fitting into the body (pre-blocking) and it was fitting nicely. One more sleeve, a collar, some sewing, weaving in of ends and it’ll be done.

I started a sweater last August for my daughter. I realize now that she is going to outgrow it before too long, so I have to finish it asap so she can wear it. Here is what the body looks like after I cut all the steeks. I had steeks for the front; for the armholes, and for the front neckline area. I did the shaping around the steeks using extra k2tog and such when necessary (instructions would say “bind off 3″ and I’d split that over two rows, doing k2tog k2tog on one row and k2tog on the next row) This gives the neckline a nice gentle curve and no stair steps where the bind offs would have happened.

I sewed the steaks on the machine. I realize it was much easier to do the arm steeks because I had used the contrasting color as the center stitch of the steek. That meant I didn’t have to pay attention quite as much and gave me a natural line to follow when sewing it on the machine.

I tried it on my daughter this morning (see picture here ) and it fits! I’m about 2″ into the first sleeve. I’ve started that 3 times trying to get the cuff sizing right. Now I just have to get it to fit into the resized armhole knit a second one, sew it all together.  I want to finish this before Madrona (that’s next week) but I doubt I’ll make it. If I block the body this weekend maybe I can take it with me to Madrona to finish the sewing.

After going to my knitting group; and seeing some other Kauni that another member have (hi Janet!), I realized what was wrong with the other yarn I was looking at. It was too non-rustic. A heathery shetland yarn would be a much better match than the bright white, or bright cream that I was looking at.

A trip to my LYS today yielded these balls of yarn to try out. Jamieson’s Shetland Spindrift in (left to right) Mooskit, Mogit and Moorit.

In a way I like the darkest one best; but think maybe it won’t have enough contrast with all the colors in the other yarn. The Mooskit almost looks like a light grey; the others read a bit more brown.

Any of them would work (except maybe not the darkest one); so now I have to decide on a pattern; how much of the background would I need, and then actually get knitting!