fo: p u r l s c a r f for maggie

Hooray, it's done! The congratulatory purl scarf for my sister is done! 

I used Malabrigo Worsted, madelinetosh merino light and Rowan kidsilk haze, and I love the way they look together. I stopped measuring it, though I suspect it's not quite as long as the pattern calls for - but it's still taller than me, and definitely long enough to loop comfortably around her neck. 

The photos don't really do the pretty yarns in this scarf justice. Not the most thrilling project to knit, but I could definitely see making one for myself in the future - perhaps with bigger needles and casting on a few more stitches, since this one is a lot skinnier than I pictured. So, yay scarf! Yay for managing to finish projects despite working round the clock!

Raveled here. 

wip : l a u r e l

I've had this skein of madtosh vintage (in Glazed Pecan) for years now - I bought it when I lived in Japan on one of my sporadic yarn binge international orders from WEBS - and am finally doing something with it. The only problem is that because I've had it for so long, somewhere along the way I wound it up and used an unknown amount of it, because now that I've reached the decrease section of the hat, I'm running precariously low on yarn. Damn you, self of the past! So here's hoping the madtosh community on Ravelry bails me out in my quest for Glazed Pecan remnants, because buying another full skein just to finish a hat would sort of defeat the purpose of knitting from your stash... 

it's june!

Oh my god, how is it June already? This year is flying by. The Ingenue sweater, not so much - I finished the body (finally!) and am making my way through the first sleeve now. In a perfect world I'd be knitting a lot faster, but, I work all the freakin' time and type like a maniac for most of it, which means I can't knit in the rare free time I do have, or my arms would actually fall off. 

Speaking of work, I went to NYC for one last work trip, where I ate cheese cake and was too busy to do much else:

mmm, cheesecake...

... and then came back to LA, where I had one glorious day off and ate this: 

... because I was feeling nostalgic for New York. Magnolia cupcakes in LA = proof that California really is the best state now. 

I also bought yarn for the first time in months! Having vowed to buy no new yarn at the start of this year, I figured six months was a respectable amount of time to wait before venturing into one of LA's many awesome yarn shops. They're not particularly summery colors and it's rapidly getting too hot to imagine being near wool, but, yay nonetheless! 

last FOs of 2011

I managed to finish two more projects before the end of the year, though it took me awhile to photograph them. The first was a Spring Beret in a yellow skein (I bought and wound it over a year ago, and can't remember the exact colorway now!)  of Madtosh vintage, on size seven needles (rather than the larger needles used in the pattern); I didn't have any of the larger sizes handy, so instead I knit an extra pattern repeat to maintain slouchiness, which I think worked out okay. I was never in love with this yarn color, which is why it took me so long to use it, but I actually like it a lot more in hat form now - it's a bright, sunny color that goes with everything, so I think it'll get a lot of wear. 

I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that most of this hat was knit during an eleven and a half hour long Lord of the Rings (extended version!) marathon with some family friends. The hat took me the better part of one movie, I'd guess from between Gandalf's arrival in the Shire through the one where they were hanging out with Galadrial, if that's the sort of thing that makes sense to you. I really should have brought a bigger project along. Seriously, eight hour of tv watching without knitting was painful. But then, so was eleven hours of tv watching, period. Good to know that there are limits to my ability to be sedentary after all, because sometimes even I worry. (Raveled here) 

My Mara shawl, on the other hand, was knit in slightly less nerdy adventures, mostly in hostel rooms and buses while traveling through South America. I brought three skeins of Madelinetosh DK in Sugarplum (a gorgeous, sugary violet pretty enough to make me forget my usual aversion to purples and pastels). I joined the last ball a few rows after starting the ribs and still ran out of a yarn a maddening twelve stitches short of a complete bind-off. I was so desperate not to have to frog (I love the ribbed section best of all and didn't want to shorten it) that I was actually cutting off the loose ends to see if I could scrounge up enough yarn, but nothing worked. In the end, I found a spectacularly helpful Raveler who was somehow able to sell me a spare skein of the suddenly hard-to-find colorway and ship it to me in the midst of all the holidays. At four skeins, this shawl ended up costing a sweater's worth of yarn, but I'm okay with it because I love this shawl. I wore it all the time in Seattle, and it's amazing, like being allowed to go in public with a blanket wrapped around you but without the social stigma against going out in public with a blanket wrapped around you. I got compliments from cool grad students and my 91 year old grandmother alike. I may never take this thing off, seriously. 

Raveled here. 

FO : traveling marilindas

They're done! Actually they've been done almost a month now - after spending half the summer working on the first sock, I blazed through the second one over a few bus rides and one day of staying in the hostel while traveling; I was just lazy about photographing them (and even lazier about getting the colors right; the middle photo is probably the most accurate). But! They're done and they're my first pair of socks in sock yarn ever, so I'm unreasonably proud of them. 

These were an awesome project for traveling, because it was intricate enough to distract me from our numerous long bus rides, but varied enough that I never got bored, the way I sometimes do with lace (sorry, lace). They were also knit in an absurd amount of places: the first sock was started in Seattle, worked on in Los Angeles and Oakland, then Ollantaytambo and Parobamba (I finished the first while at the natural dye workshop, much to the interest of Nilson and Aknar); the second was started in Parobamba, and worked on in or on buses between Puno (Peru), La Paz, Sucre and Uyuni (Bolivia) and finally finished in San Pedro de Atacama, Chile.

Yay, socks! 

Raveled here. 

two (more) wips

Two current WIPs are this Mara Shawl in madelinetosh DK (sugar plum), and Acer Cardigan, in madtosh vintage (some discontinued wren), the shawl for when I'm knitting late at night by the light of TV shows on my laptop, and the cardigan for other times. I didn't bring the Mr. Darcy sweater I'm theoretically making for Iain (eleven balls of yarn in a suitcase was a bit unrealistic, even for me), though I do have the Marilinda socks with me, usually for my long and uneventful shifts in the fair trade shop. So that's what's going on here, knitting-wise. 

I'm not making a lot of progress on either at the moment, though, because things have been insane in town lately: in honor of our town's anniversary, there have been parades, dances, street parties, bullfights (of the non-killing variety, thankfully!) and pig-eating festivals: 

How awesome are the flowers in the girl's hat? 

So that's here. Things are finally a bit calm in town, though I'm actually heading up further into the mountains to take a four day long natural dye workshop in the cloud forest. I have no idea what to expect, but it seemed like too amazing of an opportunity to pass up - so, more later when I get back! 

FO: boe

This was a test knit for Anke, whose classic, elegant sweater patterns I have long coveted on Ravelry.  This was the first time I was ever so bold as to volunteer myself as a test knitter, though - shyness aside, I also spent the last month moving myself to a remote mountaintop in the Andes - but I'm so happy I did, because this sweater is gorgeous. I love everything about it - the open, airy gauge, the asymmetry, the floppy neck (which looked better when I first blocked it, but got wrinkled before these photos, in the doorway of our homestay, were taken). 

Though Anke's prototype used a pretty linen yarn, I knit my Boe with less than two skeins of madelinetosh Merino Light, on massive size US 9 needles. There are a few odd bits where I'm not sure I did the short rows correctly, but nothing too obvious. Which is good, because though Ollantaytambo may be too cold, this sweater is perfect for springs back home, so I know it'll get a lot of wear :) I'm not totally sure when this pattern will appear on Ravelry, but when it does, I highly, highly recommend it - I already want to make myself another one in black.

Raveled here. 

FO: Goodale

Despite Iain arriving last weekend (finally! hooray!) I was able to finish up my Goodale cardigan (the reincarnation of an earlier, doomed February Lady) yesterday afternoon, not long after we left Los Angeles for my mother's house in Oakland.

Why yes, those are home grown apples behind me! 

Anyway, Goodale ... sigh. There are so many gorgeous versions of this sweater on Ravelry that I had really high hopes when I began. It definitely turned out better than the February Lady sweater this yarn could have been, but I'm a bit dissatisfied with the end result. The sweater seems really fussy to me, in that everything last to be lying exactly right so as to prevent the pockets from flopping open and looking all weird - as the sweater currently is, I can't really see myself wearing it out much, because I'd never be able to stop worrying that it was all askew. I think what I'll have to do is eventually forgo the pockets, block the thing really carefully and sew the whole thing up so the front lies flat, but I'm just too discouraged by the whole thing to mess with it anymore at the moment.

The yarn I used was Madelinetosh Pashmina, which, despite coming in very tangly skeins and being rather splitty, is still one of my favorite yarns ever. I used size seven needles here, and the fabric has a beautiful drape to it (which may explain why the pockets won't stay put?)

So, that's Goodale for now - I may try and fix up the pockets when I'm in a more problem solving mood, but for now I'm going to put it aside. Just last night I was trying to explain to my mom that I love knitting because it's more forgiving and doesn't demand perfection the way sewing does (much like, to my mind anyway, the way cooking forgives mistakes in ways that baking doesn't - so, knitting is to sewing as cooking is to baking!) - not so much with this sweater, I'm afraid. 

two WIPs

Two WIPs, which are going rather slowly but steadily at the moment: 

The first is a Mr. Darcy sweater knit in Cascade Venezia Chunky, for my boyfriend's birthday. His birthday was a week ago, though, and so far I'm about this far through:

I don't know if it's the monotony or a fear of the sweater curse that I can't quite shake. Maybe for next year's birthday? It seems like the minute I started this, all my relatives who I didn't even know knit came out of the woodwork to tell me stories of handknit sweater + man = woe and failed relationships. Still, if our relationship implodes, I'm not going to blame this sweater - I've knit him a ton of things in the past, including 1/2 of a pair of Earl Gray socks that have lain abandoned for a year and a half now; a big sweater on size 10 needles is much less stress for me than a pair of socks, and thus, hopefully, far less of a catalyst for some relationship-ending fight. 

Speaking of socks and my inability to finish them, the second WIP is a pair of Marilinda socks in madelinetosh sock. I started these on an airplane ride to Seattle earlier this week, so what you see here is about two plane rides' worth of work (with time lost reading and staring vacantly out the window of course). I love knitting on planes, and this project has been pretty addictive so far. I haven't knit socks since the aforementioned Earl Gray single sock, but I like how involved these are - at the moment I've got Mr. Darcy for when I'm feeling mindless, and Marilinda for when I'm not. Here's hoping I finish at least one of them before Iain gets here (!) next weekend, and we head away from the States again...

two hats

Things have finally settled down a bit after our whirlwind visit to the States for the holidays, so I was finally able to finish to WIPs that had been lying around for the last month. The first was yet another Thisbe hat, knit in madelinetosh Eyre, in the wren colorway. I ordered this skein last summer, and this was the yarn I'd wanted to knit the prototype for Thisbe in all along, but I hadn't taken into account the shorter yardage OR the extreme dearth of Eyre on the internet. Out of sheer desperation, I posted on the Ravelry Madelinetosh community forum, and found someone within 2 hours who not only had an extra skein of the elusive yarn, but who was willing to mail it to Japan. It was an awesome, Ravelry-affirming moment!

ps, please excuse that random strand of hair looking all weird. It's like that in *every* photo :( 

I've heard rumors that Eyre has been discontinued, which is a huge shame, because it was the most beautiful single ply yarn I've ever worked with - soft, drapey, luminous, with no piling so far. If I wasn't on my strict no new yarn policy, I'd be scouring the internet trying to stockpile it (Okay, so I did buy one more skein of it when I walked into Article Pract in Oakland and saw a big pile of the yarn in the same colorway I'd been so desperately searching for back in Japan - but that was before January 1st, so it doesn't count. Right?).

The other WIP was another excuse to play with a gorgeous yarn, this time a skein of Malabrigo Rios. Living in Japan, I'm a bit slow to check out new yarns, but was finally able to order a skein in sunset. I doubt I'd be able to say anything new about this yarn, but at the very least, I can add my voice the the chorus of praise: the yarn withstood repeated frogging with no splitting or piling, and is amazingly soft.The hat ... I'm not so sure about. It's not been blocked yet, so I'm withholding judgement for now. I lost my notes but am working on re-writing them up, and I totally fudged the top decreases (I am amazingly lazy when it comes to knits for myself) and need to sort that out too, if I were ever to make another.

2010 sweaters

I love making hats and mittens, but I will always be a sweater knitter at heart. I started knitting because I dreamed about making my own sweaters, and over the years since then, I've always measured my ability as a knitter by what sort of sweaters I was able to knit. Sweaters, for me, are the perfect knitting project - they take long enough that there's a sense of accomplishment afterwards, but there's enough variation in the construction to keep from getting bored. There's just something immensely satisfying, also, about making an actual garment - especially since I'm generally too scattered to remember to wear mittens every day, but I can (at least) be counted on to wear clothes.

In any case, here are the sweaters of 2010: above was the first I managed to finish, a Vine Yoke cardigan in Dream in Color Classy (Deep Sea Flower.) This is such a gorgeous pattern. I was so happy with the resulting fit, and the color of the yarn is amazingly beautiful.

This Wispy cardi was a bit of a beast to knit: tiny yarn + slippery needles = one seriously unhappy Mikka. It was nicely portable, though - I did it a lot of this one on trains in Central Honshu during our cheap ticket local trains only extravaganza - and once it was finished, I wore it all through the summer. Though it may be awhile before I attempt a laceweight sweater again, I do absolutely love the delicacy and the drapiness of the resultant fabric. This was my first project with Madelinetosh yarn, and the luminous Gilded colorway was enough to make me an instant convert.

Francis Revisited - also in Madelinetosh, this time in tosk dk in Duchess - knitted up really, really fast: hooray for size 9 needles! 

I'd been wanting to knit Wendy Bernard's Favorite Cardigan for at least a year; this was tosh dk in Tart and it's probably my favorite of all the sweaters from the last year. The neck is quite wide, because I left off one raglan, increase and cast on more stitches, which I might not do again if I knit this again, but I was still super happy with the results. This is the first pattern I've ever knit by Wendy Bernard, and I am constantly impressed by how gorgeous it is - fortunately, now I have a whole book of sweaters of hers for possible 2011 sweaters...

And then there was a second Vine Yoke cardigan, this time in Lorna's Laces Ysolda Red (I know, groupie-est sweater EVER, right?) I wear this one way more than it's blue predecessor, as it goes better with jeans :-) I am especially pleased by the fact that I was able to squeeze a sweater out of just three balls, as Lorna's Laces is not cheap.

This Owls sweater was another re-knit: the first met its untimely end in the dryer at the beginning of 2010. My stepdad felt really bad, though; he even paid for the replacement yarn (Cascade Eco-Wool, same as the first one). The last Owls sweater was knit in hotel rooms in Hai Ning and Beijing while we taught at an insane summer camp in 2009, and then finished during my first visit to Iain's family's house in Scotland, so knitting this again ended up bringing back a lot of happy memories. 

So those were the sweaters of 2010! Considering the massive undertaking that sweaters once represented for me, I was a bit surprised to realize that on average, each of these only took me about two to three weeks, not counting for distraction. Also, yay for audiobooks: most of these were knit to the sound of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, World War Z, the Little Stranger and We Need to Talk about Kevin, amongst other things). Weirdly, all of these were knit during the hottest months of the year, which made trying them on a bit difficult at the time, but which was much appreciated by the time the cold weather finally rolled around...

new pattern: maru

Maru - "round" in Japanese - is a cozy circular scarf knit in the round with alternating cable and lace details. 

I knit Maru because I am the most awkward scarf-wearer of all time - no matter how I fasten them, they always end up totally lopsided or on the ground. I added cable and lace details mostly because I'm an easily bored knitter; while the pattern isn't strictly reversible, I think the large chunks of stockinette and reverse stockinette help keep the reverse side from becoming particularly noticeable.  

Maru has been test knit, and includes charted and written directions. Huge thanks to my awesome test knitters and to my boyfriend for taking these silly photos of me on the beach! 

Materials:

• 400 yards worsted weight wool (I used madelinetosh tosh vintage in Fig, 2 skeins)
• size 7 circular needles, or size needed to obtain gauge.
• stitch markers (recommended), cable needle and tapestry needle. 

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