Snow White

... is finished! Yay for the first sweater of 2011! Knitting endless rounds of 2x2 ribbing may not have been the most exciting thing, but things got much more interesting once I got to the raglan decreases - I've never seen a sweater knit quite like this, with either sides of the shoulder worked separately and then joined via kitchener stitch, but I love the shrug-like quality of the neck and the general flattering-ness of the pattern! The 2x2 decreases in the front give a nice illusion of curves I don't actually have. Yay.

As an added bonus, it covers the small tattoo at the base of my neck, which means I can wear it to work in tattoo-phobic Japan! 

Other thoughts on:

The Pattern: Snow White by Ysolda Teague. This pattern has a unique construction that made the last few hours of knitting quite interesting. As many other people on Ravelry observed, just follow the instructions and everything will make sense. I didn't make any modifications other than making the sleeves shorter by exactly one round (they are quite long), and I also rather lazily bound off the neck stitches in a regular bind-off, to no apparent disadvantage. Though I can be a bit of a sloppy knitter, I think the directions are thorough and the pattern is forgiving enough that it looks quite finished. The only thing I wasn't able to totally pull off successfully was the tubular cast on, which - while stretchy - felt rather tight, and pulls the flared sleeves inwards a bit, though not overly noticeably. I'm guessing I must have done something wrong? In any case, you barely notice when it's on, it's just a bit tight when you pull it over your head.

The Yarn: Noro Cash Iroha in dark teal, 8.5 skeins. This single-ply yarn is so soft and almost pearlescent; I fell in love with the color over a year ago when I saw an unwound skein of it hanging from the wall in a Berkeley yarn shop, so I'm happy I finally made something with it. I haven't blocked this yet, so I can't say anything yet about the performance over time (though if the Thisbe hat I made for my sister is any indication, it'll just soften up more?). My only complaint is that virtually every ball had a knot in it, which means I had to weave in twice as many ends :-(

Raveled here.

etsy red wine yarn love

I know I can't *buy* any yarn till I use up the prodigious stash that has taken over our living room closet, but I still find myself window shopping, particularly on Etsy. Being on Etsy is dangerous to my resolve, though, because how gorgeous is this yarn?

wip: snow white

I'll admit I'm slowing down a bit on the second sleeve of Snow White - why is that 2x2 rib feels more monotonous than plain stockinette? 

However, having finished the body, I figured I'd see if that tubular cast on was indeed too tight, and so - following a helpful comment on an earlier post (thanks, Julie!), I ended up removing the circular tips of my Knitpicks interchangeables, and threading a length of embroidery floss through either of the holes typically used for lifelines so I could extend the existing circle. This way, I can be lazy and only have to replace a fraction of the live stitches back on the needles.

View from the back

The cast on *is* a bit tight, but the body fits perfectly so I'm not fussed. And the yarn is gorgeous! The color is a bit greener than these photos would suggest.

maru elsewhere!

My Maru pattern can now be downloaded from the Knitpicks website! I'm so excited, even if it is a bit weird to see my own face on another website. When I lived in New York, I was a huge Knipicks junkie  but living out of the range of their shipping options has unfortunately put that on hold for the moment, though I do stock up on their awesome needles whenever I'm home. This sample was knit in Gloss HW, and I am so happy with it; it's a bit chunkier than the original Maru prototype, and also a little less floppy. I'd love to keep it, but I already have one dark brown Maru, so I told my mom she could have it as a thank you for sending me the yarn. 

above: Maru on Senbon Beach, with Fuji-san in the background.

Since the pattern went up a week ago, it's already sold much faster than the pattern on Ravelry alone did; I would definitely recommend submitting to the IDP program for any US-based designers. Knitpicks was incredibly nice and understanding to work with, though I felt terrible because it turned into much more of a production thanks to much international shipping drama - they sent their sample yarn to my mother, and then I had to wait till I was home in California to send it to them, as Japan recently cracked down on airmail packages to the States and now does Sea Mail only. Oof. 

fingers crossed...

Having vowed to get seven sweaters done this year, I figured I should start by doing one that's been in my queue for ages now: Snow White. I bought the yarn for this in April last year but have been quite embarrassingly put off by the tubular cast on. It makes no sense: I love knitting, and so should be happy to do anything knitting related ... except for the provisional cast on required to start a tubular cast on, apparently. I really don't know why it took me so long, because once I got started, the tubular cast on wasn't that bad at all. Only then I took one look at the extremely skinny tube I was knitting, and realized there was no way in hell it would ever fit around my waist, stretchy cast on or no. So I got to do it all over again, one size up. It really does go faster the second time around.

So that's the progress on Snow White so far ...Still a bit small, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed it will fit in the end. And yes, I am photographing the project on our tiny little bookshelf because the rest of the house is just too damn messy to be anywhere near a camera. Sad, but true.

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.

new york handwarmers

While we were visiting California, my sister asked for a pair of fingerless handwarmers for her New Years trip to New York; though I actually suspect these won't be warm enough for New York's insanely cold winters,  I do think they'll suit her life in slightly-less-cold San Francisco. She chose the yarn herself - Cascade 220 in Palm - and I bought it for her as a thank for letting us use her car for the week. The pattern itself is improvised, mostly because my mom's printer wasn't working* and I couldn't be bothered to go on the internet and find an existing pattern to print. They're not the most shockingly original things (just a K2P1 rib all around) and unfortunately I've since lost the notes I scribbled (along with my entire knitting notebook!) but she seemed happy enough:

above: modeling her Marian cowl and new hand-warmers.

* later, it was determined that the printer wasn't working because no one had removed that little orange sticker over the new cartridge that says 'remove before printing.' Heh, oops.