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. 

RIP(ped out): february lady sweater

above: this photo is so old, it's from when I still lived in an apartment with tatami! 

Oh, February Lady; I don't think I made any progress on you since I took this photo back in ... November, maybe? I don't even remember. Perhaps it was a bit overambitious to fly blind with a much smaller gauge (to say the least of all the many modifications I had in mind). Also apparently I can't count: when - remembering my New Years resolution - I finally got the motivation to sit down with this sweater and finish it last week, a quick stitch count revealed that the two front panels were asymmetrical by like, ten stitches. How did I even do that? 

above: Goodale thus far 

It seemed like a waste to have two pretty skeins of tart sitting unknit and unenjoyed for nearly a year (to say nothing of making a mess of such a pretty pattern). The good news was, the two skeins of madelinetosh pashima were just enough to cast on for a pretty Goodale cardigan instead! Unlike the frogged February Lady misadventure, this time I'm following the pattern exactly, down to the recommended yarn. In two days, I'm already as far into the Goodale cardigan as I ever got into the February Lady, so here's hoping it'll be less drama and more fun than it's predecessor...

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...

new pattern: phaedra

I think I must have had the fastest test knit on the planet, because Phaedra has now been test knit by four awesome (and crazy fast) test knitters, and is now done! I barely had time to finish knitting my own second version of the hat before they'd all finished.

This slouchy beret is available in two sizes - a M/L size (above) which I knit in madelinetosh merino DK in mulled wine, and a S/M size (below) which I knit in Anzula Cricket MCN in a colorway whose name I either forgot or never learned. This was my first FO with Anzula Cricket, and I love how soft it is - definitely check it out, if you haven't already! 

Phaedra is usually $5.00, but will be 25% off through the end of August!

summer snapshots

It's so hard to believe the summer is almost over! I don't have any new knitting to post at the moment, so here are a few snapshots of what my summer has looked like so far ... 

FO: a prototype

Though I haven't been posting much (either to here, or to Ravelry), I *have* been knitting a lot this summer, I swear! In between my two part-time summer jobs, I finally had the chance to finish this hat prototype, and - more importantly - decipher my scrawled notes and turn it into a pattern, which I just put up for test knitting this morning.

I both love and dread test knitting; it's a huge rush to see people make your pattern (or, as I triumphantly pointed out to Iain the first time I saw it happen: "Look at that scarf! I TOLD HER TO DO THAT!") But, the moment I send the PDF off to the testers, I can't stop worrying that it makes no sense, that it won't fit, that I accidentally did that weird thing I can apparently do in Word where you drag bits of text around without realizing it, which totally happened in the final draft of my English honors thesis on the Faerie Queene back in college, and is now preserved for posterity in the basement of the library archives. Anyway. Still, ever-present murmur of anxiety aside, I always get super excited when it comes time to get something test knit. It never ceases to amaze me that there are people willing to donate their time and yarn, and I've always found it to be a really positive experience. 

As for the hat - I drafted the leaf pattern at the start of the summer, but it took ages to get here! It was originally supposed to be a hand-warmer using a totally different pattern, but then I found this slightly crooked leaf in a Japanese stitch library, and tweaked it to come up with this instead, which, as it turns out, looks not so great in a hand-warmer but much nicer (I think, anyway) in a hat. Still undecided as to the name, but - in the Thisbe vein of Ancient Greek lady names - I am tentatively calling it Phaedra.

me elsewhere!

I know it's a bit late to be posting this seeing that it's now at least one Monday ago, but I was super excited to have a project of mine featured on the amazing Knitted Bliss blog! I knit these almost two years ago in Japan, to match the ones I'd made for Iain earlier that summer. Thinking about this project for the first time in a long time (I have no idea where these gloves are now!) reminded me what an awesome pattern Dashing is, with or without mods. If you don't already follow Julie's blog, you definitely should - Modification Monday is a very cool feature, and her designs are absolutely gorgeous.