A Shrug and an Adventure

Whew! Essays are now officially finished! It nearly annihilated my brain - just the sheer stress of having them all due on consecutive days - but they're done now, so can turn my attention to more enjoyable things! Like long neglected shrugs!




You are looking at: The Kypria Shrug Without a Name, designed by yours truly. It's knitted from Sanguine Gryphon Kypria in 'The Deep Bosomed Earth' and Sundara Sock in 'Brambleberry' on 4.5mm needles.

Anna says: I am mostly happy with how this one came out. The yarns are really lovely, and I'm pretty keen on the way that the colours work together.




For all those playing along at home, this is just a basic top-down raglan, except without the front part. I wanted to make something really light, loose and drapey that I could just throw over my shoulders when it was slightly too cool for just a singlet. Kypria has a lovely drape at this gauge, so that part definitely worked out well. Honestly, it's a little bit too large for me, but thankfully this is the kind of garment where that doesn't matter a whole lot. It slips off of my shoulders occasionally, but that's okay.




One other thing: I'm not sure it was the best idea to try and do a picot cast off on the sleeves. The loose gauge makes it look kind of weird. Still, you live and learn, don't you? I like that I still make mistakes to learn from.

The other, more obvious thing that I'm turning my mind to now that essays are done is travelling! I'm off tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow. Bright and early. It's going to be a hatefully long day: I get on the plane in Melbourne at 11am, and then it's a 15 hour flight to get to LA, at which point it's morning again. And then I hop on another plane to Boston and get there late in the evening. Urgh. But I'm still completely psyched! I have so many awesome plans, and hopefully plenty of awesome spur-of-the-moment things to look forward to as well. I just wish I had time to do more, and see more people while I'm there.

On the note of travelling, there might be blog silence for a while. I'm going to try and update while I'm away, but that will obviously depend on the internet gods smiling on me at the right time, and I am a big believer in Murphy's Law. But I'll try. Until then, take care all, and wish me a happy trip!

Proof that I am indeed doing things...

Erk - I've been back from NSW for days now, and while I've had a lot of fun since, it was feeling like I hadn't really done anything constructive. Perhaps I shouldn't have been too worried about this, seeing as I am still on uni holidays and all, but in some ways that made me feel even weirder, because it's during my uni holidays that I get all my knitting/writing/other random stuff done. Anyway, long story short, last night I remembered that all I had to do to alleviate this feeling was to come down from my procrastinatory tower and actually finish something. So, I finished my halter top (and it took a whole half an hour, which made me feel even sillier for putting it off). Without further ado, I give you the first finished object of 2009:

The nitty gritty: Self designed halter top, with an eyelet rib body. Waist shaping, and increases at the bust. I-cord straps. Moss stitch border along the neckline, knitted on during finishing (to, ahem, disguise my dippy increases). Made on a 4mm circular needle. Yarn used was 3 balls of Sullivans Coton-A (acrylic/cotton blend).

The colour commentary: Haha! I have waist shaping! In your face, empire-waist infested clothes shops! The whole goal behind this project (if indeed something so random, that was only even started in the first place so I'd have something to lug to the Melbourne SnB meetup, could be said to have a goal) was to make something with a lace body that didn't make me look "like a pregnant teenager" (as a friend of mine so accurately describes the current fashion in billowy summer clothes). I don't have particularly emphatic curves. I don't have long legs. I don't have hair that behaves. I don't have tiny graceful little feet. But I do have a waist, and I bloody well want to make the most of it! So, I attempted - gasp - waist shaping in lace. Yeah yeah, I know that most experienced knitters are rolling their eyes by this point, but it's not something I'd tackled before, so I was a little nervous about it. Anyway, it seemed to come out fine. The shaping is far from invisible, but I actually kind of like the way it looks along the sides (please forgive the blurry shot - for some reason this top was a nightmare to photograph):

All in all, I was very happy with this. One of the things that I want to do this year is design a lot more of my own things, so this seems a pretty good way to kick off! I'm thinking I'm going to do another version at some stage - probably with nicer yarn and better planning (I might actually write the pattern up for this properly if I can be bothered), because this one really was just made up as I went along. For the next one, I'd like to make the moss stitch border knitted on, and actually do the neckline decreases properly (the whole reason I had to apply the border in the first place this time around). And I'll make it in better yarn too, methinks, although I do absolutely love the colour of this.


And now it's time to go and eat biscuits in my halter top. With my book. In the shade. So there.