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!

A Cure for the Rut

So, a few posts ago I made reference to a shawl that I had started in an attempt to get out of the knitting rut that I found myself mired in. Amusingly enough, knitting the shawl wasn't really as enjoyable as I had hoped it would be. I kept angsting about whether or not I liked the way that the stripes looked, and when you're unsure about whether a project is working, it takes away some of the joy of making it. The fact that the last few rows of triangle shawls last forever didn't really aid matters. Still, I'm happy to say that I'm actually really pleased with how it turned out:



And this is: A basic triangle shawl with stripes of 'Sundara Sock' (100% wool) in 'Brambleberry' and some black Patonyle (wool/nylon blend), knitted on a 3.75mm circular needle.

Anna says: As previously mentioned, this project basically revolved around my desire to finally use the Sundara yarn, and use it in a project that wasn't socks - the colour was far too beautiful to be subjected to the ravages of my feet. There wasn't really enough of it for a garment, or to make a decent length scarf, so a shawl it was.

For all those interested, my process went roughly as follows (this is a basic triangle shawl, and about as basic as you can get, but writing this out makes me feel important and knowledgeable!):

Cast on 7 stitches.
Row 1 (RS): k1, m1, k2, m1, k1, m1, k2, m1, k1 (4 stitches increased, 11 stitches total)
Row 2: Knit all stitches
Row 3: k3, place marker, m1, k2, m1, place marker, k1, place marker, m1, k2, m1, place marker, k3
Row 4: Knit all stitches

From this point, work as follows: On every RS row, knit first 3 stitches, slip marker, m1, knit to next marker, m1, slip marker, k1 (this is the centre stitch), slip marker, m1, knit to last marker, m1, slip marker, k3. On every wrong side row, k3, purl to last 3 stitches, k3. Basically you are increasing 4 stitches per right side row - once on each edge, next to the garter stitch edge, and once on either side of the centre stitch. Continue on until your shawl reaches the desired size.

My stripe pattern went as follows (MC being Sundara, CC being the Patonyle):
4 rows CC, 4 rows MC (72 rows, 18 stripes, ending with MC)
2 rows CC, 4 rows MC (30 rows, 10 stripes, ending with MC)
2 rows CC, 6 rows MC (18 rows, 5 stripes - end with an extra 2 row stripe of CC)
16 rows MC
4 rows MC in garter stitch (maintaining increases).
Bind off all stitches.




As previously mentioned, I really wasn't wild about the striping while I was knitting the shawl. But now I've decided that I quite like the way that it turned out. And while it's smaller than most of the other shawls that I own, it's still just large enough to wear in a couple of different ways (as a scarf, knotted around the shoulders, as a shrug with the ends tied behind the back, etc). And I finally managed to get that Sundara knitted up and out of my stash! This was a classic case of a yarn that just felt 'too nice to use'. Which is arguably a state that no crafting material should ever reach. At least I've found this skein a good home.




In other news, I am making good progress on my cabled Cybele vest. I've survived my first week of the new course, and I am actually really liking it so far! This week I ate my body weight in delicious home-made museli. Oh, and I forgot to mention this earlier: last week I went and saw Amanda Palmer play at The Forum, and it was awesome! I even survived the crazy rain/hail that Melbourne weathered yesterday. The flooding was pretty nuts though - the underpass next door to my work flooded so deeply that the cars that got stuck under there were fully submerged, to the point that they weren't even visible. This situation wasn't made better by the fact that people kept trying to drive through... *rolls eyes*

So yes, I have officially survived the first week of uni, flash flooding, and death by museli. Let's see what next week brings...

In a knitting rut...

It is currently raining here in Melbourne - the heat wave of the last few days has finally broken, which is very good because now I can go into the city and get things done without running the risk of roasting to death in public transport hell. Doing things will be good, if I can make it happen, because once again, I have fallen into the void between semesters: that glorious place where I have free time, but have so much that I want/have to do with it that I end up not getting much done at all. Such is life I suppose. I have been doing things - I've been working a fair bit, getting some writing done, sewing, cooking, and organising university things - but doing a little bit of many things never makes you feel quite so satisfied as doing a lot of one thing. I suppose I shouldn't feel too bad - my brother has just been playing computer games for about 12 hours per day. So, stuff I've been up to:




As I mentioned, I've done a lot of cooking. I've been making huge vats of tabbouleh, or my version of it (a slightly higher ratio of grains to herbs so that it's filling enough to take to work and have as a complete meal). Yesterday I also made a version of these, and yes, they are as terrifying in real life as they look/sound on that site. I made a half batch, and made a basic butter cake base instead of the brownie base they suggested (because I was quite convinced that a brownie base would probably catapult this slice into the realm of too-rich-to-actually-be-enjoyable), and they're still deadly. Nice, but deadly.



I went to a wedding on the weekend (very enjoyable!) and managed to make the bride and groom a card that involved love hearts but didn't make me want to vomit. I was proud of that... It's a little abstract, but I was happy with it.




And I've been knitting. Though not as much as I usually like to. I've sort of snagged on the two projects I've been working on - one of them (the summer top I mentioned in the last entry) is having issues with drape, and it's knit at such a small gauge that it takes a long time to make any progress, so the idea of proceeding only to have to rip back is not appealing. And the other is knit in bulky weight wool that is not particularly suited to summer knitting. The fact that they are both my own designs doesn't really help things either - when proceeding with a project means having to sit down and make calculations, or thread things on and off of waste yarn so that you can try them on, it just makes it a little harder to motivate yourself to keep going. I know that this is a problem that most people face, so I really have no right to whinge, but yeah, there you go.

At any rate, I was still wanting to knit, even though I wasn't too keen on my works-in-progress, so I started the above piece. A basic, top down, triangular shawl - a nice and easy project that I didn't have to think about, and can knit while chilling out and chatting, or listening to music. I am using my long-hoarded Sundara Sock yarn (in 'Brambleberry'), and to make it go further I'm striping it with some basic black fingering weight yarn (I really liked the Sundara, but didn't think I had enough of it to make a decent size shawl using it alone). So hopefully this will be the nice gentle project I need to get my knitting momentum back. I'm sure the lull won't last for long...

Progress and plans

Yes, yes, I'm a lazy bum and haven't been blogging here as much. Life has been a bit crazy lately. And it's only going to get crazier - I go back to uni next week. I'm taking a full load of law subjects for a change, hopefully wrangling some volunteer legal work with the Student Union, probably taking a Japanese language class on the side, and working part-time. Um, what was I saying about crazy? I won't have time to breathe. But I'm sure I'll still find time to knit and procrastinate, and everything else will flow from there...

I'm doing some smaller projects at the moment. Okay fine, one of them is a cardigan, which I suppose doesn't really count as 'small', but it's lace on big needles and apparently doesn't take very long at all, so I am optimistic.


The lighter green item on the left is a hat I'm making from some very lovely Wired for Fibre yarn. It's my own design, so it may or may not actually work out. But in the meantime, the colour is absolutely beautiful - it's varigated, but without any of that nasty obvious pooling that sometimes makes me twitch a little.

The darker green is the aforementioned Liesl cardigan. I was curious about all of the fuss being made over Malabrigo yarn, and then when I found an Australian vendor who sold it, I decided to check it out. I can now see why people go on about it so much - it is lovely and soft, and the colours are beautiful. I don't think that I'd want to use it for everything, but it is very pretty. It was originally earmarked for a Sand Dollar Pullover (Ravelry link, because I couldn't find a decent picture elsewhere), but then after taking a long and hard look at this jumper, I realised that it was probably not likely to work very well with my body shape. As we know, I'm rather tall, and most of my height is in my torso. I don't want to end up with a midriff jumper - it's not a good look. So the yarn is going to be a Liesl instead. Hopefully it'll work out well (though I've already arsed the pattern up a little bit - oops).

(The orangey-gold yarn is a skein of Sundara that I have no idea what to do with. I love the colour, but I'm really not sure that it will suit me in a garment. It's in the photo because, well, it looks really nice with the other yarns, and it might as well earn its keep by posing for me until I figure out what to do with it!)


And there are other things that I'm in a perpetual state of working on. What can I say - I have somewhat of an impulse control problem when it comes to casting on for new things. The above is a kind of armwarmer-esque creature, born from a perverse whim to attempt some colourwork with the Dream in Colour yarn I had left from my Corona jumper. It's languishing at the moment because I can't be bothered to make the thumb hole (that requires, you know, thought and concentration). There's also those long-neglected colourwork socks I started late last year, and also a soon-to-be-felted bag. And who knows what else. Like I said, impulse control problems.

I also promised my Dad that I'd make a jumper for him too - he saw the moss stitch on my Terra jumper (see last entry) and liked the way that it looked in the yarn I was using, so now he wants a jumper. Laugh at me if you want, but this is quite exciting. Normally my family view the knitting as somewhat odd. I mean, I've made things for them, but unless we're actually in sub-zero temperatures (and living in Australia, that doesn't exactly happen often), they don't tend to get worn. On this note: Abby - you asked if I knitted much for others. The answer is no, not really, but it's more because of lack of demand for said knitting than any overt knitter's selfishness on my part. So a family member actually requesting a garment is unprecedented! I'm having fun fossicking through potential patterns...

Anyway, that's enough rambling. I have overdue items to return to the uni library - whoops...

Corona at last!

Well, I'm still alive. Just. I kid you not, I have been studying for, on average, around 12 hours a day for the last week (thank you, law degree!). But I lived through the two hardest exams (Constitutional Law - *shudder* - and Remedies), and I should get over the line fine. Whew. I've reached the hyperactive stage of tired - which usually means that I'm an hour or so away from crashing. Must administer more beer, I think...

Anyway, my post-exam reward was to try on my new Corona jumper (I'd finished and blocked it day before last, but decided I wasn't allowed to try it on until the two nastiest exams were over). So worth it:

Yay! I was very happy with how this turned out. I had high expectations for this pattern, and the yarn too for that matter, and neither of them disappointed. This photo doesn't show the colour variation at all - suffice to say that it's actually a mix of greyish, blueish, pinky, browny, greenish shades - I've called it "grey rainbow" on Ravelry, and I stick to that.

Only change I made to the totally awesome pattern was to lengthen the body and sleeves by about an inch - I'm tall, and a lot of my height comes from my stupidly long waist (which I can also attribute the back problems to - joy). I wasn't sure about the long waist ribbing when I was knitting it, I still have slightly mixed feelings - it's not normally my thing. Still, it does make for quite a flattering fit, I will admit:

I was worried the cables wouldn't be defined enough in the varigated yarn, but blocking seemed to fix them up sufficiently.

I do love it :) Quite a lot... Enough photos of it though - I've already spammed Ravelry and Flickr enough with them... Actually, in the process of taking photos of this one, I somehow (despite the dark circles and crazy-eyed look I get around exam times) managed to take a rather nice photo of myself. I am not normally a photogenic person (I'm always making a weird face), so this was rather nice (yay - self esteem!)

Anyway, in other news, I no longer have any big projects on the needles! This must be rectified! Of course I'll finish that bloody hat finally, and there are some other things I have in mind. My other exam reward was to finally invest in some Malabrigo from Yarn and Kisses (yay - Aussie shop - in your face, exchange rate!), and it's rather seductively wonderful...

Also I've started knitting another Woodland shawl, this time in my Sundara sock yarn (that stuff is far too beautiful to go on my big nasty feet - on the average day I probably walk between 5-10km just getting from A to B, and therefore I am VERY hard on socks). Problem is that I'm not sure if it's really the best pattern for it - as is often a problem, the varigation masks the lace design. I blocked it out a little bit to see how it looks, and I'm still on the fence on this one. Shall probably continue to muse over it for the next few days. Hmm...

Meh. Anyway, carry on internet! I'm off to go and do something frivolous with my time... because now I can...

Mildly disobedient

Whoops. I might have cast on for my Corona jumper after all. Despite not having finished either the raglan or the hat. Bad Anna. Oh well, I did do some work on the raglan - just a sleeve and a half to go - and the hat only needs a good solid half hour or so sunk into it before it's finished.

Behold, my illicit jumper startings...

Yum.

Anyway, I figure since this pattern commences by asking you to do five inches of 1x1 ribbing right off the bat, it made sense to start it while the motivation was there. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Anyway, the Dream in Colour yarn is just as beautiful knitted up as it is in the skein. Once again: yum.

I got my Sundara yarn too. Turns out that it was actually sitting in my PO box while I was writing the last entry, but I didn't get it until the next day because I'd assumed that it wouldn't be there yet, so hadn't bothered checking for it. Silly me. Anyway, it is indeed absolutely beautiful. I have wicked plans for it too... I'm thinking I want to make another Woodland Shawl, except a longer, thinner scarf version. Now my only decision is whether or not to save it for Europe knitting... Just not sure if I have the restraint to wait over a month before getting stuck in.

Still beavering away on the raglan - it's getting there slowly. I've finished the body, and I'm very happy with the fit - especially considering that I employed my usual happy-go-lucky method of waist shaping.



Doesn't look like much now, but I'm happy with how it's coming along (but happy enough to bother taking a halfway decent photo? Apparently not!).

I took a photo of my Belle Beret too, but it still looks frustratingly like a showercap. Perhaps I'll go and finish it so I can have closure on the matter... Oh, and I may possibly have raided WoolBaa this morning. I might possibly have bought more Noro Iro, because I'm so in love with this yarn in this particular colourway that it is apparently insufficient to possess merely a hat made from it - the universe is telling me that I need a scarf also... Stupid universe...

Off to tackle me a sleeve...

Self indulgent yarn love...

Well, I'm still hanging on to my well meaning intentions to not start any new projects before I finish the hat and jumper that I'm currently working on. But man, it just got a whole lot harder this morning when my package got here (well, by "when my package got here" I mean "when I strolled down to the postal warehouse to pick it up because they, for some reason, had issues with just sending it to my PO box like they normally do" - oh well).

I did an online yarn store raid a couple of weeks ago - thankfully just before the Aussie dollar dropped like a stone (don't get me started on that - I'm still irked about what it means for my growing internet retail therapy habit). One of the things that I ordered was some Dream in Colour Classy yarn from the Yarn and Fibre Company (who do free international shipping and can therefore be assured of patronage by my tight-arse self forevermore)...

I bought it because I'd heard so much about this yarn and was getting increasingly curious. Being the green freak that I am, what I really wanted was to get my mitts on some in the Happy Forest colourway, but because everyone in the universe seems to be making those February Lady cardigans in that colour, it was unfortunately not to be. So, I bought some in 'Cloud Jungle' instead - I wasn't entirely sure about my choice, but I figured that given the yarn had such a good rep and it at least sounded interesting if nothing else, I'd give it a shot.

Well, it got here today, and I can't stop looking at the stuff.




*quivers in delight*

It's... just... so... beautiful! It took forever and ever to get a photo that even slightly shows the variation in colour - and even this one leaves a lot to be desired. In a nutshell, it's a sort of grey with lots of other colours mixed in for good measure. A better way of describing it might be to get you to imagine what it would look like if someone decided to do a more subdued, more tasteful version of rainbow coloured. I love it. And now I have four skeins of it - mwa ha ha! I'm thinking I'm going to make a Corona pullover (why yes, I do refuse to say sweater, because I am an overly stubborn Australian dammit!). Now I just need to put off starting while I dutifully finish my other things. Or something. *grumble* Swatching doesn't count as knitting, does it?

Only problem is that next to the glory that is this yarn, my other jumper seems thoroughly unexciting (as much as I still have an unquenchable love for top down raglans), and my hat is currently looking irritatingly like a shower cap (I shall continue with it because I have a lot of faith in Ysolda Teague's pattern writing, and because even a shower cap would be gorgeous when knitted in the yarn I'm using - but I'm a little daunted).

Oh, and I also snaffled me some Elsebeth Lavold Hempathy yarn - mainly because I'd never knitted with a yarn with hemp content before, and it's about time I got stuck into some summer knitting (you know, before it's actually winter again).

Here it is, nestled happily atop my Butterworths Concise Australian Legal Dictionary... I like it, though it's a lighter green than I was expecting. Oh well, it'll make it more summery I suppose. It feels interesting - sort of soft and rough at the same time, though I've heard that it softens more after washing. I suppose I'm pleased with it - it's just that because I'm so much more enchanted with the Dream in Colour, I fear it might be languishing for a while. Oh well...

So yes, not a lot of knitting. I've been working like a crazy person over the last two weeks, and when I've gotten home I've actually been too tired to knit - I know, such a thing *does* exist. But lots of tasty yarn!

And more to come too - a couple of months ago I signed up to the Sundara Seasons yarn collection, figuring that since I'm at home again and have a little bit of extra spending money, now is the time to be indulging myself and buying stuff that in the past (and probably the future too, once I move out again) I would have dismissed as out of my price range. The first mailing went out late last week, so hopefully I won't be waiting too much longer.

People on Ravelry Just Won't Stop Talking about how great this yarn is, so I'm very curious to see if it lives up to expectation. I'm optimistic - I'm yet to hear a negative review of this stuff, and heaven knows the internet is normally choc-full of people willing to vent their spleens when things don't live up to their every expectation. Hey, I'm more than optimistic. I'm excited...

*looks back over entry*

Wow, I can't believe I wrote that much about yarn. I think I'm turning into a crazy person...