A Tale of Two Raglans

Does having two different raglan tops on the needles at the same time mean that I have some sort of problem?




I like to think otherwise. I love top down raglans - they are the ultimate in brainless comfort knitting, and I've never once had to frog one due to fit issues.

The black project in the above picture is nearing completion now - it's a cardigan in the super-bulky Cleckheaton Tempo that I rashly bought way back when I just started knitting. It's not the nicest yarn in the world, but it takes up a lot of room in my stash (you know, the whole super-bulky thing) and I want to use it up. At least the project is going quickly - if I really sink the effort in today, I might even be able to finish it by this evening.

The green project is a raglan style shrug that I'm making out of my Sanguine Gryphon Kypria yarn. I'm not using a pattern, but I've seen other garments constructed in much the same way. It's basically a top down raglan knitted without any front. I started it because, having finished the shawl I was working on, I need another portable project to take to uni. And I am always, always looking for non-sock uses for my sock yarns (that said, autumn is making itself known, so I really should knit some warm socks as well).




In other news, I've been eating a lot of museli (note also the gratuitous fish-bowl shot). I've started making my own, and I really don't know why it took me so long to get around to it. I've always loved museli, but the varieties that you can buy in the shops tend to be either hideously expensive or full of ingredients I don't particularly like (dried apple - urgh, it's like sour rubber!). And making your own is so ridiculously easy.

I used a mixture of oats, sunflower seeds, chopped pecans, flaked almonds, and sesame seeds for my base (that's more or less in descending order of quantities). Then I made a mixture of honey (warmed a little so it mixes easier), vegetable oil, and a wee bit of vanilla essence and cinnamon, and stirred it through the dry mixture. Then I tossed it all onto some trays and put them in a moderate oven until the mixture was toasted and crunchy. When it was cool I added some chopped dried dates and some sultanas. Gorgeous. I encourage everyone else to try it too. I haven't given quantities here because I didn't even use a recipe for this - I just did my usual trick of reading a bunch of them online to glean the basic rules, and then winging it. Anyway, for me to give a recipe would be against the point of the exercise - it's all about making up your own version, with ingredients that suit you! Go and try it!

And finally, I got tagged by the lovely Cadence to produce seven random facts about myself, so here we go:

Seven weird things about Anna:

1. I don't drink coffee, and have only tried it about three times in my entire life. I'm not really sold on the taste (though I'll concede that the smell is heavenly), and I am weirdly impervious to caffeine, so I don't drink it for pick-me-up purposes either.
2. I have been bitten by a member of an endangered species (an orangutan in Malaysia, when I was about 13)
3. I can't whistle, and have only succeeded in clicking my fingers once in my whole life.
4. I am hopelessly hooked on sweets, but could probably give up chocolate without too much angst (pop culture would have you believe that I fail at womanhood for this reason).
   
5. I was born without wisdom teeth.
   
6. I love science fiction/fantasy. I was indoctrinated quite young by my parents - they made me watch a delightful British series from the late 1970s called Blake's 7 (which hardly any Australians these days have even heard of), and I've been hooked ever since.
7. I am a huge bird nerd, and can identify a great many Australian species from just a quick glance (and even by their calls in some cases).
   

I always feel weird tagging people - if anyone else wants to do this, they can feel free (just say I tagged you - nobody will ever know, it'll be our little secret!).

A Brief Interlude.

This afternoon I sat my second last exam. The final one, for my Environmental Law subject, is on Friday, so I'm tantalizingly close to being able to fall down and sleep for a week, but I'm not quite there yet. So I need to plod onwards, and give myself small rewards along the way to encourage my poor brain not to curl up and die quite yet. Rewards like a new cardigan...




What you're looking at: Easy Top Down Raglan, by Laura Chau. Knitted on a couple of 6mm circular needles (long one for the body, little one for the sleeves), out of six skeins of Noro Kureyon (100% wool), colour 213.

The endless prattle: Well, I had some Kureyon that I'd gotten my filth paws on the last time that the Aussie dollar was doing well, and I needed some stress-free exam knitting, so it's not particularly surprising that a cardigan happened. This is a great basic pattern, though I didn't follow it exactly, as my gauge was different. I used it to get a rough idea of how many stitches to cast on, and then went from there, adding a very small amount of waist shaping along the way (placed quite low on the body). I opted for 3/4 sleeves because I thought that I didn't have enough yarn for full length - though the body turned out being somewhat larger than I thought it would be, so I really could have just knitted it smaller, and then I likely would have had enough yarn for long sleeves. Oh well - I'm still happy with it.

As I mentioned before, everyone who has seen me knitting this in real life has admitted to finding it ugly. Yes, I'll admit, it's a little garish - Noro has a tendeny to be that way sometimes. But I like it anyway - it cheers me up to look at it. And I'm very enamoured with the blue buttons. I'm not normally one of those people who pays a lot of attention to such finer details, but these please me quite a lot.




See that smile? Totally forced - less than two hours before this was taken I was writing frantically in an exam, and really, what I dearly want to do is collapse (possibly after ingesting a glass of wine and something unhealthy). That said, I still quite like the cardigan.

Up next: Anna's adventures in needle-felting, a.k.a: Anna discovers a craft that basically involves stabbing something repeatedly with a barbed needle - and realises that this is actually quite a soothing hobby to pursue during exam period!

Sweet procrastination

My my, twice in two days - how utterly prolific! It really must be exam time - you know, just in case I hadn't already realised, what with the eye strain and the boredom and the revision classes and all. Anyway, in the spirit of procrastination, I was good on my promise and finished weaving in the ends on my raglan. Behold - I'm quite chuffed with this one!

Not the most flattering shot of me, but a good one of the jumper! There's currently a piece of wood sitting by my front door (I think it was originally part of the desk I was using before I moved back home again) that makes a most excellent platform for my camera when it's on self-timer setting. I must remember this for future shots - it can be bloody difficult to take a halfway decent photo of something you're wearing when you own a camera as cheap and dodgy as mine!

Um, I was talking about the jumper, wasn't I? I'm rather pleased with how it turned out. I was a little underwhelmed by it when I was knitting it, since I pretty much failed at jogless stripes, and my neckband was very sloppily done (picking up stitches is not my strong point at the best of time, and it was late at night and I was impatient and irked over something or other), but blocking did wonders and I'm happy with it now.

The breakdown: It was pretty basic really - just cast on about 40 (I think? I didn't bother to note) stitches and worked from there. Didn't do a gauge swatch or anything, for I am reckless and slovenly! Cast on 3 extra stitches in the arm holes after dividing the arms from the body (and picked up the same amount when starting to work the sleeves). Wrangled a little bit of waist shaping - I think I ended up decreasing 12 stitches total for the waist, knitting even for a few inches, and then increasing the same amount.

Worked 6 rows of garter stitch for the hem/wristbands/neckband. Striping was totally random - only attention I paid to it was to deliberately make the sleeves different (better completely different than matching closely enough that it looked like I was just lazy in trying to match, if that makes sense). Unlike the previous green raglan, the armholes were quite big already, so I started decreasing right off the bat. Decreased 2 stitchs 5 times from memory.

Yarn used was Patons Soft Haze. Not the greatest yarn in the world (but it was cheap, and according to my Dad I am genetically predisposed to tight-arsery, given the Scottish ancestry and all), but I quite like it here. Yes, there's a high acrylic content, but it doesn't worry me too much. It's soft enough, has perfectly adequate drape, and more to the point, it's not too warm, and I want something that I can wear at times of year other than deepest darkest winter. So there! I was really just after something to wear around the house anyway...

In conclusion, man do I love top down raglans. I already loved my green one, and this little number clinches it. They might not be the most interesting things I've ever knitted, but as far as wearability goes (for garments anyway - it ain't rocket science to knit a wearable hat/scarf), they are quite totally made of awesome. Wearability is something I'm thinking more about these days - yes I want to knit interesting things, but in my mind knitting something that you love wearing, and wear all the time, is more to the point than making something that is technically innovative but stays hidden away in the wardrobe 364 days of the year. Perhaps this is my boring-arse pragmatist talking, I don't know. Fear not, most of me will always be silly!

And now, after that pleasant diversion, it's back to the Constitutional Law revision.

Can never resist the opportunity to strike a stupid pose. I'll be fine in the exam - look how thoughtful and intellectual I am! If I had a goatee, I would so be stroking it...