Cabled Feather Cowl, Feathered Cable Cowl ?

I can't seem to keep the name of this gem of a pattern straight--Cabled Feather Cowl, Feathered Cable Cowl--hells bells, which is it? Not quite sure, but it was a sweet little project, that's for sure. I was feeling the need to do a small accessory, just to remind myself what the whole 'finishing a project' alien concept felt like. Verdict: Nice, it feels...unfamiliar yet nice.

The Specs
Pattern: Cabled Feather Cowl by Cindy Craig
Yarn: Noro 'Maiko', one skein of #103
Needles: Size 6
Mods: I opted to do only 6 repeats as I prefer cowls that stay down around the neck. Trying to avoid the Bazooka Joe look.
Time: About a week of on & off knitting. It's a winner!

This is the perfect time of year for this type of garment--there's just enough of a chill in the air to make it the perfect little extra layer. Can't wait to wear it this week as the purple is so seasonally appropriate. And those of you who have read this blog know that it's not a color that is unwelcome round these parts.

A word about the yarn. This was the first time that I ever had the pleasure to work with Maiko, a yarn which I greedily nabbed off the 30% discount table at Knit One. Apparently the Noro solids don't sell well there, so their loss was my gain. Imagine if Cash Iroha weren't slubby--that is Maiko. Peeping around Ravelry, I see that it doesn't seem to have caught on like the rest of the Noro yarns, it is perhaps too simple and plain to catapult it onto center stage, thereby making it the Jan Brady of the Noro family: unappreciated.

Normally I would be reaching for the air sickness bag at any pattern that had cables, lace and a feather & fan design, but this pattern somehow makes it work and doesn't veer into the overly busy. Cabled Feather Cowl: it's not puketastic. A ringing endorsement if ever there were one, right?

Felted Tweed Lovefest & Things I'm Planning on Stealing from my Parents' House

Awhile back I started the 'Things I'm Planning on Stealing from my Parents' House' group on Flickr. Ohai this group takes on a new meaning when you are cleaning out your parents' house, the one your family has lived in since 1965, in preparation for a life changing move out of state. I'm trying to remain upbeat about it, but I'm not gonna lie, this feels like emotional roulette. Which emotion are we dialing up today--grief, fear, rage, or resentment? Depends on how many Craigslist freaks are deciding they want to actually show to on any given day to get their free stuff. Luckily, because my family has never thrown out one single item ever since 1965 (see emotions #3 & #4), I've found some objects to distract me from the distress:

The past week I have been doing some top-secret knitting with a yarn to which I have taken a Promise Keeper's monogamy pledge: Felted Tweed. I am seriously crushing on this yarn and have fallen hard for it. This isn't the first time I've used it but WOW am I having a hard time coming up with good reasons to ever knit with another yarn again.

Aren't those colors kind of amazing together? I am knitting a Drive-Thru for a friend that just adopted an 18 month old. I made the pull-over before and am now trying my hand at the cardigan. The purling will likely cause me to bug, but I am trying a brand new gimmicky set of square needles--the Kollage needles--and I gotta say, they are unbelievably light and are thus making the job go that much quicker.

Meet-ups, contests & projects, oh my!

There has been a whirlwind of activity these past few days: a fantastic meet-up with some seriously gorgeous/talented knitters in Pittsburgh, an incredible sock designing contest, and another big super sekret project. All this excitement has been quite welcome because in the FO department, I got bupkis for you folks. Such is life when you are working on the FLS and Wicked...

First up: Knitting with Keana and Leslie!

Babs and I took our Central PA. show on the road and finally had our much anticipated meet-up with Keana and Leslie at Knit One in Pittsburgh. We had such.a.blast. Keana and Leslie are pretty much what you'd expect: super friendly (heh), gracious and lovely.


Leslie brought her famous cookies (I know that sounds like a 'that's what she said' joke, but no, she baked cookies and brought them) as well as bracelets she's made out of knitting needles. *swoon*

Keana brought her infectious laugh and her darling little mini-mensch Cole who was such a good natured little pal and might the official new mascot of Knit One. We had a great time and the hours just flew by. When it was time to go, Babs and I agreed: we had an all-around A+ typa day. You should meet up with your knitblog peeps--it's not scary at all and is quite fun. And you can talk about KNITTING...

Next: Super Nifty Sock Designing Contest!

This event, the Reviving Socks Design Contest, promises to be a rollicking good time. The mighty Elinor has spent much time and care putting together what promises to be a flat out amazing sock designing extravaganza. You've probably got a design or two just waiting for a reason to see the light of day. This is your chance! The rules are quite easy to follow, the creative feedback you'll get will be priceless and the prizes are unreal. I'm mean, it's Elinor. So it's quality. If you check out the list of judges, you'll see that yours truly will be there, too. Judging you. But in a totally non-mean, non-judgy, supportive way! It'll be fun! Help me love socks again. Keep me away from Costco buying more of these.

On Saturday I'm going to Minneapolis to visit my parents to help them get their affairs in order before they move out to Pennsylvania. My hilarious brother (who turns 40 today!) tells me that I'm not allowed to bring my knitting so I can actually get something accomplished for them. Feh! Happy Birthday! You're not the boss of me:)

Turn a Square for Claire

Well, my hilarious Knitting Olympics hopes of gold, as expected, about as viable as those of my Olympic boyfriend Johhny Weir (totally robbed btw). The FLS is about 1/3 of the way done. Which is fine--I'm loving the pattern and Cascade 220 was such the right choice. So, sometime next week when the name 'Lindsay Vonn' is but a distant memory, I will be sporting this baby in style.

But fear not--I did actually complete a project during these auspicious games. A hat for a five year old mind you, but hey, it's done and I'm quite happy with it. Several weeks ago I made a hat for Meredith's son Ellis, and so it was only matter of time until I obliged his big sister, Claire. Enter the most adaptable hat pattern ever, Turn-a-Square...

The Specs:
Pattern: Turn a Square by Jared Flood
Yarn: MC Malabrigo Worsted, 1/4 a skein in 'Shocking Pink'; CC 1/3 of a skein of Mochi Plus in 'Strawberry-Lime Rainbow' (the name is gag-worthy, but the yarn works).
Needles: size 5 & size 6
Mods: Because this was for a 5 yo, I went down several needle sizes and cast on 88 sts. At the increase round, I only added 4 sts for a total of 92 sts. I knit 3.5 inches from the cast on before the decrease row.

I wanted to use some crazy pink Malabrigo remnants for this pattern and was delighted to find out that it matched the Mochi Plus gauge-wise perfectly. Both are single ply yarns and look perfect together.

I think I might have a new go-to baby knit. This pattern is so easy to adapt, and rather than get sucked into to the vortex of the Baby Surprise Jacket (which always takes about 2x longer than you think it should), you could pound these out for the Dion quintuplets in no.time.flat.

Space Dust Monkeys

Sounds like a new illicit drug, right? If only. I could use a newer, cleaner buzz these days as the whole hourly dosing of caffeine + lifesavers routine is getting harder and harder to maintain. While I contemplate my options (Swedish Fish and Red Bull?), please to note that I have completed a pair of socks.

The Specs
Pattern: Monkey Socks by Cookie A.
Yarn: Socks That Rock Mediumweight, "Space Dust".
Needles: Size 1.5 addi turbo
Time: October 2008-February 2010

The Wayback Time Machine of Ravelry tells me that I started these socks back in 2008, so these only took oh, 16 months. To say that my sock enthusiasm has waned would be an understatement. I don't know what it is, I'm just not feeling the sock love anymore. I thought that by picking these back up I might rekindle the joy but no. I feel nothing. Socks are dead to me. If you happen to see me buying sock yarn at Maryland Sheep and Wool, Rhinebeck or some other yarn venue, you have my permission to accost me & engage in some sort of ritual shaming. I would in fact undertake a destash of epic proportions were it not for a. shawls and b. the desire to not deal with cheap ass mofos whose bad manners, lack of follow through and 'I'll PayPal you when I get off work' promises crush my tender heart and get my goat.

Not only does sock knitting feel like some remote interest, like the 5 minutes in 2003 when I was interested in stamping (Babs will never let me forget that unfortunate hobby), even the socks themselves don't quite ignite my interest. When doing the photo shoot for these today at work, my model Sandrine noted how soft and comfy they were. I instantly gave them to her without a second thought. "Oh, you want 'em?". What is wrong with me?

My knitting interests seem to reside elsewhere--because I am hauling some major ass on my February Lady Sweater. I mean this project is firing on all cylinders, and I am so motivated to finish it. Every time I'm on Ravelry I spend at least 20 solid minutes trolling through the gallery of finished projects and thinking "...mine....soon I will have one of my very own that will be MINE!". So, my new knitting motto is this: it's better to concentrate on projects that make you feel hopeful rather than deaden you soul.

(Reading the) Tea Leaves

My latest FO is destined to be in my Top Ten Pantheon of All-Time Sweet Ass Knits®. I am talking about the Tea Leaves Cardigan, the most legendary viral cardigan to hit the Intertubes since the FLS (see below). Babs is responsible for this particular mania--she and I had a flurry of texts about this pattern a while back (what--you don't do that?) and I became officially obsessed. I knew that this most perfect cardigan and I were destined to be. But what yarn? What YARN?

Excessive, non-specific MDS&W yarn purchasing to the rescue! Luckily my craven little lemming heart was just desperate to nab some Mas Acero in the Brooks Farm booth, and as it turns out, this is the perfect yarn for this project. Variegated--yes, but not dizzyingly so.

The Specs:
Pattern: Tea Leaves Cardigan by Melissa LaBarre. If you don't know her designs, you should pre-order her upcoming new book, New England Knits. It's going to be huuuge.
Yarn: Mas Acero, 3 skeins of 9 MA (?--I'll never understand their naming system)
Needles: Size 6s and 7s
Size: 42
Mods: Only mod was that I was afraid of running out of yarn, so the sleeves were made maybe 2 inches shorter than I would have liked. As it turns out I was right to economize, I only had a smidge left.

This project was a true pleasure from start to finish. I would have finished this project sooner had I not gotten sidetracked with other projects, and the small matter of two entire skeins of yarn getting *$#@*&^% entangled with one another:

Yes, if you can believe it, I had one hot mess on my hands with this yarn. I'm not really even sure how this happened. I decided to leave it out (à la jigsaw puzzle on the cabin card table) and have Herr Curmudgeon untangle it at the dining room table during his spare moments, in between rants about texting & the downfall of our society and the supremacy of prog rock concept albums over all other musical forms.

The ruching effect on the yoke is perfection. The two-button concept is genius, and I will always love the 3/4 sleeve. This sweater has to much to recommend it. So much to love in one sweater. Mwah!

You should check out Babs' version, it's amazing, and she's as gaga for hers as I am for mine. We got talking about sweaters, and she declared herself to be a stalwart cardigan enthusiast. I must say that this got me thinking, and I do believe that the cardigan might be growing on me too. I see its utility, even if I do despise its purling.

And since the yarn for my Autumn Rose has yet to be delivered (oh how utterly convenient!), I've decided to do the February Lady Sweater (Cascade 220 in Flame, above) for my Knitting Olympics project. And just to keep it ultra-crazy, I'll also be attempting another Back-to-School U-Neck Vest (Ella Rae, #134, below) at the same time. So I will be knee-deep in worsted for the Winter Games, because I'm all about knitting under arbitrary constraints--and you?

Tuareg Twist Saroyan

Shawl #1 of 10 Shawls for 2010 is in the can--and completed just in time for SnOMGageddon 2010: The Final Snowening™, no less. Those of you that live in mid-Atlantic know what I'm talking about--the Weather Channel and Weather.com have taken their storm rhetoric to new heights and haven't really left anyplace else to go. I'm hoping that it doesn't get any worse than they've predicted because they've used up all the hyperbole and really might need to coin some new phrases. I guess we were due for a old-fashioned Snowpocalypse™...

Luckily for me, one of the fortunate aspects of this type of day is that the radiators are going full tilt and I was able to block my new shawl/hybrid scarf/wrap in what seemed like seriously less than ten minutes. Which is a lucky thing, because I am dying to wear this lovely whatchamacallit!

The Specs:
Pattern: Saroyan by Liz Abinante from Feministy.com
Yarn: Malabrigo Twist in 'Tuareg', two skeins exactly
Needles: size 8
Mods: Only mod was that I did one less 'non-increase' leaf than the pattern called for. The garment is to my mind the perfect head wrapping length--which how I now wear all shawls, because I'm a tough, old broad.

This is the perfect combination of zone-out (stockinette) and semi-attentive (lace) knitting. I worked on and off on this for several weeks and seriously recommend it to anyone who fancies this particular combo.

Below we have a nod to the real Tuareg, the Blue People of the Sahara. It just so happens that Miss Thing here is also a descendant of another Saharan nomadic tribe, on her dad's side, so this shot seemed so appropriate. And just so she doesn't get too high on her horse, I make sure to remind her that from me she gets hillbilly bootlegger and Lancashire mill worker.

Wood Hollow Vest, aka the Best Thing I've Ever Made

I know I tend to veer towards the hyperbolic about most things (along with sneering contempt it's my favorite mode of expression), but I am here to tell you that I have just completed test knitting the best thing I've ever made, courtesy of Kirsten Kapur of Through the Loops fame. Wood Hollow Vest! Wood Hollow Vest! Shout it from the mountain tops--it's a real honey of a pattern that deserves your immediate attention!

The Specs
Pattern: Wood Hollow Vest by Kirsten Kapur of Through the Loops
Yarn: Cascade 220, 4.5 skeins of #9564, 'Birch Heather'.
Size: 44
Needles: size 6 and 7 circs
Time: Cast on Christmas Day while starting into the void and my in-laws in NJ, worked on it on and off while doing other things, and finished last night.
Mods: Excuse me? What is this 'modifications' thing of which you speak? ETA: there is one unintentional mod--I muffed up the cable panel on the front. But hey--only God is perfect, etc.

There is so much to love about this pattern. One thing that I so appreciate as Chesty McChesterton is that the pattern comes in sizes 32-54 in a way that actually works, meaning that it's not like those patterns that work perfectly at the smaller sizes but haven't been properly thought out at the larger end. The cables are perfectly proportional in all sizes.

This is the ultimate Cascade 220 project as the yarn makes the stitches pop to perfection. I'm sure that right now most of you even have enough in your stashes to do this pattern. This particular color is also quite appealing as well as it's a tad odd. I first saw it chez Babs as she's using it for a vest that SHE NEEDS TO FINISH. Ahem. To me it just screams 'Old English Furniture polish', which in my world is a supreme accolade. It also reminds me of the shag carpeting the Silverman twins had in their basement as well as the cock-a-poo Ginger our family had in the 80s. All good associations!

There's a new Wood Hollow KAL on Ravelry if you fancy doing this pattern with the real time, live blogging assistance that only a RavKal can provide. I also think that this would be the perfect Ravelympics pattern as it would hold your interest and is totally doable in the time frame of the event. Me? I'm a moron and am trying the Autumn Rose Pullover because apparently 'going down in flames' is how I plan on celebrating the Winter Games.

From the department of shameless family promotion, because it's what we do: You might have heard about a little device announced yesterday with a regrettable name? Well guess what--my brother CALLED IT over four years ago as a writer at MadTv:

Going shawl-out for 2010!

Waaa-waaa. Ravelry has been blowing my mind recently with a lot of crazy awesome features. The newest one? The Help for Haiti patterns: buy a pattern from a favorite designer and at least 50% of the proceeds will go to relief efforts for Haiti. Yo: I'm not talking about crocheted toilet paper holders here (see how I vilify what I don't understand?), I'm talking about patterns that are already in your queue. I nabbed several, including KK's Dorothea beanie, M-H's Simple Things, Daybreak, Wandering the Moor and two shawls I've been dying to make: Clothilde and Milkweed. So check it out, the designers have been so generous to offer their proceeds.

While on the topic of Ravelry, I am excited to have joined an insane group on there called 10 Shawls in 2010. Yup, you guessed it: you knit 10 shawls in one calendar year. I'm kind of excited about it because I have recently rediscovered the awesome power that is the shawl, and it is this: the key to wearing them and not looking like a society for creative anachronism member or historical reenactor is to wear them as bunched up as scarves. Voilà. Such an earth shattering observation! What's next? Leggings as pants? NO.

I'm making fantastic progress on my Saroyan, and have my eye on the above-mentioned shawls as well as a top-sekret test knit, Mara, another Shetland Triangle, Summer Shawlette, Woodland Shawl, and Candlelight Shawl. Am I missing any? What's your favorite shawl pattern?

Stangers with (Arm) Candy*

If you are looking for a quick knit with a maximum hubba hubba factor, look no further than ARM CANDY.
Specs: Arm Candy by Amy Herzog (Stash Knit Repeat)
Yarn: Valley Yarns Colrain in Grape Jelly, 8 skeins
Needles: size 7
For: My mom.
Mods: The only mod I did was to pick up the sleeves and knit them in the round. I am still looking for that missing entity, you know, that magical object that will make my life complete, i.e. THE PERFECT BUTTON. Once located, I will crow about it.

This was a very fast knit: the pattern is intuitive and expertly written, the sizing options are out of this world, and the finished sweater is a winner. There are several shaping options: I went with shaping in the back but not the front. Teen thing is modeling it here and it looks very drapey on her slight frame, but a larger gal would fill this out for some serious va-va-voom.

I have yet to meet a Valley Yarn I didn't like, and Colrain is not exception. It far exceeds my initial expectations, as far as I'm concerned. It sells for the nice price, is super versatile, and is silky and sheeny yet not disco. That is totally my new motto btw. Amy was a love to let me test knit this for her. Thanks!

Next up for me is a Ravelry viral hit: Saroyan. I'm breaking into my precious, newly acquired stash of Malabrigo Twist in Tuareg and I am here to tell you that it is unreal and is basically making the regular Malabrigo feel like sand paper. Yeah, it's THAT soft.

*Thought I'd sneak a little Jeri Blank in the title because well, I love her. FANDANGO.

Empire state of mind

First project of 2010 alert! First project of 2010 alert! And it's another Kirsten Kapur winner, folks. I feel like I am that Julie chick and that I'm trying to cook my way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, except that it's knitting and I'm knitting my way through the Kirsten Kapur design catalog. If you don't know her designs, you should: she is terribly talented and her patterns are among the clearest out there. Do yourself a favor and get on board while you can.

The Specs:
Pattern: Empire Hat by Kirsten Kapur
Yarn: Malabrigo Worsted in Marine, .75 of a skein.
Needles: size 7
Size: small
Mods: AS IF!

Because I made this for my friend Dave's daughter, I opted to only do one repeat of the main pattern and went ahead with the size 7 needle. The next one I make will be done on a size 8 and I'll do the full two repeats for optimum whimsy.

I was afraid that the recipient would have a bout of shyness and wouldn't want to model the FO for me, so I went ahead and snapped some pics before gifting it. Worrying that all our heads would be too big and not wanting to go the grapefruit route, I remembered my parents New Guinea art collection and that there was a statue that would be a perfect stand-in. Hooray for being home, where despite the -15 temps, I can get something accomplished!

Luckily I was wrong and Dave's daughter was a willing accomplice. She squealed when she received the hat and noted that it will match her backpack. So, YAY!