leftovers

mash-up cowl, originally uploaded by katie:m.

Three flavors of Malabrigo mixed with equal parts Gloria Cowl version 2.0,  Aspen Neck Cowl and a random number generator.

Graduate school is being mean again.  More later, when the boogy man is back in the closet.

voilà!

pattern: Gloria Cowl

yarn: Regia 4-ply sock yarn (black) and Tausendschön sock yarn (Traumtänzer) held double (ETA: approx 50 grams of each)

needles: US8/5.0mm circs

started: July 8, 2008

finished: July 11, 2008

mods: garter stitch at the edges, three increase rounds at bottom

pacman

I finally put aside the angst and decided on another Gloria cowl for the Tausenschön Traumtänzer. Paired with some bog-standard Regia 4-ply sock yarn in black, it makes an interesting variegated fabric.

The colors remind me a bit of the old Pac-Man video game, so there you have it: Pac-Man cowl. I substituted a garter stitch border and realized too late that I really wanted a cowl version 2.0. After some ill-fated increasing, which I realized too late would 1) look stupid and 2) mess up the random variegation. So back I ripped.

Don’t judge. It’s been a stressful week.

For slightly less mindless knitting than stockinette in the round — which, you will note, somehow managed to go stupidly awry — I finally started on my socks for the InterweaveSockAlong: the Seduction Socks by Ann Budd in some heavenly Colinette Jitterbug in the moss colorway.

So far, so not messed up.

Currently, I’m deluding myself that the scant Jitterbug yardage is a perfect match for the Seduction socks, which feature a slightly shorter leg than a typical sock. I will no doubt be wrong.

yum yum

yum, originally uploaded by katie:m.

i’m so bored.

The Central Park Hoodie is killing me.

It is insanely popular on ravelry <<cough1425projectscough>> but I am just not feeling it right now. Maybe it’s because I’ve reknit the sleeves four times. Maybe it’s because it’s summer. Maybe it’s because I’m just a fickle slut of a knitter. (Are male knitters also fickle? I mean, fickleness is so nineteenth-century feminine, isn’t it?)

Whatever the cause, I’m about ready to gouge my eyes out with a handy pointy object. Which would have the benefit of 1) preventing further work on the CPH as well as expressing my extreme boredom with said project and 2) preventing further work on the proposal as well as expressing my extreme boredom with said project. Win!

i’m so bored, originally uploaded by katie:m.

At least part of the problem is the yarn. I’m knitting this in Valley Yarns Sugarloaf and I am not in love. It’s a perfectly fine yarn: very soft, good stitch definition, nice aran weight, comes in tons of pretty colors. But for all of that, it’s not for me. The high acrylic microfiber content (48%) makes it feel slick and artificial instead of genuinely soft; at 81 yards (74 meters) per 50 grams it’s a heavy yarn. These are things I just learned to think about.

The body of the sweater hangs and will not doubt stretch like a mofo, despite the seams. I don’t even want to think about what the hood will do to the neckline.

That said, I still have a sleeve cap to finish, another whole sleeve to knit, and then the hood, button bands, and finishing to face. And the sad part is, I think I’ll like the sweater when it’s finished. Only “think” though.

On the positive side, I’ve learned that I love the wooly, even if it is a bit scratchy. I never wear sweaters next to the skin anyway. (I broke out in hives just typing that.) So in the future, unless at special request by someone I love, no more super-processed fibers for me. Because, really, knitting this hoodie in a lovely wooly tweed would have made all of the difference.

Traumtänzer

This yarn does not yet know what it wants to be when it grows up.

I’ve tried socks: yarrow ribbed and Cookie A. I’ve tried cowls. And still, nothing has been quite right. The variegations have been tricky and I expected serious pooling from what I’d seen on ravelry: here. (Warning: eXXtreme pooling has been known to cause palpitations, nausea, and obscenitites.) I don’t mind pooling at all, but I wanted something that seemed either a bit more random or a bit more calculated than the weird spiral striping I was getting.

Besides, the name Traumtänzer (= dream dancer; daydreamer) makes me want to knit a lovely, airy pattern that has the colors coming together in just the right way.

So I thought I might try another shawl. I have a couple in mind: Adamas or perhaps the Forest Canopy Shawl. I’d have to make a smaller version of the Adamas, since I only have one skein of yarn, whereas I could probably manage a full-sized Forest Canopy.

So many decisions made difficult by pretty yarn.

swallowtail

The Swallowtail Shawl was my first foray into lace knitting, and I have to say that the pattern was a great one to start with: the results are pretty, the knitting is interesting without being perplexing and gives relatively instant gratification.

There was really only one snafu along the way (well, expect for the time I knit while drinking wine and — predictably — had to tink back a couple of rows): I ran out of yarn. Hand-dyed yarn that was not, at the moment I needed it, available. So after some contemplation of the stash, I pulled out my skein of Cherry Tree Hill supersock in pink. If I was going to add a contrasting yarn, I was going to go big. All in all, the unexpected modification turned out well, I think — and is definitely cheerful, which is important in a wedding-gift shawl, I’d say. Next time I’ll try US7 needles to possibly avoid this problem.

Specs:

pattern: Swallowtail Shawl by Evelyn A. Clark

yarn: Tausenschön hand-dyed sock yarn in Zitronengelb (420m/100g) + Cherry Tree Hill supersock in Pink (51m/17g)

needles: US8/5mm circs

started: June 25, 2008

finished: June 30, 2008