fo: bandana cowl

As part of my new years resolution to use up some of the stash I already have, I cast on this Bandana Cowl a few day ago, using an errant ball of Malabrigo Twist that I bought more than a year ago. I want to say the color is zinc, but I wouldn't swear to it - in any case, it's a very pretty light grey with an overtone of pink to it. I'm pretty happy with the yarn - pattern combination, as it was *just* enough yarn (I actually omitted the final decrease round, just to be safe) and the resulting cowl is squishy and cozy. Knitting this totally reminded me that Twist may be my favorite Malabrigo base, it's just so crazy soft. 

The Bandana Cowl pattern itself is very pretty and easy to follow. If I had any fear of short rows in the past, I definitely do not now, because there are a *lot* of them in this pattern, and you definitely get used to them. This was exactly the kind of pattern I wanted to knit - something fast, mindless enough for late night tv watching, and good for using whatever you have on hand, rather than something you have to buy new yarn for. The resulting garment is a bit slouchier than I'd imagined, but I like it nonetheless :) 

Raveled here. 

fo: selbu modern

Yay, Fair Isle hat! I'd been afraid of Fair Isle for so long - I tried doing it once, when we were living in Tokyo, and it just kept unraveling in my hands, and the whole thing just put me off the technique for ages. I'd been wanting to learn it properly for some time, though, since there are so many gorgeous patterns using Fair Isle out there. This time, it came much easier, possibly because I bothered to read the online tutorial carefully for once (something I am extremely bad about), even if it took awhile to get the hang of holding yarn in both my right and left hands (usually I just hold my yarn in my right hand). It's not perfect, but I'm still pretty happy with it - the excitement I felt while knitting this was almost akin to the excitement I felt the first time I knit anything: I couldn't believe I was actually doing it. 

The pattern is the deservedly popular Selbu Modern, which is free and easy to follow. I'd definitely recommend it as a first Fair Isle pattern - having just two colors to negotiate made my life easier, and it was easy to fall into the rhythm of the pattern and not have to look at the chart too much once I got into it. I used the recommend yarns, the Fibre Company's Fingering Canopy, which I also liked a lot - the finished hat feels just fuzzy enough. I blocked over a dinner plate, and am very happy with the resulting fit.

 Raveled here. 

2012 knitting resolutions

As nerdy as it sounds, I love making New Year's Resolutions - I like having goals and things to aspire to, even if I can't manage everything in a single year, and one of the cool things about this blog is having someplace to actually keep a record of said goals. Last year, I resolved to: 

1. Finish the Vivian sweater that I started way back in December 2009. For real this time. Fail. This did not happen, not even a little. 
2. Finish the February lady sweater that's been sitting in a sad pile next to my bed for four weeks now. This sort of happened, in that I unraveled the sweater (it was doomed) and knit it into a Goodale Cardigan instead. 
3. Seven sweaters fit to be worn in public. This happened. You can read about it here. 
4. ... at least one of which that I've designed myself. Also happened! 
5. Finish the reading/viewing for the Design Your Own Shawl class, for which I have woefully fallen off the wagon during the craziness of the holidays. Fail. Never got back on that wagon.
6. ... and then actually design a shawl using the information from this class. Or that one.
7. No buying new yarn until I've used the yarn that's accumulated in our tiny apartment. I am very happy to say that this totally held for the first six months of the year. I went a little crazy buying yarn in preparation for returning to the States (had to get on those remaining five sweaters, after all), and gave up on the yarn diet while living in LA, which I'm okay with. The point was mostly to cut back on spending money on yarn for a bit and to work with what I had for the remainder of our time in Japan, so I think it worked out well. 

So, this year, I'm resolving to: 

1. Finally learn to knit Fair Isle (as you can see from the photo above, I've already started that one, but I swear I made the resolution before I started knitting!) 
1. ( Suck up all my knitting resolve and make the dream sweater I've been wanting to for years now - Ysolda Teague's Little Birds. Which means - terrifyingly - learning to steak as well. )
2. Finish (or accept the failure of, and rip accordingly) the UFOs that have been haunting me for anytime from weeks to years now: Swallowtail, Mr. Darcy, Vivian, plus all the half-knit design prototypes that may or may not be working out. 
3. Knit six sweaters (Going back from last year's seven; six seems like a good number). Ideally I want most of these to be more of the wardrobe-staple type: warm, long sleeved, neutral colors that go with everything. I never seem to have a sweater to wear, though I have a closet of brilliantly colorful bright sweaters with short sleeves. 
4. Knit less selfishly! 
1. (Specifically, make a sweater for my best friend's thirtieth birthday, and something special for my amazing godmother.)
5. Work hard at designing...
1. (... and design a sweater! This is the scariest one, but also the one I'm probably most excited about. I do have a sweater in my head, so it's mostly a question of getting it onto paper and into yarn.)
6. Be a better blog / ravelry / twitter commenter person. I know I'm really bad at commenting on other blogs and responding to comments, which I usually blame on my hobo lifestyle, but I'd like to reach out more. 
7. And finally, because it worked last year, focus on using the stash I have rather than buying more. I don't have a set amount of yarn to work through, but maybe once I've worked through about half the stash I've currently got? I think that seems fair. 

So that's it! How about you, what are your resolutions (knitting or otherwise) for 2012? 

last FOs of 2011

I managed to finish two more projects before the end of the year, though it took me awhile to photograph them. The first was a Spring Beret in a yellow skein (I bought and wound it over a year ago, and can't remember the exact colorway now!)  of Madtosh vintage, on size seven needles (rather than the larger needles used in the pattern); I didn't have any of the larger sizes handy, so instead I knit an extra pattern repeat to maintain slouchiness, which I think worked out okay. I was never in love with this yarn color, which is why it took me so long to use it, but I actually like it a lot more in hat form now - it's a bright, sunny color that goes with everything, so I think it'll get a lot of wear. 

I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that most of this hat was knit during an eleven and a half hour long Lord of the Rings (extended version!) marathon with some family friends. The hat took me the better part of one movie, I'd guess from between Gandalf's arrival in the Shire through the one where they were hanging out with Galadrial, if that's the sort of thing that makes sense to you. I really should have brought a bigger project along. Seriously, eight hour of tv watching without knitting was painful. But then, so was eleven hours of tv watching, period. Good to know that there are limits to my ability to be sedentary after all, because sometimes even I worry. (Raveled here) 

My Mara shawl, on the other hand, was knit in slightly less nerdy adventures, mostly in hostel rooms and buses while traveling through South America. I brought three skeins of Madelinetosh DK in Sugarplum (a gorgeous, sugary violet pretty enough to make me forget my usual aversion to purples and pastels). I joined the last ball a few rows after starting the ribs and still ran out of a yarn a maddening twelve stitches short of a complete bind-off. I was so desperate not to have to frog (I love the ribbed section best of all and didn't want to shorten it) that I was actually cutting off the loose ends to see if I could scrounge up enough yarn, but nothing worked. In the end, I found a spectacularly helpful Raveler who was somehow able to sell me a spare skein of the suddenly hard-to-find colorway and ship it to me in the midst of all the holidays. At four skeins, this shawl ended up costing a sweater's worth of yarn, but I'm okay with it because I love this shawl. I wore it all the time in Seattle, and it's amazing, like being allowed to go in public with a blanket wrapped around you but without the social stigma against going out in public with a blanket wrapped around you. I got compliments from cool grad students and my 91 year old grandmother alike. I may never take this thing off, seriously. 

Raveled here. 

2011 sweaters (and other stuff)

At the beginning of this year, I resolved to knit seven sweaters, one of which I designed myself, which turned out to be the only knitting resolution I unequivocally kept (the rest were a flat out failure, or else need to be judged, um, charitably). Though I really enjoyed branching out this year into tiny sock yarn socks and lacy shawls, sweaters have always been my most satisfying knitting projects; also, this year, it's kind of cool to see all the photos of the different places we were living when I finished them! The first sweater is one of the last thing I knit in Japan: Snow White with Noro Cash Iroha. I miss our tiny Japanese backyard. 

After Snow White, things in Japan got too busy for me to knit, and then too hot while I was traveling in Vietnam and India (too hot is also why I whacked off about six inches of hair right before leaving Hanoi). I was in serious knitting withdrawal by the time I got to Iain's house in Scotland, which nonetheless does not explain why I felt the compulsive need to knit this Snowbird sweater in ten freakin' days. But I did. The photo above was taken in Iain's family's backyard the day before I left. Of all the sweaters I made this year, I wear this one the most, though I am quite embarrassed to say that I have still not woven in all the ends. 

I knit this Streamside cardigan in Los Angeles, where - in Iain's absence - I discovered the amazing time suck that is Netflix instant streaming and figured out how to use a remote control on my camera and take photos of myself, myself. I'm so productive when my boyfriend is in another country. 

I never posted about this but this also happened, I swear! I designed it myself and it mostly came out the way I imagined, but it needs a button or something. I have vague plans of fine tuning this and making it into a real pattern, but they're pretty vague. I count this as fulfilling my New Year's resolution because I did wear it out in public once or twice, but it was definitely not my most satisfying knit. 

I liked my first Cecily Macdonald Glowick sweater so much that I made a Goodale too, out of the madtosh pashima that never became a February Lady sweater, and finished it right before we left for Peru. I'm not a huge fan of this sweater. It hangs funny, and I know I keep saying I'll fix it, but I don't really know when that will be. Can't argue with the color, though - yay, Tart! 

Are you seeing sort of a theme with these poses? I have no idea what this pose is - maybe I'm so busy admiring my handiwork I can't be bothered to look at the camera? If I was on America's Next Top Model, the judges would totally mock me for my lack of posing ferocity and I'd be eliminated right away. In any case. Boe was a test knit for the amazingly talented Anke, and I absolutely love it, even though finishing it in Peru meant that I was't really able to wear it in the weather there. Also, I started knitting it in San Francisco on the BART train, and then I dropped the ball and it rolled down the aisles and under seats right as the door to my stop opened and I had to run after it, and it was one of those really frantic moments when I'm pretty sure I looked like a colossal idiot to everyone else on the train. The photo is from our host family's house in Peru, which was still being built. Our lovely host mother told it me was muy linda, and I felt really special. 

The other Peru sweater and probably my favorite of the whole year - a Tea Leaves cardigan in the most beautiful yarn on the planet. Iain took these photos of me in front of an Inca wall, which is probably way cooler than the sweater itself. 

So those were the sweaters of 2011! (I also started this Acer cardigan, but it quickly fell by the wayside when we started backpacking - there was no way I could cram a sweater's worth of yarn into our already crammed full shared rucksack.) In general, they weren't really as satisfying as the sweaters of the year before. So many short sleeved projects made me feel like I was cheating (plus I can't really wear them now that I'm finally in sweater weather), and I'm kind of meh on most of them. Next year I think I just need to make a few long sleeved, worsted weight cardigans that button all the way up that I can actually wear, especially since it's looking like I'll be living someplace cold. 

When I wasn't knitting sweaters, though, I was designing! I published four patterns this year, which doesn't sound like a lot but there was a lot of behind the scenes knitting and unknitting and things that never became patterns, so it did suck up a fair bit of time. The first pattern, published in early January, was Thisbe, above. 

This pattern was actually published in an actual, real-live magazine, and I am so lame about blogging while traveling that I never actually blogged about it until now. SO LAME, I know. And now that issue is long off the shelves. But in any case, these Ivonne mitts appeared in the second issue of the UK magazine Knit Now, and despite my relative radio silence on the matter in blog form, it was one of the most exciting moments in knitting I've ever had, as well as the one that reassured my father, who I was living with at the time, that all that time I spent knitting and vacantly watching Netflix instant streaming was, in fact, productive.  It is worth noting that the photo above is actually my submission picture and that the thumbs have changed, and also that I think I'll be able to sell the pattern myself eventually, so if you like it, you're in luck! 

The other thing I spent a good amount of time working on this summer was this Phaedra hat. Yay, things with leaves. 

And finally, there was Naiya, a free alpaca cowl pattern I managed to write in Peru, mostly because I wanted an excuse to use my pretty skein of squishy alpaca yarn from Cusco. And that's it, for 2011! If I didn't have as many satisfying FOs as I would have liked, it's only because I was too busy traveling or designing, and I can't complain about any of that. If you like any of these patterns, use the coupon code happy2012 before January 2nd on Ravelry to get 25% off any pattern! Except for the free ones, because they're already free. Happy knitting, and goodbye to an awesome year! 

FO : traveling marilindas

They're done! Actually they've been done almost a month now - after spending half the summer working on the first sock, I blazed through the second one over a few bus rides and one day of staying in the hostel while traveling; I was just lazy about photographing them (and even lazier about getting the colors right; the middle photo is probably the most accurate). But! They're done and they're my first pair of socks in sock yarn ever, so I'm unreasonably proud of them. 

These were an awesome project for traveling, because it was intricate enough to distract me from our numerous long bus rides, but varied enough that I never got bored, the way I sometimes do with lace (sorry, lace). They were also knit in an absurd amount of places: the first sock was started in Seattle, worked on in Los Angeles and Oakland, then Ollantaytambo and Parobamba (I finished the first while at the natural dye workshop, much to the interest of Nilson and Aknar); the second was started in Parobamba, and worked on in or on buses between Puno (Peru), La Paz, Sucre and Uyuni (Bolivia) and finally finished in San Pedro de Atacama, Chile.

Yay, socks! 

Raveled here. 

happy holidays!

We never do much during actual Christmas day at my house, so it's a perfect time for knitting and watching TV. The happy elf above is, of course, a Korknisser knit in Cascade 220 wool - but my sister was using my computer at the time so I kind of winged the actual pattern from memory, so I was relieved that it came out okay, and also that I was able to find a brand new Sharpie marker to make his face.

In any case - happy happy holidays! I hope that you are having a wonderful holiday season with your families, eating lots of good food and staying out of the cold.