Persistent Knitter

Just to prove I do actually spin and knit these days :)

I’ve been creating; but not much knitting or spinning. This has been my project for the past little while. Love Ikea. Can’t wait to get them installed!

I’ve had an Ikea kind of week. We have bought all the cabinets to go into the laundry room. My dining room is overrun with boxes of cabinets in them - waiting to be put together. I can’t do that until the laundry room is painted, and that won’t happen until after Tuesday - realistically next weekend. In the meantime I finished another project I’ve wanted to do for a while - a shelf for storing spindles.

Also - Can anyone guess where the butterfly electric spinner is hiding in this picture? :)

It’s been quiet on the blog, and it’s not even the fault of this wonderful spinner. I just got it yesterday; and haven’t had a chance to try it out. Checkout my flickr account and you’ll see the remodel that has been keeping me busy.

Started a new project on my trip. Ordered yarn from SpinBlessing.com and she got it to me super quick and was very patient with me emailing her a bunch of times :)

The pattern is from Dale book 160, Pattern # 13. I changed the colors to purple roses instead of pink, and the background yarn is white instead of off-white (this was based on the yarn availability at the time and I think it worked out well). The pattern calls for Daletta yarn, and i’m using Baby Ull for all colors except the green. I liked the Daletta green much better than the greens avail in the Baby Ull.

I hope the scallops at the bottom block out mostly flat when it’s done. They are having a huge tendency to curl right now.

Ok, so it’s only a baby sweater; but at least i finished it!

Pattern: Dale 16209 (book 162)
Yarn: White is Bebe Lang superwash & Multi color is koigu
Size: 3 month
Modifications: Cast on more stitches for sleeves than pattern called for. I thought the cuffs would be too tight with what they had, and ballooned too much when doing all those increases after knitting the ribbing. other than that it’s knit just like the pattern says.

Satisfaction Rating: 5 stars! Love the pattern! It really does take only one skein of Koigu; and I might have been able to make the next size up given that I had about 1/4 ball left when I finished. I loved the Koigu yarn and think the colors look great against the white background. I hated the background yarn (the bebe lang). It was thin, not tightly spun enough and didn’t fill in as well as I would have liked. Next time I’d sub Baby Ull (which is what the pattern calls for; but I was stash diving when I started making this)

I’m traveling to visit my family in Phoenix this week. Here’s a picture I took while driving around today:

I have lots of knitting with me, some spinning too. I’m trying to get this sleeve done:

But I have sleeve #2 to do as well. The body of this sweater was pretty fun to knit; but I feel like the sleeves are torture. I started a new sweater for my daughter on the plane ride out; that I’m ignoring today in order to finish this darned sleeve! We’ll see how long it lasts.

Fiber: Merino/Bamboo 60/40
Source: Dragonfibers.com (bought at a local LYS)
Colorway: Masquerade
Drafting technique: Worsted
Plying Technique: 2 ply, a bit over plied to make a nice round yarn
Yardage: Approx 500 yds
Weight: approx 7.8 ounces

My goal with this fiber was to practice spinning thicker yarn. I do pretty well at the thin yarns; but I wanted to try something other than my current ‘default’. I drafted worsted style to keep the shine from the bamboo in the yarn and it really worked. The yarn has a wonderful glint to it as the light catches on it. It’s not completely uniform; but I’m really happy with how well this came out. The colorway isn’t one of my usual; but I couldn’t resist the variations in the purples, from light lavendar to a light blue. I was worried that the colors would be too barber-poled, but they work really well together and I think it will be interesting to see how it knits up. What will I knit it as? No idea.

You might be wondering if I knit anymore. The answer is yes! I’m working on a new sock design; I just ordered yarn to knit up a stranded colorwork cardigan for my daughter. I’m still working on the blue cabled cardigan for me that has only been dubbed the not-CPH sweater so far.  I also cast on the Morning Glory wrap from knitspot this morning with my red/black handspun.  I wanted to design something myself; but I don’t have the patience right now for something that large.   The Morning Glory wrap has the type of look I was thinking of; but I don’t have to work anything out. My yarn is lighter than the pattern calls for - so once I’m in a few inches I’ll see if I think it’s wide enough.  A friend accused me of neglecting some wonderful kits I ordered earlier this year; and she’s right! I’m waiting until it gets cooler to work on those.

I’m traveling next week and the big question is what is coming with me knitting and spinning wise.  My drop spindle definitely. A few bobbins for the matchless; yes - because the destination I’ll be visiting happens to have a wheel there.  My knitting- maybe all of these projects; who knows. I’ll be there a full week and a day; with lots of waiting around time to fill.

Well; I upgraded the blog to the new version. So far all seems as it should. I need to re-enable a few of the plugins I had (I don’t remember what they did for the most part; but I put ‘em there for a reason). Feel free to let me know if you see something out of whack to nancy AT persistentknitter DOT com.

Update: (So far it seems like Categories are whacked. ugh. we’ll see what we can do with that)

Further update: It seems I had to manually reenter my Categories into the database.  Looks like we’re better now.

Thanks to everyone for their wonderful words on my red/black seawool. I’m trying to knit up a swatch with it; but haven’t settled on anything yet. My current project is now this:

This is a bobbin mostly full of singles of bamboo/merino. Spun worsted; I’ll do a two ply that will come out thicker than my normal yarn.