Stitches South

I spent this last weekend in Atlanta for Stitches South 2010. I stayed with my parents (who live south of Atlanta) - which is better than a hotel, since not only do I save on lodging, but I get to hang out with them and watch Dr. Who! :-)

First off, I won the "What will you be Wearing?" contest that Kimberly, aka Somebunnyslove, was running leading up to Stitches. I posted my two Aeolian shawls, and my blue one won! So I got two tickets to the Friday night Fashion Show and Dinner. There were some lovely and unique sweaters that I saw at the Fashion show - many of them upcoming in the summer edition of Knitters Magazine. And a couple of them from 'Swing Swagger Style', among some others. The dinner was nice - the food was quite tasty (steak! and the dessert was to die for!) and the wait staff provided some humor (if you were at my table then you know what I'm talking about!). It was a very nice evening - I was very happy to have won the tickets and to meet Kimberly!

Then Saturday was the Marketplace - I overdosed on yarn fumes! It was fantastic. I ran into several of my Charlotte Knitting Guild friends on Saturday, too. I ended up only going a little bit over my budget:

(The Haul)

My first purchase (made within my first 10 minutes of being at the Marketplace!) was a sweater's quantity of The Sanguine Gryphon's Bugga! in the color 'Polyphemus Moth'. It was my only pre-planned purchase - I wanted to see the colors in person before I bought a sweater's quantity, and I fell in love with the pale, peachy browns in these:

(Bugga!!! The photo really doesn't do it justice.)

I then swung by The Knit Witch's booth and walked away with one skein of Boo! in 'Misty Moor' (the green one) and one skein of Celestial Cloud in 'The Crab' (the brownish one), plus some just scrumptious fluffy and soft Merino/Bamboo roving in the color 'Babylon' - I can't wait to spin it up!

(My purchases from the Knit Witch.)

I also swung by Dragonfly Fiber's booth, and got one skein of Djinni sock in 'Spring in Washington' (the pink one) and one skein of Naiad sock in 'Bad Moon Rising' (the awesome copper/bronze/blue one)-

On top of all that, I picked up a couple of heavily discounted bags of SWTC yarn, a shawl stick, some highlighter tape, some nail polish pens, and my mom got me the honey jade Purdy Thangz shawl pin as an early birthday present. I bought the girl scout cookies to distract my husband from all the other stuff I bought. hee hee!

Lots of great memories. I knitted a bit on The Big Sock, and got to meet Jess!

(Jess, aka frecklegirl, founder of Ravelry - and her husband, Casey, is behind me)

After an awesome lunch at The Real Chow Baby restaurant, my mom and I swung by my brother's place to visit with my nephew. He's gotten so big!

(Look at those feetsies!)

Overall, a fantastic weekend vacation! I had a lovely time with my mom, and looking at all the fantastic yarn and fiber. Now to just save up some more money before SAFF! :-D

Happy Knitting everyone!

It's too hot to wear these, but...

...here are some mittens I finished a bit ago. They only took me a little over a year to finish. o.O


Pattern: A Bird in the Hand Mittens by Jorid Linvik
Yarn: Noro Silk Garden Sock in a variegated blue and a variegated beige.
Needles: US 2.5
Started: January 16, 2009
Finished: March 9, 2010

I really enjoyed working on these. The only reason they took so long is because I kept setting them aside to work on other things. They were the red-headed stepchildren of my project basket, poor things. But now they are done, just in time for...summer! Doh! Oh well. At least I'm prepared for this next winter!



I have yet to duplicate stitch the bird on the palm (hence the 'bird in the hand') or the red heart, but that's because I haven't found the yarn I want to use to do that yet. They are nice and toasty - the silk garden sock yarn is very silky and scrumptious - the perfect yarn for mittens!

Happy Knitting!

Ravelympics/ Knitting Olympics Gold!

I finished my sweater in time to cross the finish line! Yay! It was finished at 4:35pm EST Sunday.

So, here it is - my finished Ravelympics Sweater!

Pattern: Autumn Rose by Eunny Jang
Yarn: Knit Picks Palette in 11 colors
Needles: US 3 for most of it (and US 2,1 and 0 for neck ribbing)
Size knitted: size 37 (with alterations - see below)
Started: Feb 12, 2010 at 9pm EST
Finished: Feb 28. 2010 at 4:35pm EST
Total Time: 90 hours

Modifications:

• Changed the color palette (I'll list the exact colors I used below)

• Added length to the body - extended the pattern down to the bottom of the chart (12 rows), and kept the decrease rate the same (12 extra stitches for cast on).

• Raised and narrowed the neckline. I raised the neckline to the same row as the sleeve division, and narrowed it by 4 stitches each side.

• Lowered the yoke to the smallest size's height. A lot of previous knitters noted that the yoke was too deep when worked as written.

• Lengthened sleeves and worked sleeves one size up, per the 39 size chart. Started sleeves on same row of chart as the body started. Charted out evenly spaced increases to decrease down to 35 stitches on chart (69 stitches total including the seam stitch). Mirrored bottom corrugated ribbing on the sleeve cuffs. Worked the rib over 64 stitches and then increased to 69 stitches before starting chart.

• Adjusted the raglan decreases (since I altered the neckline and the yoke height along with the sleeve width). Worked 5 sets of decreases every third row, then 10 sets of decreases every other row, then 14 sets of decreases every row. I did this on both the body and the sleeves. The sleeves ended up with a stitch count of 19 at the neckline.
  

• Kept color change in neck ribbing to mimic the bottom and cuff ribbing.

Overall I am extremely pleased with how this turned out! It fits like a dream now that it's blocked. I was concerned about some bunching that I was getting (pre-blocking) in the sleeve cap area, but it all blocked out and the raglan sleeves fit wonderfully! The Palette yarn is very soft, especially after blocking - yet it has the sticky quality that you want in fair isle. I did not reinforce my steek at all prior to cutting and it's holding together just fine.

Sleeve seam detail

My Color Palette:

Old Gold = Ash
Bracken = Marble
Pistachio = Fog
Yellow Ochre = Mist
Scotch Broom = White
Shetland Black = Asphalt
Pine Forest = Ivy
Admiral Navy = Clover
Peat = Spearmint
Sunrise = Celedon
Madder = Edamame

Here is what I came away with this time around with the Ravelympics:

I was crazy to pick such an ambitious project. Next time around I will not be so crazy - in order to save my sanity and the sanity of my entire household. I was determined to not 'fail', so housework and homeschooling and anything other than knitting was put on the back burner. Not a bad thing in and of itself , but I think next time around I'll take things a bit easier, and hence have a cleaner house and less rambunctious children during the games. (Really, who cares that my house was a mess for two weeks? And the kids were really great the whole time - they just watched a bit more tv than normal.) As proof of how much knitting I was doing each day - I even dreamed about knitting on this sweater several nights there!

I am very proud of myself - I proved to myself that I could, in fact, knit an entire fair isle sweater in 17 days. Because, I guess, I needed to prove that to myself for some strange reason. Now that that is done, I am going to take things a bit easy on the knitting front - well, for just a day or two anyway!

Happy Knitting everyone!!

Ravelympics Progress

We're into Day 6 of the Knitting Olympics. I've made a good bit of progress on my sweater. It seems like it is slow going as I'm knitting, but it really is growing by leaps and bounds!

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

My main concern right now is whether it's going to fit or not. I put it on waste yarn on Monday to try it on, and it fit fine at that point. Now that I'm past the hip decreases and started the increases I think I'm going to pause and try it on again just to be sure the waist fits. We'll see. I know it'll block a little larger in the end, so there's a bit of wiggle room if it's a tiny bit too small. (I hope!)

I absolutely love the Winter Olympics - especially the figure skating, so I've been enjoying watching the last few nights. I don't know how much longer I can keep up the past-midnight bedtimes, though!

Keep it up, all of my fellow Knitting Olympians! 12 more days to go!