double down

I finished the sweet pea sweater and got the library book back on time.  Score!  Even had the time to knit most of a second sweater out of the book, a very simple one that went quickly and was no problem to finish without the book.  Wrapped them up and sent them off to the baby shower in Florida.  I hope she likes them!

Here's the finished sweet pea sweater:

 

I'm really happy with it.  I think it's so cute!

The other sweater is a little Chanel jacket style.  It doesn't look quite like in the book, it's a little shorter in proportion to the size, but I didn't check my gauge first, so may it's just that the body is a little larger around than it should be.  Anyway, even if it's a bit of a cropped sweater when she wears it, that works, too.  The yarn is a synthetic yarn which my friend who is the baby's grandma gave me because she couldn't quite figure out what to make with it.  I think it worked well in this sweater; I hope my friend agrees.

Next I've decided to pick up a project I started months ago.  It's basically a sweater from the book, Knitting on the Edge.  (The berry cluster pullover, find a picture of it about halfway down this page.)  I'm knitting it using Elizabeth Zimmerman's proportional sweater pattern, since I hate sewing seams, but I think I can make it look pretty similar.  I think I have the lower body (up to the underarms) done, just have to take it off the needles and make sure it's right so far.  I'm using the white mohair blend hand dyed with turquoise and lavender speckles that I got at Tess's clearance sale at last year's Sheep and Wool Festival.  I think that fuzzy, cloudy look is part of what appeals to me about the sweater as pictured.  Photos next time!

In garden news, the basement greenhouse is full of tomatoes, lettuce, beets, cabbage, etc. etc., it's going pretty well down there.  I bought onion sets today.  The weather was a bit rainy, so I didn't plant them, I'm hoping for a bit better weather tomorrow.  It's still quite cool, but not a problem for the onions, I think.  I did scope out the bit of garden where I want to put them and discovered that I have two parsley plants from last year that are coming back, and the garlic I planted in the fall have started to come up.  It's my first time trying garlic.  Best of all, I have crocuses!  This was taken in the front yard last weekend, when it was warm and sunny:

Hallelujah, it's spring at last!

 

Veggies

Working diligently on the sweet pea sweater.  The library book is due in 2 more weeks, after all!  I'm working up the hood now:

(Ignore the rocks, they're only there to hold the edges down.)  I'm liking this patterns, not least because all the seams are done as you knit.  For instance, no side seams, and the shoulder seams were done with a 3 needle bind-off.  The hood top seam will be the same way, and the sleeves seem to be knit right on.  I think the only finishing will be turning up hems.  Yay!

Took a hit on the plankton shawl this week.  At knitting group, Ralene and I were both knitting along when she says, "So how does it work on these asterisk rows?"

Me: "Umm....  Asterisk rows?"

Ah, the dangers of printing out color originals on a black and white printer.  Turns out starting at a certain point, every 4th row has a little trick to it, and on the pattern the knitter is reminded of this by a red asterisk on the chart.  Printed on a grey background.  Render that in black and white, and guess what?  The asterisk is almost invisible.  I remember noticing this before I started the pattern, but of course by the time I was 60 rows in and the asterisks started, I had completely forgotten about it!

Then came 20 minutes of dithering along the lines of, "will anyone really notice?  Maybe I can just start doing it now, and really, who will know?"  Well, fellow knitters, of course the answer is, I'll know.  So it's time to frog.  Fortunately I put in a lifeline just a few rows before the first asterisk row.  Hurray for lifelines!  I am so glad I didn't get too far ahead of Ralene.

This week's big excitement was the creation of the seedling greenhouse in the basement.  The tomato seeds I planted last weekend sprouted in 3-5 days (bottom heat really does work wonders in seed sprouting), so the pressure was on to get them a place to live.  The plant lights had already been mounted in a shelving unit in the basement, but the basement is a little cool for tomato seedlings, so we turned the shelf into a little greenhouse using clear plastic sheet.  A 40 watt bulb provides enough heat to keep the little enclosure warm, and a timer turns it all off and on so they get day and night.  Here is is:

and here are the little seedlings safe and happy in their new home:

Next week, lettuce.  Bwa ha ha!

Baby stuff and more stuff

Well, I finished the hat from the last post, but it has not worked out as I planned.  The lighter yarn around the ears was a bit slack, so I decided to wash the hat, hoping it would tighten up a bit.  I like a hat that hugs the ears firmly.  Unfortunately, the yarn that I hoped would shrink and felt a bit did not at all, the yarn with the cable pattern did (really fuzzed out the cable pattern), and the yarn on the inside came out just right.  It's Goldilocks all over again.  What that left me with was a crown that was too small and still that slack feeling in the ribbing around the ears.  Not good.  I think I'll try to salvage the inside layer and reknit the ribbing and outside.  But I haven't had the heart to face it yet.

What I have been working on is baby stuff!  One of my coworkers became a dad for the second time a couple of weeks ago.  The baby was due around Feb. 18, so mid January I decided to start on a blanket.  She came two weeks early, the morning of the Super Bowl in fact (go Ravens!), but with diligent knitting I managed to get the blanket done by the time he came back from his 1-week "maternity leave".  Here's what I made:

It's a log cabin style, knitted from the center out with each square/rectangle knitted onto the ones before so no seaming at the end. I made a different stitch pattern in each rectangle.  I tried to use patterns that would look good from either side.  I think blankets need to be reversible.  I used Ralene's Jacob yarn, worsted weight.  If you wash it in the machine with lots of fabric softener it gets pretty soft, and so dense and warm that I thought it would be good for a February baby. 

Here's a detail shot:

The tree pattern in the upper right looks almost like the one Kate is doing right now!

Now that the blanket is done, I'm starting on a baby sweater for my friend Mardi's first granddaughter, due at the end of April.  Kate showed me the sweet pea sweater from 60 Quick Baby Knits (at that link, it's the light green hooded sweater) at the Library last time she visited, and I was hooked.  It's too cute!  All the patterns in the book use Cascade 220, but this baby is going to live in Florida, so I didn't think she would need a wooly sweater so much.  I found a worsted weight, machine washable cotton/acrylic blend at Knit Picks that looked pretty good, and when I found that it came in a color called Peapod, well, that was that.  It was the painting of the sun porch all over again.  I have the body of the sweater done up to the underarms, and I have to say, I am liking this yarn.  It has that loose texture of cotton yarns, not the nice spring of wool, but it is soft and knits up very evenly.  And the peapods are just as cute as they look in the book!

I also have a couple of other projects on the needles.  A few of us in my knitting group are doing shawls, and Ralene and I are doing the Diatom Shawl.  Mine is in black merino/wool laceweight, Ralene's is in shades of lavender fingering weight.  Very different looks.  I only work on it at knitting group, though.  Either Ralene knits very slowly or she doesn't spend much time on it, and I don't want to get too far ahead of her.  I think a knit-along is more fun if you're pretty much doing the same part at the same time.  No photos yet, either; you know how lace looks on the needles.  I think it will be good, but right now it's pretty funny looking.

Finally, for my traveling knitting (the project, usually socks, I keep in my purse for emergencies), I am knitting up the brown Malabrigo sock yarn I bought a couple years ago at Montoya in Evanston because Tonja raved about how much she loved Malabrigo.  Well, T, you were so right.  It is heavenly in the hands, and the subtly varied color is beautiful.  That was a good tip.

The most exciting news of the weekend is, it's the beginning of gardening season!  Never mind that we've had flurries for two days, it's in the teens tonight, and I can hear the wind whistling around the house.  It's time to start the tomato seedlings!  Peter and I put up the plant lights he bought me for Christmas.  I brought in the half frozen bag of potting soil from the shed, filled almost a dozen little yogurt cups, and put them on the radiator to warm up for a day or two.  Once they're ready, it's go, tomatoes, go!  I am also soaking celeriac seeds to start this week.  I read they germinate better if you soak them first.  It's a funny vegetable, and hard to grow, but I do love it. 

Think spring!

Winter knitting

What, let me ask you, is sadder than a dedicated knitter walking around in her winter coat without a suitable hat?  This conundrum plagued my brain recently when the weather here finally turned winterish and I dug out my winter coat.  The one I wore last year had gotten rather disreputable, so I found a nice coat in the back of the closet which I have had for years but never wore much.  Naturally my thoughts then turned to the proper accessories.  The way the coat is made, it doesn't really need a scarf, and one of the pairs of gloves I knitted with K1Frog2 last spring matched it well.  But I had no hat that matched.  In fact, I am down to only one winter hat, period, so clearly some hats are needed!

Time to ransack the stash.  Ooh, look, another skein of the yarn I used for the gloves.  That's good, but not enough.  Hmm.  Ah ha!  Some more yarn that goes with it (and the coat)!  Victory is mine!

So here's the hat so far:

Since the yarn is sport weight and I want the hat to be good for the coldest part of winter, I am making it double layered.  The top part is the outside crown.  Cables, knit bottom up.  I'm using dpn simply because I'm using my circular needles of the same size for a different project right now.  The light part covers the ears.  That's the yarn that matches the gloves.  2x2 ribbing, partly for a little extra thickness and warmth, partly because the yarn is a little larger than the other and I thought the ribbing might be needed to draw it in a little.  The fold between outside and inside is in the middle of the light part.  At the bottom I have started on the inside crown.  It's a k8p2 ribbing.  Ribbed for a bit of flexibility in the fit, but mostly smooth, which I think will work better for the inside of the hat.  I have tried it each time the color changes, and so far it's making me happy.  The 2x2 rib could be a little snugger, but I don't think it's because it's really too large, I think it's because it stretches very easily so does not hold very tight.  I'm hoping some washing and blocking at the end will tighten that up a bit.

The exciting news of the week was that K1Frog2 and Blonde Knitter would like to hold this year's NSKO East in conjunction with the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival.  Mucho fun to be had there.  I am poised to put in my vacation request at work, waiting only to find out their exact travel plans.  Yay!