30 April 2006

Something's missing...

While scanning the Interweave Knits Summer preview, I noticed something was not quite right. I scrolled up and down a few more times scrutinizing each photo until it hit me:

Where's the red head?

24 April 2006

Varying my range of colors...

As I've noted in my mini-bio, I learned to knit at a wee age but only got as far as many un-bound swatches. When I picked up knitting seriously, much of what I knit was in shades of purple. Purple was a natural choice as it is my second favorite color. Black is my favorite but I figured that since I owned so much black, it was time to branch out. This was about when I started adding more color to my wardrobe as well. At some point in this process, I noticed that I was adding mostly purple items and decided to start knitting in other colors. The next was red or colors in the red family. Now it seems I've subconciously noticed that I was adding way too much red to my wardrobe and yarn choices because I just realized that I've been knitting a lot of blue lately.

Hmm...

Purple-->Red-->Blue

Broadening my color horizons might take a little longer than I thought.

14 April 2006

It's a dry April...

Or at least it is here at home.

I'm halfway into my one month Easter holiday and have spent much of it catching up on a semester's worth of sleep. I'm also chugging through some projects I'd been wanting to do for a while. I came home to packages of yarn I ordered before coming home as well as some knitting books and patterns.

My top priority is the Peacock Feathers shawl from Fiddlesticks Knitting. This is mainly because I have no way of blocking this at school (not enough space). I'm knitting it with Superfine Merino in peacock that I bought from TheKnitter.com. I was going to do it in Zephyr Wool-Silk but they were out of the peacock color I wanted. Interestingly enough, I had originally wanted to get the Superfine Merino in purple but that color was out. It was available in the Zephyr so I ended up switching colors on the type of yarn.

I'm not a huge fan of really airy shawls so I went down a needle size to US 3/3.25mm. I'm also thinking about doing a simple, stretchy bind off instead of the crochet loop bind off used in the pattern. I'm really iffy on those loops and I think I'd like a smooth edge better.



About the same time I started the shawl, I also started the Norwegian Stockings from Folk Socks by Nancy Bush. I'm almost done with the first stocking after having to frog back a couple times. It's been a while since I've done any colorwork so the tension of my two-handed stranding was a bit uneven. I'm using Dale Baby Ull in chocolate, pink, and creme (or neopolitan colors). This has been my TV knitting for the most part and has been an enjoyable knit despite a difficult start.

Vacations are usually times when I'm actively working on more than two projects at a time. My third project is my big needle project to give myself a bit of a break from the finer-sized needle, and I'm counting it towards project spectrum for this month. It is a small messenger back in a three color tweed stitch (Cascade 220 in navy, light blue, and red-orange). Thing is, I'm not the hugest fan of orange, yellow, or golden type colors. Sometimes I like orange but I'm really picky about it. When I envisioned the messenger bag, I originally thought of doing it in two, nicely matching colors. But it seemed a little boring and that's when I got the idea to use orange as a third color to give the bag some pop. So far, I only have the bottom completed. I'll pick up the stitches along the edges and work the body of the bag in the round.



My parents came back from their trip to the Motherland (or Mother Islands?) and my mom brought back two bags of yarn. They stayed on the same street as Nathan Woolen, which worked out given her time constraints. Now, my mom knows absolutely nothing about knitting so she was really overwhelmed by the shop. She ended up picking two types of yarn that she thought were nice and were of fibers she knew I liked: nine balls of Rowan Felted Tweed in shade #131 (which I don't think exists anymore because I can't find a color card that lists it) and ten balls of Jaeger Java (which only seems to exist on eBay). I already know what the Felted Tweed will become but that won't be until the fall as it's a thick, merino wool. The Java took some thinking. It's a silk-rayon blend so I'm thinking something drapey. Possibly a sleeveless cowl? It's also in a type of orange color--again I'm picky about orange. My mom thinks it's rust; I think it's more of a coral but the color is definitely growing on me.



Sadly, my package did not arrive in time for my parents' departure for their trip so my mom didn't receive Pearl Buck until she came back. She does like it, though, and it fits unlike the last sweater I made her.

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