Tuesday, April 18, 2006

I Never Stopped Knitting, Just Blogging

I have to be the worst blogger ever!

Anyway, if I have any readers left, here is an update of my works in progress:

  • I still haven't finished the Knitting Olympics sweater. It's just been sitting in my room, like the baby in 'Eraserhead', asking "Why? Why did you begin making me if you don't want to finish me?" I'll probably finish it someday, but it's just not important to me right now.
  • I am this close to finishing the Hogwart's/Raveclaw scarf! I am on the last large section of blue, but I've come to a halt because I need to begin a new skein of yarn and I'm procrastinating on putting it into a ball. (Skeins are hard to ball when you don't have the right contraptions.)
  • I am also in the seventh inning stretch of the green sweater for my aunt. It's the sweater on the front of Rowan's Vintage Knits book. It's coming along really well and the polo neck front and lapel were way easier than I thought they woud be. I just have to sew the pieces together and finish the cuffs. Then it's blockking and sending it off (just in time for the Illinois summer!)
  • I've started a fun little scarf that I was iffy about at first, but is turning out much better than I imagined. It was just to be a simple thing, something for times when I wanted to concentrate on something else, but still keep my hands busy. I'm using the Fun Fur yarn my grnadma gave me, doubled with some lite blue Cascade yarn that I had left over from another project. It's knitting up pretty quick because I'm using US15 needles and looking really good. At first I thought it would be for a woman, but the more I work on it, the more I realize that it would be perfect for a little girl.
  • The project that I'm really focusing on, though, is a man's sweater that I designed while I was half asleep. It's a design that I've had knocking around in my head for years, but I coupled it with some yarn that I had in my stash and didn't know what to do with. It also incorporates intarsia knitting, which I was very nervous about in the beginning, but now I'm getting the hang of it. I'm about one third of the way through the back peice and so far and it looks great, if I do say so myself!

Plus, over the weekend I was browsing around the crafts section of a Barnes & Noble, looking to see if they had any books on sweater design and I came accross a new and completely ingenious new book! It's called Big Girl Knits and one of the authors also runs Knitty.com. It has plus size garments, but it also tells you how to adapt non-plus size sweater patterns to plus-size!

I also found a sweater design book and it's by the same woman who wrote Knitting in Plain English, which, while I've never used, I've heard it is a very good book on beginning knitting.