Lelah: The Venus of Our Times

Every time I look at her, I fall in love all over again. *swoon* Alright, I'll stop gushing. Overall I'd say Lelah took a little over a week to make, so it's the perfect short project - I'm definitely tempted to make some modifications (different lace pattern perhaps?) and make another one. There's a very inspiring thread on craftster where knitters have posted their FO's, some with really neat modifications.

I used Blue Sky Alpacas Dyed Cotton in #620, Fern which surprisingly knit up to the same gauge as the pattern's wool did. I also lucked into the perfect ribbon in the $1 bin at Michael's - I actually wanted more of a copper color but couldn't find it. Throughout the knitting I was freaking out about the bust - not that I have much in the area of boobage, but still, exposure is not an option. So I measure very careful and cut the elastic very carefully and it somehow (magically?) ended up being literally perfect.
I don't know if you can see from the xcu on the left, but I was actually upset at how much pilling there seemed to be with the cotton. The bottom half of the lace (where I had frequent frogging and lots of handling) doesn't look as clean as the rest of the top, and I actually used a pair of scissors to cut away the worst bits of dangling fluff.

One weird bit: The pattern says to use a bindoff (forgot the name) where instead of lifting one stitch over the other, you lift two. This created an extremely tight, gathered edge (I hope you can see it in the pic on the right) that is hell on your hands and fingers. After doing it for about 5 inches I decided to continue in regular BO fashion and just use the special bit on the back. Once completed, however, it wouldn't even fit over my head. After sighing and breaking out the scissors, I ripped and cut out the offending BO section and then reknit & bound off again normally. This worked just fine, and I'm not missing the gathered look at all.

Next update: My fair-isle camera case!

*shrug*

Because I think you guys are slightly more likely to understand this, here's a little something cross posted from my Livejournal. "I'm currently adapting the "City Shrug" pattern from last yr's Knitscene magazine for my thinner cotton yarn. As I'm doing the math and checking my results, all I can think of is Farscape: "Right Side, Wrong Side, Right Side, Wrong Side!" It has to do with Starke from Farscape and the mechanics of Stockinette stitch....ok, I've lost you all. Sorry."

Anybody? Starke? Farscape? Maybe I've lost you guys too ;)

As for the City Shrug, now that I'm nearly 2 inches away from finishing my Lelah (two very...very...very boring inches of pure stockinette) my fingers are literally itching to start another project. For some reason I've felt an incredible urge recently to actually make clothing items. My Top Secret Sweater is currently on the needles again for revisions, but other than that I've never made clothing, just lots of accessories and bags. My recently discovered love of Knitscene Magazine (I now own two of the three issues) led me to the City Shrug - I'm in love with lots of garments at the moment, but this one fit three important criteria:

1) I already have yarn I can use
2) It's a simple pattern
3) It's a fast knit

The problem is, I'm making lots of modifications. I'm using Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece instead of the recommended yarn, which is a different weight. Time to break out SnB:Nation and a calculator! I've figured out my stitch & row ratios, and now I'm trying to rework the decreases/increases, which is too much math for me right now. And I'm making bobble changes, because when I swatched (and made bobbles for the first time!) I didn't like the look of the bobbles just two stitches apart. I'm increasing that by three stitches, and since the yarn I'm using is smaller than the yarn in the pic, my bobbles are smaller and less obvious. Since I generally don't make anything flashy that calls attention to me, small and less obvious is key :)

Patience, Young Padawan

If you remember, "learn to be more patient" was one of my 2007 knit resolutions. How am I doing? Very poorly.

Case in point: The new love of my life, Lelah. I'm determined to make this out of some of the yarn I bought at the All Yarn No Football party at Unwind in Burbank (50% off the back room, 30% off the front. It was beautiful). So I sat down and swatched, maybe not as thoroughly as I should have, but I obtained gauge and decided to start my top. (Using Blue Sky Alpaca Cotton in a dark khaki green, if you're interested) Two abbreviated nights of knitting and 8 rows later, I realized I had twisted the stitched when I joined. *sigh* Isn't that rookie mistake? Shouldn't I be over that by now? Oh well, so I frogged it and began again. Only then I realized "Wait a sec! I bought two skiens of the dark green, not three! This patterns requires three! What was I thinking?" So now that we've established that I'm a moron, I decided to use my Lamb's Pride Cotton Fleece in Sedona Red instead. After swatching with that (with a little Hercules therapy in the background to calm me down) I realized I liked the bulkiness of the green cotton more. *sigh* So my current plan is to hit up Unwind sometime this week and hope they still have some of that dyelot left.

Another resolution is coming along nicely - "Learn fair-isle." On the left you can see my sample swatch for my Endpaper Mitts. I'm very pleased with how it turned out - ignore the bottom few rows, because that's where I was figuring it all out. I've figured out a rudimentary way to knit with yarn in both hands, though I have to confess this swatch took me an entire hour to do. This doesn't leave me filled with much hope as far as finishing the darn mitts goes. A part of me wonders if I should just hold off until I get better at not just fair-isle, but also knitting with such tiny (fingering weight) yarn on such tiny (size 3) needles. I'm a bulky/worsted weight kinda gal. On the right you can see the K1P1 ribbing that I'm supposed to do for 18 rows. Excuse me while I peel myself off the floor from the shock. I'm thinking of changing it to a K2P2 or something just so I don't lose my mind. I ended up doing those few rows with the wrong needle size, which explained why it wouldn't fit over my hand. So, right now my endpaper mitts are merely a swatch and a dream, to be resumed shortly ;)