Another Fitted Knit

Again with the Fitted Knits, and again with destashing the yarn that my mom keeps sending me. Presenting the Bold-and-Bulky mini cardigan:



Made in (thrifted) bulky yarn (Lion Brand Chunky USA) on size 11 needles, this baby was finished in two days flat.

And check out these buttons:

The first in a long string of FOs

I'm pretty much done at my current job. I have stuff I should do, but am done with things I MUST do, so I've been slacking. Alot. I've been going into work for only about 2-4 hours every day.

The rest of the time, I've been knitting, knitting, knitting! And it's been all for me, and I've really enjoyed it, and now I have five FOs and a WIP to share with you.

But.

First, I've been really into mindless knits lately. I'm just too tired to really think about patterns. Secondly, I've sent most of my yarn over to Cleveland, so that we have one less thing to move during the actual move. And since I've been determined to knit from stash, my yarn choice has been limited. And for some reason, one of the things I've kept with me was a mohair blend yarn, Riviera Vichy. You may remember it from the Cold Shoulder capelet that I made a year ago. Well, I had a tub full of this yarn. I originally thought that I only had 16 skeins of it (only). As it turned out, I had more like 22, because I knit one sweater (7 skeins gone), then another (6 more), and then another (6 skeins more), and I still have two skeins left over! I swear, this yarn has been procreating!

So anyway, alot of my FOs have been made in that same yarn. Which is a little embarrassing, because who in the world needs three teal mohair sweaters, but now I've destashed myself of alot of that yarn, and I like all the FOs, so I don't care too much.

Anyway, here's the first FO:



It's the Airy Wrap-Around from Stephanie Japel's Fitted Knits. It worked up quickly on size 11 needles, and used something like 7 skiens of the scary yarn that wouldn't go away. I stuck to the pattern, but I tapered the wrapping parts, because they were too thick to knot gracefully otherwise.




Of course, it's not so much "airy" as it is "fuzzy," but I am ok with that.

Also, I think I have a legitimate theory for how this yarn multiplies. My house, see, is now covered with teal fur, as is my friend L's house (whom I visited in one of the sweaters), as is my lab (it's been in the 50s here, so my new sweaters feel good to wear still). My carpet at home literaly turned teal in spots. So I'm pretty sure this yarn replicates by budding. Which sucks, because merely isolating the skeins in little baggies won't stop the spread of the scary yarn.

More teal mohair sweaters to come!

My other blog

A bunch of other ladies and I are all writing a blog on all kinds of things relevant to us as women. Since we're a pretty diverse bunch, that could mean just about anything. It's been very cool so far, plus, May's topic is hobbies, so I thought you guys might be interested in checking it out.

womenswork.typepad.com

(See if you can figure out which one I am. I think it's pretty obvious.)

Mom's shrug, finally

My mom asked me to make her a shrug/bolero-type-thingie last summer. Dutifully, I bought the yarn right away. I swatched right away. I ran the swatch by her. She picked a pattern. And that's as far as I got.

Of course, I've been hearing about how she only asked me to knit her this ONE thing and I never finished it, and now I won't finish it before summer ends and she'll never get to wear it and how knitting for my mother should be my first priority.

Well, like the parable of the widow and the unrighteous judge, I got sick of hearing about it, so I put finishing the jacket in my spring goals. On the day that I was leaving for Cleveland for my job interview, I pulled out the swatch, measured, and calculated out the back. Since I spent 14 hours on the bus that weekend, I got the entire back knitted and started on a front, and finished it in short order from there.



Mom got her bolero on Saturday, just in time for Mother's Day. Oddly, she likes it, and not-so-oddly, it fits. What's even more surprising, I loved working on it. It had all the hallmarks of something I'd hate to make: it was for someone else, it was in cotton, it had to suit another person's tastes, and it had to be done on a deadline. But I loved doing it. I couldn't put it down. I even literally wore a cut into my guiding finger because I knit on it for so many hours straight.

And I'm very pleased with the result. It features a straight, slightly cropped silhouette; cut-away fronts with a generous V-neck; 3/4 sleeves; and a scalloped crocheted edging that I'm quite proud of. It was made in Elann Sonata DK mercerized cotton, on size 6 needles.



This was completely done by the seat of my pants. I had the general dimensions of the thing planned, and used the Snowflake Lace motif out of -- you guessed it -- Barbara Walker's 2nd Treasury, but that was it. Everything was made up spur-of-the-moment, and generally not well thought-out or pre-planned. I actually took enough notes to replicate the pattern, if I wanted, but the sleeve cap, I never got it right, so it's not getting written.

To the winner go the spoils

As I've already mentioned recently, I've been entering alot of knitting blog contests lately. It's a fun way to find new blogs, and occasionally I even win something! Today, I figured I'd share my recent winnings with you.

First up, I got a very generous prize from Natalie at Keeping me in Stitches:



That's a generous six skeins of Elann's Pure Alpaca in Celery color. Since Natalie's contest was about making more environmentally-friendly lifestyle choices, she also sweetly sent along a bottle of green Method cleaner...and some chocolate!

Secondly, I won the runner-up prize in the Spring Goals contest at Skeins Her Way:



That's a skein of Blue Sky Dyed Cotton, a set of adorable little notecards, and lots of candy! And check out this presentation: how can you resist the springy green-and-pink color theme?

Finally, I got a whole bunch of yarn from Christy at Hissyknit:



Two skeins of soft and sunny Plymouth Fantasy Naturale, and a skein of Crystal Palace Yarns Maizy corn fiber yarn! Corn fiber! How cool is that?

Now to figure out what to do with all this lovely yarn!

(Erm...the candy's long gone...)

Checklist update

So. I guess I've been kinda scarce around the blog, huh? I promise I have a good excuse! See, I finished my writted PhD dissertation, submitted it, and defended it today -- all went great. (Yes, that does mean that I am now, unofficially, Dr. Dove!). I also went and interviewed for a post-doc position, and got it, so now I have a job for next year. We're currently looking for a place to live, and I'm frantically finishing up my experiments in lab. Oh, and Holy Week (the week before Easter), we spent alot of time in church.

Of course, all that's great, but it does mean that the blog got a bit neglected, as did my reading of your blogs. However, I have a ton of knitting and yarn-related stuff to share with you, so here's something to start us off:



We Orthodox Christians celebrated our Easter last Sunday (Christ is risen! Indeed He is risen!), so I dyed some traditional red eggs, and since it was a shame to waste all that vinegary, deep red dye, I threw in the remainder of my Lion Brand Fisherman's Wool.

Unfortunately, the yarn dyed alot better than the eggs did. Check out that color! It's a very, very deep pink, almost fluorescent and very bright, with some lighter spots for interest. The eggs, on the other hand, turned out leopard-spotted. Oh well -- people ate them anyway.