New Year's Re(v)olution

I blog without obligation. I guess that's obvious since my last post was December 6! So many things have happened since then, and I haven't added new pictures for our collective viewing pleasure. I've decided that my new year's resolution is to finish all the UFO's sitting around my apartment. Tragically, I haven't finished the manly scarf yet, but I'm getting there. There was a small snafu with the client who commissioned it. It took me like three weeks to work up the courage and put the (I had thought) finished back on the needles. In any case, I'm almost out of the woods there. I also made a very squishy scarf from some yarn I bought in Brazil (find it on my Etsy site), and I finished a pair of cable knit armwarmers.

Better Uses for Intarsia

I have had some adventures and some misadventures with our friend intarsia. Most notably, my ever postponed giant intarsia scarf, and my failed experiment with the interlocking trefoil pattern that I eventually decided to do in fair isle. I suppose I now know better, and have used the technique on the manly scarf I've been harping about. Well, here it is, in its *almost* full glory:

Can you tell that it's a heathered grey and a lighter grey in the middle? I swear it's not lavender. Those three balls are all that remain of the Knit Picks Wool of the Andes yarn (Heather Onyx on the outside and Mist in the center). I may need to break into three more skeins before this one is totally done.

The pattern for this scaf is three cable panels, each made with one skein of the WoA. I know it can be hard to see the cables in these photographs. It just looks like a cool texture, I guess, but this is what it's supposed to look like:

OOO
XOX
OOO
OXO
OOO
XOX and so on

So, in a line, its OOOXOOOXOOOX etc., with the center panel "X" lining up with the middle "O" of the outside, heathered panels. The inspiration for thsi scarf came from hello yarn's besotted scarf. I took some liberties, of course, what with making it three-pannelled and changing up the cables a bit. I also worked this scarf in size 10 needles, so the weave is quite open, making the scarf fluffier than it might have been had I used smaller needles.

Happily for me, this scarf already has a home to go to once it's done, so you won't be seeing it at my etsy shop this go around. I will likely make other incarnations of it, with different color combinations.

Next week (hopefully): Acid green fingerless opera length gloves, where I test my ability to make finger holes!

Le Scarf...

...is finished! Hooray! I'm done with the green lace scarf I started like two weeks ago. I feel like I can breathe again. Scarves take a kind of mental endurance to complete. Even with something like lace, where every few rows you have to focus, it can get pretty dull very fast. It's painful to sit for hours knitting acre after acre, and feeling like you're not getting anywhere. Talk about mental anguish! At least now I've opened up my horizons again, and taken out a new lease on life. (Am I getting a little dramatic here?).

I love this scarf, don't get me wrong. I will be sad when a lucky guy or gal snaps that up, but it was exhausting to make.

As always, contact me at sweet-avocado@hotmail.com for questions or orders, and check out my etsy store for the latest and greatest!

Kid Mohair is Awesome

I've been working all week on a fan and feather pattern scarf made out of kid mohair (Alchemy Promise), and boy is it a wonderful material to work with. Nevermind that the overdyed yarn is making my fingers blue, this stuff makes the squishiest, softest fabric I've ever had the opportunity to create. Although the yarn is a lace weight, it's really fuzzy and produces a buky fabric. I've been working in 8 size needles, and the scarf is working up faster than I could image lace working up!


And here's a closeup of the eyelets:

Watch for this item coming up in my Etsy store! As always, contact me at sweet-avocado@hotmail.com if you have questions, concerns, or would like to make a custom order. If you are in the New York metropolitan area, I can do a pick up for you. Remember that I also teach knitting lessons around the city. Please contact me if you are interested. Rates start at $30/hour.

A Week's Worth of Updates

So yes, it has been a whole week now since I last updated, so there are a lot of new things to talk about. First of all, there has been progress in the intarsia scarf mega project from hell. It's about twice as long as it was when I last posted an image. This is very slow going, and recently I haven't had a huge amount of time at my disposal, so I've basically been neglecting it in favor of other projects.

I've also been working on another scarf project. This one is made with Knit Picks Twirl alpaca yarn. This yarn feels like cream in my hands, it's so soft. I love the pattern, too. It's an interlocking trefoil in maroon and green. I actually really like the color combination. I started out in intarsia, but when I had eight (!!!) balls of yarn going, I decided it would be wisest to work this in fair isle. That means floating yarn on the back of a scarf. I'll probably either felt the back of it (experiment!), or just double it up, using the green yarn to make the back. Something I thought of as well, but may use in another incarnation of this scarf, is to double strand the main color so that the thickness of the material matches on both sides. Because the pattern only appears on one half of the scarf, the plain green side is thinner than the pattern side.

There are a couple more projects I have in the pipeline right now, but don't have any pictures for. I'll be updating again soon. Please check out my Etsy store, or e-mail me at sweet-avocado@hotmail.com. I do lots of custom orders, so please contact me!

Swashbucklin' Swatchery

Does anyone get Knitting Daily in their mailboxes? Well, I do, for what it's worth, and there has been a lot of talk about swatching lately. I hate making swatches. My precious yarn goes into my finished item, thank you very much. I do say that tongue in cheek, however, because it has been the lack of swatching that's caused many a ripping of acres of stockinette that I will never get back. Never! This swatch was actually not created in the spirit of knowing how the hell my yarn would behave on those needles, but as a sample for one of my lovely customers. This is another variation on the corkscrew scarf I talked about in a previous post.

The pink and the green look really lovely together, and the green eyelash yarn really spices it up. I love it!

Adventures in Intarsia

Now that people have actually started giving me money for the items I make (I am just as shocked as you!), I've been able to experiment more with interesting textures, yarns and patterns. My newest project is a completely improvised intarsia design using (what else?) Knit Picks yarn (this time Vacation in Sunshine and Get Away in Rafting). Both of these yarns are going or are already out of stock over at Knit Picks (it's my habit of getting yarn on sale...) so once my stash is gone that's it. I decided to make this scarf really wide and long, so that it would be nice and bulky. The material is an acrylic/nylon/tactel/cotton blend. It's really soft and bulky to the touch.



The intarsia also produces a magnificent amount of ends I'll need to weave in at the end. I've been trying to do most of them as I go along, since not only are the ends annoying, but they get tangled with the three balls of yarn I happen to have attached to my needles. It's all very exciting.

Speaking of exciting, I discovered a great web service today, and I vow to sign up for it soon! It's called Etsy (http://www.etsy.com/) and it's basically the Ebay of the D.I.Y. folks (I like to include myself under that rubric). Not only will it help with my visibility, but it will enable me to ship all over the county without panicking. Hooray! I've kept away from Ebay because I feel that people go there to find the best price. I just didn't think my items would fetch a fair price there. But with a service like Etsy, people go there for the quality and not the cost, so I'd be much more likely to get the price I want for my stuff. I'll make sure to post a link to any Etsy listings I make for my knitting.

In the meantime, contact me at sweet-avocado@hotmail.com for orders.