Last week at our knit night, Abby and I cast on for the Whisper Cardi (Rav link) together.
I’m using Knitpicks Shadow in Snorkel, and I really like the way the yarn is knitting up. It’s a heathered blue with green undertones so the color has a lot of dimension. It’s also insanely soft. Unfortunately, the only needles I had available were some rather long, rather heavy metal needles. They were so heavy that they kept pulling at the stitches creating big ugly jogs that I’m pretty sure even serious blocking couldn’t entirely fix. Still, I forged ahead, knitting 10 rounds short of the point where the sleeve ends and the body of the cardigan ends when I realized the sleeve seemed pretty wide. I measured the gauge I was getting on the sleeve and discovered that it was off enough that it was giving me an extra 1.25″. No good.
I figured I needed to come up with another plan of attach so after an intense (and intensely successful) writing session finishing up a collaborative paper with a friend, I took a major detour to the yarn store on my way home and picked up a pair of bamboo dpns. I frogged the original sleeve and started over using the bamboo needles, and things are definitely working out better. The lighter needles make working with the lace-weight yarn a lot less awkward and the ugly jogs I was experiencing before are all but non-existent in the second version of the sleeve. Originally, Abby and I had both cast on for an extra 8 sts so that the sleeve would be wider at the bicep. But given my gauge issues, I decided to only cast on for the number of sts recommended by that pattern. According to my math, the recommended number of stitches should give me right around the same measurement Abby and I hoped to get by adding the extra 8 sts. I guess we’ll see if it actually works out that way . . .
While I was at the yarn store, I discovered that they had recently beefed up their sock yarn selection with a bunch of new sock yarns. I remembered that I had a little bit of money left over from the previous month and decided to treat myself to a couple of skeins. First, I grabbed a skein of Malabrigo sock in Impressionist Sky.
Then I noticed that they had the new Araucania sock yarn, Itata, which is a superwash wool/bamboo/silk blend. I’m excited for this new yarn line because I love the Ranco colorways (my Spring Forward socks and Chevron scarf are proof) but the fact that Ranco is hand-wash only makes it less than ideal for socks. Plus, it’s not the softest.
The Itata, however, is pretty damn soft. And it has a really nice sheen to boot. I’m pretty sure that this color way is almost exactly the same as the pinkish/purplish Ranco colorway I’m using for my Chevron scarf, but I’m looking forward to being able to use these colors for socks. I’m pretty sure that both of these skeins are destined to become socks from Cookie A’s new book, Sock Innovation. I’m pretty much set on using the Itata to make the Kai-Mei pattern (Rav link), and I’m considering using the Malabrigo for the Rick pattern (Rav link).
When I went to pay, I found out that I had $20 in frequent buyer vouchers to use up, which was a most excellent surprise. A wiser person probably would have just reveled in the fact that their $50 purchase had suddenly become $30, but I felt the vouchers were a damn good reason to go back and grab another skein of sock yarn.
This is J. Knits Superwash Me-Sock in the Tampa colorway. As far as I’m concerned, purple+gray=major win. I love it.
In other unimportant news, I decided to frog the hot pink cardigan I started a long time ago because the sizing was making me nervous. To soothe my anxiety about sizing, I restarted the cardigan as a top-down raglan.
This, again, is knit using Knitpicks Telemark in Passion Heather, a color that I’m coming to appreciate more and more as time goes on. The hot pink is heathered with red undertones and, for reasons that I can’t really identify, it looks particularly awesome in the sun. I dig it. Over the weekend, I finished all of the raglan increases, put the sleeve stitches on waste yarn, and have started knitting the body. I suppose it’s a pretty boring knit, but I’m find it particularly soothing right now, especially in the middle of finals craziness.
My current finals count: two papers down, one to go. I’ll be so freakin’ glad when I’m done.
Filed under: Knitting | 3 Comments
Tags: Frogged, queue, Stash, Sweater, WIPS
I wasn’t aware I could miss Oxford. But your post with both a knitting night and the best yarn shop EVER has made me do just that.
I’m glad they had the DPNs.
I’m considering some sleeve surgery on my Liesl. I will consult you on Thursday. I like how knit night at the bar sounds like a business meeting when I think of all the items on the “agenda,” it just cracks me up I guess when I think of what knitting night is really like. I wonder how your gauge will turn out with the bamboo dpns. I’m going to work on the Whisper Cardi tonight. (I cannot bring myself to call it the WC.) Last night I made an apple cozy, on a break from the cardigans.
Megan, knit night is the best thing about living in Oxford right now. I spend a lot of time trying not to think about how much I am going to miss Aidan and Anna. See, I’m not thinking about it right now. I swear, I’m not.
Oh, and congrats on the writing!