FO Friday - Visser

My favorite online LYS, Eat.Sleep.Knit, wrapped up their first quarter KAL challenge on Monday.  We were supposed to knit things that required us to learn a new skill, and we would get credit for 1000 yards in their yarnathon.

My initial plan was to submit Zantha, which you've seen here before, since I had never done lace before.  But since then, I've knit two more, and I am just Zantha'd out right now.  I didn't even want to look at it long enough to sew the buttons on and finish it up.

Instead, I grabbed a skein of Madelinetosh Pashmina and got to work.  My two skeins of Pashmina, in Cobalt and Citrus, reminded me of the bright, complementary colors I saw a lot of in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.  I decided to see if there were any typical Dutch sweater designs that I could translate into a baby sweater, and there were!

These would be quite at home in a Van Gogh work.

Dutch fisherman sweaters were exactly the thing I was looking for.  They are knit in solid colors, so the visual interest comes from various knit and purl stitch patterns that decorate most of the front of the sweater.  They also generally have a drop shoulder construction, which is much easier to measure and calculate for than the raglans I am used to making.  They are often knit very tightly, but I loosened up the gauge a bit, since a baby doesn't need to be waterproofed on a boat.  (They probably also weren't knit in a yarn with any silk content, but hey.)

I've named this sweater Visser, after the Dutch word for fisherman.

And what were the new skills I learned for this?  Many, to include casting on in pattern and the right twist mock cable.  But the one I am most proud of is seaming.  I'm no longer terrified of it, which is good, since my plan is to knit myself a seamed garment someday.  This also lets me use sweater construction methods other than raglan and circular yoke.

Sunday Six

In no particular order, here are six pretty cool things that happened this weekend:

1) Spring finally came to Germany.

When I went for a run this afternoon, it was around 60 F!  It was nearly 20 degrees warmer than last week's run, so my pace may have suffered a little.  I didn't bring a watch, because I didn't want to compare myself to last week since the weather was so different.

And flowers are starting to bloom.  I even saw a potted plant we had put outside last year.  It used to be a houseplant, but it looked dead, so we just put him outside.  Not sure why.  Anyway, turns out, he was not dead!  He was just done for the year!  (His friend behind him seems to be actually dead, though)

The Lazarus plant.

2) I bought a cool pattern and the yarn to go with it.

Someone in one of my Ravelry groups posted about Vasa, and I decided I needed one, too!  I bought the pattern (my first purchase on Rav!) and then wandered over to my favorite online yarn shop, Eat.Sleep.Knit, and ordered three skeins of Tosh Merino Light.  I plan on making the Vasa over and over again, so there's a ton of TML in my wishlist now, but I'm starting with Alabaster, which is a pale yellow.  [I just counted.  There are 12 skeins of TML in the wishlist for various projects.]

I hate seaming and purling, so I may modify it to be knit in the round, but that will depend on what size needle I need to get gauge.  If I need anything smaller than a 4, I will have to knit back and forth, because that is as small as my reasonably-sized circulars go.

3) I ran the highest mileage week I've ever run.

33 miles!  There were only 30 on the schedule for this week, but we had a 3 mile company run on Friday.  It was pretty slow, so even though Fridays are rest days, a slow three felt restful enough that I didn't think I needed to move around the rest of the miles and just kept with the schedule as planned.


4) Three bananas reached their banana bread prime.

I put them to use in some banana bread from the Smitten Kitchen.  I've already eaten half the loaf.

 

So tasty.

5) I found the missing piece of my coffee maker.

Senseo: One of the top things I will miss about Germany

You see that black shelf looking part?  The place where you would obviously put your cup?  I moved offices a few months ago, and the new office didn't allow coffee makers at desks (literally the only thing I miss about that other office and job), so it had to come home with me.  That one piece ended up misplaced, and before I found it again (in a suitcase?!?), I had a tuna packet balanced there that I could very gently put a little mug on.


6) My shawl started developing an actual shape.

That shawl from the last post is starting to take on the shape I was intending for it to have.  I'm using yarn leftovers right now just to test it out, but when I get yarn specifically for it, I'll alternate colors more often.  The stripes right now are a little wide for my taste.

And here's a bonus picture of the dog in the yard:

When there's nothing to compare her to, she looks bigger than 20 pounds.

WIP (Almost) Wednesday 1

Apparently it is a tradition among knitting bloggers to post pictures of works in progress (WIPs) on Wednesdays.

Well, I am here to tell you that Wednesdays are terrible days to write blog entries, because I have homework due every Wednesday.  It's due at midnight, which means, guess what I'm doing with my evening up until midnight?  Guess what I say won't happen every week on Wednesday, but totally happens, without fail?

Someday, I won't be trying to work full time and go to school, but until then, here's my WIP Almost Wednesday:

Tosh Merino Light in Antique Lace - a dream!  The name of the sweater is a secret until I publish the pattern because I know there are thousands of you silently reading this blog, waiting to steal it.

This is the very first thing I've knit in lace!  It's a horseshoe lace pattern that's thankfully fairly easy to memorize and also easy to know right away (at the latest, two rows later) if you've made a mistake.  So far, the biggest mistake was not slipping on an sk2p, but I managed to fix it without having to rip it back!  I refuse to learn to crochet, but I do own a crochet hook for these exact situations.

As you can tell, it still needs a good block, ends sewn in, and buttons sewn on.  I blocked a swatch of the lace pattern, and it really opens it up.  The ends also end up looking way less lumpy.

The reason I finally got around to knitting lace was thanks to Eat.Sleep.Knit's "new to you" knit-a-long.  By knitting a project that makes me try something new, I get 1000 yards credited to my yarnathon progress!

The goal is to publish this pattern eventually.  I'm trying to work on a few extra lace details people can add on as they wish and to make the increases more symmetrical.  I learned how to do kfb's and yarn overs on the purl side, too, so I will try that on the next size that I test out.

Yarn Haul

The yarn I ordered from Eat.Sleep.Knit finally showed up this weekend!

I've been designing and knitting my own baby sweaters for about a year, and the goal is to publish one by the end of the year.  Before, I had been creating each sweater separately, depending on whom it was for and the yarn I had on hand.  So I had to buy enough yarn to make the sweater in all of its sizes.

The Madelinetosh is being turned into an airy, lacy cardigan.  You can't see the lace yet, but I promise it's there.  This is also my very first lace project!

Madelinetosh Tosh Merino Light in Antique Lace, Bloomsbury, Vermillion, and Betty Draper's Blues

I don't remember what the Manos was for, but it's in my notebook somewhere.  And I've got a lot of Tosh to work through first, so it will be a while before I get to it.

Manos del Uruguay Fino in Delft, Ivory, Velvet Pincushion, Watered Silk, and Corsage

(Is it bad that I told a friend how excited I was to visit a yarn store, and when she was confused about why that was exciting, I seriously reevaluated our friendship?)