Oh, the introspection

2007 was quite the year, my friends. I got an advanced degree and a new career, making my life in many ways entirely different from what it was at the end of 2006. I doubt there will be anything quite so dramatic in 2008, but I do have a few small goals. Not resolutions, mind you, goals.

- Begin and complete renovation of the Rustic Attic
- Decide on and implement new look for the kitchen
- Purge house of unnecessary clutter (or at least reduce said clutter)
- Get a knitting pattern published
- Be able to run a 5k again (am signed up for one in March), then improve my time (will sign up for at least one over the summer)
- Cook and eat real dinners, even if I'm eating by myself (heavy emphasis on soups and vegetables)
- Have a rockin' vegetable garden
- Figure out what the heck to do with the decorative garden beds around the house
- Bust out the sewing machine and use up some of my languishing fabric
- Decide on and pursue a volunteering opportunity
- Start up an IRA again; look into other investment approaches
- Update blog consistently and hopefully more interestingly

Ok, that's a good starting point, I think. It's all doable and will make for a happier me.

Oh, fer cryin' out loud...

We got more snow yesterday. My car, much as I love her (yay, good gas mileage), does not do well on slick roads. But I was a good little New Englander, and I drove verrrry sloooowly to and from work, and it was fine. Thankfully, my office closed early, which gave me time to shovel in the afternoon, by which time the snow had pretty much stopped. At the end of the day my driveway was clear, the street had been plowed, and we weren't getting any more snow, so things were good.

Except. My town's public works department was uber-ambitious, apparently, and plowed my street *again* (keep in mind, folks, it had been plowed already and there was no new snow). When I walked out to my car in the morning, this is what I saw:



I was not pleased.

Bad Timing

This week I've been antsy to plant things. Cucumbers and peppers and radishes type things (ooh, yeah, radishes. they grow in like five minutes. very good for impatient folks.), which is ridiculous because it's MAINE, and it's DECEMBER. We're in the middle of our second of what will be many, many snowstorms this season, the ground has been frozen solid for weeks, and it's pretty much exactly the opposite of when a normal person should be wanting to garden.

I should be all psyched about making holiday gifts and wreaths and all that stuff. But noooo, I want to pull weeds. I make no sense sometimes.

Accountability

Let's see how I did, eh?

- Bake a pie (with tofu! that's right!) Check! And I even got compliments on it.
- Finish raking the carpet of leaves in my backyard Check!
- Move outdoor furniture into basement hibernation Check!
- Clean out my car, fer crying out loud Err...
- Go to the gym, go to the gym, go to the gym! Check and check!
- Paint the off-white trim in two rooms true white, so the walls painted eons ago look better One room about 75% done, one room 0% done
- Decide on a color for my next targeted room to paint Yeah, not even close...
- Resuscitate the green/orange sweater I'm supposed to be knitting Check!
- Get through the front and back of the black diagonal cardigan Check!
- Go out dancing *at least* once CHECK!
- Find a cute brown coat once and for all Check as of today. :)


Not perfect, but not bad, I'd say!

Ambitiousness

I have a four day weekend starting in about five hours (hurrah!) so it's list-makin' time. I will:

- Bake a pie (with tofu! that's right!)
- Finish raking the carpet of leaves in my backyard
- Move outdoor furniture into basement hibernation
- Clean out my car, fer crying out loud
- Go to the gym, go to the gym, go to the gym!
- Paint the off-white trim in two rooms true white, so the walls painted eons ago look better
- Decide on a color for my next targeted room to paint
- Resuscitate the green/orange sweater I'm supposed to be knitting
- Get through the front and back of the black diagonal cardigan
- Go out dancing *at least* once
- Find a cute brown coat once and for all

A more spatial project...

So this is a little late, but I realized I haven't posted about a rather big crafty project: revamping my living room. I painted the walls, made curtains, and swapped out some furniture (thank you, Andrea, for the donated stuff!)

Living room before:


And living room after:


Oooh!



Ah!



Aww yeah.

Keeping my word...

As promised, a post with pictures!

Here's the beginning of my modified version of the lovely Ms. Japel's Minisweater pattern. I'm going to knit it as a full length sweater, rather than a cropped wrap, depending on how fair my three skeins of yarn will go. The yarn's a little fuzzier than I'd like (was a gift), but oooooh boy, is it soft! If the sweater doesn't work out, I'm tempted to turn it into pillows.


And here's the gray hat. "Felt me," it says. "Fellllt me!"

So much to do, so little time...

I wish each day was 30 hours instead of 24. Or I didn't need sleep to function. Or I was independently wealthy so I didn't have to work. Although I suspect I'm not alone in any of those things.

All those projects I talked about in my last post? None of them are done (the green/orange sweater is almost to the point of wrapping up the stripey section and picking up stitches in green to knit up to the shoulders, so that's good), but I'm still antsy to start something(s) new. I have two skeins of a red mohair blend, and I want to see how far they'll go in the form of some sort of simple cap-sleeved number. And I have black, gray, and light gray angora blend stuff that I want to turn into a stripey raglan. AND I want to polish up a design from several years ago. And and and and and!

I've gone from "I don't know what I want to knit next" to "I want to knit EVERYTHING. Right now!"

Man alive, if you don't knit, this is boring. In the interests of trying to keep a readership of at least two or three, um... contractor guy is coming to the house today to look at the Rustic Attic. And it's November. How the heck did that happen so quickly?

My next post will have pictures. I promise.

Major Progress in Sight?

Knitting has been slow this week. Have done nothing on the green and orange deal, *defniitely* nothing on the white boatneck number from fitted knits, and the gray hat is knit up, waiting for me to weave in all the ends so I can try my hand at felting.

[I did finish a very unimpressive project over the weekend: a 3 hour red skirt hemmed by hand for use in my Rock Lobster Halloween costume. Crafty, yes. But nothing to write home about. And *darn it*, the batteries in my camera died before I could get a picture.]

Anyway, the progress on the horizon: I now have the money and time, and at least three contact names, to start addressing the Rustic Attic in earnest. Good timing, too, because the MiniBedroom is getting on my last nerve. I have to make some phone calls, get some estimates, and FINALLY get going on this renovation project. These are going to be some stellar before and after shots, let me tell you!

Knowing my indecisive self as I do, I should probably start choosing a paint color oh, yesterday. Trim will be white, but suggestions for the walls are welcome.

Update, yo

Alright, here's what's up, in semi-list fomat:

- MUST weave in the ends on the cotton hoodie. Must. As much as I don't wanna, it has to be done.

- Have got about half of the waisty part of Candy done, and I'm contemplating learning how to graft stitches so as to connect the cylinder in an unobtrusive manner. If that's even possible when you're dealing with a cast-on edge... Hmmm, will research...

- I also cast on for a hat, which I'm envisioning as a felted brimmed number with a satin decorative ribbon. But, since I've never felted anything before, it might turn out nothing like I'm expecting.

- Completely non-knitting: I joined a gym again last week! This will cut into my available knitting time, but will be ever so worth it in the long run.

- And I think I need to come up with a clever idea for a Halloween costume. Don't know if I can (or ever will) top the year I was a "Garden Ho(e)," but ideas and suggestions are welcome!

Finis!

The cotton hoodie is done, and it fits!

I still have to weave in many of the ends (ugh), but I don't care: it's a fall day, and I'm wearing it. I'll definitely have to weave in the ends (ugh) before I wash it, though, because those suckers are tangly! The yarn is rather splitty, so in addition to the tangles there are lots of teeny tiny errors where one strand of the yarn didn't make it all the way into the stitch with its friends. I don't care; it fits well and is comfy. Yay!

Hood: yes. Seaming: not so much.

The verdict is in, and the green cotton pullover will in fact have a hood. AND, in the context of knitting the hood, I learned how to do a three needle bind-off! Hurrah! Any time I can minimize seaming, that's a good, good thing. And the side seams have been done for a week or so now, so I won't have to trudge through them when the sweater is *soclose* to being wearable. Just the sleeve seams, which were not knit in the round because, well, I dislike dpns even more than I dislike seaming.

I've also cast on for a new project: Candy from knitty... a couple years ago? It's the pink wide-necked cardigan with cranberry vertical stripes around the waist, but I'm knitting it in green and orange, 'cause that's what I've got that needs to be used up. And I'm knitting it as a pullover with an ON-the-shoulder neckline, 'cause I'm defiant like that and refuse to knit projects without modifications... also because I'm concerned that a button band will be all bunchy and bulgy and nobody likes that. The goal is for a sweater that's as flattering as possible.

Sweater in Pieces

Here's a shot of the first finished piece of my I-Think-It'll-Be-A-Hoodie sweater. It's the back of the sweater, and the center stitches are on a circ to be used later to knit the hood. I also have the front knit to a few inches past where the armholes start, but I figured a picture of that would be pointless, because it looks pretty much like the back.

This is the first sweater I've knit in a long time that's going to require a lot of seaming. I've been knitting everything in the round (hurrah! no side seams!) but I needed size 3 needles to get the right gauge for this project, and I only have size 3 straight needles, no circs. I'm pondering whether I want to force myself to learn how to do mattress stitch to seam this sweater, or whether I should keep on keepin' on with my standard "eh, just do some sort of running stitch and it'll be fine" method.

Oh, in other news, I passed the bar exam. I don't think I've posted about that here yet, but I screamed it from the proverbial rooftops, so you've probably already heard.

There's a chill in the air!

It's getting chilly and fall-like! The other day, there were frost advisories for inland towns overnight! It's autumn in New Ennnnnnglaaaaaannnnd!

Good thing I have a new finished (and blocked!) scarf.


And my next project will be weather-appropriate, too. It's an extremely modified version of the Under the Hoodie pattern in Ms. Stoller's first (?) book. And by "extremely modified," I mean that I used the pattern to figure out how many stitches to cast on, and I might use the pattern to do a hood, but I'm not sure yet. Modifications so far: waist shaping, set in sleeves, and monochromatic yarn instead of multicolored. So really, pretty much not the same pattern at all.

And I found two sweaters to disassemble for awesome yarn, even though my Big Tupperware That Imposes a Default Limit on my Stash is jam packed full. Yeah.

Wait, when is it?

For much of August, I had pretty much lost all sense of what day it was. With three weeks of vacation, weekdays and weekends blurred together, and it was lovely.

Now it seems I'm having a bit of a problem remembering what *season* it is. I'm knitting a scarf. A wool scarf. In the middle of the summer. You can't really tell from the picture that it's a lace scarf, although you can certainly tell that I still need to weave in a bunch of ends (blargh). I also will need to block it, and I've never blocked lace, so it should be an adventure.

I've also made a bit of progress on the boatneck bluebell sweater from Fitted Knits, but it isn't turning out to be overly flattering, and I've lost motivation to work on it for now. Methinks I need to start another few projects and return to it later.

New Favorite

I have a new favorite homemade sweater! Coachella II is finished, hooray!

My plan to reknit the whole thing in reverse and create a neckline was generally successful. There's still a little more bulk in the neckline than I'd like, but I think I might solve that by threading a piece of yarn through the front and creating a gathered/ruched effect. As it is, I could wear this out in public and be just fine, as long as I wasn't around a lot of tall people.... Since tall is relative and I'm rather short, I think the ruching is in order before I wear this anywhere. :)

Coachella, Take Two and a Half

Alright. So I tore out all of Coachella I last week. It was a quick knit, so not overly disappointing. I re-knit it from the bottom up (Coachella II) and tried it on last night. Um, no. My ad-libbed neck line was not a success. And by "success," I mean only, "something I could wear in public without getting arrested." I won't be posting any progress pictures because, well, this ain't that kind of internet site.

So more back tracking it is. I'll tear out the neckline tonight and try it again tomorrow. I'm determined to (for once!) finish a project when it's still weather-appropriate for the season.

Had to happen at some point

If I'm going to have a knitting blog, I suppose I have to post the obligatory cat picture, right? I was trying to get a shot of my Coachella tank, but Moxie was uncharacteristically hamming it up, so there you go.


Anyway, yes, that there's an almost finished Coachella, but I need to re-knit the whole thing. It fits, but I don't like the way the collar drapes (it's supposed to be all drapey; I just don't think it looks good on me). So I'm going to do the whole thing in reverse - instead of knitting from the top down, I'm going to knit it from the bottom hem up. That way, when I get to the top I can bind off some center stitches and create a different neckline. Wish me luck!

It's so bright here at the end of the tunnel!

For those of you who haven't heard (and if you're reading this, that's unlikely, because I've been talking about it incessantly), the bar exam was yesterday and today. That's right, folks, I used the past tense right there. It's over. Over! OVER! Can't you just *feel* the relief and pure joy leaping off the screen at you? (Please note, however, that I'll need you all to cross your fingers that I pass the darn thing so I don't have to take it again...)

To celebrate, I cast on for Coachella, a drapey racerback number in the summer 2007 edition of knitty. I'm using a yarn that's a blend of micronylon, microacrylic, and angora, and it's called "Bunny Hop" (get it, cause it's angora?). Isn't that the bestest? Kinda makes me want to bunny hop around my house. Hmm, that could also be the post-bar-exam giddiness talking, too.

For the first time in what feels like ages, I'm looking forward to tomorrow. Getting up in the morning to go running before it gets too hot outside. Then some knitting and some cleaning of la maison (yes, I'm looking forward to this). Haircut in the afternoon, dinner with family in from out of state, then out on the town for celebratory beverages at night.

Happy sigh.

I haven't been knitting, I promise!

But I did take a break from studying to take a quick picture of my most recently completed sweater. The white cable-y shell I posted about a few weeks (months?) ago? Remember that? Here it is:



I actually don't like it all that much. I mean, I love the pattern and the concept (I'm lookin' at you, jstrizzy!), but it simply isn't very flattering on me. In fact, I don't know how I managed to get my camera to do whatever optical illusion that's goin' on in the picture up there, because in person, the cables (or the yarn I used, or just... something...) adds at least 20 visual pounds to me. Weird. I think it might be usable for wearing under a blazer to work, though.

Also, I have 6 or 7 skeins of the white yarn left to use up. Initially, I was going to make some sort of cardigan to go with the shell, but a) I'm not rockin' the shell, and b) I feel as though a matching-ish cardigan would need to incorporate cables for continuity, and I'd rather do a lace/eyelet cardigan. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I can't see any one garment incorporating both cables and eyelet and still making much stylistic sense.

Anyway, if you've got any suggestions for a white cardigan (patterns, concepts, success stories, etc), let me know. I've got another week and a half at least until I can cast on for a new project, so I've got a while to ponder...

The knits, they will be fitted. In August.

I have no time to knit right now. Haven't picked up the needles in weeks, what with my time being taken up by the Summer of Studying (and the new Very Nice Boy). So of COURSE, now is a great time for me to acquire a book of patterns I can't wait to start working on, right? Right.

I picked up Stefanie Japel's book, "Fitted Knits" yesterday. In defense of my poor timing, I should say that I had to use up a gift card from a friend in celebration of the recent graduation (thank you, Ian!), and that otherwise, Fitted Knits would have waited at least until I start receiving a salary in August.

Now, I am not allowed to start any of these projects until after July 25. If I post about having cast on for anything new, someone please kick me in the shins. Or take away my yarn. Or something. I've gots ta study!

I'm still alive...

Well hello there!

Before I get dangerously close to the point of not having posted for a month, I thought I'd check in. Things are good but busy in the land of the Craftosaurus.

I started the process of prepping for the bar exam a couple weeks ago, so there's been very little knitting of late. Before that, though, I managed to very nearly finish the Banana Crew shell I'd been working on. Nearly enough, in fact, to try it on and realize that, oh, it isn't very flattering. When I get it completely finished (all I have left is the edging on one of the armholes), I'll post a picture, probably of it laying flat. It's cute that way, just not on me (no, really, all of you who think I'm being overly critical of myself. some clothes look good on me. this sweater just... doesn't). Methinks I'll end up wearing it to work underneath blazers and jackets.

My next mini project over the next few days is to assemble the table that goes with the patio furniture my parents gave me for a (wonderfully generous) graduation present. That way I can sit outside when I work on my other project: memorizing all of the law. Oh boy.

Paint the town red...

... or at least a very small bathroom.

It needed to be done. Badly. The TeenyTinyBathroom was hideous. See?


Ew. That's a whole lot of wallpaper backing goin' on. When I moved in, there was actual wallpaper, so it didn't look *quite* this bad. Sadly, though, "in construction" status lasted for a looooong time.

But I've had a couple weeks off, and that combined with the knowledge that I'll have guests soon motivated me to paint the darn TeenyTinyBathroom once and for all. And by "motivated," I mean "instilled in me the fear of major embarassment."

I used a gallon of red paint I picked up a while ago at the ol' Housing and Building Materials Exchange for all of five bucks. And bonus, I didn't have to choose a color out of all the paint chip options at a regular store. (It would have taken hours. Seriously.) Besides, I figured if I hated it, big deal, it was only five bucks and few hours of time invested.

But I don't hate it! I lurrrve it! It came out wonderfully, and the bathroom is now ALL ONE COLOR! With no exposed plaster! Huzzah!




I *heart* my clawfoot tub. Even if it is only inches away from... oh, everything else in the room.

Helloooooo, knitting!

I won't even try to tell you with a straight face that I didn't knit during the end of the semester, when I should have been studying for exams. But, what I will say is that, now that exams are over, I have time to actually post pictures of what I've been doing.

I finished the Interminable Moss-stich Pullover, a la Phildar. Ta dah!


The keyhole part of the neckline came out a little, ahem, *lower* than I thought it would. I think I can solve that problem by adjusting the button placement, though. Or, as a last resort, I'll just wear another shirt underneath. You know, that, or just stand sideways all the time, like so:


Anyway, once the IMP was finished, I still had exams left to go (read: I still had procrastination to do), so I started a new project: a modified version of jstrizzy's
Banana Crew twinset. Right now, I'm working on the shell, and my plan was to knit it as a v-neck and include short-row darts. Unfortunately, my calculations were way off on both of those, so I'll have to rip out quite a bit of work. Oh well! T'will be worth it when I have a sweater that actually fits me. Once the shell is done, I'll assess how much yarn I have left over and what I want to do for a cardigan...



Anyway, here's what I've got so far. Yay, cables! And yay, jstrizzy!

Big, BIG happy dance

I'm done! I'm done I'm done I'm done! I took the last of my law school exams yesterday, and I feel freer and lighter and just generally on cloud nine. My schedule for the next three weeks includes lots of graduation parties and knitting and puttering and the like. Hooray!

Home stretch...

Number of exams left to go: 1
Amount of motivation I have to study for said exam: next to none
Amount of knitting I've done to procrastinate: half the front of a sweater

Cross your fingers for me, folks. For the exam, I mean, not the sweater.

Foiled again!

I've been wanting to plant this year's veggie garden for weeks now. First it was too cold too late in the spring, so I had to wait. Then it was warm enough, but I had no free time. Now I have a few days with spare time, but it's supposed to rain all weekend. Even if I did decide to just tough it out and garden in the rain, I wouldn't want the rain to wash away the newly planted seeds. Darn you, weather! I'm shaking my index finger angrily at the sky. Cause that will help. Sure.

I did nearly finish the moss stitch pullover, though. By which I mean the pieces are complete, and they've been sewn together. I still need to weave in some of the ends, add a button loop closure, and block the whole thing. (Yes, I block after I do the sewing. Otherwise, it doesn't make sense to me, because how do you know how best to adjust the shape to make the garment fit you properly?) I'm hoping with this particular sweater I'll be able to blockify it so it's a little more flattering on me (can't put my finger on it, right now it's just... meh), but I haven't got my hopes up because the yarn isn't wool, so I doubt it'll be overly responsive to blocking. Wish me luck!

In Progress Pictures!

How far will my procrastination take me in avoiding school work? So far that I'll break out the digicam and take pictures of my current knitting. That's some serious procrastination, there.

So, here's a shot of the sweater I'm knitting, as it's designed to look, according to Phildar. I'm curvier than the model on the page (well, than any model), so I've no idea how the sweater will look actually on me. Just smashing, I hope!


And here's what the front looks like as I've knit it. A different color, obviously, and I think I may have made the arm holes a little wonky, but hopefully it'll turn out to be a minor error when I put the pieces together. I also added more waist shaping than was called for, as I always do. Mmmm, waist shaping.


And lastly, here's what the moss stitch looks like up close. As I said before, this will most definitely not be part of my next project. For this one sweater, though, the effect is kind of cool.

I've decided I don't like moss...

Hello, all! Well, all however many of you actually read my blog, anyway. How's things with both of you? :)

I've made a fair amount of progress on the phildar moss stitch pullover I'm working on. The front and back pieces are complete, and I've done about half of the first sleeve. Even better, I had been thinking that I'd have to turn it into a short sleeve deal because my available yarn was in short supply... and then, aha(!) I found a missing piece of an unfinished (and never will be finished) garment in the same yarn, so I can make the 3/4 length sleeves as called for.

I've already determined, though, that my next project will NOT be in moss stitch. So annoying, that moss stitch, with the switching the yarn placement before every. single. stitch. I think I'll go with something in stockinette, knit in the round: still mind-numbing, but much faster results. Aw yeah.

Happy Sentence Day!

Today is one of the coolest days all year. Why? Because today, and today only, the date is its own complete sentence. Think about it. What's today's date? Say it out loud... that's right, "March fo(u)rth!"

Yes, I'm a big nerd. But if you're reading this, you probably knew that already. :)

Anticlimactic Snow Day

It's snowing like mad outside, and school's been closed down. I don't have classes on Fridays anyway, though, so I'm not really affected. I am, however, making soup in honor of the blizzard. And by "soup" I mean "chicken broth with onions, potatoes, and corn." Not overly ambitious, but it'll do.

I'm also curled up on the couch with my latest sweater in progress. It's a (translated) Phildar pattern - ooh la la! - for a 3/4 sleeve pullover in moss stitch. I tried to find a picture on the Phildar site or elsewhere, but no dice.

And obviously, my hands can't type and knit at the same time, so... back to the needles!

Still Haven't Fallen Off!

Today at the gym, I finally had a successful treadmill outing. I used to treadmill all the time and prefer it to running outside, actually (how far have I gone now? ok, how 'bout NOW?). At some point, though, I got accustomed to running on the street, in part, I think, because by running away from one's final destination, you're somewhat guaranteed a more respectable amount of total miles because, hey, you've got to run back to your starting point before you can stop. Otherwise, I am NOT good at making myself keep running when I don't feel like it.

This street running worked splendidly through the middle of January (I know, I was amazed, too!), but now the air is consistently below freezing and the roads are snowy, icy, and generally slippery. So back to the treadmill it is.

The transition hasn't been fun, to say the least. Either my calves were in pain because of the adjustment, or I'd get this weird motion-sickness thing, or I'd just plain get BORED without changing scenery to look at. But today, today, it finally clicked again. My MP3 player, set to shuffle, gave me a bunch of high-energy songs to keep me motivated, and I pushed myself to run faster, rather than just going through the motions and calling it a day.

And I managed not to fall off the back of the 'dmill, slamming into the concrete wall in an amazing display of klutziness. I always consider this a victory.

The New 'Do

I just got back from getting a HAIRCUT! Yay! Goodbye, long, stringy hair that only looks good for about two seconds after I brush it. Hello, cute, fun, more professional look. I feel so much lighter! My hair swings and moves now!

!!!! Yay!

Before and after:

I've got mail!

You know those post cards that letter carriers leave in your mailbox when they have a package to deliver but you aren't home to accept it? There was one in my mail yesterday. So exciting! Someone sent me a package! What could it be?

I'll tell you what it could be. It could be the sandwich I spent $25 to send halfway across the country by super-fast-overnight shipping more than TWO MONTHS ago. The sandwich that (obviously) never made it to its intended destination, the sandwich that showed up in the postal service's records as 'delivered' (so no refund for me, thanks) has been sitting unclaimed all this time, and has now boomeranged itself back to me. Shut up, boomerang is too a verb!

Sigh. Instead of a thoughtful package from someone who was thinking of me, all I got was a big, cosmic slap in the face.

And, can I just say, ew. Freezer packs do. not. stay cold for two months.

Fortunate

Oh. Kay. Here's what the sweater looks like for real. Still not great pictures, but they give a better sense of the sweater that took forever and a day to knit (damn you, size 2 needles). It might not be entirely realistic because I don't often stand in super-hero pose like this (well, there was Halloween, but that's not representative of my life), but you get the idea.

Also, I decided I'm really glad I decided to call this thing "Fortunate." Because I am. My life, she is good. :)

I don't knit ALL the time!

And now for something entirely different...

I have wonderful friends. Here are some of them! Yay!

It'll have to do

Ok. So I've got a picture of my latest sweater. Unfortunately, my latest sweater is not very photogenic. It's a lace cardigan in a dark yarn, and the camera flash lighting is far from flattering, if that's even possible for a garment.

The pattern I started with was Lucky from Debbie Stoller's Stitch N Bitch Nation. I made so many changes, however, that I'm calling the sweater "Fortunate." The sleeves are shorter (I ran out of yarn). I used snap closures instead of a side tie (didn't quite get the side tie conceptually, plus, again, I ran out of yarn). And I did more waist shaping than was called for because I always do.

I might put up a picture of how the sweater looks on me, but first I'll have to figure out what to wear under it. Because it needs something under it, for sure. It's lace. :)

Tentative "ta-dah!"

In the meantime

Well, spring semester is in full effect and I've not yet had a chance to take a picture of my latest completed sweater. However, in an effort to make le nouveau blog look not quite so pathetically bare, here's a shot of my Very First Knitting Project Ever. I forget quite where I found the pattern (it was a few years ago, after all), but it was easy-peasy: no shaping, just a whole heck of a lot of stockinette. It's a tad big on me, but I still wear it when I feel like being the color of a fire engine!

Late to the party...

Yes, I know, everyone and their grandmother has a blog already. I’m hardly cutting edge here. But then I’ve never been cutting edge, so why care about it now, right? I’m starting a blog, darn it, passe (the accent is hiding) or not.

I was given a digital camera this past Christmas (!), so you’ll likely be seeing pictures of sweaters I’ve knit or dresses I’ve sewn. Also, my house is a fixer-upper, so there will be before and after shots as projects are completed. Here’s hoping that “as projects are completed” ends up meaning “more than once in a great while.”

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