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.