Tuesday, April 27, 2010

SNOW!!

Hey,

So I haven't been here for awhile, blame pneumonia, work, school, final exams and pneumonia again!

I'm DONE university!!! I wrote my last exam yesterday morning and am so thrilled to be finished, but am now packing up like mad since I'm moving home tomorrow....

But, this just had to be blogged about. Yesterday it was sunny, warm, 17*C outside. I went out to lunch with friends and we sat on the patio, I was worried about getting sun burnt and I even put on sunscreen. At 9:30 at night I walked home with just a sweater, no jacket, and I was fine!

Today however, today is a different story. This is the view out my window this morning:

April 27, 2010 (2)

... yeah... It's hovering around 0, and nothing's staying on the ground, but it has been steadily snowing for more than 6 hours now, on April 26th, after being 17*C out yesterday... Wow.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Drive-by blogging

- Sweater finished, Olympics finish line crossed, details/pics hopefully to follow next week

- no new projects yet, still working on ill-fated sock design, again... new sweater idea percolating

- midterm this afternoon in Financial Statement Analysis, probably not going to go all that well

- catching a train home tomorrow morning for Dad's retirement do on Friday then back to Montreal Friday night for Special Olympic Curling Provincials Sat-Sun

- so far behind on homework it's not funny

- wish I'd done some reading during reading week instead of just watching the Olympics, but man, weren't they awesome?!

Ok, off for last minute cramming and procrastination :)

Friday, February 19, 2010

Halfway...

Or not so much...

I was going to have a great post here tonight about how my sweater has been going pretty good (besides a misplaced set of side decreases we won't mention), however...
instead I tried on my sweater and came up with this:
IMG_8190

Yep, for a sweater supposed to have 0 ease, it's looking pretty big, too big.

I remeasured gauge and my gauge is spot on which sucks, because in my swatch it was smaller, so I did the math and cast on a size bigger, now I need to readjust to about 2 sizes smaller. I was checking my gauge throughout and always got the same as I had when swatching so maybe I need to check my tape measure.

But AAUGGHHHHHH!?!?!? what a set back to have. I'm going to sit down with it tonight and see what I can fudge. I'm not going to rip out the hem (drama with that I don't want to talk about either, let's just say Olympics is not spelt Oylmpics...) because I can't bring myself to, and also the hips fit fairly well, but hopefully play around with the decreases to get a different size from the waist up. Going to take a glass of wine or two to bring myself to rip it out though...

But tomorrow I get on a train and am going home for reading week, so no classes, no work to interfere with knitting (just a midterm the week after I need to study for), so who knows? Maybe I can still pull this off!

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Getting Close...

...to the Ravelympics / Knitting Olympics cast-on!! I'm so excited to start working on my Freyja sweater!!

I'm getting excited, also antsy, because I finished my latest big project on Saturday (more about that below) and bought enough yarn for a new sweater project at Ariadne Knits' knit night last Thursday, so I'm really itching to cast on!

I have been swatching though - enough to know that my gauge is off my 1/2 a st (drat, drat, drat) and I don't know anymore exactly what my colour combination is going to be. Here's a picture of my different combinations, I'm leaning towards the one on the right for now, the light blue just seems to pop too much for me I think.

IMG_8128

Also I’ve been trying to decide whether to add a hem to the bottom with the interfacing in another colour (the darker green in this picture) or to stick with the seed stitch border which I like the look of… I don’t know what to do, but I’ll have to figure it out by Friday since this sweater starts at the bottom!


So you may not know, but last week was the Scotties' Tournament of Hearts in Canada, the women's national curling championship, and I spent a lot of time watching over the week, either over curlcast's live feed (which was new & awesome, thanks curlcast! It sometimes also had sound which made it even more fun!) and over TSN's video on demand which was posted after each draw had been over, so I usually knew how the game would go, but still worth watching. And most of the time I was watching I knit (when not doing homework or eating) and at the end of the week I cast off, making this my Scotties' project!

IMG_8123

It's the Fern Fitted Shell, and though it had a few false starts (one all the way up to the underbust!) I did finish it and I'm very happy with it! It looks great as a tank or over top of a collared shirt so I could wear it in more business-y contexts, which is great. The only thing I'm slightly regretting is the yarn I made it with. I used Coolspun Cotton, which made this a really cheap project, but it's a dishcloth cotton and I foresee it getting really worn fairly quickly so I'm delaying blocking it but I should just dive in.

Anyways, I should head off to get ahead on homework so I'll be able to focus on the Ravelympics starting Friday!

Friday, January 29, 2010

Finally January!

So after being around plus 10*C for the earlier part of the week and being under a heavy rainfall warning, yesterday it snowed and today it is -17*C, -30*C with the wind chill, and it finally feels like January!

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Kindly Sheep Mittens!

A project I finished awhile ago but haven't posted about yet, mostly because I haven't gotten any photos of them yet today, but it is snowing big, fat, fluffy snow today, so walking home through it I decided it was a good day to finally get some pictures of these mittens.

A view from my balcony this afternoon (really only 1/2 the snow shows up in this picture...):
IMG_8098

So the mittens.
These are from a great pattern from Knitty (Fall 2009) that was written for a dk weight handspun, but the yarn I fell in love with for them is Fresco by Classic Elite, it's a fingering weight wool, alpaca, angora blend that is so soft!
The pattern is for wrist warmers and a cropped mitten that then hooks onto the wrist warmers and both have the same cable pattern.

IMG_8091

I modified them a bit, adding a repeat to the cable motif on both the mittens and the wrist warmers to make them longer because of gauge issues.

I love them so much, the double layering means that your hands stay really warm, although there's still just a single layer at the top so I've been scheming about how to make that better.
Also I'm having some problems with the hooks, especially on the back of the hand staying hooked, I'm contemplating whether to move them further down the cuff (and out of line with the ones on the palm side) or tighten the hooks up with pliers. Leaning towards the pliers at this point because it requires less effort...
I also wish that I had picked a slightly lighter colour for the mitt part because in the dark yarn the cable pattern gets mostly lost, it's there, but the effect is very subtle, whereas on the wrist warmers the cable pattern stands out and is really pretty.

IMG_8092

I apologize for the blurry pictures, but the camera refused to focus too well very quickly and the longer I continued trying the same shot the more the pictures became like this:
IMG_8085
Something wrong with the camera? I think so!

Anyways, since I finished those not much knitting going on here, been busy with the back to school, new job, messy apartment things.
I've tried a couple socks, one cobbled together from leftovers and the 'More Sensational Socks' book and another that I'm trying to design, but all efforts so far have been failures which kind of makes trying again less appealing.
But I do have a sweater picked out for the Knitting Olympics, so I'm just waiting to get started on that! (should swatch first, maybe I'll go do that!)