So Close!!

Well, ripping that couple inches out sure paid off, finished the yoke up, bound off and tried it on, and IT FITS! I'm so excited and happy! Wow! Now I'm just going to knit an inch or so in ribbing on the bottom, and then I have to seam up the armpits, but look, it's a real sweater!!!

Sweater blues...

Well, the sweater is finally at the stage where the yoke would be done, and it looks great. However, the key words in that sentence being "would be"... I took it off the needles to try it on, and the length is great, but I think it would fit better if the decreases were worked more frequently and the top was about 2" smaller around. I did leave in the string from last time I tried it on, so I could just rip it out back to there - but that makes me really nervous - I don't know how that will go, I can just see my sweater coming completely apart in front of my eyes.
But the 2 1/2" is just way to much for me to consider tinking, although I have done very long sections in the past. I think I will have a drink with supper tonight to help this along a bit...


EDIT: Well, I got up the courage to rip it all back, it wasn't as bad as it could have been, thank goodness I had that string in there!

Knitting is taking over...

Well, exams are creeping up and the work is piling up, but I can't seem to stop knitting...
The sweater is all in one piece, but doesn't seem to be ending.

I've also picked up all the stitches along the bottom to knit ribbing, it's a really short sweater, and I'm hating the way the stockinette is rolling up, so hopefully putting ribbing along the bottom will help. Design-wise I think it will be alright because the sleeves are cuffed with ribbing so it will match.

Otherwise I've cast on for a baby blanket that I'm designing on the fly for my aunt's brand new little girl, she's so cute, but unfortunately living in Bermuda where I can't just pop over and visit. I'm knitting the blanket in Coolspun Cotton so that it won't be too warm for the climate there and so that it will wash nicely.

(bear with my Paint skills, they're not that great, but it kind of gives you an idea of what I hope it will look like)
It's is going to be made up of squares in different stitch patterns, so I can take those to class and hopefully they'll be simple enough to stay in pattern with.

This is the first one I've been working on - yes it's the same pattern as my Icehouse socks, but it took some figuring out to make the pattern work flat, some figuring which I did during stats class and ended up frogging my first attempt - hey maybe this is why I'm totally unprepared for the midterm that's less than two weeks away, huh.
The centre panel though is going to have the name of the baby - Gwendolyn Jane - yes it's one heck of a name for a tiny little baby. This is my first time knitting with more than one colour, and after researching intarsia and stranding techniques, I decided that neither of them would really work for this project and so I've combined the two weirdly, but fingers crossed that it works because the name strip is 127 sts long, and going to be ~40 rows, I've already done 12 and I would REALLY not want to frog it and start over.

Sweater - good, homework - not so much

Ok, so the good news is that I have finished my Info Systems project, so no more talk of emerging technologies on the blog. Yay!
However, other homework is not so up to date, and piling up fast. I promise I will do that as soon as I type this up.
In sweater news, I'm finished the body up to the point where you need to join all the sides and the sleeves, so no more on that until I finish the sleeves. But I did get a good start on one of them during my managerial economics class (it's the one thing that keeps me awake through that class). I forced myself to learn the Magic Loop method just before class because I don't currently have any size 7 dpns, and I'm really glad, I like it a lot, and the KnitPicks needles make it really easy.


I did try the body part on, and it is short and curling a lot at the bottom, so I think I will follow someone's modification from the KAL and knit some ribbing on the bottom to make it lie flat - because short sweaters and rolling edges just really bother me. I think it will look alright because the sleeves are all ribbed too.

Wow that went fast...

Ok, so I received the wool for my sweater Wednesday afternoon and was very glad that it arrived, so I swatched right away and then cast on. So this is what it looked like Wednesday afternoon:


So, it's not like I didn't have lots of school work to do, you've seen the posts for my Info Systems class, and I had an exam on Friday in Japanese, and I did get some of that done - even managed to do a bunch of readings for my classes, but somehow just knitting round and round in stockinette went really, really fast. By Friday morning I was finished the decreases up the side and ready to start into the increases. It was this big:


Luckily, I had a good friend visiting over the weekend and spent most of my time otherwise occupied, because I don't think I would have accomplished anything else. Even still we watched a couple movies and I am now beginning the cable repeats for the top of the sweater. Unfortunately reality has set in going back to classes today (not so happily, my friend and I went out last night, there was a 4L pitcher of beer involved, and then she had to leave to catch a train at 6am this morning - it was a rough day), and I am realizing how much work I actually have to get done, and so can't commit the time and energy required for the cables... I'm considering starting a sleeve - this is not good...

Current Knitting and such

As I mentioned in my first post, I love to knit socks, so I normally have a couple on the go at a time. Right now I just have one, and have just discovered I only have enough wool for one sock(!!), which is really too bad because I am loving this pattern.

It's "Traveling Vine" from Charlene Schurch's More Sensational Knitted Socks, a book which I bought when I wanted to advance from just stockinette stitch to more advanced socks. The yarn is Lorna's Laces, Hawaii colorway - I'm not sure I like how it's pooling, but I guess that may be irrelevant if I can't afford anymore yarn to make a second one and have to frog this one...

I went yarn shopping today for yarn for the Wheat-ear Cable Yoke sweater from IK Summer '07 (scroll down, it's on the 3rd line). I ended up walking about 5kms, so I guess I should do my research more before I venture out into Montreal again. It may just be me and the fairly newness to knitting, or the communication barrier here, but I didn't really end up with something that will work. I went to this awesome yarn store, Magasin de Fibre L.B., which has bins and bins of all types of, well, string, and you can pick out what you want, even mix and match a little and they will custom wind the weight and amount that you need. It's super-cheap too! I ended up with a cotton yarn which I really like, but the swatch is turning out a bit too see-through for this sweater I think, so it will be used sometime later.


For the sweater I'm thinking about ordering some KnitPicks Swish Superwash, either in Jade, Marine Heather or Deep Ocean, but I'm still not sure about ordering yarn online that I haven't been able to feel, but I think I'm about out of options for LYSs, so I may go ahead and give it a try.
Off to put a casserole in the oven for supper, and maybe squeeze in some studying (ugh...)