Knitting Experiences - 5 years later!

I was reading back through the blog today trying to find a reference to something that I apparently didn't ever blog about (big surprise right? ;) ).  But I did come across this, posted almost 5 years ago just as I was getting more serious about knitting and thought I'd post it again and see how much has changed in my knitting.

Mark with bold the things you have ever knit, with italics the ones you plan to do sometime, and leave the rest.

Afghan
I-cord
Garter stitch
Knitting with metal wire
Shawl
Stockinette stitch
Socks: top-down
Socks: toe-up
Knitting with camel yarn
Mittens: Cuff-up
Mittens: Tip-down
Hat
Knitting with silk
Moebius band knitting
Participating in a KAL
Sweater
Drop stitch patterns
Knitting with recycled/secondhand yarn
Slip stitch patterns
Knitting with banana fiber yarn
Domino knitting (=modular knitting)
Twisted stitch patterns
Knitting with bamboo yarn
Two end knitting
Charity knitting
Knitting with soy yarn
Cardigan
Toy/doll clothing
Knitting with circular needles
Baby items
Knitting with your own handspun yarn
Slippers
Graffiti knitting (knitting items on, or to be left on the street)
Continental knitting
Designing knitted garments
Cable stitch patterns (incl. Aran)
Lace patterns
Publishing a knitting book
Scarf
Teaching a child to knit (haven't taught a child but have taught other people)
American/English knitting (as opposed to continental)
Knitting to make money
Button holes
Knitting with alpaca
Fair Isle knitting
Norwegian knitting
Dying with plant colours
Knitting items for a wedding (currently knitting a shawl to wear for a wedding, not one I'm in though!)
Household items (dishcloths, washcloths, tea cosies...)
Knitting socks (or other small tubular items)on two circulars
Olympic knitting
Knitting with someone eles's handspun yarn
Knitting with dpns
Holiday related knitting
Teaching a male how to knit
Bobbles
Knitting for a living
Knitting with cotton
Knitting smocking
Dying yarn
Steeks
Knitting art
Knitting two socks on two circulars simultaneously
Fulling/felting
Knitting with wool
Textured knitting
Kitchener BO
Purses/bags
Knitting with beads
Swatching
Long Tail CO
Entrelac
Knitting and purling backwards
Machine knitting
Knitting with self patterning/self striping/variegating yarn
Stuffed toys
Baby items
Knitting with cashmere
Darning
Jewelry
Knitting with synthetic yarn
Writing a pattern
Gloves
Intrasia
Knitting with linen
Knitting for preemies
Tubular CO
Freeform knitting
Short rows
Cuffs/fingerless mits/armwarmers
Pillows
Knitting a pattern from an online knitting magazine
Rug
Knitting on a loom
Thrummed knitting
Knitting a gift
Knitting for pets
Shrug/bolero/poncho
Knitting with dog/cat hair
Hair accessories
Knitting in public

So, encouraging to see how many of the items on this list turned from italics into bold, things I wanted to try that I have.  Also surprising to see a few items I didn't think I'd want to try have turned into things I've done. A few new things added to the list of what I'd like to try, nice to see I still have some new things to try in knitting, not something I think I'll ever run out of :)

NaKniSweMo

Many of you may have heard of NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, but may not have heard of NaKniSweMo. During NaNoWriMo writers across the globe endeavor to complete a 50,000 word novel. As NaNoWriMo's knitting counterpart, during NaKniSweMo knitters across the globe try to complete a sweater with 50,000 stitches in one month. (For comparison your average pair on fingering weight handknit socks have around 15,000-20,000 stitches)

I haven't participated previously, but having competed in the Knitting Olympics in February and Ravelwealth Games (which ran alongside the Commonwealth Games) this year as well as having a number of friends who are attempting NaNoWriMo I thought it would be a fun time to join in!

So joining I am. I'm going to try and knit Elizabeth Zimmermann's Green Sweater, whose very interesting tale is told in this article in Twist Collective and can be seen on Ravelry here.

I've swatched, I've wound my yarn and today I start!

Stitch & Pitch at the Blue Jays!!

Earlier this summer my brother had been complaining that he had never been to see a Jays game, my response? "I'll go with you but we have to go to the Stitch n Pitch game" (expecting really to be going by myself or with Mom who I've been able to drag along before), imagine my surprise when not only did he say sure, but my Dad piped up and said get 4 tickets, we'll all go. So Wednesday night found us working our way downtown Toronto to the Skydome (bite me Rogers, it will always be the Skydome!) to sit in the only sold out sections of the stadium, the Stitch n Pitch sections!!




Brother at the baseball game

Stitch n Pitch is an event organized by TNNA (The National Needlearts Association) with major and minor league baseball teams across the United States - and the Blue Jays!! (Find one near you!)



They stick the knitters up in the 200 level in the outfield where we can sit and knit (or crochet) without fear of being hit in the head with a ball. There were over 500 of us there! Even Ace (the mascot) came up to visit us, wearing a scarf knit by one of the knitters and presented to him on the field at the beginning of the game.



The game was great, they were playing the Seattle Mariners and we were sitting right behind Ichiro, who having lived in Japan for a year I think is really neat!! The Jays got 3 home runs and beat the Mariners 11-6.
Despite being brutally hot outside, once sitting in the dome in the shade with the roof open there was a lovely breeze and it was great to sit there, enjoy the baseball game and knit!


The sock at the game

One of the best parts of going to Stitch n Pitch are the goody bags & taking 3 non-knitters with me, I ended up with 4 of them!



They all had the same yarn, so now I have enough purple/white yarn to make someone a sweater :)



We also got samples of Eucalan wool wash and coupons to use at the stores that had sponsored the game.



Not only did they do goody bags this year, but there were prizes on various seats throughout our section & I scored 2 of them! This lovely BFL yarn from Two Sisters Stringworks and a copy of the Yarn Harlots book 'At Knit's End' which I have been meaning to buy, so bonus!




At the end of the day though, the game was awesome and I am totally looking forward to next year's Stitch n Pitch!!



And for the record, this is how much sock you can knit during a baseball game:

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:

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!

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.

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!

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!

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...):

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.

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.

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:

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!)

Pink Promise Socks finished!

The Pink Promise socks have been finished and will hopefully be up for sale in the next little while.

All proceeds from this pattern will go to benefit the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation.

This is a toe-up sock pattern featuring ribbon detailing in cables up the sides and on the heel flap. It features a short row toe, a toe-up heel flap with gusset and a lace ribbon detail around the ankle.

Hopefully this works and the pattern will be available here shortly. If not, it will be available through Ravelry as soon as I get my designer pattern store working.

Designing

So, it's been awhile. I'm not going to bother updating you on everything that's happened since I last posted since I promised I would do that last time and never got to it.

I am posting here though for a specific reason. I'm in the process of designing a pair of socks. I was driven to do this thanks to the Sock Knitter's Anonymous group on Ravelry. They have a monthly challenge that I've been joining in on for a while and this month's challenge is a man's sock, a holiday stocking, a design by Jeannie Cartmel or Socks for a Cause.

Now I haven't mentioned this here before but I come from a family that's been fairly affected by breast cancer. Both of my grandmothers have had it in the past and one is currently undergoing treatment for a recurrence.

So I thought, what better to knit than a sock that benefits breast cancer, both for the SKA challenge and since October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. But I'd already knit a couple of the breast cancer supporting socks out there and the rest don't really appeal to me, so I've dove in and I am currently designing a pair of socks!

That's what I have so far, and I do have the rest of the pattern written out and tested on a mini prototype sock, but I just want to get past the heel flap before I send it out to test knitters.

Thanks to some helpful suggestions on Ravelry I've decided to name them Pink Promise Socks.

As soon as I get the pattern finished and the test knitting done, I'm going to be posting it for sale here and hopefully on Ravelry and all the proceeds from the Pink Promise Socks will be going to support the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation, so stay tuned!

It's Been Awhile...

Sorry about that! I did survive exams, yay! But posting was a bit difficult over the summer, between working full-time and having dial-up internet at home. So I'll try and get caught up a bit and try to update again soon. (P.S. - if the weird music is bothering you, scroll down a few posts and mute the "Horton Hears a Who" widget, hopefully in a few more posts that won't show up on the front page anymore)

Knitting

Well, I did finish Jaden over the summer. Since you last saw it I realized that my row gauge was way off and ended up having to rip back large amounts to make sure the sleeves weren't 4" too long and that the neckline didn't fall below my boobs. I had a really tough time after I had finished to actually get the crocheted neckline as nice as I wanted it, and I definitely didn't sew in the ends very quickly. But it did get finished, and I quite like it. So far it's been cool enough a couple days to wear it this fall.


I also finished my Forest Canopy Shawl the second time I started it. I probably could have done more repeats because I ended up with yarn left over and it's a bit small. But it's a nice enough size to just throw over my shoulders while I'm sitting at the computer and getting cold, so it's nice.


Socks, Socks and more Socks
Socks were pretty much all I knit over the summer, and I didn't knit all that many, I've started a pair for Mom, and have one sock finished. I'm also doing a pair using Grumperina's helix striping method to use up some of my leftovers, and I like how they're turning out.


I've also started a February Lady Sweater (yes I jumped aboard that bandwagon...). I wasn't sure how much I would like the style so I'm knitting up a test sweater in Red Heart Soft Touch, instead of dropping $60+ on yarn. So far I really like it, and depending on how much I wear it I could see knitting another with some really yummy yarn, and maybe a different stitch pattern.

There have been a few other projects over the last few months, including a Diamond Fantasy Shawl for my Nana who is starting chemo today. If you're interested check out my projects page on Ravelry here (if you're not on Ravelry yet, go check it out now - really!)


Baking
I actually haven't done a lot of baking so far this semester. I've been pretty stressed out with a few of my courses and especially advanced Japanese seems to come with a ton of homework. But I did just buy a new cookbook - Small-Batch Baking - which basically has baking recipes to make for 1-2 people, so hopefully I will find some inspiration there and there will be baking to show you soon!

Getting all caught up has been great! I've been a bit out of it for the last few days, Saturday evening the guy in the apartment next to mine managed to light his kitchen on fire so there was quite a lot of excitement there... and not of the good kind. Luckily there isn't any damage to my apartment and the smoke smell has mostly cleared out of my place and my lungs - the hall is a different story though. Luckily I knew where my fire extinguisher was - do you know where yours is and how to use it? Please think about it and be fire safe!

Till next time!

What a close one...

Ok, so it's Friday, yay, and the weekend and all that, but I'm a bit stressed because my parents are coming up to visit for the weekend with some friends. They're not staying here (there's no way they would all fit in my very small student, studio apartment), but it's stressful none the less, this is the first time they will have seen my place, so I spent most of today cleaning. Then just to add to the stress I accidentally threw my ring in the garbage, and didn't realize it until after I had taken the garbage out. That was a fun 20 mins of running between my apartment and the garbage room in the basement trying to figure out where it might have fallen off, and was so relieved when I did find it.
Anyways, that's about how my day has gone. Not much knitting to report as of late, mostly just knitting on a sock in class. I did start a new pair of socks with the Tofutsies I received in the Holiday Tea Swap, they're going to the Monkeys, but from the toe up, so the pattern will be upside down, because frankly I'm too lazy to try and reverse it.

I did get a picture of my progress on the cardigan I'm trying to create. So far so good, although I can see multiple problems upcoming with connecting the sleeves, the hood, and the button band. The fronts ended up a lot skinnier than I thought they would, so I'm hoping a very wide button band will make up the difference. I wanted big buttons to start with, so hopefully this is a good thing. I'm thinking of attaching the sleeves in the way you would with a raglan sweater, just because I've done that before, but I'll deal with that once I get there. I still have to do the entire back, and it will be 2x2 ribbing, so I can see some project boredom kicking in there.
I am also signed up for Secret of the Stole ii, but still awaiting yarn (long story short, DHL is stupid!) so can't start yet, even though the first hint has come out. Hopefully I can get my yarn early next week and catch up so I won't be too far behind, although I can see this taking major time away from the sweater, hmm...

I'm Angora!

Sorry I've been more than slightly absent lately. Before Christmas it was exams and then there was Christmas where I was at home with dial-up and now I'm back at school and things are kind of crazy.
Just thought I'd share this with anyone who is out there reading! This quiz is fun to try and very short!
I found out I'm Angora!
Angora – Soft and warm
“Angora has a warmth that rivals cashmere and softness that rivals qiviut. Best of all, it comes from cute little bunnies that look for all the world like furry footstools with ears.” –The Knitter’s Book of Yarn

Angoras are eager to please and are highly sensitive. Flexibility and adaptability are your strengths and sometimes your weakness, as well. You are essentially a warm and feeling person, and little escapes your impressionable mind. You are generous with others and strive for harmony in your relationships.

Some other things that are keeping me busy lately
- Ravelry - oh my goodness, such a wealth of information, pictures, wisdom, sympathy, and an awesome community of knitters
- School - of course! 4 new classes, one continuing very intense Japanese class, 4 very expensive textbooks to buy, ugh!
- Pedometer - www.active2010.com is an awesome initiative by the Ontario government to try and get people active, not to say that it's having much impact, but you know. I found out about it when I got a pedometer for Christmas and I've been wearing it and tracking my steps since I got back to school last week. So far I average about 7,300 steps/day which is making me feel better about never making it to the gym (I know, I know, I still need to do that...)
- A new Sweater - I saw a knit sweater at Winner's over the holidays and wasn't sold on the colour so couldn't justify buying it, but it's turning out to be a good knit for the cotton from Magasin de Fibre LB that I had earlier, so we'll see how my first try at designing/copying the design of something and my first cardigan goes. I'll try to put up pictures soon, promise.

Bad Blogger...

So sorry about the lack of postings as of late. Time has been sucked away by midterms, and other time, even time I didn't have, has been taken by Ravelry, it's so awesome! If you're not in yet, I'm sorry, but it's well worth the wait, and if you don't have your name on the list yet, Go now, what are you waiting for???

Knitting wise, I've been knitting a lot on Gwen's blanket, all the squares are done, I just need to do some piecing together and then pick up for the border. I've also started, and almost finished - just needs to be blocked and seamed, a baby kimono from Mason-Dixon Knitting. I'm really sorry I don't have pictures, my camera doesn't want to cooperate lately and I'm just really hoping it's a battery problem and not a bigger problem, because I really can't afford a camera right now. I'll try to take pictures and post them if the camera works once the batteries are recharged.
I've also started Tricorner, a scarf from Knitting New Scarves, a book I've been coverting ever since I saw Grumperina's post about it - it's so cool! I went and spent some time yesterday in the bookstore pouring over it, and have dropped some blatent hints to my mother so hopefully I will get it for Christmas. But until then I've kind of adapted what I remember about this pattern to something that works, took frogging it a few time last night, but I like how it's coming out so far, and it's using up some yarn I made a very, very cabled scarf out of last year that got frogged because I didn't like it and hadn't found a use for yet.


Baking - I've been doing a lot more lately since my oven was fixed, and actually have a few friends coming over to have a bakeathon this afternoon, so that should be fun. I've been experimenting with Monkey Bread a lot and I think I found a modification that I like a lot better. Most recipes have you dip the pieces in a butter-brown sugar mix before putting them together, but I found those a bit too sticky, so I found that it worked well for me to dip or coat (they don't need to be dripping) in melted butter, and then roll them in a white sugar-cinnamon mix and put them together. The bits absorbed the cinnamon and sugar and tasted so great! I still had some butter-sugar mix left from before and so I poured that over the finished product just before it went in the oven and I think it came out very, very well.

Well, hope you're enjoying your weekend, and savour that extra hour today!

ETA: sorry I've now realized that picture is from my first attempt that turned out very sticky, not the successful one, but still yummy looking right?
also ETA: picture of Tricorner - It's not my camera, just very dead batteries, YAY!

I'm on Ravelry!!!

Yay! I'm in - username Cheryl21
This has proven to be a great distraction to all the studying that I should be doing, but I really don't care!
(Update: I replaced the crappy photos from yesterday after my camera batteries recharged, it looks a lot better now.)

Ravelry! Uh Oh....

Ok, so not only should I not be anywhere near a computer, I have been checking the Ravelry list excitedly today, because usually check on Mondays, just to see where I am and I started the morning with around 400 people in front of me, and now there are 96(96!!!!!). This is not good. Not only have I been spending WAY too much time knitting on the blanket.

There is also a 4th square done which I finished on my commute to help coach Special Olympic Curling yesterday. I know, they aren't really square, but I'm hoping a really good blocking will help fix that, otherwise Gwen will just have a slightly non-geometrical blanket.
Ok, I really need to study now (presentation and 3 midterms over the next week - wish me luck!) - hopefully I will be able to resist ravelry for at least a little bit.
Oh - and to make matters a little bit worse (for the studying anyways) my landlord says he finally has my new stove and hopes to get it installed sometime this week, Yay!
I will leave you with a beautiful fall scene I took in while hiking up Mount Royal on Saturday...

Mid-term time!!

Ok, so, sorry in advance for the lack of posts in the next few weeks. Anyone else somehow involved with university students will know - it's midterm time!! Whoo!
Pictured above is my favourite new knitting tool - and the exam I'm supposed to be studying for and can't quite drag myself to.
But the bobby pin - I discovered it by accident, I found myself in class without a cable needle, and am doing a cable like the one on my sweater on a baby blanket square. What I came up with was what I had in my purse - a bobby pin. I've never really been a fan of using a cable needle, but I don't like cabling without one either, it doesn't look as nice to me. But with the bobby pin, I slide the stitches off onto it, and then when it's time, slide them back onto the left needle, that way, I'm not fiddling with a cable needle, the stitches aren't going to unravel (as they often did with my other method, just sliding the stitches off the needle and coming back to them), and they're kept safe clipped in the bobby pin. The bobby pin is also very slim, making it easy to slide the stitches on and off.
This is working great with the cotton I'm knitting the blanket with, but I'm not sure how well it would work with other yarns. I guess I'll find out, because I love this!

(sorry for the crappy photo, I was too lazy to get out my real camera...)

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.

Knitting Experiences

I've seen this around on a couple knitting blogs I've read, and always enjoy looking through them to "get to know" the blogger a bit better, maybe some of their likes and dislikes, etc. So I thought I'd go ahead and post it myself to share with all of you.

Mark with bold the things you have ever knit, with italics the ones you plan to do sometime, and leave the rest.

Afghan
I-cord
Garter stitch
Knitting with metal wire
Shawl
Stockinette stitch
Socks: top-down
Socks: toe-up
Knitting with camel yarn
Mittens: Cuff-up
Mittens: Tip-down
Hat
Knitting with silk
Moebius band knitting
Participating in a KAL
Sweater (previous two are both current projects)
Drop stitch patterns (sounds somewhat frightening)
Knitting with recycled/secondhand yarn
Slip stitch patterns
Knitting with banana fiber yarn
Domino knitting (=modular knitting)
Twisted stitch patterns
Knitting with bamboo yarn
Two end knitting
Charity knitting
Knitting with soy yarn
Cardigan
Toy/doll clothing
Knitting with circular needles
Baby items
Knitting with your own handspun yarn
Slippers
Graffiti knitting (knitting items on, or to be left on the street)
Continental knitting
Designing knitted garments
Cable stitch patterns (incl. Aran)
Lace patterns
Publishing a knitting book
Scarf
Teaching a child to knit
American/English knitting (as opposed to continental)
Knitting to make money
Button holes
Knitting with alpaca
Fair Isle knitting
Norwegian knitting
Dying with plant colours
Knitting items for a wedding
Household items (dishcloths, washcloths, tea cosies...)
Knitting socks (or other small tubular items)on two circulars
Olympic knitting
Knitting with someone eles's handspun yarn
Knitting with dpns
Holiday related knitting
Teaching a male how to knit
Bobbles
Knitting for a living
Knitting with cotton
Knitting smocking
Dying yarn
Steeks
Knitting art
Knitting two socks on two circulars simultaneously (would love to try this, it sounds so intriguing, and efficient)
Fulling/felting
Knitting with wool
Textured knitting
Kitchener BO
Purses/bags
Knitting with beads
Swatching
Long Tail CO
Entrelac
Knitting and purling backwards
Machine knitting
Knitting with self patterning/self striping/variegating yarn
Stuffed toys
Baby items
Knitting with cashmere
Darning
Jewelry
Knitting with synthetic yarn
Writing a pattern
Gloves
Intrasia
Knitting with linen
Knitting for preemies
Tubular CO
Freeform knitting
Short rows
Cuffs/fingerless mits/armwarmers
Pillows
Knitting a pattern from an online knitting magazine
Rug
Knitting on a loom
Thrummed knitting
Knitting a gift
Knitting for pets
Shrug/bolero/poncho
Knitting with dog/cat hair
Hair accessories
Knitting in public