A Bitter Knitter

Today's drive by blog post features a project that took me over two years to make.  While I blame a good portion of that gap on having a baby, it also was one of the fiddliest projects I've done.   The pattern is " Aster Vest " by Cassie Castillo and I fell in love with it when I saw it because of the beautiful lace and the medallion in the back: Aster I swatched for two weeks and tried two different yarns... I ended up using NaturallyCaron.com Spa (now discontinued).  The yarn was excruciatingly splitty (splity?) but ended up blocking beautifully. Before: After: You really do block the living daylights out of this pattern.  Here's what the fronts looked like before: And after: I changed the back from what was written. I thought it was too narrow and would have required stretching the stockinette more than what would have been attractive in order to meet the pattern measurements. Then I had to assemble.  I'm actually rather pleased wit...

Oy.  So my beach shawl is finally done and blocking.  It only took forever to get it that way.  See?  Here it is: (Pardon the crummy photo.  It's dark out and I had to use the flash.  The colours are WAY better in real life.) As I wrote in my post earlier this month , I started it in June 2010 and finished it in July of that year but I wasn't happy with it because it was too short.  So I frogged it and started again.  And it wasn't as exciting the second time around (the same phenomenon that causes second sock syndrome) so it went into deep hibernation.  When the new year started, I brought it out of the deep recesses of my knitting basket determined to continue with the progress I had made in lowering my number of WIPs.  I made good progress on it until some point last week.  I was almost done.  I had a row and a half to go before the bind off.  But... The second to last short row section is on the top cent...

I owe you an update... I promised you pictures of stealth projects in "late March."  Well, I guess May 2nd is now "late March."  Sure.  Let's go with that.  So here we have the promised stealth projects, as well as the other projects I've completed since. STEALTH PROJECTS: My older sister is expecting a baby in a couple months, and these are for my future nephew: Because I think every little boy needs a "Hobbes" tiger .  We're calling this his " hat of many colours ." And for my niecelette, a pair of socks in her favourite colour, "hot pink," to celebrate that she will soon be a big sister: RECENTLY FINISHED PROJECTS: 1- Bubble Socks that I started back in November and finished during a 12-hour Doctor Who marathon.  (Did you know that you can watch all of Series 5 in 12 hours?  You can.  I know.  Pam and I did  it, and it was awesome.): 2- My second pair Musical Mitts .  (The first ones are here . )  Thes...

If I would stop stealth knitting, you would get blog posts.  I'm planning a post for late March that will show you what I've been up to in January and February, but you're going to have to wait until then for most of my knitting progress. For today, however, I have some good yarn-y news. I have finished all the pieces for my sweater! Yes, my NaKniSweMo sweater is finally cast off.  It's currently blocking (perched precariously on my piano) and looks like a puzzle waiting to be put together...  A sweater sized jigsaw puzzle... The second sleeve is hiding down on the piano bench.  Each sleeve took a whole skein of yarn.  Or, to rephrase, it took 200 yards per sleeve to make them long enough for me.  Of course, it was after  knitting all 400 yards (or 50 inches) of sleeve and putting the whole thing in to soak that I noticed the mistake below: Two stitches that should have been knit that I distractedly purled instead.  If I had noticed before...