Finished Knits!

I finally caught up with some overdue finished knits photos - here's a tour of my accomplishments:

Ardent Cardi, pattern from Twist Collective.  Look how pretty!  I just love this yarn, it was my inspiration for this project and I'm thrilled with the final result.  I wound up having to noodle around with the gauge and the shoulders a bit - by the end of this project, my pattern was completely scribbled up with notes and little math equations.  This was a really fun knit - I LOVED working the lattice section, twisted stitches are really fun!

Here's a shot of it all buttoned up.  I don't wear it this way often, with all of that shaping in the waist, its very flattering unbuttoned.  And speaking of buttons:

Aren't these cool?  They're vintage glass and have more iridescence than I can capture in a photo.  I live near an amazing fabric shop that I visit every now and then and the last time I was there, I thought: this is where I'm buying buttons for my next finished knit.  The women who were there this day were a blast - I pulled out the sweater, they all oohed and aahed and then pulled out card after card of buttons - these were everyone's favorite.  

Slip-stitch hat by Shelly Kang of The Yarnery.  Here's the hat I've been sporting all winter - this was really really fun to knit and people are always surprised when I tell them that I made it.   Here's a closer look at the detail and colors:

 Details of the slip stitch - so charming.

Kiri Shawl, knit in Scheaffer Anne.  Here's my mini-model strutting her stuff on the deck.  I'm pretty surprised that she sat still as long as she did.  She even got up, turned around, and sat down again so I could take pictures of the detail, see:

I love the pretty effect of leaf veins on this.  A triangle shaped shawl is my favorite thing for wrapping around my neck with a coat in the winter.  I have a robin's egg blue coat that this looks just lovely with.

Here's what's on the needles now: Dale of Norway Sirdal.  I started this ages ago, had a devil of a time getting gauge, got frustrated, stuffed it in a bag and walked away.  I'm feeling much happier about my efforts this time around.  I've re-knit this cuff maybe four times now - this was written in the pattern as a button cuff, but it was really bulky, so I tore that out.  Then I decided that I didn't like the colorwork as charted, so I switched that around a bit.  Then the circles looked good, but the pattern was wonky at the pattern repeat point, so I had to fix that....  Fortunately, there aren't a lot of stitches at this point so none of this has taken long and I wound up tinkering around with my two-handed technique while all of this was happening so now I'm pretty comfortable with it and my knitting is looking really even.  I'm a little surprised at how dramatically the sleeve increases are happening - at the rate things are going, I'd easily be able to smuggle a few bags of popcorn into the movies in these things.  And I'm knitting the kids age 12 size - I know that Dale sweaters run huge, but this just seems excessive.  I may have to check the instructions again.

In other news, we've been gathering paint chips and talking about what we want our home to look like.  As soon as the weather is warm enough to open the windows, we'll be getting out the rollers and the brushes.  And we've got some plumbing projects planned for the end of this month - I'm definitely looking forward to having some better water pressure around here!

Back to the needles - the Dale is calling!

Comments

[Mommy]

That's some darned impressive knitting, my dear.

[Shelly Kang]

Hey! Nice Hat! I was scrolling down my google reader, mostly soaking in the pictures and lookie there, that's familiar! Great job!