All Knitting
My first finished object of the year!
My lopi sweater is done.I finished it on Monday and wore it that
afternoon and yesterday all day. The neck opening is a bit tight,
but is stretching out to fit my slightly large head. When I made
Brent's lopi sweater, I remember having to do the neck several times
because he has an enormous head. The Istex patterns ought to be
notorious for small neck openings. I have a couple patterns planned
for the girls and I intend to remember the small neck openings on
their sweaters. Not that I forgot about it on the latest one, I just
thought there were going to be more decreases. And I couldn't be
bothered to rip back. I think the sweater is going to be just fine.
The best thing of all is the underarm grafting turned out great.
Pictures soon, I hope.
It has taken me a really long time to
wrap my head around Kitchener Stitch. Partly because I don't knit
continental. I don't really knit proper English, either. Just
another reason for me to learn Continental. I can't follow
instructions in any knitting pattern on how to do a decrease,
increase, or a cable because of the weird way I knit. And I don't
even know how I ended up knitting the way I do. Anyway, I always
tried to just alter the directions instead of changing the way my
stitches were seated on the needles. I finally got smart a sock or
two back and I am now beginning to get the hang of it. About time
seeing as I am coming up on my 20th anniversary of
knitting at the end of May.
I can't believe I have been knitting
for almost 20 years! I'll have to do something special this year.
It might need to involve some sweater designs I have been working at
on and off for ages. Maybe I'll have to get done 'designing' and
just knit them for crying out loud. The yarn has been languishing
here for ages.
My orange shorty socks are coming along
quickly since I'm not knitting a sweater anymore. I expect I will
join the red yarn sometime today. I'm hoping to get all the gusset
decreases done before I run out of orange. Of course, it doesn't
matter much. When the orange is gone, it's gone. When I finish
them, I will be free to start another project if I want to. But I am
not sure I will. I might try to finish off the Bonsai vest first.
I've had it on the needles for close to 3 years, so it would be very
nice to be done with it and wear it before another winter is over. I
really think that once I have the vest done, I will start to feel I'm
getting ufo/wip stuff under control. Some of the others aren't
exactly small projects, but somehow skinny yarn never feels like a
big out of control knitting project.
I love knitting fingering weight. It
makes me feel like a real knitter.
When knitting started becoming popular 10 years or so ago, there
started to be a lot quick to knit bulky patterns on the market. And
I started to equate things made with super bulky or bulky yarn as
patterns for beginners. People who want to say they knitted
something, not part of something. A sweater on size 3 needles is
intimidating for most beginners. A hat with bulky yarn on size 13
needles comes together pretty quickly. And that isn't a bad thing,
because confidence is everything when you are learning something new.
Anyway, back to the fingering yarn. There is nothing I love more
than doing a fair isle or scandinavian pattern with their color
changes. Fun stuff.
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