Sew Wrong

WIP – Owls Sweater


owls1

The Owls sweater has been in my queue since 2008 and honestly, I don’t know why it’s taken me this long to get around to knitting it.  It’s fantastic!  The fact that there are 6,000 Owls projects on Ravelry speaks volumes to the popularity and knit-ability of this sweater – it’s as if as a knitting blogger, I’m obligated to make this sweater!

I splurged and bought this Rowan Cocoon yarn waaaaay back in June when I took a trip out to Webs with the knitting gals.  Ah Rowan, how do you always succeed at making crave-worthy yarn?  I can tell that this merino wool/mohair blend is going to be warm and snuggly to wear, but boy does the fuzz fly when knitting the sweater.  I can see it floating in the air around me and the amount of fibers that stick to me looks as if I had a cat sitting on my lap.

Right now I’m around the underarm and will start the dip for the yoke soon.  I can’t wait to get to those owls and start knitting the cabled yoke.

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Saturday Stitching


plaidskirt

My sister couldn’t make it up for the sister-weekend we’ve been planning (she’s been really sick for the past three weeks), so I started making my Halloween costume this afternoon.  If you haven’t seen my Twitter updates, I’m going as a zombie housewife this year and my boyfriend is going as a zombie survivor (he bought a cowboy hat and shotgun a la The Walking Dead).

The skirt is a simple circle skirt pattern but it’s my first time sewing with plaid, eek!  I’m pretty happy with how it turned out even though the alignment of the intersections isn’t exactly perfect…I think I had some issues with the fabric being off grain when I cut out the pattern pieces.  All that’s left is the hem and some hand-stitching inside.  See that green?  That’s a grosgrain ribbon waistband technique that I tried out from Claire Shaeffer’s Couture Sewing Techniques (psst it’s the October book for the Sewing Book Club).

Ok, now I need to finish that Carnac sweater!  Happy crafting!

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Magic Loop Fail.


magicloop

This post was supposed to be a “look what I made this weekend!” post, but since I’m pretty under the weather with a head-cold, I didn’t feel like getting all dolled up to take pics of my new Renfrew.  Instead, I’m sipping a Rum Hot Toddy and wearing my comfy velour hoody and pants (don’t hate on the velour, it’s perfectly acceptable indoor wear.  And nowhere else).  After this whole thing clears up, I’ll make sure to take pics to share, I’m really excited about how it turned out!

On the knitting side, I’ve made minimal progress on my Carnac sweater due to the debacle of the sleeves.  I’ve tried knitting the sleeves on double pointed needles for the cuff and transitioning to a 16″ US 15 circular, but that didn’t work.  Before that, I tried to magic loop on a 32″ US 15, the needle I used to knit the body of the sweater, but that didn’t work out well.  Thinking that magic loop was going to be the solution, since size 15 DPNs are not easy to find, I purchased a 40″ US 15 Addi Turbo needle this weekend and tried it again.  Still not good!  It was so fiddly and fussy with a big curling cable getting in the way of me trying to slide around my stitches.  I don’t know if it’s the lace pattern which is making it difficult to do magic loop or what, but I really don’t want to break down and order DPNs online, which look to be around $25.  I already dropped $20 on the Addi circulars and another $8 on the 16″ Clover circulars.  This is getting to be a big needle investment for this sweater.

Maybe there’s some experienced magic loopers out there reading this: how do you keep the tension even between the stitches on both needles?  I find that when I finish the last stitch on one needle and slide the stitches around to get the next half on the needle, I pull to tighten up the slack from the last stitch and continue knitting on.  But then, when I finish knitting and need to slide the stitches around again to get the next batch of stitches on the needle, they’re too tight to slide easily.  If you could follow that explanation and know what I’m talking about, I applaud you.

Oh well.  Maybe I’ll just knit the sleeves flat.  I’d rather not, since it would be an ugly seam underneath the sleeve with the lace pattern.  Or maybe I’ll just suck it up and order some double pointed needles.

I’ll give it one more shot…any ideas/recommendation on magic loop knitting?

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A Weekend of Knitting and Baseball

It felt like the last weekend of summer this past Saturday (ok well, technically it was not, Saturday was actually the first day of fall).  It started out cool but got hot and sunny around noon, just in time for attending my last Red Sox game of the season with the boyfriend (my birthday gift to him).  And I got sunburned on my arm, too!  Didn’t see that one coming…


redsox

The game was a bust but we had a blast, eating Fenway Franks and slurping down over-priced beers.  Around the eighth inning we got up to walk around and hang out at the section behind home plate.  One of the security guards was nice enough to take our picture…we always take pictures of us for each game we go to together.  Three so far!

My Carnac sweater is so close to being done, and if I could have, I would have brought it to the game.  It would have been a little messy with mustard and peanut shells…plus the knitting needles may not have made it through security.  Anyway, the body is done and I’m on to the sleeves now.  I was a bit miffed that the pattern only called for “circular needles” and didn’t give a specific length.  Try as I might, I couldn’t do Magic Loop with the lace stitch pattern and had to run out to get size 10 DPNs and a 16″ US 15 circular.  So my goal this week is to have the sweater done and on my back by Saturday, which seems completely realistic based on how fast it knits up.

How was your crafty weekend?

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On the Needles: Carnac Sweater [WIP]


carnac

Apparently, there are hazards in talking to my sister on the phone (aka The Stitcherati).  We’re crafty ladies and like to dish on the projects we’re currently making, things we’ve seen on Pinterest, and stuff we want to make.  Well, last Sunday, she told me about a sweater she started to knit that she saw over on the Anthropologie Knits board on Ravelry.  I may have squealed in delight into the phone when I looked up the project on my iPad while talking to her.  This was a must-knit sweater, and I had to knit it now.  Which is why I paid extra for shipping on Knit Picks because I wanted that yarn to knit that sweater NOW.  Get the picture?

The pattern is Carnac by the oh-so-awesome Heather Dixon of Army of Knitters.  I’ve always said that I’m “lace-challenged” in that even the most simple of patterns always seems to make me stumble and screw up my knitting.  Once I got the hang of the constant yarn-overs, which make this sweater look almost like crochet, I started to breeze through this pattern over the weekend while watching a marathon of “Murder, She Wrote” on Netflix.  Oh, Jessica Fletcher…it’s a shame Cabot Cove isn’t a real place in Maine because I’d move there.

I’m planning on seeing my crafty sis when she comes to visit me in October and I hope we can both wear our Carnac sweaters while she’s here.  I’m trying to crank mine out as fast as I can to wear in time for the impending fall weather, and I can’t wait to see how hers turns out!

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