Knitting Sandwich

sisters cast on!

it's been a whole five years since my sister meghan and i have done matchy-match knitting projects. that means it's high time we came up with another project for a sister knit-a-long!

a few years back at the fiber fest i got both her and i skeins of lovely alpaca yarn from enchanted meadows fibers, we were chatting the other day and decided that we needed to make matching cowls with our almost matching yarns.

 as luck would have it we just *needed* to meet up in iowa today to transfer lily's old bed to my nephew henry.  and as luck would have it we made the trip with no children and stayed a little bit longer to cast on our projects together!

 we found a gorgeous gazebo in a gorgeous park and enjoyed a gorgeous day while starting our matchy match cowls.

 we decided upon the rhythmic cowl pattern by susan dingle (rav link) because its super squishy nature lends itself directly to lots of luscious alpaca yarn being near our faces at all times.

 hooray for knitting along matchy-match sisters!

-melissa

my big green sweater

way back on january 2nd i finished my miranda (rav link) sweater.  it then sat for approximately a month and a half waiting to be blocked, and then it took another two weeks to get around to taking some photos... but she's finished, and here she is:

 ta da!  my main concern while knitting was that the yarn would be too busy and the pattern would get lost, i think that happened just a little bit, but in the end i don't seem to mind so much.  

 the yarn, which i won in a blogaversary giveaway from the lovely kathy over at works in progress, is the amazing araucania magallanes (rav link), 100% wool, and perfectly warm and snuggly.  now it did state right on the label that i should alternate skeins every other row to avoid drastic color changes within each skein... but that sounded like too much work to me, so i didn't do that.  you can tell quite clearly where i switched skeins.  it's a little obnoxious, but in the end i don't seem to mind too much.

 it's also rather big on me... this is a result of my own body image issues.  even if i had measured myself i would not have believed i didn't need to make the XL size.  (i could write for pages about working on over coming my own body issues mostly because i don't want to see lily picking up anything negative from me (she'll get enough of that from society in general) and so i have been making a conscious effort to accept and even love my curves... but i digress... back to the sweater)

 so yes, the sweater is bulkier than i would have liked it to be, partially because i made too large a size, but also because the pattern doesn't have waist shaping.  it doesn't fit exactly how i'd like, but in the end i don't seem to mind so much.

this sweater is warm, and bright, and wooly, and even though it has its faults i really am happy with it, and have worn it out and about a number of times already!

-melissa

yarn along 02.12.14

 

joining up with ginnie at small things for this week's yarn along:

 reading: after taking a short iain m. banks break i'm back on the banks' train of awesomeness reading feersum endjinn.  the book is, of course, fabulous.  each chapter is broken up into 4 sections, following each of 4 main characters.  the 4th of which writes completely phonetically.  it's not the easiest thing to read, especially when one's been staying up until after midnight everynight watching olympic curling, so i'm moving pretty slowly through this one.  

and kate, the yarn matches the lettering on the cover... that counts, right?!?

knitting: aside from my olympic grannies i'm also working on a pair of fingerless mitts for a friend.  it's the hedgerow mitts pattern(rav link) which i tried to knit for myself last year, but the pattern and yarn were not playing well together.  this time the results are much more pleasing!  this gorgeous orange yarn was a gift from rachel at the time we are living, she dyed it herself and it's the perfect match with this lovely pattern.

so as per usual, now i want to know what you're reading/making!!

-melissa

make a new plan stan

so i'll be honest, i very rarely swatch for gauge.  i'm talking practically never.  ever.  but when i sat down last night to make a cowl for my aunt i knew a swatch was in order.

i have these three lovely lace-weight yarns in my stash:

 i had tried once, a few years ago to knit a lace-weight shawl and promptly gave up.  so i knew i wanted to knit these babies together but wasn't sure of needles size, etc... so i cast on a few stitches and got to work:

 from the bottom up: i started with us10's and all three yarns, but felt it was too loosely knit, so i switched to us8's.  this was producing a nice fabric but when i snuggled it to my face the white mohair was making it too scratchy.  i want this cowl to be soft as butter, so i decided to try removing the white yarn.  

back to the drawing board... with just the 2 yarns and the us8's i was getting the "soft as butter" effect i was after but the stitches were again too loose.  so i switched to us6's and *voila!* i have the desired results!  

now i plan to cast on for the sanibel cowl and make my aunt a perfectly snuggably soft cowl!

-melissa

the knitnight swap

this is my knitnight group, a fabulous group of women i have the pleasure of knitting with on monday nights!

shannon and blair organized a post-holiday swap, and i was to craft for hillary (that's her down at the end in dark blue).  we each had to fill out a questionnaire and the three things that called out to me on hillary's form were: (1) something to keep her warm (2) she loves frank lloyd wright and (3) she liked the colors teal and green.

 i went with frank lloyd wright's stained glass windows because i thought their geometric patterns would transfer nicely to knitting charts, and i got to work sketching and then knitting!

 here are the finished mitts...

 on the back i put his initials...

these were a lot of fun to design and make (even though i did suffer a wee bit from "second mitt" syndrome) and i am pleased to report that hillary really liked them!

 a swapping good success in my book!!

the person crafting for me was little heather.  she is making me this fantastic squirrel but wasn't quite finished by last night.  i reassured her a number of times that i did not mind waiting, but she insisted i take home this yarn that she spun... after me saying it wasn't necessary and her insisting that it was, i decided to take the yarn but to use it to knit up something for her.

 so keep an eye out for this yarn in the near future, it's so gorgeous i can't wait to knit with it!!

-melissa

A change of pace

We escaped to paradise last week.  Cancun, Mexico.

We spent time on the beach.

Explored Mayan pyramids.

Made new friends.

And I experienced my personal knitting nirvana.  I'm making a bib for my niece and my sister could not have picked a more perfect yarn.  The yarn complimented the view, and I even had a margarita beside me.

It got me thinking, what is your knitting nirvana?

-Lindsey

off the wagon

after 8 months of not buying a single skein of yarn, i am off the wagon.  and i'm okay with that.  i knit up a bunch of my stash yarn, and will continue to use up stash yarn first whenever possible.

but i had reached the point where i didn't have the yarn i needed for some new projects.  

exhibit a:

when your 7 year-old daughter reads all seven harry potter books in one summer and then asks for a gryffindor scarf, you make her one.  that's a pretty amazing feat for anyone, regardless of age.  and i'll tell you, she's been a gryffindor since she was a baby, so it's high time she had a scarf!

exhibit (b):

i found this awesome coat at the thrift for my nephew isaac, and i couldn't resist buying it.  then i couldn't resist buying some yarn to make him a hat and some mitts.

exhibit (c):

i have a friend who defeated breast cancer two years ago and is in need of some cancer-hating handknits for a fundraiser.  you know me - i love combining knitting and cancer-hating, so i was in!

exhibit (d):

i'm loving all the new color combos sugar n' cream is coming out with!  these were on super sale when i was in omaha, so i couldn't help but pick a couple up.  don't worry, i'll put them to good use!

-melissa

yarn pilgrimage

I have to admit that I haven't been very inspired by the yarn store options I've found so far in Munich.  Most of them carry all the same big-name brands of mostly spongy merino yarn with not a whole lot of variety to choose from in terms of color, fiber or texture.  I am really missing the handdyes and independent yarns that took up the majority of shelves in my little Brooklyn yarn stores. 

However, If you become desperate and begin to investigate the ravelry projects of other local Müncheners, you'll find over and over again the name Wollmeise  and their charming shop in Pfaffenhofen an der Ilm.  Pfaffenhofen (don't you love that name?!) is a little town about 50 kilometers outside of Munich where apparently people flood to from all directions in search of their infamous handdyed sock yarn.

And so I got myself to the train station

 

and about half an hour later arrived in the (now infamous) Pfaffenhofen an der Ilm.

 

After a brief wander into the center of town, I found the most wonderful color oasis imaginable. 

This store is just overflowing with the most delicious colorways and unique dyes imaginable.  (sorry that my iphone pictures don't do them justice at all)

 

The impossible part is picking which colorways to take home or stopping yourself from taking home more than you can carry on the train.  I settled on these three lovelies

and then whipped up a horseshoe lace cowl for my mother-in-law's birthday.

Three cheers for Wollmeise and yarn pilgrimages!  (now if I can only figure out a way to take a yarn pilrimage back to my Brooklyn yarn stores....)

-cmvs

my marvelous skein of never-ending yarn

i bought this gorgeous skein of springtree road navarre sock yarn back in june for a fingerless glove kal.

upon finishing the fingerless gloves i found that i had quite a bit of yarn left over so i decided to make myself a pair of turkish bed socks.

upon finishing the bed socks i found that i still had quite a bit of yarn left over so i decided to make a wee baby hat.

(by the way, this is the baby lotus hat (rav pattern link) by john horigan.)

upon finishing the hat i found, yet again, that i still had yarn leftover.  so i knit a blankie square.

and i bet you can guess what happened next...

yep, more yarn.  so now what do make with it?

-melissa

family tree wreath

here's my present for my grandparents:  a family tree wreath.

there's a flower for each member of the family: 2 dark blue for my grandparents, 4 medium blue for their children, 13 light blue for each of their grandkids and 13 tiny dark blue ones the great-grandchildren.

all in blue, my grandmother's favorite color!

-melissa