Knit Picks Options Interchangeables

Already cast on for a swatch with Malabrigo Mecha in "English Rose"

I must say, these are pretty dreamy. They even come with end caps. I've read a bunch of comments here and there that the quality of their needles varies a bit, so I was a little afraid. Not afraid enough to not place my order when the needles went on sale and my LYS just happened to have run out of interchangeable cables in 32" and 24" (just the lengths I wanted!) for the interchangeables I was originally intending to purchase. But now all my fears have been allayed, and I'm very happy with my new needles! Maybe I got lucky. Or maybe it's because I sent my order in on the 9th (Friday) and received it today (Thursday). Not even 5 full working days! (5 exact days, if you count the Friday, I suppose.) Always a nice surprise.

Pool

It's pooling it's pooling it's pooling it's pooling it's pooling!!! I just started alternating the skeins to transition into the next one slowly, and it's not like I didn't notice the pooling before this, but it's giving the dress a bit of a striped look to it in some areas and more prominently a splotch or two of lighter areas, and I'm not sure how I feel about it... I know the yarn is going to soften and drape beautifully after I wash and block it, but I haven't had this much trouble with colours pooling before. The second skein is much less variegated and more overall medium grey (the first skein was medium grey mixed with lighter greys). In hindsight, I should have started off with the darker skein, then the more mottled one, and then used the lightest one for last. I just thought the first skein was less all over the place.
I am considering ripping back and just reknitting those 7" or so, but this is lace weight on 2.5mm needles. Well. It's still a bit stripey for the part where I started alternating the skeins, so. So. Where's the silver lining?

... I won? I won!

I'm just so excited about this, as well as so incredibly happy that these things happen, that I want to tell the entire world (or you know, whoever reads my blog. And I'm not conceited enough to think the world at large reads my blog - unless it does? - but this is as close as I can get, so I'll take it!): I won a giveaway from the lovely Melissa over at Miso Crafty Knits! Aaaahh!! Thank you so much! It's my first time winning a giveaway, so this is pretty exciting. I'll be looking forward to the Tricksy Knitter Knitting Gauge - it'll be something to look forward to now that classes have started again!

Thanks again, Melissa!

Silver Lining

Quite a while ago, I borrowed Knitting in Vogue No.3 from the public library and was really taken by the Tucked Woollen Dress. Understandably, I was also quite dismayed when I realized the largest size offered was a 24" chest. (Which, in hindsight, may actually have been for the best, seeing as how the pattern would probably not have translated well into adult sizes.) So I resolved at the time - I queued the pattern May 2012, so it's been almost a whole 2 years now! - to size it up and make my own. I would plug in different measurements, work out the gauge I'm going to work at, and recalculate everything. (This isn't actually that difficult. At all. Simple multiplication and division.)
2 years down the road (present day), I've realized that this pattern would probably not look quite as adorable on me as it does on the toddler in the picture. The tucks on the skirt would have to be huge to keep the proportions on me, and puff sleeves aren't the most flattering look I could ask for. But I still adored those tucks and that button-up back, so I decided that I could just take those two design elements and run with it! So now, armed with simple math skills, a calculator, sketches, a tape measure, and what knitting know-how I've accumulated, I finally sat down to finish some final sketches, make a gauge swatch (blocked and measured!), and did some math. I'm using the madtosh lace in charcoal and hoping that I'll have enough! I should - it's almost 3000 yards I've got right now, so I'd be really worried if that wasn't enough. But I still bought another skein at the Knitter's Frolic, just in case. It's a lot darker and a different tone compared to my other 3 skeins, but it's a last resort thing, so it'll be fine. I'll use it for the sleeves if anything.

Speaking of which, although I thought to myself, "This madtosh stuff isn't anything special, apart from the gorgeous colour, maybe, but even that other yarn companies have... it's a little overrated" while I was knitting up the swatch, my opinion took a 180 after I washed it and blocked it out! It's so ridiculously soft after washing and blocking and just beautiful! While I'm sure other yarns have that going for them as well (Araucania, my love), madelinetosh has made my favourites list.

Designing Knitwear

Oh dear. What was I thinking?

What's that up there, you may ask? Why, it's my first attempt ever at making a pattern! It's the Frost Flowers Dress from the beginning of this year, in fact. While I took a copious number of notes while I knitted this up and did all the math on paper so that I could reference it again later when I wanted to finally type up the pattern, I don't think I realized what a huge chore this was going to be! Not that that makes me want to stop, of course. I'm about halfway done plugging in all the numbers and figuring out all the increases and decreases, although all of it is based off of standard numbers, so I'm afraid it might not actually translate into the larger sizes especially. I have little to no knowledge of short rows besides in theory (I've never had to use them for full bust adjustments and the like), so I can't really add those in, but I'm afraid the dress won't fit bustier ladies too well if they just do the increases I laid out. Anyway, I'll be offering this pattern in sizes 30 - 54.

Remember to take your measurements!

And because of course just plugging numbers into equations that I have to figure out how to do in excel isn't enough work for me (why would it be? Totally easy and didn't take me a couple hours just to realize it wasn't as easy as I thought it was going to be let alone format everything correctly!), I decided to make a little compressed miniature me to be the mascot character that guides you through the entire thing! Or at least that's the plan. I don't know if I'll have enough energy left to implement it by the end of all this. I'm only halfway through the numbers - I have yet to even start laying out the actual pages or planning a format I'll want to stick to for the rest of my self-published patterns (if I decide to make any more in the future).

So what I've actually been trying to get around to saying is: I've really been rethinking my attitude towards purchasing patterns. I love to try to figure things out and reverse-engineer patterns just by looking at them, so of course I'm not very given to purchasing patterns so that someone else can tell me how to do something - something that I want to try to figure out myself first before I go and look at the answer, gosh! But now that I'm on the other side of the pattern designing table, I'm starting to think that even if I can just recreate the pattern I want to knit (even if it is a pattern for sale), especially considering the fact that I'll probably have to recalculate numbers anyway since I rarely get gauge (different yarns and all), I should maybe just fork over the $7~$10 for the pattern anyway, just to show a bit of gratitude towards the designer for all that they've done. But that also means a lot of stuff in my queue is going to get shoved down, since I haven't actually bought any of the patterns yet.

Focus in Knitting

I have a problem. It goes something along the lines of queuing every single pattern I come across that I stop at for more than 2 seconds on Ravelry. In fact, I have 370 patterns in my queue and it's not stopping! It's really getting (if not already) ridiculous, even from my perspective. There are probably enough patterns there to have me knitting for an entire lifetime - at the rate that I knit - and still not be finished by then. So here's the thing: I want to put some more focus on what I choose to knit.

So to start with, what do I want from my knitting? I think, for the most part, I knit because I want the finished product. I want to wear something beautiful that I've created with my own two hands. And, for the most part, I've succeeded so far. I'm pretty satisfied with the projects I churn out, especially as of late (specifically within the last 2 years or so), but when I think about what to knit next, I totally panic! Justifiably, I think, because hey! I've got 370 patterns in my queue! I look through it every so often and cut stuff out that I don't think I'd wear even if I did get to knitting it up (I actually got to 400 queued items and cut it down to 370 already).

On that note, I've been thinking that I should make some basics, sort of like an "ideal wardrobe". The most recent dress I made, the frost flowers one, fits into this category, I think. It's got its little lace details, which makes it that much better for me, since it isn't too boring, and it's long enough that it's appropriate for most things. I want more of that sort of clothing: plain, simple, and most importantly comfortable, but still special enough that I'm going to reach for it over and over again.

So to put in short, maybe wearing something handknit every day, if that's not getting too ahead of myself. I don't mean I'd only wear handknit items, but I'd like for me to be able to incorporate it into my everyday life. Some clothes I already do, some fewer than others because the fit or the style just isn't doing it for me, but for the clothes that I do wear often, I want more of that sort. So over the course of this year, I think I'm going to make some sketches of what I'd like to add to my wardrobe. I've made a few doodles (in class, of course, where else?) that I can probably link to some patterns I've been meaning to knit for well, forever. So that's another one of my little side projects I think I'm going to try to keep up this year. This is just to lay down my thoughts so I know what direction I want to go.

First FO of 2014

First finished object of 2014! Hurrah!

Detail of the side lace insert.

The frost flowers dress I was aiming to finish by the end of 2013 didn't quite get finished in time... but I was close! And so it is now the first finished object of 2014! The details are all more or less on my ravelry page, but in short: I am ecstatic with how this turned out, although there are a few things I'd like to change if I were to knit this dress again or knit something similar (which will probably happen, considering the fact that I purchased 4 more skeins of Botany Lace in a beautiful dusty rose colourway).

So here are the little quibbles I have with this dress so far (I haven't taken it on an outing yet, and it also has not been blocked; I usually don't block my garments, only lace):

• The bottom hem bothers me a bit. I had to knit it a little longer so the garter stitch didn't flip up - I tried doing decreases (which I kept, but also bother me because I did the decreases on the purl row instead of the knit row directly before the garter stitch hem), but the hem still flipped up and out, especially at the back. Next time, I would do the decreases on the knit row, then switch needle sizes (half of this hem is done in 2.5mm needles, since I ripped out the BO and added to it) and do 10 rows of garter stitch before using 3.25mm needles to do the BO loosely, as I have done.
• Pull in the raglans a bit. Do the decreases over fewer rows. It's fine as it is as well, though, but a closer fit around the underarms would be great.
• Do 0.5-1" less of knitting between the last bust increase and starting the AH, in order to pull up the lace a bit. On that same point, only do 1.5 repeats instead of 2 full repeats of lace, and start it as though I were doing 2 repeats (so start the lace a bit later so it ends up a little bit higher).
• The neck could probably look better if I had done a bit better planning, but it's actually fine the way it is. It would be fixed by fixing the raglans.

It looks like a lot, but I'm still really happy with this dress, and hopefully I'll be able to write out a pattern for it, since I'd like to try my hand at pattern-writing and publish one pattern this year. We'll see how that turns out, especially seeing as how I simply fudged the neck while I was knitting this up!

Here's one of the four skeins of Botany Lace I purchased at Romni's Boxing Day Sale.