One of the things I love about knitting is the incredible freedom to modify patterns to your own liking. All over the place, you see people knitting socks and using their preferred way of turning a heel or turning sweaters into cardigans. Like the construction but not the stitch pattern? (Or the hideous fringe?) No problem! Change it to something you do like!

It’s in this spirit that I appreciate the Angora Hearts Cardigan. I really like the collar. I’m not sure I’m the sort of girl to like an angora sweater with hearts on it, especially one that combines so many elements (the shortness, the fuzz, the hearts, the contrasting colours, the collar, not to mention the extra knits in the photo) into a bit of a mess. But I do love the collar. With a more simple cardigan (i.e., lose the hearts and switch to two colours), the stripes and the shaping would really stand out. I could even imagine starting the collar out a few more inches from the neck and making it really tall. Not to the same extent as Rachael’s coat in Blade Runner, but you know, tallish. Enough to hug the neck and fold over if necessary. And puffed sleeves! And a cinched waist, all very Edwardian. With ruffles! Uh oh, what did I say about combining too many things? Oh well. I’ll just blame the puffed sleeves on Anne Shirley. She’s fictional, so she won’t mind.

I bought my copy yesterday and was planning to take a picture of it, but then my mom stole it this morning to show to her friends so what you see above is the little sneak peak that Shannon Okey sent me a few weeks ago. This is so neat!

Welcome, knit.1 readers! Here is the Soccer Ball pattern she’s talking about. And for the record, you don’t have to seam it all together like she says. There’s virtually no seaming at all, in fact, if you hate seaming (which I do); the ball above was constructed by picking up stitches from the sides of other hexagons and pentagons.

I braved the windy streets of Kingston to pick up three delightful books from our local library. I also returned three books, which means I still have an embarrassingly large number of knitting books on my shelf.

Oh my goodness, it was so windy this morning! I went out to shovel the walk (my dad says, “you call that a walk?” but yes, I call that a walk thankyouverymuch, I also shovel THE SIDEWALK), anyhoo, my face felt frostbitten! I still have a prickly feeling on my face and it’s been half an hour. So I think I need a new scarf to cover my cheeks. My old scarf has been annoying me lately because it’s so bulky, but you know what’s not bulky?

It’s weird to be knitting for winter things in February. Winter has been displaced! I swear, if it’s still winter during April exams, I’ll have a bone to pick with… someone. I haven’t decided who yet, but bones will be picked, mark my words. MARK THEM!

I’ve only got one project on the go that’s primarily grey. I’m thinking of doing something in a charcoal colour, but no yarn yet purchased.

I started this mitten a little while ago and I got about 4/5 of the way through the first mitten when I decided that it wasn’t going to work. The intent was to use a self-striping yarn for the dominant colour and a background of grey, but because the self-striping went from really dark to really light, it left some grey in the middle that just didn’t pop out enough and the result was more random than I liked. It also striped too quickly; I was hoping for colour changes every 3 or 4 rows, but I got changes every row. On top of that, the yarn was acrylic and it didn’t look like it was going to look nice without blocking, which is not too easy with acrylic. I still love the way it looks and I’m really proud of the pattern I managed to come up with, so this will definitely be a project for the future. Just not with these particular yarns. I may pick up something from Knitpicks to do this up.

The Past

This was my first ever project with natural fibers. It was the most gorgeous creamy merino that cost around $10 per 50g ball. Oh dear lord, but it was worth it. I hope.

The Future

Once I’m done frogging the creamy silk sweater I bought a few months ago, I’ll be knitting this bad boy. The yarn I’ll eventually end up with is a 2-ply fingering weight, but I’m going to double it up to make it a bit stronger and thicker, the side benefit being that I don’t have to modify the pattern.

Here is slipper #1, before felting.

Read the rest »

Laura at affiknitty reminded me that Project Spectrum is in full swing with blues, whites and greys this (di-month? bi-month? twi-month? If every three months is a quarter, can I call two months a sixth?) sixth. Fortunately, I’m knitting some blue slippers and a grey stranded scarf so I followed the rules without even realizing. To “start off” the month (I’m always a little late), here’s my blue knits from the past, the present and the future. (No ghosts, though.)

Read the rest »

Manage all your projects within a single WordPress interface, and display your progress with pride! Visit my home page to see this plugin’s progress bars in action.

Download!

To use the bars:

1. Download and unzip the progress bars zip file.
2. Upload the “progress_bars” folder to your wp-content/plugins/ folder.
3. Activate the plugin within the Plugins section of WordPress.
4. Manage your projects and set your preferences in Manage >> Progress Bars.
5. If you have widgets support, add the widget to your sidebar. Otherwise, copy and paste the following into your sidebar: <?php if (function_exists(‘display_progress_bars’)) { display_progress_bars(); } ?>
6. If you have any questions or find any bugs, contact me by email or leave a comment!

Read the rest »

I realized I left a mopey blog post up for the past few days without replacing it with something cheery, so here’s an update (sadly with no pictures, as I still can’t find my camera charger). This upcoming week is going to be a busy one, so there’s not much time for knit-blogging. Lots of time for knitting, though, as most of my time is spent waiting for study participants to fill out questionnaires. I’m running participants through one study for one of my profs, and then there’s my honours thesis. Fortunately, they both use equipment from the same lab which means I don’t have to go outside ever again! I got a chance to look at the eye-tracker that I’ll be using for my own experiment. It’s quite neat; everything is contained within one monitor, so you don’t even have to put on a headset or anything.

Knitting news: the lab requires you to take your outdoor shoes off when you get in, so I’m knitting myself a pair of felted slippers to keep there for the rest of the semester. I’m using the yarn that the beau’s mother gave me, which will be great to pull out tonight when his family and I watch The Super Bowl. I hear the Super Bowl is a big football thing, so maybe I’ll wear the Germany jersey I bought during the World Cup. Boy, do I love football.

I restarted my dad’s Rule 30 scarf in a double-stranded fingering weight alpaca, and it’s about a foot and a half long. It feels like I’ll never finish it, and it’s driving me crazy. It was a relief to start something different, which is why I started working with the above slippers. The pattern is nice and brainless, though, and the colours are great. I’m using a light grey for the 0s and blue, green and red stripes for the 1s.

As well as the sweater I mentioned previously, I’ve decided to start knitting an Orangina. I’m going to use Classic Elite Provence in a beautiful emerald green. It’s going to be incredible. I’m a bit afraid of cotton, but it should be nice and breathe-y for the summer. I can’t wait!