Five Baht Elephant

my crafty home

Made: Red Antrose

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I did it! I am finished with my Antrorse. And I love it!

I bought 2 skeins of Cascade Eco+ about a year ago, intending to make Idlewood. I started it. Then put it aside. FOR MONTHS. The partially knitted collar – because that’s as far as I got – and yarn balls sat in a paper shopping bag in my closet. FOR MONTHS.

After I finished the Great Divide Shawl, I immediately poked around my Ravelry queue and decided on Antrose. I had added it to my queue a few months back after seeing Tashia’s version of it on her blog, thinking, “I really like this one.”

And I really do! It knit up pretty quickly. Bulky yarn, size 10 needles…. this sucker went pretty quick.

I made a size 34, and I’m glad that I erred on the smaller size. By measurements, I should have knit a 36, but the 34 fits really well.

Some design notes: The chevron pattern is a nice design touch. The cowl neck is pretty too. I thought about adding some waist shaping, but ended up too lazy to calculate the rate of decrease and increase. When I got to the body hem, my ‘garter stitch in the round’ looked craptastic, so I ripped all that back and worked it flat. Then I seamed up the side when I reached a good length.

The underarm still looks a bit … hole-y, so I’ll probably go back and fix that. I haven’t yet cracked the code on how to make that part of a hand-knit sweater look good. At least that part is at the armpit, mostly hidden.

Pattern: Antrose by Very Shannon
Yarn: Cascade Eco+ in Cabernet bought at Fancy Tiger Crafts
Buttons bought at Fancy Tiger as well.
Link to Ravelry project page, here.

WIP: The Great Divide Shawl

WIP The Great Divide Shaw

Knitting Knitting Knitting… I cast on for the Great Divide Shawl last night. And after knitting a few rows, I ripped it out and cast on again.

Anyone do a yarn over while purling? I completely jacked it up the first go-around. I watched a few YouTube videos, which helped. However, if these stitches were called ‘purl overs’ I might not have needed the video instruction. Just throwing that out to the universe…

Wow. I forgot how much I love the feel of Madelinetosh Tosh DK. I don’t exactly love the price tag of a single hank ($22 for 220 yards)… but I do understand that I get what I pay for. Anyway, I’m really not thinking of the cost – knitting this is an absolute dream. The stitch pattern is fun, and I’m now in a groove where the ‘s1, k1, yo, psso both sts’ is (not quite, but close) flying off my needles.

I’m using the Farmhouse White as my main color with the Jasper for the contrast. I waffled between a few accent colors – more blue? more gray? – but the helpful employee at Fancy Tiger choose Jasper. Which was my #1 choice too.

Re-do!

You know how sometimes when you’re executing the details of a project that you miss the effect on the project as a whole?

That’s what happened here, with my “I {heart} Coffee” tunic.  The Madelintosh yarn I’m using is amazing in its color depth and variegation. And to produce this color yumminess, the yarn is dyed in small batches.  Meaning that despite my 4 skeins coming from the same dye lot, there could be a color difference between skeins that is visibly apparent in the project.

To avoid this, I alternated my knitting between 3 of the skeins.  Except I didn’t do it very well.  And the result is this:

oops.

Yuk.

And its right on the front, top part of the tunic.  You know, in a pretty conspicuous spot?

Yuk. Yuk.

*sigh* what to do? What to do?!

Fancy Tiger offers a knitting help night each Wednesday (free if you purchased your project materials there) and I took advantage of having a knitting instructor show me what to do.  I ended up ripping back (way, way back) and adjusting the location of that join to the back left shoulder seam.  I also decided to only alternate between 2 skeins instead of 3.  Why complicate it any more than I have to right?

I’m happy to report that the join looks so much better than before. 

Brrr. It is cold.

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And snowing.  Perfect day to stay in my pj’s and knit.  Ok, truthfully, I don’t want to clean or grocery shop or run errands.  And JJ has drill this weekend, so he’s not around for us to bug. 

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Remember these?  Yeah, well.  I frogged it.  The sock was too big, and I actually thought that they would be while knitting them up.  I don’t know why I continued with them.  So, rip rip rip.  And I would have started all over again, but I somehow lost 2 of my dpns.  2! I have no idea how that
happened, but I can’t find them. 

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So instead of knitting gifts, I started on a sweater tunic for me.  Yes, I am that selfish.  I cast on last night and I’m loving this yarn.  Its 100% merino superwash (no more JJ accidently felting my sweaters!) by Madelintosh, colorway Olivia.  Love their colors. Love the texture.  Its an absolute dream to knit.  Worth the $20 a skein?  I’d say so. 

I have not forgotten how to knit!

Remember this?

Yeah, I forgot about it too.

Anyway. I threw my knitting in my luggage in the off chance I’d get working on it while on vacation. And, I did! One night, while JJ was watching SportsCenter, and I was tired of reading {The Stand if you were wondering. Boy that’s a long book.} I picked up my knitting and finished up some rows. I’m still quite a ways from finishing the body of the cardigan, but its a simple stockinette stitch. Mindless. Sometimes, I like mindless knitting. I can watch/listen to television, or have a conversation and still knit.

258.jpg But look at this! Its a knitting bowl!

My parents are in town visiting, and they brought knitting bows – one for me and one for my sister. Dad wasn’t sure how it worked, but a quick demo cleared that up. They are friends with a potter and frequently bring us his pieces. This was perfect.

FO/WIP: V8553

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This dress.  Really?  This is how this turned out?  Bleh.  I really really really wanted this one to work out.  To look nice.  To actually wear.  *sigh* unfortunately, things didn’t work out very well.  And I’d basically have to take apart the entire dress to fix the mistakes. 

Lets begin with what I like about the dress….

  • Fabric:  What a pain in the ass to work with, but boy is it lovely and luxurious!  This bamboo/lycra blend wrinkles easy and is somewhat heavy, but wow is it nice and cool.
  • Cap sleeves:  Not only easy (no work!), but cute!
  • Skirt pleats.
  • Contrasting band at the neck and front.
  • Length: I ended up cutting off about 2 1/2″ off the bottom.  It is probably where its designed to fall, but since I’m short I needed to take the hem up.

And what doesn’t work about this dress:

  • Waist:  My big mistake is seen at the front waist seam.  When I did my full bust adjustment (FBA), I lengthened the torso to accommodate the additional fabric.  I neglected to add that same amount to the front facing and front band.  And I did not even realize it until after I put it all together.  I mean, I noticed that the front band was shorter than the torso, but I thought it was because I cut the pieces wrong or didn’t line them up properly.  ARGH.  The front band and facing are kind of fiddly to put in, with a lot of hand sewing.  To re-do this piece will be a nightmare. 
  • Bodice length:  I really needed to lengthen the bodice by an inch or more.  I don’t really know if I’m long-waisted or not, but I do know that I have never really liked anything (pants/shorts/skirts) around my natural waist.  I remember pulling my soccer shorts down to my hips when I was younger I hated the high-waist look so much.  Anyway, I didn’t like where the waist fell in the finished garment.   Even if I hadn’t made the mistake listed earlier.
  • Back gathers:  I really don’t like this part of the design.  I’d rather have no gathers in the back.  My sister likes them though, so it must be just me.

All is not lost, thought.  I think I can camouflage the mistakes at the waist with the sash/belt thing, so right now I’m not wanting to rip apart this entire dress and start over. 

Oh so many lessons learned.
*FBA
*Gathers
*Sewing with slinky knit!
*Facings and how to put them in

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