Wool is Always in Season

I don’t really have any exciting news for this week. Work has been decently busy and with a few up in the air, life-altering things happening at home….I’ve been a bit distracted.

And yet, over the weekend I still somehow managed to cast on for Andi Satterlund’s A Cropped Sweater for Winter, because of course I need a new winter sweater in June, right? If you haven’t looked at any of Andi’s patterns before, you really should. As a decently busty girl who has usually avoided cropped anything for fear of looking like a giant pair of boobs, Andi’s patterns (and Andi herself!) make me feel like I can rock that crop, no problem. A lot of her patterns also have a distinctly vintage vibe, which is always a good thing.

I’m really loving the pattern though – it uses a top-down construction I’ve never done before, and have to admit is pretty clever, and am able to use up the frogged Cascade 220 I had with the leftovers from a hat. Stash busting, ho!

And because of the wacky weather Calgary has been having, I’m hoping if I complete it quick enough, there may be at least ONE day where I can wear it! Here’s to hoping.

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May I Formally Introduce…

Boxy.

Today Husband and I took a quick little breather to have a mini-photo shoot outside.

Boxy by Joji Locatelli in Malabrigo Mechita “Plomo”

I’m pretty much in love with this sweater, so did my boss who gently suggested that I should share the pattern with her. This sweater is so cozy with the Mechita, but so light all at the same time. I have a feeling that this sweater is going to get a LOT of wear.

As for sweaters that won’t get a lot of wear….until the fall….I’m almost done my first Timerline sleeve!

Husband is going to have a hard time keeping me from borrowing this sweater once it’s done.

May 2-4

If you’re from Ontario,the phrase “May 2-4 Weekend” in commonplace (unless you’re my grandfather, that is. Yeesh.) and I had to learn the hard way when I moved to Alberta that if you refer to the May Long Weekend as “May 2-4” you will be laughed at. It’s true. Calgarians can be cruel.

Anyways, this last May 2-4 weekend, although very rainy and cold, did not stop the adventures.

With a couple of friends we trekked down to the Alberta Birds of Prey Foundation in Lethbridge, a sanctuary for hurt or abandoned birds, where you can feed ducks and hissy mama geese, hang out with some eagles, falcons, and my favourite – owls. We each could hold one of their owls who have imprinted on humans (key to owl-holding), and got to hang out with a unnamed owl baby who hangs out in the gift shop who I dubbed Harry Potter.

In actual knitting news, I finished my Boxy sweater! Wooo! It’s currently pinned and drying as I type.

I’m hoping that it stays a little bit on the cooler side this week, just long enough for me to wear this constantly. I’m excited to see how it fits after blocking, because when I tried it on pre-block, it was a little bit short for my liking (like an inch-ish) but then again it’s supposed to be a little bit on the short side and I have a penchant for long sweaters.

The Mechita though…oh, the Mechita! I want more of it in ALL THE COLOURS. I actually ended up with about 1 full skein and a quarter leftover from this (WOO!) and now I’m debating what it should become. A shawl? A baby sweater? A hat? So many options.

A Post About Yarn and Books

For anyone who doesn’t know me well, I am a bit list-maker. I love lists. I love making lists. I love reading lists. Maybe this is why I’m such a hardcore knitter, because what is a pattern other than a giant list of steps?

1. After a couple days of non-knitting (I know..I know) I got back into the obsession last night. I blame my body adjusting to full-time at work; leaving me exhausted at the end of the day and wanting to do nothing but zone out on a book or The Sims. Oh yes, you heard me. I play The Sims.
2. But last night I managed to rip through the neckline and essentially complete the right front of my Boxy sweater. This morning I finished that front off and started the left. I even brought it to work so that my lunchtime can be filled with Malabrigo-goodness.

The Malabrigo-goodness in question

3. A couple nights ago I finished reading The Table of Less Valued Knights by Marie Phillips, which was quite good, although not exactly what I was expecting, but in it there is a mousy runaway queen named Martha, whose favourite colour is brown because it suits her hair and is the colour of animal fur, but no one believes her because who would have brown as their favourite colour? I usually tend to concur with this statement, as there aren’t many browns out there that can woo me very well, and so when my boss told me this morning that the brown in my tunic suited me very well I didn’t know if it was an actual compliment or not.

4. I have also started reading The Magicians by Lev Grossman, which thus far is stuck in my head.

no control at all

So remember in this blog post when I said that I had already ordered new yarn to make another new cardigan for Husband? Yeah. It arrived last night.

Timberline by Jared Flood in Ultra Alpaca’s Charcoal Mix

And because I, obviously, have no self-control, I immediately cast on. Now I’m addicted to this sleeve. Sleeves make the greatest swatches because it means that you can actually cast on and work on the actual project, but it’s not big enough that if you have to frog back that it’s the end of your knitterly mind, even if you did painstakingly do a tubular cast on….

Well, maybe not painstakingly, but definitely a wee bit fiddly and time-consuming. But the results? Hoo boy. Worth it. Combined with the Ultra Alpaca? Glorious.

On another note, I finally got a good picture of my Boxy sweater in progress.

Malabrigo featuring my forever messy desk

I just want to hug it and squeeze it and call it George. I am in such yarn bliss lately between these two projects. It’s all I can do not to just ignore life and work and knit my days away. Right now I’ve got both projects stashed in a bag under my desk (due to underground garage cleaning at my building, I had to leave extraordinarily early, so what better to do than knit at work?) and it’s taking all my restraint not to keep one or the other in my lap to do the occasional row. I may or may not have a knitting addiction.

 

Not My Problem

Well. So much for self-control. Last week my cousin asked me if I wanted to do a knit-along of Joji Locatelli’s Boxy with her and my other cousin, and I love Joji’s patterns – adore them. After hemming and hawing for a few days I caved and went and hemmed and hawed over colourways of Malabrigo Mechita (I went for the Plomo colourway) which my cousins had already bought (the Mechita in general, not the Plomo; they picked Eggplant and Cielo y Tierra) .

#norestraint, #neverenoughyarn, #whatprojectsthatshouldbefinishedfirst?

Not even a week later I’m one skein in (aka 9 1/2″) and still going strong. Surprisingly considering it’s a helluva lot of stockinette (370 stitches per row!) in fingering weight, I’m chugging along quite nicely; I truly think it’s the Malabrigo that keeps me going.

Hopefully by this weekend I’ll be ready to split the front and back, and perhaps sooner rather than later I’ll have a new light sweater to wear in this shock of chilly weather we’ve been having. Or, you know, I could always push along on that Mucha Cardigan I’ve been working on…..oh Mucha.

Happy Tuesday!

 

 

Well, isn’t this nice

I’ve always been a bad blogger. I know this for a fact. I doubt I could even count the number of blogs I’ve started with high hopes, kept up for a wee bit, then completely forgotten about and then remembered about it only to discover it as dead as the Tamagotchi I also forgot about in the 5th grade.

I always say I’m going to try harder, and I will! I promise.

To start, I’ll tell you that I have an incredibly weak will when it comes to yarn. Rarely can I come out of a yarn store without some little squishy skein of wool on top of whatever it was I had originally gone in for. This happened to me yesterday: I went in for a set of double-points, and came out with enough yarn to make a #SherlockLives Cardi. I am at least, lucky enough to have a husband who puts up with my yarn habits, and will actually listen to me when I text him as I’m leaving my LYS saying, “please don’t judge me when I get home.”

And so, of course, I’m already about halfway through the sleeve chart on the first sleeve – I decided to start with a sleeve because even though my gauge was pretty spot on, I still substituted sport for DK and I figure a sleeve makes a pretty decent large swatch to test the colour work out on. Plus, you know, the colour work is the whole reason behind wanting to knit this cardigan. Eeee!

I just feel bad for my poor Harley sweater. Just as I was getting into the rhythm of the first sleeve (the sleeves are the last things that need to be knit), I go and leave it for another sweater.

Because I am apparently a project slut, I also cast on last night a pair of Podster Gloves with the special vacation yarn I bought in Seattle over Thanksgiving weekend (surprise! I’m Canadian!). I can’t remember the exact brand of it off the top of my head, and I don’t have the label with me; all I remember is that it was made in Montana and was the closest “local” yarn I could find that wasn’t close to $50 CAD per skein. I may be addicted, but not THAT addicted.

Happy Thursday!