green.ketzle.net: knitting

the kind of winter where you stay indoors, telecommuting to avoid the icy roads, and bake tasty things in the afternoon, knit toasty things in the evening.

and so the orange fluffy was completed.

as were a pan of gingerbread, a russian apple cake and six cinnamon rolls.

08 january 2012 distractions

turns out i am easily distracted at the moment.

i did manage to stick with the big sack sweater until i used up all the yarn. it added about five inches to the length which makes it just about perfect for a big slouchy weekend sweater. i need to run it through the wash and give it a good block, but that didn't stop me from wearing it last night while watching six episodes of homeland on the free showtime preview. very snuggly and very warm.

and then, when i should have picked up the red shawl and continued on that, i instead picked up the five skeins of berroco plush i unearthed the other day, and using the recently freed 10.5 needle, i cast on for a giant fluffy cowl. it is a lovely shade of orange that brightens this rather dull january quite nicely.

on the needles, red hot love and bright, cuddly sunshine and still, there are five also rediscovered skeins of wool that are screaming to be wound into balls and made into some sort of striped shawl...

04 january 2012 extension

while i was foraging for the cotton yarn over the weekend, i found the leftovers from one of the first sweaters i ever knit myself.

the big sack sweater is rather a big sack, but a short sack and as a result i rarely wear it. in fact, i had to go looking for it having shoved it into a drawer last winter or the one before. but find it i did, and find the 10.5 needles i did and decided to pick up and knit down did i.

you can definitely see the line where i picked up but it doesn't bother me much and will bother me even less when i am wearing it and can't see the demarkation unless i am looking in a mirror, something i tend to avoid most of the time.

i knit about five rows with the leftover partial skein and have two full skeins with which to continue. it is going to be plenty long enough when i am done. and maybe i'll even wear it once in a while.

03 january 2012 mercy killing

i am going to try and get things off the terminal ufo list.

and i should probably have taken a picture of the first one before i dealt with it but i didn't. it was called boolund and was loosely modelled after a noro sweater called klaralund [i think]. it was for sophie in a purple worsted weight wool blend and a very dark purple mohair blend and i never liked it. the purple was too stiff and the mohair too floaty. and it sat at 75% done for several years, long past the point where there was any hope of it fitting her.

so today, i unravelled a sleeve and threw away the main body part; there was no way i was going to try and unravel the mohair and it felt strangely liberating to just shove it, unceremoniously, into the trash. the small child was somewhat horrifed and thought she could salvage it as blankets for her stuffed animals but was ultimately convinced that it was better gone. i can always make proper blankets if they are required.

i think i may use all the yarn as a purple striped scarf. or maybe not, no need to rush into anything.

i also went diving through my stash this weekend and liberated many skeins of cotton/cotton-blend yarns. i put into the mail a box for jim's mother and it contained 6 skeins of cotton-ease in orange, 5 skeins of a shiny brown egyptian cotton, 4 skeins of a cherry tree hill cotton [2 blue and 2 turquoise], 2 skeins of tahki cotton classic [1 brown and 1 dark green] and 4 skeins of brown sheep cotton fleece [1 each forest green, navy blue, burgundy and brown]. that should hold her for a while. i am, however, missing at least one box of yarn somewhere -- i know i have a pretty good stash of the cotton-ease in other colors but it was nowhere to be found...

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