Wednesday, April 27, 2016

WIP Wednesday

I have finally stopped procrastinating and finished sweater surgery on the Film Reel cardigan for Rosa. It wasn't actually that difficult, I'm pleased with how it turned out, and weirdly enough, it didn't even take all that long (but isn't that often the case with things you procrastinate about?), but now I have about a gazillion ends to weave in, as I just added another 12 ends to the mix :-P
Next step is picking up stitches for the sleeves, which I also have an aversion towards (aversion against? Never can figure that one out), so let's see how long I procrastinate over that! ;)

I finished my April socks a week early :) These are the Hermione Everyday Socks for my brother-in-law. Now everybody in that family has at least one pair of homeknit socks! :) I think they ended up being a tiny bit too big, but like he said - too big is better than too small!

I've added a few more squares to my cozy memories blanket and am now more than half way!!! Really excited about :) Isabella and I tried snuggling under it, and decided that it can fit three people nicely ;)

Finally, I've returned to crochet :) I recently frogged my Monocromatic $5 in Paris for just being an altogether bad knit (wrong gauge, blocked weird, holes in odd places), and as I was looking through ravelry for things to make with the repurposed yarn, I came across Stacey Trock's elephant, and even though that really wasn't what I'd intended to use the yarn for, I just couldn't let go. It'll probably be a hassle and a half to sew together, but I'm almost done with the crocheting.
(It looks kinda awful just now - like elephant road-kill :-P). I'm just missing the tusks, but will save those for the StashDash :)

Wednesday, April 13, 2016

WIP Wednesday - Not much Progress

The Professor McGonagall blanket is a hot mess right now. I've picked up the stitches for the border, so there's no way to show it off properly!

It currently has 600+ stitches on the needles. Each round takes me ~45 minutes to finish, and I still have another 14'ish rounds to go, plus the bind-off. I've decided to knit another 10, and then I will leave the rest for the end of May, so it can count for StashDash! Priorities - I've got them ;)

I do rather like the edging detail though :)


I haven't quite finished with my sweater surgery from last week yet. I've gotten the two fronts sorted, but have been procrastinating with the back, as grafting the two pieces back together is going to take forever. But I've done the prep work now, and am ready to snip the yarn tonight.



You can sort of see the added length on this second photo, if you compare the top two stripes on the front and back.

Finally, I've cast on another pair of socks :) My sister sent me this adorable photo of her and the kids all wearing their socks, with the comment "We're just missing hubby now!". After making sure that he actually would like a pair, and she wasn't just making idle chatter, I found some suitably subtle yarn, and ditto pattern. So this is Hermio... Ron's Everyday Socks :) At 72sts per round it's taking me quite a bit longer than my usual socks, but I hope to finish by the end of the month so they can count for my April socks as well.

Wednesday, April 6, 2016

WIP Wednesday - When Knitting Attacks

I've had a serious case of When Knitting Attacks this past week. I've been working on a cardigan for my niece, and was almost at the end of the body when I started wondering about the length of the thing. The pockets seemed like they were going to be ridiculously long. Rereading the pattern, I discovered that the meassurements didn't add up right (5"+11" was supposed to equal 17"), and that it was much the same for the other sizes, so wondering what on earth was up, I sent an email to the designer, asking where I'd gone wrong, and hoping I wouldn't have to rip back too far.

Fortunately she replied very promptly. Unfortunately, my error was at the very start of the pattern, 12" back!!! The armhole meassurements were supposed to be taken from the end of the short row shoulder shaping, not from the cast-on edge. Somewhat ambiguous directions in the pattern, so I can understand why I got it wrong, but it's probably one of those things that should have been obvious.

I was not going to rip back 12" (plus 2 pockets), so I decided to take a deep breath and try my hand at sweater surgery... figuring that if it went horribly wrong, I'd just rip back after all, and only be a little worse off, than if I'd ripped back right away. I've only done the left front so far, and am reasonably satisfied with how it went, even if it did take forever. I just hope it won't be too noticeable that once stripe is suddenly 1" longer than the others.
Cardigan pre-surgery. I'll let you know next week (hopefully... unless I start procrastinating something terrible) how the end-result turned out.

While the cardigan was in time-out, I picked my Professor McGonagall blanket back up, and actually managed to finish the colourwork last night! Now I just need to make the border, and I'll be done!
The colourwork is quite uneven in places (especially the stripes by the falling star), but I'm hoping blocking will help with that. It was a relief to finish all the colourwork, that's for sure. At one point I had 5 balls of yarn going at once!