Wednesday, March 29, 2017

WIP Wednesday - The Doodler

I've been pretty monogamous with my knitting this past week. The Doodler has taken over all my knitting mojo, and even though there are a ton of other things I ought to be knitting (i.e. the two items I have that are on a deadline), it just hasn't happened :-P Instead I just finished clue 2 of the Doodler last night and am loving the way it looks :-)
... I did also swatch for two new projects though. We'll see how that goes :-)

Wednesday, March 15, 2017

WIP Wednesday - Infinite Butterfly

Week before last, I knit pretty much exclusively on my butterfly shawl, as I had gotten to the point where I was so close to being done that I could almost taste it! A few dedicated evenings, and I knew I'd be able to get it done and blocked in time for this week's WIP Wednesday post!

... and I was right :-) As expected, I did run out of the Helix yarn from Infinite Twist, but I was right in assuming that a few black stripes wouldn't matter at all. I'm ridiculously pleased with how it turned out - both colour and size - and will love wearing it. It's definitely more a wrap than a scarf (has a wingspan of more than 2 meters), and will come in very handy.

I finished one shawl and cast another one on :) I've been wanting to knit Stephen West's The Doodler for quite awhile, and last week I finally got my hands on some suitable yarn :) I'm slightly less than halfway through clue 1 and am enjoying it greatly :) Not entirely sure about my colour choice yet... we'll see what happens when I add in the third (red).

Thanks to the 2 Knit Lit Chicks podcast I signed up for their colourwork KAL and immediately cast on the "Musical" fingerless gloves. They're a bit more of a hassle to knit than I had expected, due to the magic loop (it's a bit tricky to keep the tension right as I start each new row), but I think I'm getting the hang of it. But funny that it might actually be easier to do fair isle on a larger project than a small one!

Wednesday, March 1, 2017

WIP Wednesday: Finished all the things!

Somehow I've gotten a ton of knitting done this past week, so lots of cool things to show you this time :-)

First, some better photos of the Path to Wonderland shawl and the Penstripes scarf... just because I'm so happy with how they both turned out!



Next, I came across a test-knit I just HAD to sign up for: A Minion Easter Egg!!! What's not to like? Besides, it only took me an evening from start to finish :D Kinda fiddly in places (the eye especially), but I still enjoyed knitting it. The pattern was written for DPNs, but I very quickly moved to magic looping on a circular instead. Guess I have to just accept that I'm NOT a fan of DPNs. They have their uses, I'm sure, but mostly I'm a circ girl all the way :)

But I digress, the pattern originally called for worsted weight yarn, but fortunately the designer didn't mind what yarn we used, so I could use up more of my minion fingering yarn (I have now knit four minions in various sizes out of this yarn... and there's still more left!)
I really want to try to adapt it for crochet, so may have to play around with that a bit when I get some free time :)

Then Mixi asked me to crochet an octopus for my nephew-to-be. They've been all over the Danish news lately, as being really good for premature babies, so Mixi figured they'd work for newborns as well. I'd actually mostly finished this last week, but wanted to wait and not share it until I'd given it to her :)
Took me just three evenings, so again a very quick project. I'm not completely satisfied with how his face turned out (he looks so worried!), but I figure that's more for the adults anyway, and my nephew won't care either way ;)

With all those finished objects out of the way, I've had time to knit a bit more on some of my works in progress. The Zigzagular socks by Susie White has seen quite a bit of love, and I'm almost done with the first sock now!

I've managed to get a number of hexagons done for the Polygon Blanket, and have even finally taken the time to calculate how many I'll need in total (60 full plus several half-hexagons... I'm currently at 25 (not all made it to the photo), so still have QUITE a ways to go).
My goal of finishing this by Easter is starting to look rather unrealistic, but that's okay... it was just an arbitrary goal anyway.

And finally, I spent most of the weekend knitting on my Butterfly shawl, so it is now decidedly too large for any sort of decent photos! I've finished 24 colour changes out of 30, so I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel now :) I'm still playing yarn chicken with the coloured yarn, but actually don't mind too much if I have to switch to black for the last few stripes - I think that'd give a really nice effect. We'll see what happens.