Sneak Preview

Well I finished her up tonight and she’s resting in her blocking stage. Given Hart left today for a business trip, I won’t have pictures until later in the week but here is a bit of her. A very small bit.



I will do my usual debrief when I post the final work but I’m not going to lie to you. While I am upset that I didn’t get knitting done on my “sick day” last week, I think being sick and dealing with where I was in the pattern would have been bad. Where I left off was a procrastination point. Short rows. I am, or was, a short row virgin.

So at like 8pm on Thursday, still sick, I gave it a go. Mistake. The Twinkle book has some instructions but in true Katyaflutes form, I whipped out my Vogue Knitting manual and starting doing it, but it was dreadful. It totally didn’t make sense to me and I’ve learned that “winging” it in these situations never ends well. And it didn’t. Long story short, on Saturday I hit Downtown Yarns in the hopes of getting some help. This is my first time doing this (asking for help at a store) and I was afraid of the reaction I would get given that I didn’t buy any of the materials (book, yarn, needles) at the store. But they were fantastic. Not only did they help me walk through it, I got to see a just finished Baby Surprise and I was just so excited to be there that we spent a lot of time picking out yarn for another queued project, Dollar and a Half Sweater.

Alas, another thing I’m not going to lie about is my diminishing love for this sweater. My frame is not bone thin - and I tried it on and it’s big, bulky, and makes my body look at least 3 inches bigger in girth. Plus the sleeves are a bit cappy which make my arms look like sausages. Actually it’s not just my arms. I tried the timer on my camera to get a full shot and after seeing the picture I felt, well, aside from immediately deleting the picture I just look like a sausage in general with this sweater – you’re just seeing my least sausage-y part – my neck. I'm thinking that this one isn't going to end well.

We’ll see, perhaps I like it more when she’s freshly blocked.

I am really itching to do something with small stitches but I do love the Magic Shawl and I’m a glutton for punishment – perhaps I should listen hard to my complaints about the bulkiness but even as I write this, my love for the shawl is bigger than my knowledge that it will be BIG.

I’m thinking of, wow, modifying it. If anyone has this book and can act either as a helper or a sounding board on what I’m thinking about doing – please let me know.

Twinkle Twinkle

Nothing like a little Ravelry to get you full force back into knitting.

Ravelry. It’s like My Space for knitters but better. I don’t have my head fully around the powers of ravelry but in the small corner of what I’ve discovered, I am obsessed.

Cutting to the immediate chase, I found this knitter, I can’t remember how, and her FOs were amazing. Why? Well, she’s great but she chooses patterns wisely, or at least I just love what she’s done. A large portion came from Twinkle’s Big City Knits. Click here for pictures of most patterns.

So on ravelry, if you find a person who did a (for example) sweater, you can click on that pattern (say, “Ms. Marigold” or “Jaywalkers”) and see every single FO or WIP – pictures, what yarn they used, their modifications, the needles, etc. Basically, this eliminates the annoying protocol of the past. You used to find a patter you loved, want to see if others did it or what yarn they used, and you googled the pattern name or yarn in hopes of finding blogs, pictures, yarn websites, etc. This is all about centralization.

But I digress (again).

From said great knitter, I clicked on Twinkle and I spent a monumental amount of time looking at different knitters Twinkle knits, and then looking at what yarn they used or substituted with, how much they bought/used, problems they had. In Twinkle case, patterns a) appear to overstate how many skeins and b) Twinkle yarn isn’t like Cascade – it’s hard to find. As you know, learning this is critical.

Here is what is next up:

Shopping Tunic (click here for FOs on flickr)

Magic Shawl: (click here for FOs on Flickr)

And today was all about fulfilling that dream but the scandals of immediate gratification were not met. Today, I got up, went to the local bookstore, bought said book, and perused while getting a pedicure (you know how gnarly feet get while on a trip, walking around everywhere…wait, do I need to justify pedicures?)

I then went to Downtown Knits, Purl and The Point. I was hoping for Cascade Magnum (a suggested substitution) and while the first two had a skein or two of each color, they didn’t have what I needed. I mean, did I really think any knit store in their right mind would carry a super bulky in the summer. Anyway, I came back home, planning to buy the Cascade online, and from a random google search found the Twinkle site (no, I didn’t find it easily before), where I bought enough yarn to make the tunic in eggplant and the shawl in white. So there we have it.

Hart always tells me I’m a very bad story teller. I’m longwinded, I know, but this took a whole to get through! Anyway, I can’t WAIT to start.

Finally, while I do feel like I am not paying attention to current projects but only looking for the next, I will say that I wove in ends and blocked Rusted Root yesterday and if Hart isn’t too jetlagged when he returns from Milan tomorrow, pictures will be taken. So since he will be jetlagged and annoyed by my pressing for a photoshoot, they will come this week.