The Knitting Scotsman

I’m within an hour or two of finishing my sweater.  Ive got about 3/4 of an inch to knit on the neckline.   Then I just need to weave in the ends and wash.  That’s it.  I could have finished tonight.

However, I didn’t work on it at all today.  I have an adorable 3 year old, well 3 1/2 year old.  She’s been asking me for a sweater.  Every time there is a new project cast on in our house, she asks, “is it for me?”  Yesterday we went on the 2008 Shop Hop in our area. Every store we went in to, we looked for yarn for Gwen’s sweater.

The store clerk would ask, “Are you looking for something in particular?”  Invariably, when we asked Gwen, she said, “Pink!”  So we found some nice pink varigated yarn (Berroco Peruvia Colors).  We need 3 hanks, and they had exactly 3 hanks.

This morning, she helped me wind it into balls, so I could get started on it.  While we were winding it, she asked me who made it.  I said a company called Berroco.  She immediately said, “Bama”.  That’s my girl!

So I cast on a top-down, raglan, in-the-round sweater for her.  It’s going quite fast, especially compared to the cabled concoction I’m knitting for myself.  She’ll love it.

So, I said in my last post that I wasn’t going to allow myself to buy yarn for my next project until I finished FLAK.   Well, I really meant I wasn’t going to buy yarn for my next sweater project.

I just placed an order for 5 balls of Knit Picks Palette yarn 2 Black, 1 White, 1 Navy, and 1 Marine Heather.

This is going to be an challenging project for me, and there will probably be some swearing and ripping of yarn.  However, I need a small project and I’m kind of hatted out.

Any guesses what I’m planning?

I sat down tonight to do some election night knitting while watching the results.  I decided not to work on the sweater I’ve been working on for, well, way too long.  Instead, I decided to work a little more on my “next” project.

I’m planning to knit myself a Shawl Collar Jacket by Wendy Baker, from Knitting for Him.

This past weekend I picked up two different color balls of yarn for this project.  I knit several gauge swatches to get the needle size right, then I focused on deciding which color to use.

The choice was between Dark Grey Welsh and Black Welsh (which is actually a bit on the red side).  I really thought I was going to prefer the Black Welsh.  But after knitting the swatches, I’ve changed my mind.  I think the cables really stand out better with the Dark Grey Welsh.

Like I said in my last post, I’m not allowing myself to buy the yarn for this project until after I finish my current sweater project.  So, this is all I’m going to do for right now.

I just might knit a larger swatch of the Black Welsh, just to make sure.  We’ll see.

I upgraded WordPress today. I was running an incredibly out-of-date version.

I also decided to change the look of the blog. The whole old layout was getting to be kind of drab. So I found this layout, and decided to personalize it a bit. I hope everybody likes the yummy hand painted Malabrigo I used as a background.

We picked it up at a wonderful yarn shop in Traverse City, MI on our last vacation.

They are supposed to be a hat and mittens for Gwen.  She picked out the colors, and couldn’t decide which one she wanted.  So she twisted daddy’s arm, and we got both.

It has been quite a long time since I’ve posted.

I really haven’t done much knitting at all over the summer.  Now that the weather has turned cold, I’ve picked up the needles again.

I finally started (and finished) a project I’ve wanted to do for quite some time.  I made a Jayne Cobb hat!  OK, actually, I made two.  May adorable daughter wanted one.   She doesn’t have any idea who Jayne Cobb is, she just likes the silly hat.

And here is an action shot:

How’s it sit?  Pretty cunning, don’t you think?