How to design a sweater.....kind of...

Make a sweater for yourself following a pattern. Listen to your 4 year old daughter when she says she wants one. Pull out your "Knitting From The Top" book and measure the girl. Write down said measurements and cast on. Here's the results:







She's rather pleased with the results. It was knit with one skein of Cotton-ease and is probably the cheapest sweater on the planet (cost me $3 for the yarn). I have another skein of the pink Cotton-ease and may just cast her on another sweater....

So many projects so little time...

or something like that.

I enjoyed knitting my tivoli. I have the yarn to make another, with a narrower neck and maybe a little more bust room. But Miss K wanted me to knit her a top. I found some nice pink Cotton-ease and using "Knitting from the top" by Barbara Walker I have cast on my child sized ballet necked top for her. I shall soon have a picture to post as a child size 4 is much faster to knit that a sweater for a pudgy middle aged woman.

At the moment on needles I have an afgan for my sister in law and her husband for Christmas...we'll see if it's Christmas of this year. The first sock of a pair for myself. A hat for the hospital and this little top for Miss K. I am fighting the urge to cast on another project.......(I really should finish Miss K's quilt....but that's another subject)

Tivoli finished!!

I am happy with how it came out. I knit it up using 6 skeins of Tivoli Aran weight denim yarn. I had better luck with this yarn than Grumperina did, only 2 splices in the 6 skeins I used. I've had worse luck with expensive yarn (I bought this yarn cheaply off of ebay so I have no idea what it's actual cost would be). I ordered some knit Picks Shine with which to knit another top like this one only I will customize the next one a bit to suit me a bit more (narrower neck).

All in all a great knitting experience...again...

Camping and knitting, knitting and camping

We left Friday for a quick weekend in Ridgeway. It was supposed to be a relaxed long weekend (leave Thursday, return Monday), but Chris had problems at work (as seems to happen whenever we plan anything) so we left Friday and came back yesterday. Hardly seemed worth dragging the boat 6 hours each direction. But it was fun to get away (and much needed) and I love Ouray and that whole area. And I brought my knitting. When camping I always bring my knitting, something washable when it's finished just in case it picks up that "I've been camping and sitting in the campfire smoke" smell....I do not knit while sitting around the fire lest an errant ember burn a hole in my project. I knitted part of the trip up, and a couple of rounds on the way home and still have about 4 inches left on my Tivoli.

Yesterday morning sitting on the lake shore after my outing for a lap of skiing, I was happily knitting away and chatting with our camping buddy, when we noticed the rangers towing our boat back to shore. It seems that after Mr Ranger scolded Chris for making a wake in the no wake zone (our boat is a jet, and Chris swears that he wasn't making a wake that it's just the nature of the jet....read...Chris was making a wake) about 45 minutes later Mr Ranger had to tow the offending boat because it sucked up the tubes tow rope. So instead of getting to happily sit in the sun with my knitting. I got to drive the truck with the boat trailer down to the dirt ramp while the guys dragged the boat around the cove so that we could drag it out of the water. The boat is now safely in my front yard until we have time to cut/pry/pick the rope out of the intake......and my knitting is not finished.

Finally making progress. I think.

The Tivoli t-shirt is coming along. I'm to the waist decreases, from here on out it shouldn't be too bad, especially since I plan to take it camping with us and working on it while we're gone. I really should give credit where it's due. You can find the pattern and some lovely photos of finished ones at www. grumperina.com. She's used real people as models and really it's a quick knit (if you don't have a bunch of kids and a new dog to make sure you have little time to knit). I have to say that I was leary of the Tivoli yarn. I bought 11 skeins off of ebay for about $11 including shipping, so we're talking cheap. I'd read a not so glowing review and that's about all I had to go on as far as this yarn goes (and I read the review long after I had 11 balls of the stuff staring at me). I've wound 5 skeins into balls and have only found one splice, the dye job on the skeins I bought seem to be pretty uniform. My only gripe is each skein only has 95 measley yards and that it's not machine washable. I have a front load machine and I wash everything in it and this sweater will be no exception. This next week I should have some "shine" yarn from Knitpicks, which is machine washable to knit this top up in. My daughter has already told me I have to knit her a sweater next to match mine. At the tender age of 4 years I love that she wants me to make her clothes.

A "Fast Knit" sweater that takes me forever

I downloaded a pattern from the internet. The Tivoli t-shirt. Seamless top-down, my favorite type of sweater. I don't like to do seams so whenever I can I convert whatever pattern I'm doing to knitting in the round anyway. I like top-down sweaters because I can try them on as I go and adjust the arm holes and other such fun things. I have started this darn project about 4 times before getting it right. I was beginning to think I'd never get past row 20. So, casting on and ripping out have dominated a great deal of time for this project. I am now up to row 27....10 more rows and I can begin the waist shaping. I am having better luck with the yarn than the pattern maker had with the yarn, hopefully my luck will hold and I'll finish this sweater/top in this lifetime. Hopefully it will look as good on me as it does on the "real people" models from the site where I found the pattern.....

Goodbye nana

I know this is my knitting blog, and this entry has nothing to do with knitting, but it's my blog and I can put this here if my heart tells me to.

My nana passed away this morning. She was 91, the last of her brothers and sisters to depart this earth. She was 4 feet 11 inches tall and weighed about 100 pounds. She was a terrible driver (she got her license when my mother was in high school), and a pretty good, old fashioned cook. She had been pronounced dead 4 times just before she got pregnant with my mom, but just after my uncle had been born (this time she's really gone). My grandpa said she was a lot different after that illness. She was always different, kinda like she was sorta senile, if that makes sense. She learned to swim and water ski when she was in her 50's. Ski first, learn to swim later...and the only stroke she knew was the side stroke. She used to jump into the water when us kids (her grandkids) were putting on our ski's, no matter how cold the water was she'd yell "Oh, the water is just heavenly". I remember begging her to get back into the boat so that we could yell "hit it" and get up on our ski's and out of the cold cold water.

There are so many many stories, she was a colorful little person (no she was not a dwarf, she was just short, tall in her family was anyone over 5'4"...which is my height, at 5'7" my sister and brother are practically giants.

So when I actually cast something onto my needles that I don't knit 2 inches of and then frog, I will be back. Perhaps with more stories, maybe not (since I'm the only one I know, except my sister, who reads this blog, it will be merely to jog my memory and entertain myself).

Boring projects, new dog = uninspired knitting

Shortly before Christmas my mom decided to knit up a couple of afgans. She raved about how fast they were to knit. Six (or seven) skeins of Light and Lofty, size 17 needles, 100 or so stitches, knit each row until it's the size you want. Yea.....well, I find garter stitch about as exciting as watching paint dry in an empty room with no windows. But....think of it!! A Christmas gift for Greg and Lesley that their kids can't break!! Something that (in thery) they could use!! So off I run to my least favorite store on the planet for some of this cheap yarn and I find some size gi-normous 17 circular needles and cast on 104 (just to be different) stitches. And you know what? It's boring, and because it's boring it's slow. And I am bound and determined to have this damn thing done in time for Christmas!!! And if I ever lose my mind enough to actually say "Why, yes I think I will knit an afgan", someone remind me of how much fun it is, or at least hand me something with some pattern in it so that I can exercise my little mind!!!

Just call me the frog queen

Thought I'd make "Tina" from the Berroco free pattern site. Cast it on in Tivoli Aran Denim cotton and knitted up about 3.5 inches of it. Looked like it was going to fit, but.......everytime I'd switch from purl to knit the first knit stitch was larger than the rest and try as I may I couldn't get it to come out to my liking. Now I know that Chris would say "No one but you would notice"...but he's WRONG!!! Every knitter I know (which, I grant you, is not many) would notice. So I frogged it tonight and will make a nice cardigan or something that won't have weird stitches.....eventually.....