Mikknit

Thank you all for your kind and supportive words. It feels so weird to not have my grandma around anymore, even when we knew it was coming and had prepared ourselves for that. Here is her obituary, if anyone’s interested in reading. She was an incredible person, as was my grandpa (his obituary). It’s hard to imagine how they packed so much into their lives, but they did.

And now for the knitting content:

I can finally reveal the mystery project I teased you with a couple weeks ago - it was the Mittens from Halland from Folk Mittens, by Marcia Lewandowski. They were a gift for my mom and she was totally surprised, so I’m guessing that maybe she didn’t happen to come across my blog post showing them.

I used Cascade 220 and size 3 bamboo DPNs, which was a lovely combination. I was a bit worried about knitting worsted weight yarn on such small needles, but there wasn’t much trouble with splitting yarn (a problem I tend to have with bamboo) and the fabric wasn’t insanely stiff. Just perfect, as a matter of fact!

I found the little bit of snow around my parents’ house for this picture - it’s ridiculous that we had more snow in the Twin Cities than they did up in Ashland!

I knit her initials into the cuff of one, she thought that was pretty cool!

Since I finished the mittens, I’ve been a little aimless. I finished DH’s maroon & gold U of MN Gophers socks on Christmas Eve and cast on for the first knee-high out of the grey handspun. That’s still on the needles - I’m cutting it close trying to use as much of the yarn as possible and first I started the ribbing too soon, then too late. I may go back and undo some of the calf increases since the fabric is stretchier than I’d anticipated, or I may go all the way back to the ankle and decrease some there to help it stay up better. My ankle has the same circumference as the widest part of my foot, but what’s snug on my foot is loose on my ankle. I don’t understand that one bit!

I’ve also been working on my Peace Fleece sweater and finding out that Peace Fleece holds up really well through repeated frogging. I’ve been learning a lot about how to fit a sweater to my body, which is great, but I’ve been re-knitting the same yarn over and over again. First I did the front and back down to the underarms and that came down to the bottom of my bra band, a little too low. Went back and took out an inch or so before the armsceye increases and redid the increases, still way too long but I didn’t try it on before doing the short-row shaping for the boobage. Screwed up the math on that part pretty badly on the first attempt, didn’t center my short rows properly on the second attempt, and got it right on the third attempt. I promptly tried it on and took a look in the mirror and oh boy did it look bad. After much consideration and consultation of other patterns, I ripped back to where the front and back were each about 6″ narrower than the desired width and increased those stitches at the underarm. Voila, perfect! Barbara Walker tells you to increase until your work is 1-2″ narrower than the desired width at the underarm, and that just makes the armhole way too sloping for what I want. Now I’ve got about 2.5″ to knit straight until I start the bust shaping (which I thankfully don’t have to recalculate), then after hours of short rowing (again) I’ll get to do some decreasing for some waist shaping. Or maybe I’ll do a sleeve, just to get it out of the way and to break things up a bit - I don’t think I want to do both sleeves one right after the other, just for the tedium.

I’ve been wanting to break this up with a little sock knitting but I don’t want to work on the knee high handspun sock. I *did* get a ridiculous amount of Trekking XXL for Christmas (love you, mom and sister!) as well as the gorgeous yarn included in the last installment of the Scout’s Indie Swag club; plus there’s my slightly obscene sock yarn stash. I may break out the Schaeffer Anne that’s been marinating since 2004 - it’s got the sort of eye-searing colors I love and God knows I need more handknit socks! I suppose we’ll see what happens. I want to at least get to the point of starting the bust shaping before I get sidetracked, but we’ll see. I do need a portable project that doesn’t involve counting.

But first, the sweater. I’m hoping that I’ll have it to a point where I can show you a modeled picture soon. But only if you promise not to laugh at me, okay?