Mikknit

It wasn’t all that bad. I crocheted the steeks and ended up dropping my steek stitch down, then cutting the ladders - somehow that was less scary than cutting the intact stitches. Don’t ask me why, it just was. Sewing the sleeves into the armholes was pretty simple. Who knows if I did it “right”, but it looks good and is secure so in the end I did it right enough.

He loves it. He’s worn it every day since I finished it - if he wears it today that’ll be six days in a row. This from a guy who insisted he wouldn’t wear a sweater for years. I have no idea what finally convinced him, but I’m glad he changed his mind!

Not a fake smile!

We’re talking about his next sweater now. Cobblestone is a front-runner. We’re talking about Beaverslide Dry Goods yarn for it, but the price is giving me a little pause. It’s so lovely, though! We’ll have to see.

While that’s under consideration, I’m working on a couple other things. First of all, a sock (naturally). The pattern is Sunday Swing from the Summer ‘09 Knitty. Yarn is some Berroco Sox Metallic that my aunt brought me. The yarn feels a bit scratchy due to the metallic thread, but it feels just fine on my feet. The pattern’s easy enough but I have to pay attention to it (just a bit, though) so it’s not so boring I want to cry. Good thing, too - boring never gets finished.

Still life with sock and chart

What’s that in the picture, you ask? A bike chart, of course. I’m working out a mitten pattern with that bike on it. The chart knits up just fine - I had to make a couple modifications to the chart as I test-knit it, but I’m pretty sure that happens just about every time you convert something from a drawing into knitting. Here’s how it knit up:

Not bad for the first shot, right?

I already know I need to use a bigger needle - this doesn’t stretch nearly enough for my liking. I need to revisit the handlebars a bit, too. There’s a white stitch in there that just isn’t showing up as much as I’d like it to, and there are a couple spots that need fiddling with, but ultimately it’s pretty good! I’m planning to make the pattern (or just the chart) available once it’s finished, so watch this space.

I’m off to work on my sock and stalk the First Avenue site for Spoon tickets.

So I finished the sleeves for Chris’s sweater:

And now I have to do something scary:

I’m using Eunny Jang’s extremely well-written tutorial for my crocheted steek, it worked on my swatch, but it’s still scary to think about taking a pair of scissors to this big piece of knitting. If I fuck it up… well, it’s not going to be pretty - there’s a lot of emotional crap knit into this sweater (to put it mildly). My sanity may not *quite* be riding on my success here, but it might not be off the mark to guess that there could be tears and a fire if there is failure.

So it’s been just over a year since I last posted. There’s been a lot going on around here, between my shoulder getting screwed up and making it painful to knit for much of 2009, the depression that was exacerbated by the removal of my favorite creative activity, and life in general. The depression lifted in November and life is beautiful again - I’m so thankful for everything in my life. It really feels like I got a new chance at everything and it’s amazing.

But enough about my crap, I know you come here (or at least you used to) for the knitting content. My Ravelry page is mostly up-to-date with project information, if not pictures of all the projects, so you can look there if you’re curious what I made last year. This year I’m hoping to share my projects with you here as well as on Ravelry, starting with this one:

Berlin Muster socks (Ravelry link)

I loved knitting this pattern! It wasn’t a chart I could memorize or just work out from reading my work, but that wasn’t too much of a hardship. The pattern is only 60 stitches around, which would normally be far too small for my wide feet. I took the designer’s suggestion and added a couple stitches to each purl panel and knit all the way down past the heel before trying it on - the sock could have fit my foot and my hand! The lace pattern is extremely stretchy, so most people should have absolutely no problem with it as written. My only modifications were to cast on 68 stitches and to knit the ribbing a bit longer than the pattern specified. I then decreased the extra 8 stitches on the first row after the ribbing and continued as written. It’s great, although they were a tad snug in the instep when I put them on this morning. They’ve stretched a bit so it’s all good now!

The title of this post is not only in reference to the resurrection of the blog but also to the resurrection of a project. I’m going back to the project that screwed up my shoulder in the first place, but this time around I’m going to be more careful with it. It’s the Aran Sweater from Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Knitter’s Almanac (Ravelry link). I knit the entire body of the sweater in the month of January and the twisted stitch pattern caused some pretty nasty tendinitis in my right shoulder. It’s been in time-out for nearly a year and I’m finally feeling up to working on it again. The sleeves aren’t nearly as cable- and twisted stitch-heavy as the body, so I’m pretty confident I can knit them without destroying my shoulder again.

Did I mention that my husband’s a tall beast? Wow, what a project.

Here’s a close-up of the pattern.

I’m knitting pretty much according to the pattern, but I had to add a number of purl stitches to each panel. I have no idea how many, now, but it was a few inches’ worth. I’m so excited to finish this but the steeking is intimidating - I’ve only done that once and it was a Lopi sweater, which is a much different creature in my mind. I’ll probably take EZ’s suggestion and have a nice glass of wine before I cut, just to steady my nerves. Hopefully I’ll get to that this month!

I’ll make no promises, but I do plan to blog more frequently this year. Not that I can really beat last year’s inactivity…