The thing that's currently getting the most face time is my Sundara sock project:
The colorway is "Basil over Buttercup", a rich shaded yellow-green that I adore. I actually started a project with this yarn back in May, using a slip-stitch pattern to give the impression of snake scales. I loved the way the pattern looked but it was a major pain in the patootie because (1) there was an awful lot of stitch manipulation going on, which was hard because (2) I knit tight, so (3) the instep was working up way shorter than the sole so (4) I was trying to figure out how to fix it with short rows which (5) made it so darn hard to figure out that (6) I frogged them.
The current pattern is a lot more cooperative. It's Wendy Johnson's Diagonal Lace Socks, available free on her website or in her (marvelous) book Socks from the Toe Up. I rejiggered the pattern a little to go with my desired 58-stitch circumference,
and I'm almost ready for the heels but I'm holding off a little because I'm not sure if I want to add Wooly Nylon as reinforcement. The Sundara Sock yarn is 100% superwash merino, and I'm worried that I might wear out the heels if I don't reinforce a bit. But then I'll have to go buy the Wooly Nylon and I haven't had the time.
(I haven't given up on the slip stitch snake scale thing, by the way - I'm going to give it another try using a 2- or 2.25-mm sole needle and a 2.75- or 3-mm instep needle, and see if that gives me something workable.)
Then I have my Mini-Mochi Coriolis socks, which I have no picture of because I'm mad at them. The yarn is the stuff I won last fall, and the colors are really great, but the yarn not so much. This is not a criticism of Crystal Palace, the manufacturer - it's because the yarn is from the first-ever batch they made and there were some problems that only came to light after people'd been working with it awhile. The version they're making now has a tighter twist and is a little more stable.
My problem is that I made a small error in calculating where to start the gusset increases (Cat Bordhi's patterns require more math than some) and I'm ready for the heel but the sock is 1/2 inch too short still. If this were ordinary yarn I'd just pull it back and have a re-do, but the Mini-Mochi is a single ply and this first-batch stuff is quite lightly spun. Because of the direction I wind my yarn around my fingers, I'm already "un-spinning" it a bit and I've had breaks. NO WAY am I going to get away with frogging back three inches and re-knitting. So I'm trying to brainstorm another option. When these socks are back in my good graces, I'll take their picture and post it.
Thirdly, I have my Garter Rib Socks in Knitpicks Palette:
This was an experiment to see if I liked this yarn for socks, because if I do, I'll have cheap sock-knitting fun forever. The yarn runs a whopping $1.99 to $2.19 per ball (two needed per pair of socks) and oh my holy wow, I just clicked in there to give you the link and they've added a whole whack of new gorgeous colors. The yarn isn't particularly soft and it's 100% feltable wool so I'll have to hand-wash but at less than $4.50 for a pair of socks worth of yarn I'll take it. I swatched a bunch of stitch patterns in the Iris Heather yarn I'm using, and most of them failed to read well against the heathery yarn.
I ended up with classic Garter Rib a la Charlene Schurch and I like it a lot. I'm past the heel on both of these so it's home free.
Also, because I appear to be truly insane, I wound off the "Pink Granite" yarn from dyeing day
because I think I'll have time to knit those socks soon.
Then there's the shawls. I have two on the needles, one in the swatch stage, and about 15 in my head. Knitpicks is my friend here; they supply almost all of my shawl yarn. Here's the Swallowtail Shawl in Knitpicks Shimmer (a lovely smooth alpaca/silk blend in a colorway called "Turquoise Splendor"),
and the Icarus Shawl in the same yarn (colorway "Spice")
(Remember that lace doesn't look its best till after blocking; these are both going to be pretty, I promise!) The shawl in the swatching stage is Elizabeth Zimmermann's Stonington Shawl. It's a rework of a traditional Shetland shawl to permit it to be knit all in one piece. Actually it's more than a swatch I'm knitting; I'm making a mini shawl so I can learn all the techniques I'll need. Once I have it down I'll start the real shawl, either with Knitpicks Shadow (100% laceweight merino wool) in Jewels
or with my hand-dyed laceweight merino from last month's dyeing day - it looked like this:
but now it looks like this:
because I overdyed it. In either case, I have barely enough yarn for the project so I'm a little bit nervous. I think my plan is to take this shawl to South America as vacation knitting. (Dad and I are going to Chile and Argentina in November/December.)
Then there are the sweaters: I am involved with two at the moment. First (because it's really on the needles) is the Ivory Pinwheel Sweater,
based on Elann.com's free Lara Pinwheel Sweater with Crocheted Edges, but using totally different yarn: some of the 8.5 tons of Caron One Pound that I bought years ago. This project has been kind of hibernating for the past few months but I hauled it out the other day because Dad and I went in for our eye exams, and this was a project I was sure I could work on even when my eyes were dilated! It needs to be about one more inch across, then I can put the arm stitches on holders and crank on it.
The last sweater exists only as this swatch:
It's Knitpicks' Classic Lines Cardigan, which is knitted with two strands of lace yarn held together. I'm using their kettle-dyed Shadow yarn in "Soot". Then, every six rows you add in a third yarn to make the irregular stripes. I tried two different ones in the swatch:
the top half used Shimmer in "Lip Gloss" and the bottom half was kettle-dyed Shadow in "Begonia". I preferred the hotter pinks and stronger variegations of the Shimmer, so that's what I'm using. This will be my first steeked sweater (or steeked anything) so I practiced on the swatch. Here's my crocheted steek, cut open:
It wasn't all that scary, really (she says). The problem is that I desperately want to take this sweater - as a sweater, not as a project - on that trip this fall. Looks like I have my work cut out for me!
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