Sweater Knitting

I cannot begin to describe to you how great it feels to have a sweater on the needles again, especially a norwegian one. There is just something special about casting on the three hundred plus stitches and just going for it, that makes me very excited.

The good thing about the pattern that I am doing at the moment is that, for the bulk of the body, it is just plain stockinette stitch. Thousands upon thousands of plain knitting all in black. Now, I know that the thought of this is probably so unappealing to a lot of you, but with university back, and me studying at odd hours, it is nice to be able to pick something up, knit a couple of rows, and not have to worry about where I am in the pattern. Essentially, it would mean that I would get a whole lot less sweater knitting done, which is vitally important at this time of the year.

Now for a couple of pictures -



Close up of the border pattern at the bottom

   The pattern down the bottom was quite simple, except for the one row when there were three colours in play. I'm very much a prescriber to the traditional fair isle rule of only ever using two colours in a row, and just now it dawned on me that I could have easily substituted the white stitches with the light blue, cutting down the colours to two, but what the heck. It's done now.

I find this photo to be a little bit more true to the colours, and I like how the endless chug of black is really putting a big emphasis on the border pattern, which i think is absolutely great in it's simplicity.

Also, as you can see, I do enjoy knitting at my computer. There is nothing like reading your favourite knitting blogs whilst indulging in the craft itself. I've been reading through the archives of Jared Flood's blog at Brooklyn Tweed. I so want someone to go over there and have a look at the patterns and find something that they want me to make them, because I have been itching for an excuse to buy some of them, if not just go a little wild and get them all. I genuinely love everything that he's done, again it's great in the simplicity of the look. Anyway, I've got dance practice tomorrow, which is always a lot of fun, and a good workout, so I should probably start heading to bed, but not before I get a little bit more done on Osterdalen.

x peace folks

Osterdalen

So, I've done a complete reversal in my thinking process, thanks mostly to my discovering something last night which I thought had been well and truly lost.

About 3 years ago or so, I had cast on a project for a little baby jumper, but after I had got up to the armholes, the pattern book seemingly just disappeared. Needless to say, I was quite distressed, and the the sweater was then frogged, and kind of forgotten about until yesterday, when lo and behold! I found the pattern.

It's Osterdalen, by Dale of Norway, and it is definitely something that I am looking forward to knitting up. I'm really intrigued by the bands of colour at all the edges, while I'm also looking forward to the endless chugging of knitting for the bulk of the body.

And so, with the opening of the new Spotlight over at Wetherill Park, and all of their stuff on special for the next few days, I decided that, what the heck, I might as well get into the project with a bit of gusto. Because, let's face it, I've been really good. I have diminished the yarn stash considerably, done a hundred little projects here and there, and so I think that I am ready for another sweater.

Needless to say, I got the wrong sized needles for the body, but not for the facing, so I've started that. But there isn't a whole lot that is photoworthy today, so I will add a couple of extra ones in the next post.

x peace

back to the uni life

And it's kind of pooped me out. I think that after 3 and a half months of holidays or whatever it was, I just wasn't ready for so much new information to enter my brain in one day. But it is nice to get back into the swing of things.

Either way, that hasn't stopped my knitting altogether, although I definitely can't do as much as i could, with 6 hours of classes today, but I can't really complain, it will give my poor hands a bit of a rest.
I have gotten a fairly good percentage of the scarf done, which means that I will have used up another 2 balls of stash yarn (just so I can go out and buy a bit more, but we'll get back to that a bit later) and I can start another little stash using project.

Here is pic of said scarf:



And I have even written in my planner that I am going to finish that scarf tomorrow. Which will be kind of nice. While I am happy with the design, I think if I were to make it again I would make several changes, especially because I was kind of lucky when I winged(wung?) the pattern, and came up with a cool cably design. And it turned out nice, it could just be...better. But for my first self designed item, I am rather happy with it.

Apart from scarf knitting, this has been my life for the past week or so too:

Yes. Glorious granny squares.

Now, I'm not really all that keen on ALL OF THOSE ENDS, but to be honest, my stash hasn't decreased this much in, like, ever. My hoards of wool is probably minute in comparison to others, but eh. I feel as though I should diminish the wool that I've got before I buy any more. And boy oh boy, do I have some plans for some more wool. But I will come to that in the next post.

Peace for now folks.

x

GLORIOUS JUICE!

Before I forget, you'll never guess what came in the mail a couple of days ago!

A WHOLE CASE OF SPRING VALLEY BANANA AND BERRY NECTAR!

I got the case through a thing with a website called Soup, which is website where you get to try stuff, and then tell people what you thought about it. You should all go and check it out.

Anyway, the juice itself is heavenly. First of all, it smells really good, which can sometimes be a bit of a let down, because so often is the case that the flavour doesn't stand up to the plate, but not with this juice. Or nectar, to be precise.

So yeah, I now have 24 of these babies to pass around and see what people think of them, so I think that I am going to have a little bit of a juice party or lunch or something like that, which should be pretty cool. And hopefully it will bring a little bit of Spring into our days, because it seems as though we are headed into Autumn a couple of weeks early.

I'm not really complaining about the weather though, after the harsh 40 degree days,  cooler, wetter weather is just what the doctor ordered, but people just seem to forget that so easily. I just prefer it cooler than most. Although some sun for a picnic wouldn't go astray...

xpeace

A cool few days, with plenty of pictures

So I have been pretty busy for the last couple of days, although to be honest it is kind of difficult to remember exactly what it is I've done, but I do have a couple of photos to help me remember.

I've decided that I am going to start designing a lot of the stuff I knit, and then I'll probably put the patterns up on here, I'll make a cool little page for them. Initially, I had the little dilemma of deciding whether or not I was actually designing anything new, or just putting a little spin on something that I had seen before, which is why I'm working on trying really hard to make all the knitwear that I am going to design original.

And the good news is that I am already a quarter of the way through the cabled scarf that I just kind of come up with on the fly.

I'm still not 100 percent sure if that pattern is going to be a successful one, but I am pretty happy with it as a first design. Plus it just means that I can use up another 2 skeins of off-white 8 ply that are languishing around, in order to make room for some more yarnage. Which is always good, I don't care what anybody tells you. Especially when there is a Starmore sweater in the near future.
Just for a little bit of detail, its got seed/moss stich as the border, and it is a scarf of wide proportions. In fact, I probably would cut the amount of side stitches in half, but I want to try something a bit crazy with these stitches once I've finished, now that I have them.

And I went to a yarn store today in the city called Morris and Sons, and it was pretty cool. I got these -

They are quite quaint, really. A tiny little pair of circs, which will make beanie and sock making a whole lot easier.
I'm kind of dismayed by the lack of yarn stores in Sydney as a whole. It means that you are pretty much stuck with 8 ply acrylic for the rest of your life, unless you order stuff through the internet with credit cards and stuff like that. Plus it is a really good place to meet girls, unsurprisingly. I always love that the female to male ratio is always pretty high, but the thing I hate is that a lot of them assume that a guy into knitting is gay. Eh. Always with the good and the bad.

xpeace for now folks

Still Alive

Just thought that I should post a little something, just so that everybody knows that I haven't yet abandoned my blog, I've just been keeping myself a whole lot busier than normal.

In the past week alone, I've finished a mohair cardigan that I had been working on for a little while, then I started and finished a white beanie, started another one because I really liked that pattern so much, and today I started and have almost finished a pair of socks in a lovely blue and green coloured wool.

So I have most definitely been keeping myself busy.

Anyway, it has been a pretty good week, I hung out with Adam and we just kind of bummed around for a while, which is always good, and then on Friday night I hung out with Andrea and Stef and a few other people for a little bit, I met up with them at a sushi train in Cabra.

I've also been thinking about trying to commercialise my knitting a bit more these days. I know that I can knit up a decent pair of socks, a beanie, some mittens or a pair of gloves in a couple of days, I just wonder how little people would actually pay for that type of stuff. I don't really know, but it would be cool to just knit a whole lot of stuff and then at the middle of the year just get a stall somewhere and sell some of my stuff.
I just would never EVER sell any sweaters. They just seem to be so personal and they normally take me forever to knit, and I don't know whether or not i could bring myself to knit something as involved as a sweater or a big piece of work like that which I didn't personally like to begin with.

And just a little side note. One of the main reasons that I am making so many little knick-knacky things at the moment is because I would very much like to start a fair isle sweater from Alice Starmore's Book of Fair Isle Knitting (I mean, who wouldn't?), but I have kind of been banned from getting any more wool until I can deplete my stash a little bit. But I suppose the good thing is that I can buy the wool up slowly and get the right stuff for the job for this one, because I want it to be a really special sweater.

Anyway, I think that that should do it for now, I will take some pictures of the stuff that I have been working on in the past few weeks and put them up in the next post.

xpeace