Archive for January, 2011

Twenty-one days into the new year and I’ve already cast on four new projects, finished two, and plan to start a new one this weekend. Holy cow! I suppose living in the frozen tundra contributes to my desire to curl up in my chair with some yarn and go to town.

In the early hours of 2011 I cast on my first project of the year – a pair of cable-tastic socks! I do love them, but they’re taking me a really long time to knit. I have never had to rip back, tink, and purposely drop stitches to fix errors three rows down as much as I’ve had to with this project. It’s not the fault of the pattern! It’s extremely well written and beautifully charted. My head’s just not in it with these. I will be glad when I’m done, and it will be fun to wear them. The cable pattern is lovely.

Front and back of the sock. That’s a lot of cabling!

The second project was my amigurumi for the month of January. Here are my February Love Bunnies!

I adore these little guys. I put a little bit of rice in their bottoms so they would stand up nicely. I also sewed magnets under their noses so the would smooch.

Project number three was a beret commissioned by my mom. She picked out the yarn and the pattern. I used Vanna’s Glamour in Onyx – a yarn as sparkly and pretty as the gowns Vanna wears! My husband was amused that Vanna White is a spokeswoman for Lion Brand yarns. The pattern we chose was called “Charlotte’s Tam” and I purchased it through Ravelry.

Sometimes you pick a pattern first and then you choose the yarn to go with it. Sometimes you choose a yarn and then find a pattern to match. Or, sometimes you choose a yarn, then choose a pattern and smash them together without considering whether or not they are right for each other. That’s what I did with this one.

“Charlotte’s Tam” is a pretty beret with lots of small details and embellishments. Cables and twisted stitches are arranged to make a star with a small diamond near each tip. Unfortunately you can barely see them (and all the hard work that went into them) in my Glamour Girl beret.

Glamour is a marled yarn (two strands twisted around each other). Cables, especially small cables, and twisted stitches lose all their definition when you use marled yarn. And when you use dark colors you lose the three-dimensional effect of cables. So a black, marled yarn on a pattern with two-stitch cables and twisted stitches was not the best choice. On top of that, the pattern description called for a sport weight yarn, like Glamour. Unfortunately, after I bought the pattern I saw that it actually called for DK weight yarn – which is slightly thicker than Glamour. This made the beret a bit more lacy than it ought to have been.

However…I really love how this beret turned out. I think even though you can’t quite make out the intricacies of the pattern the overall effect works.

Much to my delight, the designer seems to have solved the problem so many beret patterns have of a too-loose brim. I-cord bind-off. The beret stays put on the back of the head!

Last night I also cast on a sweater  with some nice dark brown wool. It seems to be moving along quickly – which is good. I’d hate to knit a whole sweater and then miss the opportunity to wear it because it’s spring (the sweater has snowflakes on it – not very spring-like). And tonight I have plans to start hooded cowl for my husband.

All this when I have a poor scarf I started back in November sitting at only a quarter completed!