Archives for June 2004

What’s so close? Ingeborg is.

I’ve finished the second sleeve. I’ve finished all the lace fiddly bits.

However, rather than putting her together last night, I knitted on other things. Why?

One reason is that I don’t have the stinking buttons yet. I ordered them from an online vendor on June 8 and have heard nothing from them, nor has my credit card been charge. I sent off an inquiry last night. I suppose they might have shut the shop for vacation, or the buttons are backordered, but in either case a notice on the website or automated email might be a nice thing.

Because in the back of my head I know Ingeborg won’t really be complete until she has her buttons, I don’t feel compelled to put her together. Poor Ingeborg!

Lizzie

I worked a bit more on Lizzie. Love the yarn and love the colorway!

Reader Questions About Moi

From yesterday’s comments:

Wendy, have you always (well, in the last 18 months since I’ve ‘known’ you) been this svelte? Maybe its just that previous pictures of you were usually in sweaters with lots of ease.

A little of both.

In the past I’ve tended to make oversized sweaters, or sweaters with a boxy shape. But I’ve also lost some weight.

And another one:

Any exercise in your daily or are you just one of the lucky ones?

I exercise as little as I can get away with. 🙂

I tell people I work out with free weights three times a week. I do own free weights and I do heft them, but . . . uh . . . not three times a week. I used to. I ought to. I hang my head in shame. But I get a lot of walking in every day. I’ve worn my pedometer on a weekday a couple of times to see how much walking I actually do in a day. Around five miles, believe it or not. Walking from the car to the train, walking from the train to the office, walking around the office. I work in a huge building, and every place I need to go seems always to be at the other end of the building four floors away. And I always take the stairs.

Oh, and the countdown since my last haircut underneath my photo? Just for grins. I’m letting my hair grow out a bit. There are good things about curly hair — it doesn’t look too horrendous while growing out!

A Preview of Coming Attractions!

Koigu. That’s all I’m gonna say right now.

Lucy

. . . is peeved that today’s entry is not all about her.

Lizzie!

Isn’t she gorgeous?

Well, you can’t tell much about the pattern yet, but she will be a cropped raglan pullover with a crew neck, reverse stockinette stitch, and one big-ass cable running up the center front. The start of the back is pictured, and I decided to not do a cable on the back.

Lizzie is knitted from Knit Happens’ own Laughing Lizard “Big Lizard” hand-dyed yarn. This design is knitted on size 11 needles at 2.5 st/inch. So it’s a fast knit and I believe will take only three skeins of Big Lizard, which is about 200 yards/skein.

I think the reverse stockinette stitch shows up the beautiful colors beautifully.

Elastico Tank

Did a bit of knitting on this on my commute yesterday.

A question about the tank from Friday’s comments:

Do you know how much it would cost to knit that tank in a size small? . . . and does it have any difficult shaping?

The pattern has two sizes — 76cm and 84cm (that translated into 31 and 33 inches!) which take a total of 5/6 skeins of Elastico respectively. One skein is the contrast color.

Difficult shaping? The top and straps are a little tricky. Made more so by the extreme brevity of the instructions, which I believe have been translated from another language.

Bottom line is that I wouldn’t recommend it for a beginner.

And about the sizing . . .

Sounds pretty skimpy, doesn’t it? I’m making the larger size. I measured the width of the work I’ve completed thus far and smooshed together in the rib it’s 11 inches!!!! However, it easily stretches out to 18 inches and beyond. The yarn is quite stretchy and the rib pattern is quite stretchy, so I have no worries about the fit. I’m 28″ in the waist and 37″ in the boobage, so I think it’ll fit just fine.

Wendyknits Designs

A number of you have asked when my designs will be available. They’ll be ready to go as soon as all the testknitters are done and I’ve made any needed alternations to the patterns. I don’t want to release any pattern until it’s thoroughly tested, you understand. My testknitters are all volunteers with other demands on their time, so I don’t expect them to drop everything and do nothing but knit my designs.

So . . . soon.

Speaking of such . . . here’s the photo of Lucky being worn.

In asnwer to a comments question, I experienced no stretching of the Jaeger Silk. It was great to knit!

Critter Knitters Update

Check out the Blankets Received page to see the latest additions! Wow! And we have a couple more prizes on the Prize page as well.

Lucy

. . . is working on her tan.

Nice weekend here, and lovely weather yesterday for the first day of summer.

Lucy knows that the trick to being comfy is to stay hydrated.

Ingeborg

I got most of the second Ingeborg sleeve done.

A question in the comments about how I did the shoulders on the body of Ingeborg.

On the last round of knitting, I cast off all the steek stitches, including four stitches at each side for the armhole steeks. I put the live stitches for the shoulders on holders, then machine stitched all steeks. Then I did a three-needle bind-off for the shoulders.

I did the shoulders according to the pattern, with the stripes of solid color at the tops.

Luanne News

Two test knitters have completed Luanne. Here’s Lisa’s Luanne.

This is knitted in Elsebeth Lavold’s Cotton Patine.

And Donna posted a photo of her Luanne on her blog yesterday.

And this one is knitted in Heirloom 8 ply cotton.

They both look fabulous, I think! There’s one more size still being test-knitted, then all bases will be covered.

Stay tuned for something new tomorrow . . .

Lucky

And I finished the Lucky tank!

It looks much better being worn. I’ll try to get a photo of it being modeled soon.

As Martha Stewart would say.

What’s a good thing?

When it’s a million degrees outside with two million per cent humidity, knitting little dainty strips of lace on the train is a good thing.

(Another good thing, according to Martha Stewart, is Valrhona chocolate. Trust me, she is not wrong about this. Brownies with Valrhona baking chocolate? A very good thing indeed.)

In the Ingeborg Knit-along group, a number of people initially said they were planning on leaving off the lace edging, as they thought it was too girly.

Now I’m not into girly stuff really, but I think the lace edging makes the sweater. Particularly in this colorway. The touch of white really really brightens up the sweater. And it’s not a particularly frilly lace — just neat little points. The instructions tell you to sew it in with just 3/8″ showing. Mine has just a smidgen more showing I think, as that didn’t seem quite enough.

There was a request to see the wrong side. Here it is.

I inserted the lace by pinning it at the center back, then pinning the ends at each side of the front, then carefully pinning in the rest, stretching the lace slightly as I did. You are directed to knit the lace so that it fits with just a little stretching, so it does take a little bit of fiddling to get just the right amount of stretch. But nothing too arduous.

Then I sewed the top edge of the lace to the inside of the hem. Then I carefully steam-pressed the lace and hem. I did not press the lace at all before inserting, as I think you get a better fit if you steam it after everything is secure.

I considered carefully sewing the bottom edge of the band to the lace as well, as the lace is attached only at the top of the lace to the inside of the hem (so it can be wiggled back and forth), but I really don’t think it needs it. After pressing, everything lies down obediently and looks good, so I’ll leave it alone.

I’m Sneaky

Yes, I slipped another project over in the ol’ sidebar. It’s just barely a project at this point, but I cast on for it a little while back so I’d have something mindless to knit on when I needed it.

It’s the tank in Lana Grossa Elastico, yarn and pattern from Knit Happens. Kristine blogged about it last month, here.

In answer to some comments questions . . .

The Luanne tank is still being test knitted.

And no, I don’t have anything particular in mind for my Montana yarn. Yet.

Lucy sez:

Have a good weekend!

Back to work. Back to normal.

Going back to work yesterday after being away for 5 days was tough. It wasn’t until I got to the security checkpoint at the office that I realized I wasn’t wearing my ID. First time I’ve ever forgotten it. Let me outta the office for a few days and I completely forget how to get ready for work.

At least I caught up on some blog reading yesterday morning in the wee hours (that insomnia thing) — I hadn’t really read any since last Thursday. So I feel like I’ve caught up a bit with the knitblog world.

And it looks like several of you have the bloggy blahs. Me too. I am finding myself totally uninteresting these days. Zzzzzzzzzzzzz . . . huh? What? Oh, sorry, I dozed off whilst writing this.

So I’m just chugging along on my projects and it doesn’t make for very exciting blogging.

And the weather doesn’t help. We got bitch-slapped with humidity earlier in the week and for the next couple of days it’s supposed to be unbearably hot. At least my sinus infection-thingie is just about gone now.

Lucy’s chilling in the a/c, though.

Doesn’t she look as cool as a little sealpoint cucumber?

On the Edge

And I do feel as though I’m teetering on the edge of some very cool projects. So things will liven up soon.

The Lucky tank will be done this week, and I’ve got a new very cool design I’ll be starting to knit after that.

And poor Ingeborg. I’m heartily sick of her, but she’ll be done at some point in the near future too. I knitted on the longest piece of lace on the train yesterday, so that’s done. It’s really quite pretty.

And I sewed the edging around the hem of Ingeborg’s body. And I’m quite happy with how it looks.

I still have a sleeve that I’ve not cast on for yet, but as soon as I get started on it, I can get the sleeve done in a week or so, knitting on it part time.

But first I’ll knit the rest of the lace edging.

I think I’ve hit on why I knit so fast. To try to avoid getting sick of what I’m knitting!