Saturday, April 21, 2007

So Much Progress, So Few Posts (Oops!)

One finished Embossed Leaves sock:
I'm very pleased with this pattern. It's fun and it's going quickly. I also think I picked a great yarn.

Progress has also ocurred on the Diamond-Seed Baby Jacket, as have technical difficulties.
See how the sleeves seem a lot wider than the armscyes? Yeah. I have reasons (who shall remain nameless) to believe they aren't going to fit all that well. I was very happy with this pattern until assembly started. I am however, still very happy with the yarn, Dale of Norway Baby Ull. It's soft and has a slight sheen. Now that the sweater is blocked it has a lovely drape. The yarn is made for babies, but the palette is not all pastel, so I'll consider it for future work for myself.

I've also been making stitch markers:
These are made with split rings,

and these are made with jump rings I clumsily soldered shut then filed smooth. Functional, but not good enough to share with others.

Can you believe neither Hobby Lobby nor Michael's had appropriately-sized split rings? I didn't want to drive all over the metro looking for a bead shop*, so I just ordered some from Fire Mountain (along with more beads, hee!) But still...

*At B&N Wednesday night Liesl filled me in on some local spots to check out, so in the future I'm better armed. Yellow Pages, why do you fail me?

And the big project I've been working on has no pictures. I keep a spreadsheet of potential projects and some pictures of them on my PDA. Lately they've been neglected, and I wanted to improve the quality of the pictures (something happened when they were uploaded; I had to figure it out and fix it.) This has taken a lot of time, but I'm nearly done. I need to move the computer from the dining room table back to my desk to use the scanner to get some photos I don't have and that is just too much work. It's all about getting organized and immersing myself in my hobby again. As much as I love it and it's omni-present in my life, it does take a little bit of watering and pruning which I have neglected as of late.

Now for the fun part --
I've decided that I am going to alternate making a baby sweater with a sweater for myself. So now that I'm nearly done with the above baby sweater I need to pick a sweater for myself. I can't decide between these two:

This is from Vogue Knitting, and I bought the yarn from Elann summer of 2004. It has tenure.


And this is some Old School Cotton-Ease in pink for this sweater.
I bought this yarn summer of 2005.

Both will make nice summer sweaters for work. Both are made from cotton, so hand stress will be even. The Scoop du Jour has more mindless bits and I enjoyed the last pattern I used from Bonne Marie. I just can't decide. What do you think?

7 comments:

Unknown said...

I love the lace one. Gorgeous. Looks like you are all ready to start on it. Maybe I should pull out my lace summer sweater. Just needs the body finished and sleeves. Nah, too much new stuff to cast on for.

Gwen said...

I went on my first ever yarn crawl today and learned the true meaning of friendship. I wish you had been there. :-)

Gwen

Anonymous said...

Can you ease the sleeves into the armholes?

Anonymous said...

I'm voting for the Scoop du Jour because I've been wanting to make it myself. Either would be great, though.

JRS said...

You still have another lace sock to make, right? Rather than having two lace projects OTN at the same time, I vote SDJ. Because of that, and because it's one of the cutest cardigan patterns I've seen in a long time, I say go with it first...

Anonymous said...

I voted for SDJ, too because it really seems to be your style - I can see you wearing it more...very cool pattern.

As for the baby sweater, no offense, but it's good to see you having trouble - it makes you more human, rather than the goddess we deem you to be. ;-) Good luck and keep us posted!

Teri said...

Would it be bad for the baby sweater to have puffy sleeves? That would be cute.

Also, that lace pattern...if I'm not mistaken I have that in my WIP collection. The pattern has a mistake in it if I recall correctly. I'll review it this weekend if I get a chance. I'm pretty sure it was a pretty easy fix though.