Wool and Spice

My head is full of projects these days. I’ve finished a couple things that have been sitting around for months (and years) so I’m “allowed” to start something new.

I’ve been looking through patterns and pulling yarn out of stash, making swatches for this and that. I’d show you a picture of my knitting area (the couch and coffee table) but it just looks like a jumble of magazines, books and tea cups all mixed in with single skeins of yarn and fiber to spin. Once something clicks, I’ll be able to clean it up, but for now I feel unsettled and flighty.

Today, I think this is what I’ve settled on as my next projects. Ask me tomorrow and it may be different. (Socks aren’t listed but there’s always a pair or two in the works.)

The Minimalist cardigan (Rav link). The pattern calls for a merino/alpaca blend and I just happen to have a similar yarn in stash (we luvs the stash). The gauge is supposed to be 5 st to the inch, but I like the fabric better at 5.5 stitches. It has a little more body to it, less open and floppy than at 5 spi. I’ll rework the pattern numbers and start the back. I can always change my mind.

Oh and I don’t like the version of Moss stitch in the pattern, over an odd number of stitches. Either I’m not doing it right, or it just looks funky. I swatched an even number of stitches and used Barbara Walker’s version of moss stitch; works better for me.

Patterns are meant only as suggestions, right?

These fingerless mitts. It’s been a while since I’ve done Fair Isle and after lace, it’s my favorite kind of knitting. I don’t do it more often because it requires concentration and usually I have a lace project that takes up that portion of my knitting brain.

But I have a good bit of fingering weight yarn so it’s fun to pull skeins out and play with color combinations, always a challenge for me.

Now I just have to remember the rule about which hand is dominant for making yarn pop. I haven’t been able to come up with a mnemonic to help me hold this information in my leaky sieve of a brain.

I’ve also started something for the Red Scarf Project, using the Palindrome pattern but with an 8-row repeat instead of 6. The trick with this pattern is that it’s completely reversible, the cables look the same front and back. It gets done in bits of time since I have until December to finish it.

What about lace you say? Well there’s this:

For some reason, I’m not feeling the love.  The yarn is beautiful and I’ve gotten into the pattern rhythm now so it’s going faster. But I had to cut some repeats in the center section because I thought I would die before I finished. That doesn’t usually happen. I’m determined to complete this because I think it will be lovely when done. One of these days, I’ll make it my primary project and it will fly.

~

Pics of the finished stuff soon.  I need to put in my first zipper and I’m procrastinating.

Tags: honeybee stole, Knitting, minimalist cardigan, palindrome scarf, snowflake fingerless mitts