The Golden Iris

I finished this a few days ago, but haven't had a chance to get on and get Blogger to upload all my photos. Essential Stages of Hedgehogness: Flat: Attacking: Friendly: The stats: Pattern: Fiber Trends Huggable Hedgehogs Yarn: Ella Rae Classic, Lion Brand Fun Fur, and scraps Needles: 10 1/2 & 11 circular For all the time it took me to finish this, it was mostly delayed by my running out of fun fur. I know, what a horror. This, in my opinion, is one of the only appropriate uses of fun fur, and it came out well. It's a quick project, and comes out cute. The instructions are lengthy but comprehensive and easy to understand, like most Fiber Trends patterns. Now... what to name him? Do I keep him? Give him away? Make another in a similarly obnoxious color? ... or just go back to my lace? Shetland Triangle, at 10 pattern repeats. I've only used about one third of my yarn (thanks to my nifty new kitchen scale, I can figure these things out). Question is, how many ...

Serrano is now just like two tiny pair of pants. Hope you like it, Sarah! I'm making these on some new Crystal Palace bamboo circulars. I'm not very happy with the needles, mostly because of the join. While Crystal Palace has done a great thing with their rotating, non-kinking cord, the metal ferrules they use to join the cord to the needles have a very square corner right where the cord hits the metal. I'm afraid they're going to tear up my yarn, and it doesn't allow the yarn to flow easily onto the needle. Bummer. Sadly, I've had a lot of difficulty finding my favorite nylon needles in smaller sizes, so I'm resorting to buying these. I'm also working on my Shetland Triangle -- I've been through 5 sets of pattern repeats, which is technically half, but I have enough yarn to make it bigger than the pattern says, and 'half' is relative when each row increases the stitch count by four.... Anyway, it's making a slightly larger scrunch...

And to think I almost had myself convinced that blocking would cure yesterday's problem. I'm much happier with the way the new hem looks. Despite this being on #2 needles, I'm still convinced it's going to go fairly quickly. I have 6 skeins of sock yarn to make it -- that's only 3 pair of socks, and that's not such a bad way to think about it. Of course, taking into account school and other distractions, I probably won't get it done until spring. That's okay, although faced with grading 65 8-page papers or knitting, I'll bet you know which one I would choose.

See this? In theory, this is the beginning of a Serrano sleeve. I'm sure you can see the problems it's having as well as I can. Here's my dilemma: On the left, the hem is knit on smaller needles than the body, while on the right, the hem is knit on the same size needles. The one on same-size needles flips up annoyingly, but I'm worried the smaller-size hem won't block out as well in width as the larger-size hem. I have to rip half of this thing out one way or another. I'm currently leaning towards the smaller-size hems, because they look neater, but what do you think? (Bad knitter, going to knitting group with only one project and not the right needles....)

No, no birthday knitting. But that's okay. I made 2 cakes over the last couple of days instead so I could have a bunch of people over for my birthday yesterday. Here is the pretty one, just a box bundt cake: And closer: The other cake (Chocolate Eclair Cake, a real treat) was delicious but not worth photographing. And I got a lovely bouquet with zinnias, milkweed, and hot peppers! Fun! Maybe when I dig myself out of the giant, gaping hole that is school, I will find more time to be productive in my knitting.

With some wonderful hand-dyed yarn I purchased a while back, I decided to try out the Shetland Triangle from Wrap Style. Here is an image of a sort of swatch in progress. Of course it's really not a swatch, it's the beginning. Who cares! I'm going to block the living daylights out of it anyway. Lace totally agrees with my knitting style -- intricate in thought and execution, yet without backtracking in preparation. I have an opinion question: I will soon be knitting 2 lace scarves, one in a variegated and one in a solid yarn. Variegated yarns tend to give me trouble when choosing a pattern. I'm not sure whether to choose a small-scale pattern or a larger one. Any opinions? Here's an opinion of mine. While I love the efficiency of a swift and ball winder, I far more enjoy the aesthetics of a hand-wound center-pull ball of yarn. Compare below: For me, hand-wound balls tend to fall apart less, particularly when thrown into a bag for storage, and just make me...

Did your mom ever tell you, "stop making that face or it'll stay that way!"? ...yeah. Maybe somebody should have told me earlier. Fiber Trends hedgehog, fresh for the felting. And, um, you know, eating my head. A few days ago, I couldn't resist casting on a Serrano sleeve: Looks awfully fun, although the sheer craziness of knitting a sweater on #2 needles hasn't struck me yet. Trust me, though, soon I'll be saying, "what was I thinking?!?!" In the meantime, it's purty. Can't wait to have more dedicated knitting time!

When yarn comes in the mail! Here's my portion of the latest Knit Picks haul, including some lovely Gloss to make knitty's Serrano with. (The needles I picked up at my LYS, because my #2s were metal and only 16"... no fun.) I've wound one ball, and I might cast on for the sleeves soon. I still feel obligated to finish other projects, but my desire for sweaters cannot be stopped. I finished (finally) my socks for charity, and took those in yesterday when I bought my needles. I'm also chugging along on my Pomatomus socks. Daylight or no, I still can't get these colors to photograph properly. There's grape, violet, cobalt, teal, turquoise, berry, and blue, all in there, regardless of whether the camera can see it or not. I'm still enjoying the pattern, although the heel as written is kind of a pain in the butt. The back side of twisted ribbing is even less fun, with p1tbl. I think I should put down the knitting for a while and do a little grading. ...