Another Finishing Flurry

 So, It's been a few weeks and I've been stitching a fair amount!

I'm almost sad to say that I haven't done any cross stitching of pokemon since the last post.  I fell into sock knitting and sweater knitting and boy do I have some horrendously lighted pictures to show for it.

My socks!  They are done!

I don't have a lot to say about them.  They're my typical sock: 64 stitches, eye of partridge heel, 14 everything.

 I did leave the first toe to graft till I was finished the second sock though, which was unusual.  I was waiting for a hair cut, and let me tell you, they need more hair salons in this part of the state.  Even if I had signed in online, the wait would have been horrendous.  boy.  I waited 2 hours!

Well, I didn't have my accessory pouch with me when I finished the first toe, so I put it on waste yarn and started the second cuff.  Then I just left it on the waste yarn till I finished the second toe and grafted both within a few minutes of each other.

After I finished those, I immediately dedicated myself to the sweater.  Last I mentioned it, I was halfway down the bottom rib with just the sleeves to do.

I bound off the bottom with a sewn tubular bind off.  This bind off is interesting because it's essentially grafting the purl stitches to the knit stitches. It creates a wonderfully elastic edge that is neat and professional. In a two by two rib like this, you either have to cable each repeat so it becomes a one by one rib and then graft, or you can do those steps all in the same round.

Normally I do the latter, but this time I did the former and it was a lot easier for me to get started since I remembered the steps a lot easier.  I graft things a lot, and it took me a few years of doing this bind off before I noticed what was actually happening to the yarn and to the stitches to make them curve into themselves.  So, if you're confused even if you're a knitter, it's a technique that is definitely more advanced that can be difficult to wrap your head around.

After the body comes the sleeves.  The pattern, Nightscape by Joji Locateli, is written to have top down sleeves that are attached to the armholes from the beginning of them.  That is, you pick up stitches around the arm hole, do some short rows to shape the shoulder, and then knit the arm down to the cuff and bind off.

 I actually haven't ever done that technique successfully.  It's just not really something I'm interested in?  I don't really like having all that weight on my needles.  I'm much happier knitting sleeves in pieces and sewing the pieces together.  I also had more than a little trouble with getting the right stitch count and pick up rate.  It might be something that I explore later, but like with most things in knitting, there's more than a few ways to end up with the same exact result.  Bottom up is my preference, so I frogged my first attempt and casted on:

Again, I did a tubular cast on.  There are a few ways to do a tubular cast on, but my favorite is the Italian Tubular cast on.  It's a long-tail cast on, and to make it two by two, you simply cable in the first row.  The stitch markers coming off the right side there are my increase markers.  I like to mark my increases so I can keep track of my rows.  And there are three balls, so I can alternate every row, which actually wasn't even an option for the top down version, due to the short rows in the shoulder.

And eventually I had one sleeve.  I actually waited to attach the sleeves until I finished both.  Just a little while after this picture was taken, I was able to block the sweater and take this one:

See?  horrendous lighting.  I'm afraid it won't get better until it's all dry tomorrow and I can get a better one.  You heard that right! I finished this lovely sweater this morning!

So for now I'm actually down to two active WIPs: Zac's Christmas sweater (cough, that likely won't be finished for this Christmas either) and my tiffany lamp shawl.

And yeah, I could go on and work on either one of those, but instead I've actually casted on a new sweater for Hazel.  There's some pretty heavy things coming up in her life that requires a sweater from mom.  These are things that will affect the whole family, and I don't want to go into too many details, but suffice to say, it's going to be a difficult road for her, and handknit sweaters are like big wooly hugs.

So, almost as good as real hugs.

That's all that's going on for now!  I am hoping to get back into cross stitch next month, but I'm just kind of going with the flow.