sweaters galore!

 Hey there!

I got a spare Q from the Q and A pile, and I thought I'd answer it today!  I do have quite a few crafty bits to get to, but first:

Rachel asked, How do you choose what patterns you want to knit?

That's an interesting question!  And relevant as I've just cast on for that sweater I was imaginary knitting last week.

For that sweater, I went to ravelry and I put in my parameters in the search boxes.  (ravelry has its faults, but a very thorough database is not one of them).  I described a slightly cropped short sleeve tee, fingering weight and stripey.  I then searched the pattern pages till I found a few that caught my eye.  I brought up a few of them in new tabs.  Then I looked at each in turn, further narrowing my search and I was left with two options:

Vasa is a boat neck slightly cropped striped tee with wide shoulders rather than sleeves.  It was pretty much exactly what I had in mind from last week. But I was concerned with the wide shoulders as sleeve caps.  I have bigger arms than most people my size, and I don't know that the style would be flattering.

and Jumper 49 is a more structured striped tee with a crew neck and set-in short sleeves. It's inspired by a vintage sweater pattern from 1949.  But, it's in French. Now, I dabble in languages and French is one of them, but knitting patterns can be tricky even in English.

I ended up going with Jumper 49, as it seems to fit my style a bit better, but my gauge was much tighter than the original pattern.  I didn't feel comfortable going up in needle sizes trying to match it, because I liked the drape of the fabric I was getting with my needle size.  I think that the original pattern used slightly heavier yarn.  I tried to just do some proportion math, but a few rounds into the bottom ribbing, I changed tack because it was going to be too small.

I ended up writing my own pattern using the Jumper 49 as a starting point.  I widened the waist to keep it from riding up on me, giving myself 6 extra inches. I'm planning on doing the sleeves separately and seaming them in.  Just my preference.

And so far I'm a few inches into the bottom ribbing (out of 4!)

I don't know if you noticed, but I casted on the full number of front and back stitches and am working it flat till I finish the ribbing.  It is not fun at all to magic loop ribbing of sweaters. At least, this one isn't.

For other patterns that aren't specifically sweaters, I get a lot of inspiration from podcasts I watch on youtube, from pattern searches on ravelry, and from the ravelry thread I follow in LSG. We're a bunch of filthy enablers. ;)

Moving on. Seamless transition.

I finished Toby's fox sweater!

I don't usually have a lot to say about projects once they're done.  This was a massive success and he has barely taken it off since I blocked it. The neckline turned out a bit wider than I thought it would, but it fits him nicely and the foxes blocked out really smoothly.

He did put this on backward for the photo, there's a jog in the white rick rack.  oops.

I've been working on Hazel's sweater too.  Hers is the Campside Cardigan.  Though I'm only done the first sleeve so far.

Of course I don't have a picture of that, but here I only had a few more decreases to go, a few more inches, the rib and bind off.  Currently I haven't put the second sleeve on needles, but I will do so today.

Let's see.  Last time I was bragging about my new spindle.  Well, I've finished the sample Finn that I was working on that came with it:

Here you can see the shoe box I saved to store fun crafty things in.  I have one ply on my turk and one on the Auryn.  I took those singles and turned them into a plying ball.  That is, I wound a ball using both strands.  This makes it easier to deal with and ply.

and look! I was really close to matching!  It's silly to expect several plies to line up perfectly.

I ended up plying on my wheel, cause it's much faster and enjoyable than using a drop spindle to ply in my opinion.

And here's the finished skein! It's 33 grams and 144 yards, which is about fingering yarn! It's really nice, and I am looking forward to playing with Finn in the future!

 Even though I have quite a few spinning things going on, they're all mostly white.  I kind of think I want to start some color with my Auryn. I'll think about it.  It's kind of starting to get a little overwhelming the number of spinning projects I have.

Speaking of, I am still plugging away at the Christmas sparkle spin.  The one that's on my wheel, my other turk, and a third single finished on a third spindle.  The kids have been on fall break, and the turk was in the car, so it hasn't gotten any love. I did spin for awhile on my wheel and am making progress, but no photo.  Sorry, it's white also. booring.

And finally, I did start a little project for a friend of mine.  Out of nowhere, she's decided to send people some of a cormo fleece she has, and I wanted to return the favor so I'm making her a hexie bag!

I got a charm pack in christmas themed just a few weeks ago for another hexie bag, I just wasn't sure the recipient at the time.

I did the embroidery:

I ended up adding some colonial knots around the christmas oranges, to give it some sparkle. and so far I've cut the hexies and started basting around the papers:

I feel like that's a lot going on.  I have two sweaters, the hexie bag and assorted spinning. (not to mention my August socks which I haven't worked on since all my other knitting was vanilla)  But. Something came in the mail yesterday.

Something huge.

And I don't want to talk about it yet, not until I have organized a few more tools and prep, but it's pretty exciting stuff.

I'm looking forward to where my crafting will take me in the next few months, that's for sure.

Hope to see you then!