unintended paws

 You know that thing when you don't do a thing for awhile and it grows in your mind and gets overwhelming and you forget where to even start when you get back to it?

Blogging here has kind of become that.  Which is a shame, because like usual, I have things to talk about!

The cat spin/knit for one, life news, and a finished item!

Finished item first, naturally!

 

These are my typical 64 stitch sock with the eye of partridge heel.  I knit them in about 3 weeks, which isn't bad!  They are perfectly matched, from the cast on to the toe, so that's neat.  I used felici yarn from knit picks in the 'vampire vibes' colorway. I originally planned these to go to Hazel, but I gave her a few pairs of hand-me-down socks in the last few weeks and decided to keep them for myself.

[Hand-me-down, as in I knit socks for myself and they turned out not to fit me that great?  I have so many socks now that giving some lightly worn socks (and less worn than a typical pair since they don't fit that great) doesn't faze me that much.]

Anyway, new socks!

I suppose I can segue into life news.  I talked a few months ago now about a big event happening to Hazel that she needed a new sweater for.  Well, she definitely doesn't need a new sweater for it, but if I love you, I'm knitting for you, and she needs extra love right now.

Back in the summer she was diagnosed with severe scoliosis.  After an x-ray and a check up at Shriner's in Sacramento, it was plainly clear that she will need back surgery.

There were a few appointments to figure out some other issues in between then and now, but now we have a surgery date and it's right around Christmas.  So, not necessarily ideal timing, but bright side, everyone has time off then, so we don't have to do as much juggling. We won't have to take Toby to school while Hazel is in hospital an hour and a half away. And Hazel will have three whole weeks that she can spend recovering and not miss too much school.  My mother-in-law who was always planning on coming to help with everything has time off work then (though she can work anywhere) and Zac also will have the ability to take a few days off too, hopefully.

 So, it's a lot.  We've been processing everything over the last few months and mentally preparing for all of this.  It sort of just all came together last week in a phone call, and I'm looking forward to getting it all in back of us.  pun, as ever, intended.

So, meanwhile, I've been working on the cat floof.  I came up with a pun somewhere back there, too.  it's not cat/polwarth, it's cat/paw-warth.  You're welcome.

I got through a few bobbins and did some pattern planning and narrowed it down to a pattern I've knit before, which I think will set off the yarn perfectly.  It's Grace, by Jane Richmond.  This is a fingering weight top-down raglan sweater with lace mesh in the front and back panels before the sleeve separation.  It's then stockinette stitch down the body.  I'm modifying it in a few ways, after talking with the recipient.

For one, it'll be cropped.  It's what she wants.  I'm also shortening the sleeves to 3/4, again, it's what she wants. Another modification will be to do garter stitching along the bottom edge rather than ribbing.  In the pattern, the button bands and neckband are garter stitch, which I really like the look of, and thought that the bottom of the sweater shouldn't pull in at all, but lay flat.

And it was a good thing that we started talking about the pattern so early, because the spinning ended up getting done real quick.  I'm almost amazed at how quickly.  It also turned out exactly as I imagined it would:

 

The bottom picture is all three skeins.  Originally I planned on 5, just in case, but due to the cropping of the sleeves and body, I'm only doing three.  This is more than 300 grams, but I didn't weigh anything after spinning and plying.  It's enough.  That's the important bit.

Also the bottom skein is wet here, that's why there's a color difference.

Winding the yarn was no problem, then I swatched and got going!

Here's the beginning. You can see the back and front panels are mesh and the sleeves are plain stockinette.

Here's a close up of the stockinette.  It's so fuzzy!  Some people were comparing it to angora, which isn't too far off.

And here you can see why I picked a lacey pattern!  I just love when fuzzy, highly haloed yarns get knit into lace.  I love how the fibers fill in the holes a little bit.  It's gorgeous.  I'm actually really proud of this spin and knit.  I'm experienced enough now, as a spinner and knitter, to have an accurate picture in my mind of what it'll look like and how it will behave, despite only knitting with the stuff a few years ago and never spinning with it.  I just knew.  I just knew.

And I'm happy that I could predict this, because, well, it could have easily gone the other way.

And here's the sweater as it sits now.  It's about 2 inches down the body.  I am going to do a bit of waist and hip shaping, but it's straight knitting from here on out.  I did cast on a sock the night that I finished the socks from before, but I didn't get very far on them, just a bit past the ribbing of the cuff.  Well, now I'm able to knit on this rather mindlessly so it'll go quick.

There's a bit of a potential snafu with the gauge.  sweater knitting is so much like hitting a moving target.  Despite the gauge swatch, there's every possibility that the fabric won't change like I think it will when it hits water.  Added in is the struggle to get it to fit a body that is physically distant and you can see some of the anxiety I'm feeling.  I'm planning on doing a quick block after I finish the body, to get a better idea of what's happening.

See, gauge swatches tell you how a very small bit of the fabric will behave after blocking.  It informs the knitter/crocheter of the drape of the fabric, and the loft of the halo.  A sweater is a larger bit of fabric, and it has the weight of all the rest of the fabric pulling it, so it behaves differently than a swatch.

 Not to mention, the ability of knitted fabric to stretch, moreso with thinner yarns, and moreso with a larger piece of fabric.

 If a swatch is 6" wide, it can stretch a certain percentage.  It can stretch the same percentage on the size of a sweater, but it's the same percentage of a much larger piece of fabric.

 And this is handspun, so there are irregularities.

It's a lot.  It's overwhelming in a few ways.

Anyway, I hope to chat again soon!  Hopefully sooner than 3 weeks, and hopefully I'll have a finished sweater next time!

I do have an idea for a quick project I want to do.  But we'll see if I get to it.  I kind of want to drop all of my WIPs, whip out this -thing- just to get a break from the pressure if you know what I mean.

That's about it.

Cheers! 

ETA:  HAPPY ONE YEAR BLOGAVERSARY!