Ruthless Knitting Archive

If I continue my current trend of only posting when I think I have something worth writing about, there will be a lot of long silences around here followed by finished objects that seem to have sprung fully-formed from my needles. This is silly. Thus, an update.

I have been busy. Last weekend, I came up with a design idea for a baby sweater to submit to Gryphon Perkins in response to her call for submissions. Over the weekend, I knit up a prototype in some stash yarn and sent it off to Gryphon. She accepted it, so now I will have some pattern writing and sample making to do. I’ll show pictures eventually when I’m allowed to.

Meanwhile, I have been diligently trying to finish up two projects, neither of which I’ve ever shown you pictures of. The first is the Tedium Bathmat (aka Absorba from Mason-Dixon Knitting). I have been working a little bit on the bathmat every day, and I’m starting to run out of yarn, which is good. I’m a little worried that it won’t be quite as big as the hideous bathmat that it is meant to replace. But it will be as big as it is, and that will be good enough. I’m not about to buy more yarn for this beast, even if I could (and I probably can’t, given that I began knitting it more than a year ago with yarn that seems to have no Internet presence whatsoever).

Here is where it stands now:

It is not the world’s most beautiful bathmat, but it is not supposed to be. What it is supposed to do is harmonize all of the non-harmonious colors in our teensy master bathroom: the beigy walls, the peachy floor tiles, and the blue and green and gray tiles in the shower. I think it will do the trick.

I have also begun and nearly finished a February Baby Sweater from Elizabeth Zimmerman’s Knitter’s Almanac. I’ve admired other people’s February sweaters for quite some time and have been wanting to make the pattern. One boring day last week, it occurred to me that I had a large skein of sock yarn in my stash that would be perfect for this sweater (and not so perfect for socks), so I retrieved it and cast on immediately. I flew through the knitting while it was interesting — yoke, sleeves, and rejoining the body — and then got a little bored when I had to do five inches of the body in the lace pattern before a final row of garter stitch. I’ve got four inches done, so you can expect a finished object soon.

Meanwhile, here’s a somewhat blurry and unimpressive picture of it on the needle:

The yarn I’m using is quite lovely — hand-dyed and, I suspect, hand-spun as well. But it seems to be difficult to photograph. I will have to try hard to get good pictures of the finished sweater. Given that it is supposed to snow today and also tomorrow (!?!!), this might require some patience.

That about covers the things I’ve been slogging through. Now on to the things I’ve been daydreaming about.

The design workshop that I joined a few weeks ago has been engaged in an exploration of the possibilities of linen stitch, and I came up with two designs that I’m excited about. One shall remain secret, just in case it works out as something I can submit for publication. The other, however, I will divulge: I’m thinking of knitting a little baby tank/tunic for summer with a linen stitch top (to simulate smocking) and a stockinette bottom. I have four leftover balls of yarn that are candidates for the project, two of Rowan Denim and two of Knit Picks Shine. I have two adorable twin nieces who are the intended recipients. I have a strategy for knitting these from the top down that I picked up from Barbara Walker. I’ll keep you posted, and if it works out, I’ll share the pattern here for free.

Finally (see, I had lots to write about!), I found out the other day about the Jimmy Beans Wool pattern contest. I am intrigued. All the patterns submitted for the contest have to be done in yarns sold by Jimmy Beans Wool, and it just so happens that they sell Nashua Creative Focus Worsted. I’m thinking of submitting Buster to the contest, mainly because I want the prizes. I need to buy the Knit Visualizer software first, though, so that I can make the charts in a speedy fashion. (Some exploration of the world of chart making the weekend before last convinced me that Knit Visualizer is definitely the way to go.) It may take me a little while to scrape together the funds, but that’s okay, because the contest is ongoing.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 11th, 2007 at 9:09 am and is filed under Design, Projects in Progress. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.