Things I'm Knitting

or... hi, I have no attention span...
or... it's time to procrastinate on on finals...




Clockwise from top left:

Sweater I'm making up in bright green Cascade Sierra
Fitted Tank by Blue Sky Alpacas in sage Organic Cotton
Clessidra kneesock in royal blue Plymouth Sockotta
Turtle Dishcloth in sea green Peaches n Cream
K1P1 ribbed scarf in copper/blue Dive Autmno

Not quite sure if the Fitted Tank is really gonna be my style... but hey, it seems easy enough! And yeah, basically I have tons of work to do - finals start a week from Monday - and this is apparently how my brain responds to that kind of stress.

Rusted Root!

Here it is! I'd love to get actual pictures taken by someone else, but for today there'll just be the obligatory holding-the-camera-out generic blog picture. Face edited out because seriously, I looked like a vampire. But the sweater's still cute :)



Photography skills to be improved in the future...

Pattern: Rusted Root by Zephyr Style
Yarn: Campolmi Roberto Filati cotton/modal blend (got it in Florence, Italy)
Needles: Addi Turbo sizes 7 and 5 circulars (pattern called for 6 and 4, but with my yarn substitution, the gauge was pretty off). I mostly used a 40" circular, and did the magic loop so that I wasn't switching between a bunch of different lengths.
Comments: SO cute! I love everything about this pattern. The leaf part was my first lace ever, and it was super easy. If you plan to knit it, I'd buy a skein or so more yarn than it indicates - my skeins were slightly longer than the Cotton Fleece used in the pattern, and I still needed four rather than the recommended three. I did make it longer than the pattern said to, because too-short sweaters make me a sad panda. But still, I woulda run out of three skeins even sans lengthening. Also I suck at binding off loosely, but luckily the bottom didn't turn out too tight to wear. In the future I need to learn a wayyy more elastic bindoff, though. All in all, I love it though! I definitely will be knitting more zephyr style patterns in the future.


Next up: Fitted Tank by Blue Sky Alpacas, in Sage Organic Cotton. Um, this stuff is not cotton. It's too unbelievably soft and pretty. And it knitted exactly to gauge! No emergency needle-buying trip for this one. Blue Sky Alpacas might be my new favorite. Everything they make is pretty much the softest anything ever. I'm also working on some sort of sweater design - I have this crazy vision of an empire-waist cardigan, and after a thorough scouring of the internets... nothing matches up with the picture in my head. So I'm attempting to make it up myself. The plan's to kinda copy how the top-down part works from the Rusted Root, but knit it flat with room for button-bands, then bind off under the bust and pick up a kind of skirt-y part from there. Seed stitch borders, buttons only on the bound-off top section. We'll see if this works... if it does, who knows where this could lead?

yo!

So... hi! I said I was starting a knitblog and here it is. Introduction in order, I guess, although if you made it here, you probably know me somehow. I'm Annie, I'm a grad student in pure mathematics, I'm trapped living in the deep-midwest but I travel far away whenever I get the chance, I could read books all day and not get sick of them (math texts excluded), and most importantly, I knit. I first picked up needles when I was about eight, and made a few... squares with lots of holes in them, mostly. Didn't knit much for awhile until sophomore year at college, when one of my RLAs started knitting as a hall activity. I slowly picked up steam, made a couple kneesocks and the ubiquitous cat-ear-hat, from Stitch&Bitch, an iPod cover, and most recently my first sweater, to name a few things. I think that sweater was the tipping point and now I'm obcessed. What I've currently got going: Rusted Root, Clessidra, another cat-hat, and a dishcloth. Pictures to come. Right now I've gotta run!

So count me into the ranks of the knitbloggers. Here goes!