WIP Wednesday (6)

Thanks to Tami's Amis for hosting WIP Wednesdays

This week it's just me (Caro), since Susi is being held hostage by her family ;)

I'm still working on my Little Birds cardigan. I finished knitting to the underarm and it went pretty fast. But now I have to knit the sleeves before I can join them to the body and keep on knitting.
Did I mention that I HATE knitting sleeves. If it was only me I'd only wear sleeveless garments! This time it's even worse than usual because I find it hard to knit fair-isle in the round on DPNs. It's difficult to keep the floats/tension uniform between 2 DPNs.
It's taken me longer to knit 1 sleeve than for the entire body! Now I'm starting sleeve #2 and it's a slow progress.
I love the tubular Cast-on, (even if it takes longer to knit). The cuffs are very elastic.
The original pattern sports  3/4 sleeves. Mom wants full length sleeves so I'm making a few mods.

Mods for the sleeves:

• Knitted 4" (instead of 3) of beaded ribbing (20 repeats instead of 15)
• Added an additional repeat of bird/leaves to the top of the sleeve (in the straight part, to keep the same # of stitches). 

I love the Koigu yarn the colors are very flashy (more in real than on my pics). The Spud& Chloe yarn is also super soft and it has a shiny sheen (prolly the bit of silk in it)
I'm hoping to finish the 2nd sleeve by Friday.

In the meantime I also knitted Clue #4 of my Mystery Shawl by Stephen West but it wasn't working out. So I ripped it and I just need to start back. <== I'm waiting for the burn of ripping to pass ;)

I needed something mindless I could knit when I got too bored of the sleeves. So I started a Snug As A Bug Sleep Sack. It'll be a Baby gift for my neighbor who's expecting a girl for the end of September.  I wanted to tame my stash (a little), but now I'm not sure I'll have enough to finish it. =P
I like the idea of knitting a cute sleep sack to keep the baby warm but I'm unsure if the mother will like it. After all...it's a sack! lol
I'm using bulky yarn so I had to cast on less stitches. It might not be large enough though. I think I should have taken into account that fair-isle make it tighter.
We'll see.

That's all for now.  Don't forget to visit Tami's Amis to see what everyone else is knitting

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WIP Wednesday (4)

Thanks to Tami's Amis for hosting WIP Wednesdays

Let's see what's hot on our needles this week =)

Susi: 

Daybreak

Not much progress on this one. Last week my needle broke and I didn't have another 3mm handy so I had to order one and it arrived today. Meh. So the Daybreak lay around most of the time. I got some more stripes done. But that gave me time to finally finish my cardi. YAY

Summer Bolero

I started this one after I finished the cardi. I needed something fast and wearable for next weeks convention. I love the color and well it's sooo summery. *g* I got the yarn at a supermarket sale. 4 skeins 100% cotton for like 3€ so it is also a really cheap project, too. It's my second Ribbed Lace Bolero and I really love it.

Caro:

Juliet Cardigan

(on my mom)

(On me)

I've been knitting a lot of Shawls this year and Susi knitting her cardigan made me realize I needed to knit something more than just a shawl. I planned on knitting a Juliet cardigan for the convention so here I am halfway there. My only concern is that I think it'll be too large. Well maybe not too large but it should have a 5" of negative ease and it shouldn't close in the front (that's how I liked it) and mine already closes in the front. That + blocking I think it'll be too large to please me. *shrug* First pic is on my mom (and yes we cheated coz it's actually way too large for her). Second pic is on me. It's knitting up very fast, I started on Saturday and by Sunday I was already starting the lace. BTW my mom wants one too so I'll make her one in her size but maybe I'll knit the yoke in stockinette instead of Garter. I find garter to look messy. Wish me luck I need to finish it before next week.

That's where we stand this week =)

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WIP Wednesday (3)

Thanks to Tami's Amis for hosting WIP Wednesdays

Let's see what's hot on our needles this week =)

Caro:

Taygete

Looks like an Aries sign! (or I'm just crazy)

Close up of the lace with the MANY markers

Last week Susi convinced me of guinea-pigging knitting a Taygete shawl. It's been in my Favorites for months and I never got to knitting it. So after the usual 2 days of deliberating on which colors to use I finally chose: Madelinetosh Merino Light in Teddy Bear color  and Madelinetosh Sock in Fawn color.  I know most people uses more colorful yarns with greater contrast (with a fantastic result I must say) but since this is going to be a Mother's Day present I tried choosing more 'neutral' colors my mom wouldn't hate  LOL.
Knitting all these stripes was a bit boring but not extremely so. Picking up the right amount of stitches on the other hand was a freaking pain in my a*s! I don't know why but I just never had the right amount on each side. They I realized I'd forgotten a YO in the middle. It took me hours to get it right, so right-ish ;) And I should know better than knitting with a migraine because I had to unravel twice!  I only just started the lace part but I'm excited about it. I put markers everywhere (18 on each side) and now I'm hoping it'll knit fast.
My only concern is running out of Fawn yarn. =S I already went down 2 needle sizes to compensate my loose kniting. Wish me luck!

Susi:

Daybreak

I started a Westknit! YAY. Well I hope it will be one I actually finish. *ahem* I chose some blue sock yarn I had on hand and planned to combine it with black but the dark blue in the sock yarn looked exactly like the black so after first row I ripped it back and started again with a sparkly violet yarn. This actually had a kind of subtle contrast but the yarn has a weird structure. It's kind of crinkly and the stitches looked awfully aymmetric so I ripped out around 6 rows and started again with a gradient sock yarn. It's really light gray-ish blue-ish. So far I like it. We will see if I will keep it.

Shapely Boyfriend

I resumed knitting this one for 20 rows or so. I'm a bad cardi knitter cuz I'm so easily bored so I only knit it at work- when I have the time and well my other knit is too complicated for work knitting. But I started the waist-shaping. YAY! Well after that I tried it on at home and realized that I shouldn't have started yet cuz my boobs are in the way. So I made some more plain stockinette rows after and resumed. It's going great but sloooooow. Perhaps I will be done before the next winter comes. *wink*

Susi's bf: 

Chevry

Isn't it AWESOME???Without kidding, I'm the MAN!! 

Now for real: because I haven't developed the proper knitting muscles in my left hand, I decided to skip one repeat of this tedio...ahh quite interesting shawl. I think it's big enough already. So all that's left to do are the nice stripes at the edge. And I'm really looking forward to see it blocked and... spread wide.  

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WIP Wednesday (2)

Thanks to Tami's Amis for hosting WIP Wednesdays

Welcome back to WIP Wednesday where we show you what's currently on our needles.

Susi: I finished my Color Affection last weekend and desperately wanted to started a lace shawl and was again caught in I-can't-decide-what-to-knit-next-hell. *sigh* I spent hours looking for a new knit and at some points had a bazillion tabs in my browser open and couldn't decide. So what did I start? A shawl I already knit in the past.

I started a new Ziggity by Kirstin Kapur because the first one I made was a gift for my mom. I loved that one so much that I actually considered keeping it for myself. But I was a good daughter and made her happy with the pretty. So I cast on again. This time I was a bit daring and knit with Malabrigo Lace in Marron Oscuro and Sapphire Green. I hope it won't come out too small as the pattern is made for fingering weight. We will see. And if it's still tiny after all the lace panels I can always add an extra lace panel. Or so I hope.

Also my bf started knitting a week or two ago and he already finished his first project. After that he started a Chevry by Stephen West because he loved  Caro's so much. I'm unbelievable proud of him and well his progress is scary fast. A really clever knitter if you remember that he touched knitting needles for the time just 2 weeks ago. LOL God, I love that guy.

Caro:  First I'd like to say I'm super proud of Susi's bf and I love his project already. Go bf!! *cheers*!  So last week I only had a few stripes on my Catkin shawl but I've been working on it a LOT and I'm just a few rows from the end. I was really scared of running out of pink yarn and believe me it was a close call. I only had a few yards left.

I'm super happy of the result. I was scared of the charts and it's lucky I had Susi to explain how they worked LOL Hopefully I'll have finished pics for Friday's post.

Here's what's on our needles this week. 

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WIP Wednesday (1)

Thanks to Tami's Amis for hosting WIP Wednesdays

Welcome to our 1st edition of WIP Wednesday! Let's take a closer look at what's currently on our needles.

Caro's WIPs:
 A new week a new project! I’ve been itching to knit myself a Catkin shawl. To be honest I spent 2 whole days trying to decide on the colors. It’s the most important part of it all in my opinion. I’m in freaking LOVE with these colors. I’m using Madelinetosh Merino Light in Graphite and Fragrant. It’s such a pleasure to knit I can’t stop. <3 My only problem is that I keep stopping every 5 minutes to pet the WIP LOL

 I’m also knitting a Hekate shawl . Susi made one a few weeks ago and I knew I had to make one too! *g* . But as much as it was pretty easy for the most part, I’m struggling with the last lace part. It’s even more annoying considering that Susi said it was the “funnest” part to knit =P. I should point out that she loves knitting charts and I HATE charts! Anyway, I really like how the red pops out. It’s so big I’m having trouble taking any decent pic of it while on the needles.  It's the second shawl I knit from this designer and it won't be the last I'm sure. She has such wonderful patterns!

I still have quite a few WIPs on my needles (like my Aidez Cardi!) but the others will have to wait a little longer. ;)

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Susi's WIPs:

 I started a new Color Affection last week. This time in lace weight and I’m in love with the colors and the yarn. The stripes are just awesome and the colors are way more vivid in real. It’s a little sunshine good mood shawl. The first striped section was a bit of an endurance test but I survived and I’m now happily doing the three colored stripes. *g* I’m a bit worried yarnwise though. The last full length yellow stripe from the previous section looks like it’s starting to felt. All this going up and down on needle while I’m doing the short rows seems to be taking its toll. We will see if that will be visible after blocking. Fingers crossed it won’t. >.<

My second project will probably hibernate a bit now. I started a Shapely Boyfriend cardi and I do like how it works out but OMG so many purls on the WS. >.<  I hate purling but well I will be a good girl and do a row here and there- mostly at work so the progress is always minimal. But well I can be patient with this one. (if you take a closer look at pic I just lost some stitches from my right needle while taking the pic but I could catch them all *whew*)

Here you have it! This is what's keeping us busy this week =)

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