A Sneak Peek

Now I just need some good light, a photographer, and a few pesky buttons. I'm so happy it's almost, almost done.
Those sleeve seams took forever in fingering weight yarn. Thank goodness the body was knit in the round.

Thermal Trial #1: Passed

I finished the body! Actually, I finished it a couple weeks ago, but I'm still happy about it, so, yay! Not that I look particularly excited, but I swear I am. That's 3 skeins of sock yarn there, and part of it I ripped and re-knitted when I decided to make the body longer. I wonder if the number of stitches in the body alone would have made a whole sweater out of worsted-weight yarn. With matching pants. Not that I would ever wear them (together).

I like working on smaller needles, even if it takes twice as long to knit something. It's easier for my fingers to tension the yarn, and you get into a good rhythm. The finished product is less-bulky, too, which is a plus in Southern California. It means I can wear my sweater in the daytime, too.

So, onto the sleeves, and then seaming. Oh, and an aside: I found the perfect cast-on for 1x1 twisted rib. I know many people use the tubular cast-on, but I've found that looks a little sloppy with a twisted rib since the top edge pulls the halves of the knit stitches apart when stretched, but the rest of the knit stitches tighten when stretched because they're twisted. I hope that makes sense. So the solution is (drumroll, please) the Channel Islands cast-on from Montse Stanley's A Knitter's Handbook. There's only one drawing of it in the book, and almost no info on the web (believe me, I looked) so I was thinking about writing up a tutorial. Hopefully I can find my socks so you can compare the difference between the two cast-ons.

Hello world!

It all started a year ago. While watching Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-rabbit, I was overcome with a sudden desire to knit. It must have been Gromit's needles clicking away while he and Wallace were waiting for the were-rabbit to appear. If even a dog with no opposable thumbs can knit, I thought, so can I! So I asked my mom if I could "borrow" some knitting equipment and she showed me the knit stitch, and off I went. Here is my very first swatch:



Charmingly misshapen, or so I like to think.

So, a year after learning, I figured it was time to take the next step and start a blog. I hope it can be as useful to others as everyone else's blogs have been to me.