I've been making slow progress on this project. I didn't get the neck decreases completed in time so I had to rip out a few inches and decrease more quickly. Hopefully the neck won't be shaped too oddly. I grafted the shoulders together which wasn't too hard and was quite satisfying in an organic seamless sweater sort of way and then I cut the first steek. I am quite surprised with how strong the arm hole feels now that I've picked up around the edge and started knitting. I was afraid that if I gave the arm a bit of a tug it would all just fall apart but the seam feels much stronger than that. Knitting the actual arm has been somewhat of a pain since I don't have any circular needles short enough for a small arm circle but my dpns are too short and I keep dropping stitches. Nevertheless I'm excited to get this project finished and see how it turns out.

Here is a photo of the sweater from the front with the first arm started.

Here is a closeup of the second armhole before I cut the steek.

I started this project a week or two ago and I'm enjoying it but not too surprisingly it's a slow moving project. I'm using smaller needles than the pattern calls for (mostly because I just got a new pair of Turbo Addi needles that I really wanted to try out) and I'm doing a few extra pattern repeats to make up for the smaller gauge. Also I have more yarn than the pattern calls for which contributed to my bright idea to have a smaller gauge. (Oh, I forgot to mention this is the Stripes and Torchon lace wrap from Victorian Lace Today and the yarn is Cherry Tree Hill Merino Lace (2400 yards, yikes!).) (I seem have a surplus of punctuation at the moment but I blame it on the prime minister debate that Kim is watching which is making me want to squeeze the candidates and their oddly shaped ears between a couple of parenthesis to shut them up - even more so the crazy moderator who keeps randomly repeating the question for those of us with attentions spans shorter than two or three minutes.)

I really want to start a new project so I sat down this weekend and finished these socks. They are a simple design but I'm happy with how they turned out.

Kim and I were at our favorite antique place a few weeks ago and I found this ebony and ivory spinning wheel which I couldn't resist bidding on. It is much more ornate than my other wheel and I think it's meant for spinning flax because of the large distaff sticking out the top. I tried it out this weekend and it does spin although it feels a bit more fiddly than my other wheel. It has two bobbins (apparently spinning flax with two hands was a popular idea once) but I'm having trouble getting the one on the left to spin counter clockwise without the drive band coming off. Also several bits were broken off and I had to glue them back on so hopefully it will hold up. The hooks to guide the yarn onto the bobbin are mostly broken off so I couldn't spin much because I couldn't fill the bobbin properly. I'm planning to try to buy some tiny hooks to screw in myself but I'm not sure if I'll be able to fix it or not.

Well, I finished the bottom section of the sweater and then switched to the tree pattern from the original inspiration design and although there are some common colors in the two different sections I didn't like how it was turning out.

So I decided to get a bit more yarn and just carry the bottom pattern throughout the sweater but with a few more color combinations. My plan is to repeat the brown/tan background for a few pattern repeats and then switch back to the blues. I couldn't get more of the dye lot for the darker blue so the blue on the top will be a different shade but hopefully it will look ok.

I'm much happier with how it looks now though I wish the tan color was a bit darker. I think I'm getting a bit better at fair isle but with a kitten constantly trying to run away with my balls of yarn it can be a bit tricky to keep a consistent tension.

I recently started my first real fair isle sweater. I've been itching to work on my fair isle technique and try out steeking for a while and I finally got started when I went on a wool shopping trip with a friend a few weeks ago. I was going to make a pattern from Vogue Knitting (Holiday 07) by Alice Starmore but I wasn't that excited about the pattern at the bottom of the sweater so I've been using an Alice Starmore book that I got for Christmas to make my own pattern inspired by the original Vogue pattern photos. I'm still going to try out the steeks, a technique that involves knitting the sweater as a long tube and then cutting the front opening with a pair of scissors, yikes! I haven't actually gotten to that part yet since I'm still working on getting my tension right. I've had to rip out the bit above the ribbing several times - a few times because one strand was so tight that it didn't show up properly in the pattern and a few times because I didn't like the color combination I used. I'm happy with how it looks now and hopefully the more I practice the less ripping out I'll have to do. I bought the number of colors and quantities of yarn needed for the sweater in the magazine and although I've been trying to keep the ratios sort of the same in my sweater I'm a bit worried that I might run out of one or two colors. I guess the good thing about fair isle is that if I have to get yarn from a different dye lot it hopefully won't show up too much. Here is what I have so far.

I got this yarn for my birthday last year and I was in the mood to make some socks (or more accurately to wear some knitted socks) so I pulled it out and started knitting. I normally make my socks too loose so I tried to be a bit more careful with this pair. I started from the toe using "Judy's magic cast-on" from Socks from the Toe Up by Wendy Johnson. It worked really well and hopefully I'll be able to make the second sock the same even though I've let this project take so long that I'm forgetting how I did the shaping. I think I have a few notes scribbled on a bit of paper. Somewhere. Anyway, here is a photo of the first one.