I've Circumnavigated my Cardigan!

Pattern: Circumnavigated Cardigan by Medrith Glover

Yarn: Body - Estate sale homespun - wool & mohair? / Trim - uhmmm, I'll have to look it up

Needles: various Addi Naturas, Brittany dpns, Crystal Palace dpns

Size 8 for the body and size 4 for the edging

Changes to pattern? Nothing really, although I did the optional shawl collar

All I need now are 9 small buttons - I'm thinking wood would be appropriate. As fast as this thing is developing a nice fuzzy halo, I'm figuring there's got to be mohair or something similar in the mix. And I love the subtle natural variegation of colors. I finished the last sleeve last night, wove in the ends (not many) and I'm wearing this sucker today. Wonderfully soft and warm.

Now that the obsession is over, I can concentrate on other things...........

Fickle

After waxing poetic about my Circumnavigated Cardigan last week, I proceeded to ignore it for several days - talk about fickle! Instead, I sweated, ripped, and swore my way into the first of two matching quiviuq scarves. Why is it that I can never get a lace pattern right the first time? It's got a 12-row repeat that isn't all that hard - there's only 38 stitches, for goodness sake! I frogged this thing at least four or five times.

I finally got my head into the right 'working-on-lace' place and have been having a ball with it.

I did finally feel guilty about abandoning the cardigan and finished up the first sleeve yesterday, while sitting slug-like on the couch watching movies.

And look at this! Remember that order of J&S that never came? The order I submitted back in September? I got a very apologetic email last week - and a very fast delivery with a discount. I'm tickled to get it even though I had already ordered some of the same colors directly from Jamieson and Smith. There's one skein of Jamieson in there too - a replacement for the discontinued J&S #55. When I finally emerge from my work-induced haze and swatch, I'll be very happy to have all this.

I also finally remembered to send off that scarf I made for Orphan.org. They need them in by the end of the month so they can send them out for Valentine's Day.

So, besides being sick most of this week and getting even further behind at work, it's not been too bad. I'm waiting on a STR order, though... the yarn for my 2 sis-in-laws' socks (and one for me). I probably one of the few sock knitters left in the world that hasn't yet tried Socks That Rock yarn.

Paper

That's the traditional first anniversary gift. So do I send a ten dollar bill to Blogger or something? Or maybe some nice stationery?

This is the first anniversary of my blog - it's also my 150th post. Not that I have much to say today.... it's kind of a blah day here. Rainy and yucky, but not freezing, thank goodness. Oh well, if it's nasty weather out this weekend, maybe I'll at least get a lot of knitting done.

I'm in the mood for stew, thanks to Rebekah's entry 'why knitting is like stew' so I'll probably go to the store later on and grab the ingredients for Brunswick stew. (I make mine with chicken, not squirrel, the traditional meat for this stew.) Her entry also gives me justification (at least in my own mind) for keeping lots of projects going at once.

And I might as well do this meme from her blog, too:

The Page 123 Meme
1. Grab the book closest to you.
2. Open to page 123, look down to the 5th sentence.
3. Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog.
4. Include the title and the author's name.

"He said it so often that I began to smell a rat.
You and Knighton would make a very nice pair, Katherine.
Bless you, my children!"

The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie

It's looking sweaterly

You know how hard it is to stop eating peanuts (popcorn, potato chips, -insert favorite snack food here-)? That's how this cardigan is affecting me. It's simple stockinette, which would normally have me bored pretty quickly, but this has so many little things going on that it's really keeping my interest.

See the shawl collar? (This collar treatment is optional, by the way. The 'standard' collar is just a continuation of the button band.) It's got a clever little trick to make it lie down correctly and is done with a series of short rows. Who knew that garter stitch could be fun?

The sleeve - normally something I dread - is keeping my interest too. It's knit down from the body (always nice) and has a nice little underarm gusset decrease thing going on.

I'm not even pretending that I'm going to work on anything else 'til this is done. So there.
(Well, I'm still working on my stockinette sock #2, but I'm not even off the ribbing for it .... so it hardly counts.)

I see now why some of the guild members are working on their 3rd or 4th cardigan from this pattern.

Look at those needles getting chomped! And that's after I chased her away three times. Bad Emy!

Oh, look... a sock

I know. How terribly exciting. But, I did manage to correctly graft the toe of this thing while watching the President's speech last night. I consider that either a tribute to my powers of concentration or something about the speaker (I'm not saying which).

Sorry about the slightly blurry picture - I'm too lazy to take another one right now.

Holly Jo wanted to know where to get the pattern for the Circumnavigated Cardigan. I got it from the guild, which (I think) got it directly from the designer, Medrith Glover. That's a link to her price list from the ample-knitters.com website. It's got her address and email on it (I think it's still current).

I've made a little bit more progress on it but not enough for a picture.

Welcome to 2007

I was going to list all the stuff I knit last year and all the stuff I wanted to knit this year. I even had a post saved in draft. Forget it.

I knit in 2006.... a lot. (I think that's enough of that)

And this is what I'm working on now:

The Circumnavigated Cardigan. Remember how I claimed I was going to knit it along with the guild and not get ahead of the game? Right. Like that was going to happen. I'm nearing the top of the shoulders now.

This is one of those patterns that you need to read carefully and do exactly as written. Trust the pattern, it will get you there just as promised. I was tickled to hear that Medrith Glover will be at our May meeting so she can see a whole guild-full of her cardigans.

See the top of the pocket here? That's where I should have been by now. I'm afraid I got excited about fusing pockets and just continued on.

A plain stockinette sock. I don't think I've done one of these since my first disastrous Red Cross socks. It makes for very soothing knitting. That's Regia sock yarn and my favorite size 1 1/2 Brittany Birch dpns.

And my Christmas present from my husband. He suggested Quiviuq yarn since he knew I'd wanted it for quite a while. I was going to order one skein, but he didn't think that was enough! Isn't he a sweetie! Two whole skeins of Quiviuq yarn and a scarf pattern fromFolknits! These will make matching scarves for my husband and I.

Well, that's about all for now. Since it is year end and I'm an accountant, I'm going to be pretty busy from now until after our audit in March or April. If I'm not posting very frequently, that's why. I'm still reading lots of blogs on a regular basis, but have been pretty horrible about commenting..... I'll try to get better about that, but am making no promises right now. So Hi! to all my friends out there. Hope you're having a great new year.