Such wonderful socks!

My sock pal, Julia knit me the most wonderful socks!

They make a great use of the Koigu (which is so nice and soft). I'm just thrilled :)

Even on top of that, my sock pal was so sweet. She sent a bunch of little treats along with the socks.

Merino for spinning, a little sock-project purse (which I've really wanted), a little cute book, and some lovely little lemon chocolates (which my husband is about to steal). Thank you so much, Julia!

Could it be?

Baby's very first itty-bitty lace swatch. Everybody say awwwww.

Chialea's beautiful shawl

The lovely shawl that Chialea made for me came home from California with my husband a few weeks ago, and I finally got the chance to block it last night.
None of the pictures I was able to take really show the quality or the lovely colors of Chialea's handspun, but I wanted to post a few quick shots now - will take more later if the sun ever comes out.
(Also in this shot, the back of my super-cute new haircut!)

Thank you so much, dear. It is really nice to have a hug from far away :).

Swatching for Hild

A while ago I fell in love with Hild by Elsebeth Lavold. I was, at the time, rather furious at the conciseness of the pattern. One swatch later:



I think I'll be changing almost everything anyway.

I'm so damn new that even swatching is still a learning experience for me. Look at this -- you can see exactly where I remembered reading somewhere about slipping the first stitch on every row of something that's knitted flat.



And here's me messing up the beginning of the closed cable on the first pattern repeat:



Yikes, cringeworthy. It wasn't entirely my fault though. The beginning of the closed cable involved two sets of increases on subsequent right sides, with a plain wrong-side row in between; the end of the closed cable involved two sets of increases on subsequent rows -- right side and then wrong side! No wonder it closes up so nice and tight and pretty.



My second attempt is much tighter, as you can see, and also done over only two rows. However, it still has something I don't like: I did it right-side and then wrong-side, forcing me to do an extra plain right-side row before beginning to move the cables around. The better place for that plain right-side row would be between the patterns, so that all cable points can be 2 stitches wide on a wrong-side row and 4 stitches wide on a right-side row.

What else might I be changing about the pattern, you wonder? Well, my size doesn't have anything written out for it anyway, so, all stitch counts. The sleeve cap instructions don't make a nice sinusoid, so, the sleeve pattern. I don't want to change to larger needles for the cable section (no boobs), and I don't want to knit plain rib sleeves when a repeat or two of the cable pattern looks so nice on my forearm. And I don't want to roll back my sleeves the way that model is... I'd rather they fit me. I think I'm turning grumpanese I think I'm turning grumpanese I really think so...

I have company though. And like me, my kitty Nala always prefers patterns to written instructions. They make MUCH better pillows.

FO #2, the disco tee

The disco tee is finished. It didn't take me long to do the yoke... I was doing it to chill out while trying not to think about certain other things.

The fabric, done on #8 needles with about 3 2/3 stitches per inch, is weird. If you hold this thing up and shake it, you get a Long, Skinny Tee that might fit one of those cheesy Spielberg aliens. Then if you hold it sideways, a shake will get you a very Short, Fat Tee that might fit a chubby 4-year-old. I only have one other thing with drape/malleability like this, and it barely qualifies as clothing:





Um, right. Not to get distracted... show them the tee shirt.



I think it came out pretty nice, definitely wearable, but not perfectly according to plan. Most especially, bringing the neck in to normal neck-size definitely pulled the sleeves up. I planned for the sleeve-line to be sort of straight across, but nope... I realize now I could have added short-row shaping to handle the fact that the path up and across my shoulder is longer than the path straight up the front of my body from my armpit-level to my neckline. Not a big deal though; nobody KNOWS I didn't plan it like this. And I'm pleased that my carefully calculated decreases still resulted in a pretty good fit across the top of the shoulders.



Behold the slits in the sleeves: laziness pays off in this case, as the extra ease around the arm circumference was needed and it looks cute.

Oh, and those certain other things I was thinking about? Other people, who might have decided my fate today, won't be deciding it until next week. Bleh. I need to knit something else.