a foggy place . . .

Off to China

I finished Héla in the nick of time. Right now, I can see all my mistakes, and that the zipper is much too white. But it is done. Even my "made by" is not properly centered. But few, especially non-knitter types, will probably notice. By the way, I love these labels; you can order them online. I found out about them from Knits & Pieces. And since I'm knitting a green sock, I decided to join the green sock KAL. I may or may be able to update this blog while in China. My in-laws have dial-up. So I will be on a vacation from the internet for the next little while.

Organising my stash

I am making progress on Héla, it will be done by my deadline Sunday night (the flight is really early Monday). So I've decided to organise my stash a little bit. That is assign my wool to future projects.

My first ever socks! In Fleece Artist Merino sock yarn.

This will be the Gjá sweater from Lopi 24.

This will be Aftur from Lopi 25.

This 100% wool, Selkirk by Ram Wools in Lavender, will become Rogue by Jenna Wilson.

And finally, this lovely RYC Alpaca (in blossom & herwick) will become Eunny Jang's Deep V Argyle Vest.

Frog

I haven't posted in a while because, well, I ran out of cash iroha for the third time with Flétta, and, well, I got a little frustrated and frogged the whole thing. It was 95% done. I had no wish to revisit my previous agonising searches for the correct colour and dyelot. So it is done. I may use the cash iroha for the lace pullover sweater by Laura Zukaite in this winter's Vogue Knitting, but I really need to not look at this yarn for a while. I bought some berroco alpaca from Effiloché, a new LYS in Montréal. Finally, a really great LYS with a wonderful atmosphere. They have SnB every Friday night too. Oh! and the best part (for me, anyways) was that they re-wind your skeins into balls, right there! In 10 minutes! No tangles! Sorry. It has been a long time since I had good service at an LYS, I guess. And they even let me use the swift / winder all by myself! The photo of the lump of fushia is Héla in progress, I have finished the body and half an arm. I have also cast on for Lappi (I do not have the attention span for stockinette), that's the green photo. The colourful ball of wool is some old noro iro I have lying around; I am thinking of making a baby harness - I am little worried about him running away in an airport. We are switching flights in Detroit and Tokyo before arriving in Guangzhou. Last but not least, I have been tagged for the 6 weird things about you. Once I have narrowed it down to six, I will post about it.

Mama's Héla Sweater Pt. 2

Lessons in colour or Mama's lopi sweater so far ... I lost a little time using a much too light beige contrast, (or rather a non-contrast), colour instead of the dark grey-brown seen here. I was that nervous of using green with grey. I find that these colours don't go together that well, but with the white border of the design it seems to work quite well. I tried to take pictures of the sweater with the beige contrast colour, but those photos turned out so bad they were definitely not worth posting. The white and the beige were all mixed together in one blah mess. I hope to finish this soon.

Mama's Héla Sweater pt. 1

So I have begun the first of 3 lopi sweaters that I must finish by February. This sweater will be for my mother-in-law. The pattern is a free download from the Alafoss Lopi website. I am following the given tension, 13 sts to 10 cm (4"), but it looks very loose to my eye. I am a notoriously tight knitter, though. I usually use a 1 mm larger needle than called for in any given pattern. I couldn't find an appropriately grandfather-like colour (read: conservative) for my father-in-law in my excessive alafoss stash, so I was forced to order several balls of a midnight blue and a dark grey. Dominic's I will do last, since the small size will cause less panic in a time crunch.