Smile, and Pass It On

If you only have one smile in you, give it to the people you love.

Don't be surly at home, then go out in the street

and start grinning 'Good morning' at total strangers.
-Maya Angelou

Thank you for all the lovely comments on my new sweater. I keep meaning to post in more detail about my grand plans for NaKniSweMoDo, with sweaters #2 and possibly #3 nearing completion, and #4 just started (and having bought yarn for #5 and #6, of course), but I'm spending all my days and 1/3 of my nights in the ICU. Which can be surprisingly good for sweater knitting as I wait and watch. But I digress. I'm loving my new sweater, and the fact that this week it's been a delightfully cool 50s and rainy.

I mentioned in my last post that I thought making two sweaters in the same brilliant peacock blue (as gorgeous as it is) at the same time was overkill. So I cast about for a new yarn for Acer, and settled on Peace Fleece. It's the original, called-for yarn. It's reportedly soft and wooly. And I like the company - no one loves peace more than those of us in the military.

It came quickly, within a week or so. And it was as perfectly, delightfully, soft and wooly as I had hoped. I went with pink, for variety.

Inside was a delightful surprise:

You probably can't read that, but apparently my order was selected during their Tuesday staff meeting as the "Smile" order - it was sent free of charge. I say again, free. No charge for the yarn. No charge for shipping. Completely free.

I was amazed. Astounded. Tickled pink, if you excuse the pun.

So tickled pink, in fact, that I feel compelled to pass on this smile. . . . and, er, try to do some stash compensating at the same time. Ironically, a company like Peace Fleece that I feel good about patronizing, sent me my money back. So, let's try to send them more, shall we?

Comment on this post, and tell us something that made you smile today. The random-number generator and I will send you the sweater-quantity of Peace Fleece in the color of your choice. That way I can support a company I like, and not add to the stash.

In order to even out the stash a bit, and to add to the fun, here are five skeins - karmically, the same number as my Peace Fleece - of Briggs and Little 4-ply in a gorgeous charcoal gray that I bought on the way to PEI on a memorable yarn-shopping vacation a few years ago. The stash is getting upset that this lovely yarn sits unused in San Diego, so I will happily send it to yours full of the good memories of times when I lived in places where wooliness was so desirable.

Contest closes at midnight PDT on Sunday February 15, 2009. If your stash is as crushingly-huge as mine and you want no more yarn, feel free to mention that in your comment, but tell us something happy anyway.

One Down

You have to walk carefully in the beginning of love;
the running across fields into your lover's arms
can only come later when you're sure they won't laugh if you trip.
-Jonathan Carroll

Since my regular photographer is off serving our country, making the world safe for democracy, and getting himself rather beat up for the sake of wearing a different color belt (boys will be boys), I had to take my own finished object photos. (Do note the quotation above; taking my own photos here is akin to tripping.)

I tried . . . In spite of my bad hair day . . . Outdoors, indoors . . . Left, right, center . . . And then I called it good enough for a photo montage.Hopefully you can get a vague idea of just how great this sweater is.

Cable Down Raglan
Pattern: Stephanie Japel from Interweave Knits, best of, among others
Yarn: mystery wool bought off eBay circa 2001 - I believe this might be my oldest stash yarn!
Needles: US 7
Notes: Great pattern, fun to knit top down. No mods - just kept trying it on!
Best Thing About This Project: It's a toss-up between finally putting this albatross of the stash has been put to good use, and finally buying a scale to measure my yarn.

In fact, I was so happy with this, my first finished sweater of NaKniSweMoDo, that I immediately cast about on the interwebs for my next projects. I fell in love with Acer after seeing Margene's version and Sarah's version on the same day. So I bought some Beaverslide. Always wanted to try that. Then I saw that Fiddlesticks Knitting (some of my favorite Canadians) was having a special offer to celebrate the Blooming Cardigan on the cover of IK. Of course I had to celebrate with them. But then they arrived, and I immediately saw the problem: Am I predictable, or what? These colors are just a little too close. So I bought some Peace Fleece. And that's a story for another day . . . Stay tuned for a big give-away this week!

It's About Time

If you're walking down the right path
and you're willing to keep walking,
eventually you'll make progress.
-Barack Obama

I started 2009 in a flurry of good intentions, cast-on projects, and grand proclamations to knit, knit, knit. Twelve sweaters. 100 balls of yarn. Massive stash reduction.

So it's about time that I finished my first project of the month:
This is probably the worst possible photo of a gorgeous pair of socks - the Artichoke Socks in a gorgeous semi-solid Koigu. Stunning. And the first two balls of yarn knit in 2009. . . only 98 to go!

I find myself in the midst of a great many large projects, including a husband sweater in cotton. The Cable Down Raglan is rapidly nearing completion. Which will be the first sweater of NaKniSweMoDo, but only a single ball of yarn. So it goes . . .
In other promising news, my bread-baking life has been revolutionized thanks to a Christmas gift of Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day.
Try it - it's amazing! And for all it's speediness, it's probably not the reason my productivity has been down, right?

Gathered

Great is the road I climb,
but the garland offered by an easier route is not worth the gathering.
-Propertius

OK, OK crewneck it is. The response is overwhelming, and I think we're all agreed that it would be a problem to interrupt the lovely snowflake. The good news is that now I think it'll be done by the end of the week. In the meantime, since I'm past the halfway point of NaBloPoMo, let's review a sweater I finished back during The Great Blogging Drought of 2008.

Gathered Pullover
Pattern: from Interweave Knits, Winter 2007
Yarn: Garnstudio Silke-Tweed, about 6 skeins
Needles: US 7
Notes: Great easy pattern in the round, no mods.
Best Thing About This Project: A great San Diego sweater.
There you see a sneak photo by my dad when we were in Santa Fe (James - that's a golden doodle - let's get one!), but you can see that it's in action. Unlike the Dale, this is the perfect weight sweater for most of the year in San Diego. Initially I was a little skeptical, but seeing Loribird's here made me realize it was the perfect project for this yarn, which is some of the oldest in my stash. I got it from the sale bin of a small shop in Rhode Island on a rainy day my senior year of college. Eek! Anyway, now it's finally come to fruition, and getting a lot of wear. In fact, I wore it out last night.

Remembering Nantucket

Memory is a way of holding on to the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose.
-Kevin Arnold

I love weekend trips. The posts for the next few days will be auto-posting (thank you, Blogger) while I'm enjoying a weekend trip to Santa Fe where I'll be meeting up with my parents and the flitgirl's delightful parents. I'm very much looking forward to a little time away, the company of those I love, and - last but not least - sweater weather! Temperature projects are in the 30s to 50s.

Which means this project is actually not coming, being knit in cotton as it is, but I'll be busting out some of the wool from the trunk. Nevertheless, I've been feeling all kinds of nostalgic (homesick?) lately, and this sweater calls to mind a blustery winter weekend in 2004 or 2005.

Nantucket Jacket
Pattern: from Interweave Knits, the Kniting Daily special, and one issue some time ago . . .
Yarn: Cotton-Ease in Candy Blue. This is my second sweater in this yarn (first here), and I still have more. The stash, it is a mighty thing.
Needles: US6 - had to go down to get gauge
Notes: A lovely pattern, well written, no errors I could find. The only change I made was to lengthen the sleeves to full length. And don't neglect the crochet edging. I only crochet once a year, but it made the sweater.
The Best Thing About This Sweater: Aren't these the perfect pewter anchor buttons? This is a great New England sort of sweater.

Most people visit Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket in the summer. Lovely beaches, lobster rolls, a nice sailing wind. And I've been to the Vineyard in the summer, once. Every other time I've gone has been chilly - a delightful fall with perfect changing leaves, a cold and gray winter weekend with the flitgirl. And then there was that January trip to Nantucket. A very good friend for very good talking. Stew and beer in an old pub with a roaring fire. A historic bed and breakfast, also with a roaring fire. Wearing all of my favorite handknits, and discovering how much my friend also loved handknit socks. A perfect weekend. Until the blizzard closed the ferry, and - rather than getting stranded - we got some of the last seats on the high-speed ferry across a choppy choppy choppy sound. And a long drive down the Cape in near-blizzard conditions. A 3-hour return trip turned into 7 or 8. And, in retrospect, did I actually learn anything useful that next day in medical school? To this day I regret not just staying and getting snowed in to that wintery world standing still under a blanket of snow.

Harrumph!

When women are depressed, they eat or go shopping.
Men invade another country. It's a whole different way of thinking.
-Elayne Boosler

Knitting for men is hard!

I'm having a bit of a dilemma. I believe I mentioned that my second anniversary is exactly 250 days away. And we all know that the second anniversary is one of the knitter's anniversaries - cotton. (This is not a secret, if you're worried that the sandstorms have calmed down and my husband's internet might actually be working, by the way.) Well, I've been trying to prepare. And this is the scene:Pure chaos. I had ordered the yarn for the Tree Bark Pullover, which no one seems to have ever made. I've loved this sweater ever since the magazine came in 2002. But we (the husband-recipient and I) thought maybe some nice neutrals.See the problem? That brownish musk color is a non-starter, so just look at the other two. Apparently color cards from 2001 aren't entirely accurate since my color #104 looks exactly like the color #103 on the card - the strange green-ish undertone to the khaki. Ugh. Not a good color. Time to explore Ram Wools' return policy . . . Although the ivory and musk were from Webs and I think will be repurposed as baby yarns.

So now I'm left reconsidering everything about this project. The pattern. Definitely the yarn. OK, let's think. Yup, you too.

What do we need? A sweater. In cotton (the 2nd anniversary thing, plus he might actually get to wear it while we're still living in San Diego).

What else? Well, he does seem to have somewhat more adventurous (but still classic) taste in clothing than the husbands of my knitting group friends. Note - he bought no fewer than FIVE Hawaiian shirts in Hawaii. And he really likes heavily patterned designs. I tried to talk him into a Cobblestone once, but he thought that was too boring. "What was the point of knitting it if you could buy something like it?" He even bought a traditional Aran sweater in the British Isles, way before meeting me.

Option 1: Stick with the husband-approved Tree Bark sweater, but in the original colors as pictured in the link above.
Pro: Who needs neutrals when it looks so nice in blue and green?
Con: The last sweater I made him was green.

Option 2: Go with second-choice Anniversary Sweater from Knitty, in a yarn to be determined. Rowan All-Seasons Cotton perhaps.
Pro: Easy pattern to memorize, even if it is a lot of cables.
Con: What yarn? And no one on Ravelry seems very happy with their finished project - a big red flag.

Option 3: Perhaps the most daunting option - a cabled Aran. When asked to point out patterns he liked, the sweater-loving husband loved Kristin Nicholas (good taste, right?) and her book Knitting the New Classics. While "new" is a misnomer, most of the (cable) patterns transcend the early nineties.
Some contenders (Rav links): Banjo Pullover (I have a Jo Sharp DK cotton in a bright Navy that would work), Evergreen Aran, Aran Family Cardigan (and there's a matching women's cardigan!)
Yarn Matches: most of these are made in a cotton-wool blend, so Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece, or Rowan Wool Cotton or All-Seasons Cotton, perhaps
Pros: lots of lovely cables
Cons: lots of lovely cables

Wow - long post. Please give me any input on this most difficult of decisions. In the meantime, start getting excited. Tomorrow is my last CCU call of the month AND I'm doing NaBloPoMo again. Welcome to November!

Say It Isn't So!

Many things - such as loving, going to sleep, or behaving unaffectedly -
are done worst when we try hardest to do them.
-C.S. Lewis

I'm tired. Too tired even to knit. I know, crazy, right? A month of call every third night is finally catching up with me. But I do have a teaser of good things to come . . . And now, back to my previously scheduled presentation writing. Yup, that presentation that I sort of forgot about, until now. Oops. The good news? It's almost November, and my schedule's about to get much better. One more week . . .

Falling Off the Wagon

A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs;
it's jolted by every pebble in the road.
-Henry Ward Beecher

. . . The stash wagon, that is.
And so it begins. (Yup, there's more on the way.) The problem with developing a passion for colorwork is that it requires so many colors. Might seem obvious, but I just ordered the yarn for the Bondegard pullover, a baby sweater that requires 15 colors of Dale Baby Ull. Yes, that's right - One-five. And it requires 2 balls of a few of those. So you know that most of them only need about 30 yards of that color, but it's absolutely integral to the design.

Why did I order them now, you might ask? There were a lot of changes to the baby ull color line in the last year, and some of the colors were discontinued. I snapped them up while I could.

And that's not all . . . a sweater's worth of yarn for my husband's second anniversary sweater is coming. Let's just say I qualified for the Webs 25% discount . . .

The stash is there for knitting, right?

Seasonally Inappropriate

The only reason why we ask other people how their weekend was

is so that we can tell them about our own weekend.

-Chuck Palahniuk

It may be wildly out of season, even for San Diego with its chilly nights, but better late than never. I finished my Bed and Breakfast pullover quite a few months ago, and even got a few chances to wear it before it got warmer.

What can I say? I love this sweater. This is everything I've ever wanted in cabled pullover. Thanks to the Year of Projects, I have it.

Bed and Breakfast Pullover
Pattern: IK Winter 2003
Yarn: Cascade 220 in French Blue and a dark brown for the contrast
Needles: US 7 Brittany Birch straights - the most delightful combination of yarn and needles!
Notes: I do think there was a slight error in the chart and that the cables should start closed and then open on the bottom (makes sense if you see the chart), but I didn't realize that until too late. It's not a crisis. Overall, a very fun, well-written, wearable pattern.
Best Thing About This Project: This is basically my dream sweater. Expect to see modeled shots pop up as the nights cool off and it comes out to play.

This project was one of many helping me knock down the stash. I'll update the sidebars soon, but as of August 1st I'm down to about 480-some balls of yarn and 103,000-some yards of yarn. Getting under 100,000 is rapidly approaching!

A Summer in Silk

One swallow does not make a summer.
-Aristotle

I've long been an admirer of knitzalot's extensive collection of summer knits (love this Josephine!). After all, she lives in San Diego just like me. It's been 90 degrees here lately. It's a nice long sunny summer. But I've been intently sticking to my wool (and I just finished the Bed and Breakfast pullover - photos coming soon). But then I had some silk that I've been carting around for years and states, and it was the perfect amount for a nice summer top.

Let's all pause and ponder how perfect Ravelry is in this situation. I had my yarn, my yardage, my weight, and I found the perfect pattern.

Surplice Bodice Top
Pattern: From Knitting Lingerie Style - a much more versatile book than I had previously given it credit
Yarn: Anny Blatt Kanpur, a 100% silk DK weight that I got for the steal of the century at $2/ball at a sale back in 2001; 4.5 skeins, approx 600 yards
Needles: US 6 and US 5
Notes: Great pattern. I need a camisole for underneath that doesn't have as much contrast, though.
Best Thing About This Project: A night out on the town is coming.

Now, what should I do with the last 1.5 skeins? Because while I've used most of the yarn, I haven't used all of it . . .

Sensing A Theme Here

Tomorrow never comes.
-Proverbial

For most of the last week I was planning on blogging "tomorrow," but somehow each and every day is a today. It's been a busy week working, getting back into cooking (it's so much more fun to cook for two of us!), and actually doing some knitting.

In fact, it was during a nice post-work relaxing night of knitting that I noticed there was a bit of a theme in my knitting. Don't we all love Interweave? These are the magazines for the Bed and Breakfast Pullover, the Lacy Kerchief Scarf, and my new project. Yes, I finally decided what to do with my alpaca. Thank to all the suggestions and reassurance, I went with the teddy bear. How cute is this? It's going to be so adorable, so fuzzy, and, well, just so classic. I am realizing however, that I will have quite a lot of yarn leftover. I'm leaning towards mittens. We shall see.

I also figured out what my May project was going to be. It's a good stash project from some Reynolds Saucy that I bought at the Webs tent sale with Rachel right before I moved to California. Now, I realize that the wisdom of buying lots of yarn right before moving cross-country can be questioned, and two years later I'm still trying to work my through most or all of it, but the stash does become it's own justification when I can just decide to cast on and I have a good yarn handy. That I got on supersale. But I digress. I'm making the oh-so-romantically-named "Long-Sleeved Cotton Jacket" from Sarah Dallas' Vintage Knits. I've had my eye on this for quite some time, and now is the time.

Speaking of stash, I finally updated my sidebar to reflect the progress I've been making on stash reduction. While it does come in handy to have yarn around, I'd like to have a little less yarn around so I'd feel a little freer buying yarn for specific projects. At any rate, in spite of some recent yarn gifts (May Day Swap photos coming soon!), I'm still far in the negative from my starting stash. By the end of May, I should be under 110,000 yards!

Moving Along

Artists can color the sky red because they know it's blue.

Those of us who aren't artists must color things the way

they really are or people might think we're stupid.

-Jules Pfeiffer

Somewhere in the midst of all the craziness, there is some plain ol' knitting being done. Shocking, I know. And apparently, it's all blue.

You may or may not recall the Bed and Breakfast Pullover. This is my March project, which isn't standing a particularly good chance of being finished in April either, but that's OK because my April project is done. At any rate, the B&B is clicking along. It has a perfectly delightful cable pattern - unusual, interesting, and really not at all particulalrly difficult. The boring ribbed sleeves were done in an early moment of opportunism, so now I have a couple more inches of the back and then the front. Not bad, if I get to work.

My other brilliant blue project also saw some progress, although of a different sort. A while back when I was in a lace kind of mood I started the Fiddlesticks' Long Paisley Shawl in some KnitPicks Shadow. I like the yarn, and I like the pattern. I definitely made a mistake and went down too many needle sizes, so the garter stitch fabric was too bouncy. But really, it had to go. I knew I wasn't going to finish it this decade, so it was better to frog now and open up the possibilities for both the yarn, the pattern, and my time.

Frogging can be progress, too. What kind of progress have you all been making? Show us en route to the FO parade!

The Sweaters You've All Been Waiting For

When a wife has a good husband, it is easily seen in her face.
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

. . . Betcha didn't know that there were two! This is a little secret only known to me and the ladies in my knitting group who saw me working on it. No tempting mentions on the blog of a "secret" project or tantalizing photos of heathered twisted stitches. Nope, not when the recipient has this blog as his first bookmarked page. I originally thought that the Dale was going to take me pretty much until next Christmas, so I thought I'd whip up a simpler sweater for the interim, like for a certain birthday coming in June. Turns out that I knit faster than I thought. Turns out I married a man who wants nothing to do with a plain stockinette sweater. As he put it - "If you're going to go to all that trouble to make it, why should it look like something you can buy?"

River Forest Gansey
Pattern: from Handknit Holidays
Yarn: Cascade 220 in Lichen Heather - about 8.5 skeins
Needles: US 7 for the body, US 5 for the edging
Notes: I measured against a sweater he had here, which worked pretty well. The sleeves are maybe a little long, but nothing dramatic. This was a fun, easy pattern. Love the all-over texture.
Best Thing About This Sweater: The utter surprise.

And now, the masterpiece that has really occupied my entire winter (one can easily imagine worse things, can't one?) . . .

Salt Lake City
Pattern: Dale of Norway Olympic Sweater for Salt Lake City (tragically out-of-print)
Yarn: Dale Heilo, almost all of 17 balls of the MC, 3 of the natural, and 2 each of the red and green
Needles: US 2, 3, 4
Notes: This may be the most knitting fun I've ever had.
Best Thing About This Project: "I never imagined I'd have a wife who could make this."'

That was so fun, I feel compelled to knit another. This time is mine. Park City in the natural colorway with a slightly brighter blue accent.

Well, the sweaters are packed to show off to the folks. We have a wedding to catch. See you next week.

Guess What I Finished

Oh, well, I guess this is just going to be one of those lifetimes.
-Stephen Wright

I just had to hijack (my own) Time Machine Tuesday to bring you this:
Look what I finished!

The best part? You can get some modeled shots next week. The model is coming home.

How To Work on Three Sweaters At Once

Spring is when you feel like whistling even with a shoe full of slush.

-Doug Larson

By (unintentionally) not blogging, of course. Between the every third night call schedule, and forging ahead with my knitting projects, this here blog has been a bit neglected. The upside is that now I have so much knitting to catch up on (and a better schedule come Monday), you'll be up to your ears in blogging!

The other best way to work on three sweaters at once? To finish one, of course: Gerbera, the sweater my husband calls my "Dale non-ski sweater" in a perplexed fashion, is done. The only downside? The difficulties of measuring gauge in a lace pattern mean that the sleeves are too long. You can see the pattern trajectory from here - what's the best way to shorten them? More on that later.

The other two sweaters are coming along - the Dale Ski Sweater - is almost done. Thanks to some sunlit time off today, I sewed the steeks. And then forged right ahead with the cutting, and the sewing of the sleeves, and the working on the neckband . . . Not much more!

And that third sweater, the Bed and Breakfast Pullover, has finally made it to it's rightful place as my go-to project at home. . . just in time start some new projects for April. I am loving making so many larger projects right now, in keeping with that grand plan for the year.

In Like A Lamb

A lion among ladies is a most dreadful thing.
-William Shakespeare

I got March started off right with a day off to get some new projects kicking around. . . then I went to work and didn't come home until the next day. Sometimes I love my job. But I digress. I am loving my knitting now. In spite of the relative in-advised-ness of having three adult sweaters on the needles simultaneously (that would be Salt Lake City for 6' tall husband, Gerbera for me, and the new one), I cast on for my March project, the Bed and Breakfast Pullover.

This is the cabled pullover I've been wanting to make for years. Unfortunately, I hadn't had the stash lying around for years. Which is one of the reasons my stash has hit it's largest total ever . . . how does it do that? Probably because in order to pick a contrast color for my hems, I had to buy all this yarn: And who ever gets rid of Cascade 220 they don't need right now? Some day those skeins will get used. In the meantime, I think I hit on the perfect color combination:I've started one ribbed sleeve to check my gauge, and then the cabled front. Just lovely. The true challenge will be dividing my time between the three sweaters. Any suggestions?

February's Other Project

All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous,
unpremeditated act without the benefit of experience.
-Henry Miller

It's a good thing there's a bonus day in February this year, because I am so behind in my blogging. Here's hoping March is a little better . . . At any rate, I've gone 28 whole days without showing you my official February project.

Here's what it looked like on February 1st:Gerbera, from Dale of Norway. And now, on February 29th, it's up past the colorwork on the body, with a partial sleeve completed as well.
I bought the book several years ago for Ingeborg, but decided that I needed to warm up my skills a bit with this project first, mostly lace with a single stranded band around the middle. And several years ago, I bought the yarn (the Sisik the pattern called for). And moved it four times. This year is definitely the year for this sweater.

Sleeves are the New Socks

Stretch your arm no further than your sleeve.
-French Proverb

If brown is the new black and pink is the new brown, I declare that, for 2008, sleeves are the new socks. Sleeves are the new go-to portable knitting projects. Sleeves are the new knitting-while-reading project. Sleeves are the only way that my somewhat ambitious knitting plans for 2008 are going to come to fruition.

Exhibit A: One finished Salt Lake City sleeve

Exhibit B: One half-finished Salt Lake City sleeve

Exhibit C: all the time at home I did not spend knitting the plain stockinette portion of those two sleeves above

There's always a portable project, right? There's always something in your purse, backpack, or pocket of your white coat for those found and opportune moments, like waiting in line, pumping gas, or going to noon conference. Traditionally, I knit socks during these times. They had all the qualities in question - small, lightweight, easily-memorized patterns for maximal not-looking-at-my-knitting. Turns out that the first 15 3/4" of the Salt Lake City sleeves fit all of these criteria. So instead of slogging through 15 3/4" of stockinette on US3s in the round during my perfectly good knitting time at home, I got it done here and there. So when I did get home, it was the fun color chart that awaited me. And I dove right in and had a blast.

Now there's just that 15 3/4" of the plain stockinette body to do . . . Perfect plane knitting for my weekend trip to see my husband, and New Orleans.

Coming Up Roses

You'll be swell! You'll be great!

Gonna have the whole world on the plate!

Starting here, starting now, honey,

Everything's coming up roses!

-from Gypsy

It's Tuesday again, and we're back for another trip in the time machine!

I love this sweater. I do not love self-portraits, although my sister gave me a little flexible tripod for Christmas, so this may get better if I experiment more with the self-timer. But I digress.

Rosedale
Pattern: Rosedale from Knitty
Yarn: Noro Kureyon, color unknown, 1 more skein than the pattern called for in my size
Needles: don't remember - US 7, maybe?
Notes: I only made one modification, which was to work the intarsia panels on both fronts rather than just on the left front. Call me square, but I like symmetry.
Wearing Notes: The yarn has pilled a bit, but nothing that can't be picked off. The only real signs of wear are around the edges of my first-ever sewn-in zipper, which I really should tack down one of these days. If I were to make it again, I might mess with the collar. It takes some fuss (and steam) to make it lie right. Overall, wears very well.
Best Thing About This Project: Five years old and still going strong . . . and spanning coasts. It was a great sweater for a January trip to Nantucket (brrr . . .) and it's my favorite sweater for a night in Old Town eating Mexican food. This may just be my favorite sweater. (Do I say that about them all? I really mean it this time. Really, I do.)

I made this sweater my first semester of medical school. It's knit in one piece with the two front panels of longer stripes knit intarsia style. The edgings are corrugated ribbing, which - as you all know - looks cool but is not terribly fun to do. Overall, it was a great easy knit that I still wear a lot 5 years later. It probably sees more action than most of my more complicated sweaters, and periodically I toy with the idea of knitting it again, this time in Kureyon Color 40. I already have 3 skeins of it, so I'd only need another 6 or 7 skeins . . .

And here's a better photo of that hat, which I wore to work this morning (it was 39 degrees and my hair was wet). This is a simple garter stitch hat in leftover Lion Brand Homespun. No pattern, just knitting and decreasing. Very versatile. More important - very stretchy to go over my bun and not mess it up.

Coming soon - you guessed it - more mittens!

It Works!

Denim has always been an everyday symbol for style.

-Ritu Kumar

In spite of that little mitten indiscretion yesterday, I have actually been making good progress on the Shaped Denim Aran (last seen here). It's become my go-to project at home. (Having fewer projects helps.)

While I love the product, I have to take care about knitting it when I don't want my hands to look cyanotic. I scared some (medical) friends of mine on Thanksgiving ny doing just that very thing. And since I managed to finish the back, I threw it in the washer and dryer to see if it really is the right size after all.

And guess what? The denim, it shrinks just like it's supposed to.How cool is this? It was so inspiring, I'm about half-way done the left front. After that, another front, two sleeves, a little sewing of a collar. I think I can push this through by the end of the year. Clean Slate for 2008 here we come!