knits, notes, etc.

the move went very well, though we are by no means completely unpacked. it's just so wonderful to actually be living in our home — i really don't even mind that the list of things to do seems to grow daily... i'm sure we'll get to everything. in time.

setting up my craft room the day after the move. i think i might need a hard hat!

i have plenty of projects finished and in-progress to blog about. soon. what have you been up to?

i finished my featherweight cardigan this morning! [ravelry]

i'll have more pictures as soon as i wash and block it. since i'm not ready to post my notes on it, i thought i'd talk about the part of the cardigan i spent the last two weeks knitting, unraveling, and knitting again: the sleeves.

keep in mind, this is a top-down seamless cardigan; they're very simple sleeves and i shortened mine to reach my elbow. at the start of the sleeve instructions, the designer gives you 3 options for knitting them:

slip held sleeve sts onto 12" circular, or spread evenly over dpns or 2 circular needles.

now that i've finished the cardigan, i don't think i recommend any of these methods. here are my not entirely objective reasons why:

12" circular needles only work if your sleeve circumference is larger than that. my upper arm is at most 11" around and i know this isn't the case for everyone. but, if you're knitting this with the specified yarn and needles, your stitches are already very loose and if you're me, you don't want to stretch them out even more on needles that are too long.

knowing this from the get-go, i actually bought a pair of 9" circular needles (so cute!) in US 6... except that after i knitted a few rows i realized these were 4.25 mm instead of 4 mm. guh. unraveled.

knitting with dpns is sometimes not comfortable for me and causes crazy ladders. i think dpns are great for knitting socks with short rows, knitting all things for a baby, or for finishing hats. but, once again because this is a laceweight yarn knit very loosely on 4 mm needles, it just seemed a lot harder to keep my stitches even when i passed from one needle to the next. progress was really slow, so halfway through one sleeve i switched over to the third method.

knitting with 2 long circular needles can be finicky, otherwise i have nothing against it. when you divide stitches between 2 circular needles to knit in the round, it's pretty likely that you're using 2 different lengths of needle, right? i mean, unless you're like me and habitually forget what lengths you have in stock, there's really no reason to have multiple circular needles of the same length. in this case, i had 36" and 24" inch needles; everytime i pulled them out of my bag, i had to untangle them from each other and from the delicate yarn.

although this is usually my preferred way to knit in-the-round, soon enough i was fed up; i removed the 24" circular needle and switched to magic loop knitting on the 36" needle.

magic loop knitting on the banks of lake merrit while i waited for erica.

with this method, i quickly finished the first sleeve. then i tried on the cardigan and decided i'd shortened the sleeve too much; it fell at least 2 inches above my elbow. i unraveled it again.

after those false starts, i actually finished both sleeves in a matter of days using only magic loop. so much faster and easier to handle... project notes soon to follow.

happy knitting!

yesterday, one of my two local yarn stores, Noe Knit closed their doors for good.

i rushed over there to meet Hilary on Monday evening, intending only to buy some circular needles and check out their shelving units; i thought it would be cool to furnish my new craft room with shelves and yarn baskets from an actual yarn store.

i valiantly resisted buying any yarn — until i found myself at the counter. really, that was just not the time to say no to the very last two skeins of Lorna's Lace Shepherd Sock in "Parry Hotter" colourway, exclusively dyed just for Noe Knit. i bought them. they will become armwarmers to wear to the next movie.

Lorna's Lace Shepherd Sock in Gryffindor House colors and size 7 circular needles.

the shop will definitely be missed. it was such a wonderful luxury to have a local yarn store that was open after 6PM; i could always depend on them to have what i wanted when i absolutely could not wait another day (or until the weekend), whether it was a skein of yarn to complete a project or a pair of needles to replace one that had just snapped in half.

...soon, i will be moving to Bernal Heights; there is not a single yarn shop in the neighborhood — hint. hint.

this morning, during my many meanderings across the internets as i waited for email to update and sipped my coffee, i came across Kate Gilbert's blog. guess what? — you can now purchase and download the sunrise circle jacket!

this is probably old news to many; but in the past couple of months i've been pretty out of touch with the knitting blog world... so busy with various things...

and the sunrise circle jacket is one project i've wanted to make since i first noticed it in Interweave Knits's Spring 2006 issue... but i just kept waffling on purchasing the pattern... until now.

we won't move in til the end of the June, but we're homeowners now:

this cute little victorian is ours.

you can see some of the repair work has started but there are many more to do before we move in. then we'll take our time turning this house into our home.