• turn a stitch pattern on the bias and make it a scarf
• rework an embossed leaf pattern onto a pair of mittens
• take delicate ribbing from the cuff of a sweater and use it on a cowl
• use a complex cable from an aran sweater in a wide, wrappy scarf

I think I'm going to start a bunch of pinterest boards to keep track of the inspiration. I don't think Rav faves are quite right because it'd be hard to remember what element I liked and what I thought it would be good for.

Sock yarn scrap projects have been taunting me - sock yarn blankets and hexapuffs just kill me! And then Andi blogged about her scrap yarn and highlighted a bunch of other people's projects. The variety of colors is so inspiring.

Back in December I was considering knitting a pair of Blender socks. This pair did me in! If I wore those socks they'd make me happy all day long.

So I pulled together some of my leftovers and came up with this selection. I think there are too many shades for one pair of blenders, but maybe I could do a cool-toned pair and a warm-toned pair. I think I've only finished one pair of socks this year so I need to do at least a couple more.

And lest you think it's all daydreaming an no knitting around here, I did get another wedge done on my Wingspan.

It's going to be veeeery close for me to squeeze in an eighth wedge, but if I can only do 7 I'll be ok. And on the bright side it will let me get to some new project knitting a bit sooner. Sweet Dreams from last week's post is high on my list. So are some new socks . But first I need to finish Wingspan. I hate knitting this yarn (but love how it looks knitted up) so I'm afraid to start anything else before it's done. Because we all know I'll never get back to finishing it otherwise.

Recently I admitted to myself that garment knitting just isn't for me. It's a combo of three things:

• Stamina - it's so hard for me to stay committed enough to finish the whole top.
• Weight loss - this past week I hit the 50 pound mark, and I still have around 20 pounds to go. Which size do I choose to knit?
• Silhouette and style - Being short and busty, it's so hard to know what will look good on me without trying it on. Not very practical when you're selecting the next pattern to knit.

So I decided this past week to just admit it - garment knitting just isn't for me. At least not for now. And I'm OK with that. At least for now ;)

It freed me to buy some fun accessory yarns this past weekend and to look at some great new accessory patterns

Aren't these gorgeous? They can be knitted in either fingering or laceweight. With or without beads. Suitable for merinos or blended with silk, bamboo or tencel. Lots of options. I can't wait to dive in to one of these!

But first I need to finish my Wingspan. I'm done with 5 of the 8 repeats (the pic below only shows 4). It's a fun, portable project and the yarn has been working up beautifully. I think I'll get a lot of wear out of it in the fall.

So here are my project plans:

• Finish Wingspan
• Finish the Mother's Day gift (no pics on my blog until I'm done but you can take a peek on Ravelry if you're curious)
• Start a shawl (maybe one of the ones above)
• Start a sock

The whole list feels reasonable! Fun, even. I'm so happy to take garments off my knitting plate! I even have a few plans for things I've never done before - colorwork (I've played with it but never finished a project), a true laceweight project (I did a very simple laceweight shawl but I want to do something more substantial), and maybe even something with beads.

Knitting fun - who knew?

It was fun to read all the color combos that you chose. Gray was a definite theme, and three out of the four winners listed gray as at least one of their colors.

The four winners of the gorgeous Wholehearted shawl are:

Susan who said

The shawl is adorable. that's one of my favorite shapes because it stays on your shoulders without much fuss. I also have a difficult time choosing colors for multicolored projects. Inevitably, I choose shades of grey. But I love grey so I'm never disappointed with the results.

Carla, who said:

I would make it in 2 colors of Plucky Knitter yarn ( was just at her retreat) a beautiful dark grey and a rich cobalt blue.

Monica, who said:

This is a gorgeous pattern. And is so nice of you to do a giveaway for a good cause. I would love to knit this yellow/mustard and grey. Just because those are my latest favorite colors.

Jessica, who said:

The shawl looks wonderful, but the colors, that's hard. I think I would go for a dark almost black blue and a royal purple. I think the contrast would be very nice.

I've emailed the winners (and sent the pattern if I knew your Rav name). Congrats to everyone and thank for playing!

And no, I'm still no closer to knowing what colors I'd choose. Fortunately I can't be distracted now anyway. I have to get sock yarn project #4 done in time for Maryland (under two weeks away!).

Happy Sunday!

What are you waiting for?

It's my birthday today and Andi gifted me a copy of the Wholehearted shawl (thanks, Andi!). It was a great surprise but my favorite part is that the proceeds are going to help the designer's family. Here's what she writes:

My daughter suffered a serious house fire today. She’s ok, but things are in shambles. From now through the end of May, the proceeds from this pattern will go towards helping her re-build and be whole again.

What an awful thing to go through. I can't even begin to imagine the heartbreak of losing prized belongings and irreplaceable memories.

Let's Help Erika's Daughter - A Contest

So, in a pay-it-forward spirit I'm going to purchase and give away 4 copies of this pattern to you all!

All you have to do is leave a comment with the two colors you would use for this shawl and why you'd choose those colors. I always have a difficult time choosing multiple colors for a single project so I'm looking for a little inspiration.

The fine print - one entry per person. The contest will run until next Saturday April 21st, and I'll announce the winners next Sunday April 22nd. I'll send the winners a copy of the pattern as a gift via Ravelry so I think you'll need a Rav account. If you don't have a Rav account and you win we'll figure something out.

Shiny Objects

• Rav forum post about remedying rowing out - I loved the "helicopter method" to address excess yarn. Ingenious!
• Another Rav forum post listing mostly garter shawls. I discovered a lot of new shawl patterns and I love the simplicity of garter stitch for my commute.
• Spatterdash wristwarmers showed up in my friends' activity this week. How did I miss these? Great for variegated yarns (or tonals too) and love all the little buttons.

I'm making decent progress on Buttercup - I split the yoke for the body yesterday. I'm now in the "knit, knit, knit" portion of the body, which is exactly the kind of autopilot knitting I need right now.

A few weeks back the Spring/Summer 2012 Knitty came out and I was mildly obsessed with Gemini - a top down pullover with just enough lace to dress it up. I even have the right yarn for it - GGH Bali. I love top down and I thought this might be the right pattern for my next garment project.

After spending some time with the schematic though, I can see the pattern suffers from a common grading issue with top down patterns. The larger sizes are not scaled properly. For example, the 42.25 bust size has a 9.75" yoke depth, and a 19" sleeve circumference. They're much too large in proportion to what the typical 42.25" bust size will have.

I say "common grading issue" because the pattern is sized up in a typical fashion - as the bust increases, the yoke depth and arm circumference increases at the same rate. The problem is that bodies don't grow at the same rate - the bust grows faster than the arm or yoke depth. Think about the extreme example - do waists gain as much size as a pinky finger as a person gains weight? Of course not!

There are ways around this. You have to alter how frequently you increase body sts versus sleeve sts on a raglan. And you have to modify where you start the raglan in relation to the neckline. Take a look at the below illustration.

Does this all seem like Greek to you? Well I have a real world example for you! Buttercup - a free pattern - does exactly what I show in my illustration. Heidi grows the body at a different rate from the sleeves - allowing the body to grow to the body size without sacrificing well-fitting sleeves. She does this by increasing the body every other row, while increasing the sleeves every 4th row. And it works! I'm knitting the 43" size and it has 12.6" sleeves. Compare that to the 19" sleeves on Gemini!

Now the good news is you can learn from Buttercup and adjust any top down pattern to use modified increases. You'll achieve the look of the design without the poor fit. And that's exactly what I plan to do if I knit Gemini.

Questions? I'd love to help you out. This is a topic I'm passionate about. Top down doesn't have to fit poorly in larger sizes!

Pattern: Zuzu's Petals by Carina Spencer
Yarn: Sliver Moon Farms Fingering Superwash in Orchid, held double (bought at Rhinebeck 2006. stash yarn - YEAH!)
Needles: 1 24" Knit Picks Options US #6
Mods: None! I love it that much!

This is such a clever pattern. I get all the things I like about wearing a small shawl as a scarf without the fuss of making sure it's laying properly. I used the decrease bind off - I wrote a quick tutorial here back in 2007 - and it's laying nicely. Very thankful that Nicole from Stash and Burn mentioned it on a recent episode - I had never noticed the pattern before.

I wore this while shopping at the mall yesterday and it was so easy. The opening is wide enough to easily slip over my head without messing my hair.

I plan to make more of these with a few variations:

• different stitch patterns
• garter instead of stockinette
• shorter plain section and more lace
• maybe even with beads at the bind off

On my needles, on my mind

I'm still going strong with my Buttercup. Nothing interesting to report - I'm in that oblivion stage of top down knitting.

And I'm also planning my next top - also probably a top down - in GGH Bali in either brown or light blue. Also both stash yarns. I'm not quite sure what's gotten into me with the stash yarns but I plan to ride this wave as long as it'll take me.

First, I'll tease you with an FO. Contrary to what the pic looks like, I did not knit a pink volcano. You're looking at the blocking pic. Once it's dry and I have time to do my hair (uhm, next weekend?) I'll show you an FO pic.

Now, for the new stuff.

Last month, I blogged about a new cowl top that I was working on. After knitting through on full ball I admitted to myself that there were too many unknowns for me to see it through - will the cowl drape? will it make me look frumpy?

So I decided to rip it out. I love the Hempathy yarn, I just needed to find a project that I could make with relative ease. I haven't finished a sweater in almost two years. I need to get past this hurdle.

Along came the latest episode of the Yarniacs, and Gayle was talking about her Buttercup. I sat with this thought for almost two weeks. And even with all the waiting I still wanted to knit Buttercup. It's a great design, Heidi used Hempathy in her original. Top down is my favorite way to knit tops, and the bit of lace will make it just interesting enough to wear with a floral skirt, denim skirt and even a regular pair of jeans. Yay for wardrobe options!

So, cowl is no more. Stay tuned for Buttercup updates.

BTW, if you're as much of a fan of top down as I am, you have to check out the Contiguous method (free tutorial!) of knitting a sweater from the top down with set in sleeves. As the name implies, you knit everything all at once, so it's different from the Barbara Walker top down set in sleeve method. Ravelry has 29 designs using the contiguous method and I expect more to pop up all the time.

Pattern: Toe Up Slip Stitch Heel by Wendy Johnson (PDF link)
Yarn: Jo-Ann Sensations Soles & More
Needles: 1-24" Knit Picks US #1 (2.25 mm), magic looped

Mods: to accommodate my shapely calves, I added calf sts along the center back, approx every inch until I increased 12 sts. The pattern offers three size options, but of course I wanted to do a size in between. This required that I calculate the gusset, heel turn and heel flap. In retrospect I should have just opted for one of the sizes in the pattern. This especially became evident when I went to knit sock #2 and "this is easy, I'm sure I'll remember" became "uhm....what exactly did I do?"

Combine that with my hubris that I surely remembered how to work the gussets and you get a decent-fitting pair of socks with mismatched gussets that took 2.5 months to knit.

Now that we're done with the negativity, there are a few things I love about these socks. The toe up heel flap, the slip stitch heel and the no picking up of sts are awesome. This method is new to me but I feel this style of heel flap must have already existed in cuff down patterns. Cuff down connoisseurs - anyone know?

New Book/eBook alert!

Hunter Hammersen, of Silk Road Socks fame, is coming out with a new book The Knitter's Curiosity Cabinet - a collection of 20 patterns (half socks, half shawls, hats and mitts. The ebook should be out mid-March. And similar to her Silk Road Socks designs, these patterns are all inspired by flora - chrysanthemem, narcissus and crocus to name a few. Sign up for her mailing list to be notified when she releases any new patterns. Oh, and check out her Ruction mitts. They're coming out in March as well. I love the architectural stitch pattern on the cuff.

Lots of great options for using up sock yarn here. And if you read my last post you already know I'm on the hunt for ways to use up my sock yarn.

It's mid-February and time for a check in on my goals. Every year I post goals and then I...don't talk about them. I'm changing that this year.

I blogged about my goals in early January. Here's a recap and where I'm at now.

• Continue with weight loss. I increased last year's goal to 15 pounds and I only got to 7. I struggled for a while with this but I need to remember - I'm still 7 pounds less than I was a year ago, and slow weight loss stays off. I'm going to reset my yearly goal to 10. I've lost 2 pounds so far this year.
• Always have a commuting-friendly project OTN.I've always had something to work on while on the train. But, I want to make sure I always have a sock OTN. Sometimes I'm just not up to thinking after a long day at work, and a simple sock is more my speed.
• Shop my stash first, but don't make it a chore. If I have a great idea and the stash can't support it, allow myself to buy without the guilt. I've added to this goal that I want to have more sock yarn FOs - one per month. I did Lintilla in January, and plan to have my grey jacquard socks done this month. BTW the pic up top is most of my sock yarn. Just in case the scale isn't clear, that's a 56 quart container. That's a whole lot of sock yarn.
• Continue working on weeknight meals. I still need to find my groove with that.I've been working on this one differently. Instead of cooking during the week, I've been making a big meal each Sunday that works for lunches and reheated dinners. So far I've done meatballs, meatloaf and stuffed peppers. The meatloaf and stuffed pepper recipes were great. I'll do a post on my mods as well. For today, we're doing a chicken dish. The Sunday cooking just fits better in our lifestyle right now.
• Figure out how to make sewing more a part of my weekly crafting. I have a hard time working sewing into my life. Knitting is just so portable and stop and go, but sewing is so instant gratification. I need to find the sweet spot for sewing.No progress on this one yet. I don't see this happening for a while. And I'm OK with that.

This week's shiny objects:

• Yarniacs - the new podcast on the block. I try a lot of podcasts but don't often write about them because they just don't hit the mark for me. This one really does! They've done 3 episodes so far and it really feels like I could hang out with Gayle and Sharlene. They're yarn-obsessed, chat about new designs and what they're working on now and have an active knitting fantasy life. You know, just like the rest of us.
• New book! A Handknit Romance by Jennie Atkinson - The designer of the famous butterfly dress in 2005 has released a book filled with frilly garments and lacey details.
• An awesome new pullover design with assymetrical cables, feminine shaping and even a pocket. Really unique and it's currently in pattern testing.

I spent a lot of time this past week looking for THE pattern for one of my summer yarns. I finally decided last night to make up a pattern myself.

I'm using the hempathy and I'm making a top down raglan with a drapey cowl in the front. I'll be able to wear it to work as well as on the weekend.

I'm definitely winging the cowl.

I love the hand of hemp and linen when laundered so I knit up a gauge swatch and washed and dried it. After drying I got 6 SPI and 9.5 RPI.

I sketched it out and calculated my CO amount. Since this is a raglan I also calculated what I'll have at the end of the raglans (when I split off for the sleeves).

I did a few rows of garter before joining in the round. This is for two reasons. I want a slight bit of weight at the edge of the cowl to help it drape. Plus, I used a knitted on CO and it spirals around the needle before it has any knitting to stabilize it. I love the look of the knitted on CO when used with garter.

A little discovery. I cast on at a cafe and I realized that I forgot my stitch markers just as I was pulling in to park. There was no way I could do a top down raglan without stitch markers! Thankfully there was a Target nearby so I picked up a package of hair elastics for girls - you know, those thin elastics made for little girls' hair. I intended just to use them so I could start, but these are *awesome* as stitch markers! They're super thin and come in a variety of colors. So I have one color for the raglan increases, one for the cowl decreases, and one for the end of row. These will definitely be in my knitting bag from now on.

I'm sharing my knitting time between this and my grey jacquard socks. My goal is to knit through a few more skeins of sock yarn before Maryland in May. And I also want to knit something I'll actually be able to wear this season. Reasonable goals, right?

I ripped back to the ribbing and gave 8 more stitches to the cable panel. I also knit the ribbing a good inch and a half longer before starting the cables. It’s looking better but I need to knit more to confirm. More on that next week...

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the types of big projects I’m knitting (meaning, garments). Given how long it takes me to finish a larger project, I need to start knitting them several months before I want to wear them. So, if I want to make something for the spring and summer, I need to start now.

I pulled three yarns from my stash

• left: Dale stork, 100% cotton, fingering weight, black
• niddle: Elsebeth Lavold Hempathy, hemp, cotton and modal, DK weight, a great red
• right: Louet Euroflax, 100% linen, sport weight, eggplant

I’m so out of touch with warm weather patterns. I need to do a little more studying and a review of my Rav faves. I want to get something CO by next Sunday. I’m so tired of not finishing garments. I want to wear what I knit! And not just on my hands and around my neck (although that’s nice too).

I'm open to any suggestions. Please leave a comment if something comes to mind. Help a knitter out :)

Oh! I almost forgot (ok I did forget, but I'm updating this post right after I hit publish). Here are a few things that caught my eye this week:

• The Blathnat socks, a new mystery sock pattern designed for the SKA January mystery KAL. The theme is flora and fauna and these are a gorgeous combo of flora-inspired motifs. Take a look at this stunning FO by IgnorantBliss. She always takes the most awesome pics.
• The Knitty surprise came out and I love the Freja mittens with their abstract heart motif on the front. I won't be starting any more mittens this winter but I'll definitely consider these for next fall.
• Wingspan shawl a garter stitch, short rowed shawl that works exceedingly well with long repeats of color. Check out all the projects - there are some masterpieces!

I still have a hankering for some more cables so these will have a swirl of cables going up the front. I used the same stitch counts as I did for my Ambroso mittens since they fit well. You can see the start of the thumb gusset and I plan to make a flip top so I can easily use my phone without freezing my hand off. It's the little things.

I’m using Cascade 220 Quatro in Lupin Twist. I’ve wanted to use this colorway for a long time but was worried the four colors would be too busy for a garment. But it will be perfect for mittens! And the colors seem to meld together when knitted and almost look gradiated. Really pretty!

One small issue with the yarn - it's coming out of the yarn cake twisted so it's getting caught up on itself. Every now and then I need to hold up the WIP and allow the yarn to untwist. I'm not sure there's anything I can do about it, right? I think it means the yarn is slightly overplied. I don't notice anything once it's knitted though - it might be a problem with a garment though.

Oh, and let me know if you’re interested in the mittens. I’m keeping notes so I can make the second mitten and if there’s enough interest I’ll post a free pattern for them.

And before we go, here are a few things that caught my eye this week:

• This cabled blanket is amazing It almost makes me want to knit another blanket. Almost.
• The new Knitscene is out! View the preview here or browse on Ravelry. Like many of the spring Knitscenes, this issue showcases a mix of warm and cool weather projects - short sleeve pullovers, vests and a shawl as well as mitts, mittens, hats and a cowl. Mercedes Tarasovich-Clark is the featured designer. I really like her Beulah cardigan with its embroidery detail. I’ve been drawn to embroidery on knitting lately but this is the first one I’ve liked on a garment.
• I just came across Twisted Fiber Art yarns. Wow! Meg dyes self-striping and gradiated yarns (she calls the Evolution). She has mostly fingering, DK and light figering - great for socks and shawls. Several of her yarns have nylon in them - great for durable socks - and she also has the popular MCN (Merino Cashmere Nylon) blend too. Oh and she also offers mini skeins for coordinating heels and toes or small amounts of two color knitting. I will *definitely* be buying some as soon as I finish up a couple pairs of socks. I will NOT increase my stash this year. I will NOT increase my stash this year.

I CO for my Nuvem last Saturday. I knit on it during my commute all week and wasn’t sure about it. I had a hard time keeping everything together on the train – a combo of fine yarn and stitch markers – and was considering frogging it. It was so bad that I chose not to knit at least twice this week. Yeah - that bad. With the amount of stockinette this needs to be a commuting project. There’s no way 1,300 yards of laceweight stockinette would keep my attention otherwise.

Before I frogged though I decided to give a different pair of needles a try and swapped from Knit Picks to Addi Lace. What a difference! The join is smoother and the needle has a bit more grab to it. While I won’t know for sure until my commute tomorrow I think this will be a winner. And good thing because so far I’m loving the colors and the lightweight hand. I’ve knit almost 5% of the ball so I think this is likely a year+ project.

Can you believe this is 5%? It looks like nothing. I guess laceweight projects are always that way - even if you're not knitting lace.

New Blog Feature

I love how Andi ends many of her posts with links to things she discovered this week and I’m going to give it a try too.

Here are a few things I loved this week

• brittg’s arabesques pullover is half garment and half art. I’d love to do just the sleeves on a top
• Berroco released their spring 2012 booklets and they're downloadable too. I haven’t come across anything I love yet but like many pattern books I suspect I’ll discover several after FOs pop up on Ravelry
• Garnstudio announced their Spring/Summer 2012 patterns and are posting the pattern over time. There are only a few up there right now but all the pics are there. They liberally featured garter stitch yokes and mesh in garments and have a mix of accessories too – shawls, scarves and even some socks.

I toyed with the idea of doing a big retrospective, but truthfully I didn't do all that much crafty in 2011. We did A TON of work on our house and that took a good 6-9 months of concentrated effort. So I ended 2011 in a good place - a house with no active renovation projects and a smaller stash because I sold quite a bit of the yarn I didn't want to use.

For 2012 I do have a few simple goals.

• Continue with weight loss. I increased last year's goal to 15 pounds and I only got to 7. I struggled for a while with this but I need to remember - I'm still 7 pounds less than I was a year ago, and slow weight loss stays off. I'm going to reset my yearly goal to 10.
• Always have a commuting-friendly project OTN.
• Shop my stash first, but don't make it a chore. If I have a great idea and the stash can't support it, allow myself to buy without the guilt.
• Continue working on weeknight meals. I still need to find my groove with that.
• Figure out how to make sewing more a part of my weekly crafting. I have a hard time working sewing into my life. Knitting is just so portable and stop and go, but sewing is so instant gratification. I need to find the sweet spot for sewing.

And lest you think this is all about things I want to do in 2012, here's my first FO of the year - Lintilla!

I love this project - the simplicity and cleverness of the pattern, the easy knitting of garter combined with the little ruffles and the ease of stopping and starting at any point (I put this project down for over a month and picked it back up without a problem).

My only regret is that it's a bit smaller than I'd like, but that's not a surprise. The original was knit in Wollmeise (575 yards per skein) and I knit mine out of Miss Babs Yummy (400 yards per skein).

One thing I like about many of Martina Behm's shawl and scarf patterns is that she writes them not in terms of number of rows or inches, but rather percentage of the entire skein. So, regardless of your yardage you can create the entire shape of the shawl and use up almost your entire skein.

My scarf used up 90% of the skein, so I had 40 yards left over. I don't think I would have been able to get another full repeat in though - those final rows were using approx 5 grams for each set of rows.

And now that I'm done with one Martina project I'm going to get started right away on another - Nuvem. It's a very different shape fromLintilla but has the same

percentage directions so I can use up most of my yarn. I'm going to make mine in Creatively Dyed Waterfalls - a handdyed heavy laceweight of purples with a bit of pink and white. It coordinates with about 70% of my wardrobe so I can envision using it as a scarf or a wrap around the office. 1,300 yards will definitely be longer term so I don't expect to finish this until next fall/winter.