Oh, it's been a while, hasn't it?

Not without good reason, though: I'm 33 weeks pregnant, expecting a girl, and have been working on a few projects for her. I've knit a little cardigan and a smocked dress, and yarn is on the way to knit another cardigan as my project for the Ravellenic Games. I also have a few summer-friendly projects on the needles right now: small shawls and cowls, AKA things that aren't so hot that I'll melt beneath them in this heat wave I'm suffering through.

Back soon, with pictures!

Spinning a Storm

The drop-spinning continues at my house. I bought a small stash of wool roving and have been slowly working my way through it. I'm still knitting, for sure, and am seeing the light at the end of the tunnel on a cardigan I'm working on right now, but spinning is so easy to pick up for five or ten minutes throughout the day.

Working third shift, I am blessed to be home to help my husband start bedtime for our son, but around 8:00 or so, I say goodnight, leave my husband to read bedtime stories, and I get ready for work. Once the scrubs are on and the dinner is packed, I have 10 minutes before I have to leave in which to spin.

Undyed wool roving, my second attempt at handspun:

Two plies of pink and one ply of purple, which I spun more tightly:

And some hand-dyed wool, done on the stove with plain old liquid food coloring, tap water, and vinegar:

Spinning is great fun, but there's a little added excitement for me as I watch the colors change gradually, and then again as I wait to see what will happen when the individual strands are plied together.

New Adventures in Old Technology

I received a top-whorl spindle for Christmas from my awesome parents, and within three days had already spun through the wool roving that came with the spindle. Last night I wound my single into a center-pull ball, then took the "outside" end and the "inside" end and plied them together to create a 2-ply yarn:

It varies between worsted and bulky weight, and there are definitely some spots that are much thicker or thinner than others, but overall I'm pretty happy with it. I have 1 oz (~28 grams) of wool that will probably never be knit into anything, but I've already bought more wool so I can keep practicing.

Chroma Chroma

When I saw the pattern for the Chroma Stocking Cap on Ravelry, I knew I would knit it. Furthermore, I knew I would knit it in Knit Picks Chroma. And, because I'm cheap, I knew I would knit it in whichever colors were on sale. 

So, here it is: Chroma in Pool Party (blue-green-yellow) and North Woods (green-yellow-orange-brown). Because both colorways rely heavily on a blueish green and a greenish yellow, I had to do a little "editing." If both skeins were coming up on the same color at the same time, I snipped out the offending color from one skein and rejoined my yarn.

This was a very well-written pattern with a good tutorial for jogless stripes. My only modifications were using a tubular cast-on method (beautiful!) and adding a tassel, because this hat was just begging to have one. Also, it was a great way to use up some of the yarn that I cut out earlier to make more eye-pleasing stripes.

Thick Stripes Cowl

Four skeins of clearance-priced Lion Brand Alpine Wool somehow jumped into my basket about six months ago. I thought about knitting hats and mittens with them, but during a Christmas-shopping trip I saw some great chunky, soft cowls and decided to see just how far those four skeins would take me:

This was super simple to knit, and made me especially glad that I had bought a 40-inch cable for my interchangeable needle set. More details on my Ravelry project page.

Orange You Glad I Knit You a Sweater?

A recent splurge has become this: 

A top-down raglan pullover for my son. I've used tubular cast-off on the cuffs and waist, and TECHknitting's post on the subject is really well done. After having my son try on the almost-finished product, I abandoned the idea of also using this bind-off at the neck and instead just picked up stitches and worked a few rows of stockinette stitch for a nice rolled edge. I used a suspended bind-off that I've used before.

Knit 1, *slip st back to LH needle, k2tog through the back loop; rep from * until one st remains and draw end of yarn through last st to secure.

I knit the sleeves straight until just before the cuff, where I did a few rounds of decreases before switching to 1x1 ribbing. In hindsight, I think I would have preferred using paired decreases from the elbow to the wrist: next time, right?

Man on the Moon

I love to knit for my husband: searching for the perfect Man Hat pattern, knitting it in something washable yet soft in a deep green, or navy, or the orange and brown of his beloved pro football team. In the past year or two, when I offer to knit for him, he says something like, "I have so many hats. Knit something for yourself."  

As one might imagine, it was a mark-the-calendar day at my house when my husband requested a hand-knit sweater this spring. He, of course, had something particular in mind:

Andy Kaufman, of Taxi and Saturday Night Live, not to mention his comedy specials.

Yes. I was being asked to custom-knit Andy Kaufman on a grown man's sweater. I did a little digging on the internet, just in case something was already available. There are plenty of bizarre, lovely patterns available, and since there was actually a Big Lebowski sweater pattern out there, I thought there might be something  for an Andy Kaufman sweater. 

I did not find a pattern, but someone had already done the hard work of rendering Andy Kaufman in intarsia. The chart is from DomiKNITrix. (If you were so inclined to knit a Bruce Lee sweater, she has that covered, too.)

I bought ten skeins of worsted wool in a natural color and one in black. I used a basic (very basic) men's sweater pattern that I used many years ago for the second sweater I ever knit for my husband and added the chart. In hindsight, I should have moved the portrait up about two inches, but overall the effect is pretty awesome, if I do say so myself.

My husband swears this is his new ski sweater, to be worn all the time. All. The. Time. All I can say is, after this much stockinette stitch, someone had better get some wear out of it.