A Chill Week: WIP Wednesday

Life is getting pretty exciting here in the land of the deepbluerenegade. However, after the flurry of activity last week, this one was very very chill in comparison.

I have been preparing to move across the country in a week. I am leaving for 7 months to go work in my dream job!

Because of these big exciting things, blogging might be a little interrupted. I probably will be missing internet at my apartment.

It is looking pretty sketchy on fitting all of my crap into the car. I can ship 150 pounds of stuff, though I might need to rearrange some boxes so I am carrying only the fragile things.

But hey, this is a creative endeavors blog. I have been busy knitting when I can, and now that I am no longer under the interesting constraints of blog week, I can talk about them like normal.

I have my stash in exile packed, and we will see how good I am at anticipating how much I can knit in 7 months. I have 2 sweater quantities, stuff for the 3 shawls I talked about, and a random smattering of sock yarn. I am going to bring half of my blocking mats, the blocking wires, niddy-noddy and hopefully the swift and ballwinder. If I had been thinking I would have balled up the obvious stuff. I grabbed a few books, which the titles escape me now. Well, I know poems of color is in the box, even though I decided not to bring the bohus yarn. I know think outside the socks got thrown in, which makes sense since I want to knit hexagons again for the DSLO.

On the finished object front:


I started and finished a cowl made of my first handspun. I have knit this cowl three times. The first time with some purple bulky held doubled. That did not work. The colors were too close in value. Then I knit it with charcoal super bulky, but I cast on too many stitches and it was the awkward, too big to fit and too small to be huge.


It is on the border between crazy and cool. I actually like how the singles look more than the plied yarn. Mostly I am glad I found a way to use the yarn. I will have to put my thinking cap on for the other skein of handspun.

I like this photo because it shows the contrast between my first handspun and my third handspun. I have learned so much in the past few months.

The next thing is a set of baby hats for one of my friends. I finished the newborn size with no problems. I actually knit the first one because I was frustrated with the socks. I modified the pattern so I could use 2 yarns, and then I am doing the linen stitch pattern. Well, so this is on the border between FO and WIP.

Kai-Mei is in knitting limbo for a spell. Something went pear shaped when I went to gather the dropped stitches and knit them all together. This is after I ripped out the entire foot when I realized I placed the instep pattern in the wrong location. This is not the first time I have ripped back to the picked up stitches on the gusset.

I really want the finished product to be awesome. And it is my own fault for ignoring the directions.

There are several fun facts. 1.) The lace pattern is scalable. You can make it larger by adding initial stitches. So you add two stitches for every row you add. I keep the numbers even I added 4 stitches to the width.

I am happy with sock number 1, but the knitting of Kai-Mei was not as fun as I thought it would be, if that makes any sense.


I am also trucking away on Evenstar. I have it by my computer, ready for whenever I have a little spare time to pick away at it. We had some friends from undergrad visit this weekend, so I finally made it past the halfway point on the border.

It was very happy to be able to move the progress bar that extra five percent. For some unknown reason my markers for the middle were nowhere near the middle of the border. This makes me feel a little better. I am not even sure of the count. I was at 27 left the last I checked and it is very happy because it has become a count down not a count.

I also had an interesting time deconstructing how the purl stitch works. Did you know that when I knit or purl I always wrap the yarn counterclockwise? My friend was having trouble because he was trying to approach the purl like the knit. So in a knit you stick your needle in the front inside of the stitch going to the back outside. In purls you stick your needle in the back outside and go toward the front inside. Hopefully it works : ) It was really interesting to see what assumptions I make when I knit, and to break it all down and see what it is I actually do. I have been on autopilot in knitting for a long time.

I think that is all for now, please go visit the other WIP Wednesday folks here.

Take care guys

Molly : )