I hit the Argyll V-Neck hard. Observe:

all gylls present and accounted for

One back, with all duplicate stitching completed and all 10 million ends woven in. Phew!

arr.

One front, with all knitting finished and (since this photo was taken yesterday afternoon) all existing ends woven in. Duplicate stitching has commenced.

I'm still fairly certain that I won't have enough black to do the armhole and neck ribbing but I'm choosing to remain in denial. I'm leaving for vacation in a week so all responsible brain cells are being diverted toward packing, not knitting. Well, except for those required for the packing of the knitting. That comes before all else.

Posted by Elli at 1:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (27)

It's been a while since I've showed you some knitting. Let's do something about that.

who am I? where am I?

I may have been holding out on you. This is my current guilty pleasure knitting. Whenever I start going cross eyed from knitting the Argyll V-Neck (yes, still working on that...) I pick up this little gem of a half-sweater and get happy all over again.

For those of you who will ask, it happens to be the Aran Crossover Top, by Mari Lynn Patrick, from the 2005 Holiday Vogue. Only one other person has some progress shots of this up on Ravelry. Why, you ask, have so few people cast on for this little treasure? Check out the photo from the magazine. Yup. A sad case of overexposed cables. But I will do my darndest to salvage this little gal's reputation.

The yarn is Jaeger Baby Merino in a shade I like to think of as Muted Macaroni. Very tasty.

In other news, I'm still plugging away on the Argyll.

Almost. There.

I'm a bit concerned that I'll run out of the black yarn...which is ridiculous because I have way more than enough of the other colors, but I refuse to buy more until I find myself high and dry.

Thanks for all the advice on the handspun, by the way. You will be pleased to hear that my twist is set.

Posted by Elli at 7:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (25)

greetings, knitters. we are single and on the prowl.

So I made some yarn, and frankly I'm a little underwhelmed. Granted it's been a couple of years since I've spun anything and I did pick the crappiest of the recently-purchased roving to practice on (some hairy el cheapo Romney with a goodish bit of v.m., short ends, etc.), so I'm not giving up yet.

The deets: 4oz Romney, 2ply. A tad underspun, but surprisingly balanced. Not worth measuring WPI yet, I think.

What I learned:
-Making a little reference card with a sample to refer to does in fact help me spin a more consistent thickness.
-I should probably split the roving by the number of bobbins I plan to fill so that I can minimize the leftover singles.
-Buy nicer fiber!

Abe Lincoln agrees that this is quite possibly the most unremarkable yarn ever.

The plan: plain old mittens look like about the only option here. I'm going to definitely knit with this so that I can see what I need to do differently.

Question for all you spinners out there: do I need to wash it and set the twist before I knit with it, or can I just knit and block?

*I figure if I name my yarn, I'll be more likely to keep track of it. So I'm starting with the beginning of the alphabet and moving on from there. We'll see how soon I make it to Xavier, Yul and Zebadiah.

Posted by Elli at 8:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (17)