Sister's Birthday -- Pig!

Tomorrow I fly to DC to spend the weekend with Sister. It's her 36th birthday, meaning she's done 3 Chinese zodiac cycles (12 years each), so that's something. But the 60th birthday's the really big one. It means you've lived 5 cycles, and back when the average life span didn't quite reach that far, doing 5 cycles was really something special.

I'm not sure what's planned other than going to the spa on Saturday. Sister warned me that it's a Korean spa which is really, really exfoliating. Hm.

I'm taking her Bi-Colored Cables cardigan, gorilla sleeves and all, to pin up how it should really fit on her arms. Then my options are to cut and sew up, as if steeking, or to re-knit. If the cutting and sewing doesn't work, I may end up reknitting anyway. At least I'll know how many stitches wide to knit it.

I'm also packing the Manos So-called Scarf in Bramble and the Pagewood Farms sock yarn in Crayon (much more pastel than shown on the site, even more than the Pretty Pastels colorway) I got at Knitch last night. I'm playing around with it now, doing a So-Called Scarf swatch on size 8 US needle.

By the way, it's the year of the pig.

sleeve problems

I have sewed on one sleeve of Sister's sweater and found a problem:

The sleeve is much, much too long and too wide, even though I held it up to my arm as I was knitting it. Also it's too wide in the shoulders, so the sleeve droops even more.

On the other hand, the body of it fits well and I'm very happy with my first try at knitting cables.

I may have to re-knit the collar, though, for the third time.

And I thought I was almost done.

Well, I guess Sister may have to wait until winter to get this.

WIPs

This weekend I was inspired to photograph my current projects:


Sister's Bicolor Cables cardigan, from Interweave Knits, in Cascade 220, not the recommended yarn.
The body is knit from the bottom up, in one piece up to the underarm. Then I finished the back.












Here are the sleeves. You can see that they are almost done, and then I decide to count the stitches and find that one has 10 more stitches on the needle than the other. I knit them both at the same time, from opposite ends of the same ball of yarn, precisely to make sure they match. And yet they don't. Another weekend of letting them sit.

This baby blanket is almost done, but here's a picture anyway. The yarn is Cascade Sierra in navy, light blue, pink, and white. The yarn in held double and that's how I got the tweedy look. Size J crochet hook. General pattern is 2 rows of double crochet of the solid colors and 4 rows of the mixed colors. There will be 2 rows of white on the sides to finish.

Husband's afghan: Cascade 220 in black and medium blue, held double, size 10 US needle. There will be alternating strips of black and blue, with a black border. Very similar to the baby blanket pattern, no? Very easy to make? Yes.

Here's a close up of each strip, knit in basket weave stitch. Each block of the basket weave is 5 stitches wide and 6 rows tall.

Last WIP, another baby blanket. Center is Mountain Colors Barefoot in Mystic Lake colorway, double crocheted. Don't remember what hook I used, but may be size F. It was started last year to be a scarf but now it will be a blanket. The other yarn shows is Knit Picks Essential Solid in burgundy, navy, and dark green. Currently log cabining one inch of the burgundy in garter stitch. When that's done, I'll switch back to double crochet. Much faster that way.

Gah! Sleeve mistake

I'm knitting this sweater for my sister:

It's Bicolor Cables from Interweave Knits. She wants it brown and pink instead of brown and green.

I'm working on both sleeves at once, from the cuff up and am shaping the sleeve caps. And just found out that one sleeve is at least 10 stitches wider at this point than the other.

So, it's going to go in the knitting basket for a while and may be when I pull it out this weekend, the stitches will have evened out by themselves.

Here's hoping that magical thinking works