Category Archives: Knitting

Ha!  And you all thought I wasn’t getting any knitting done just because I wasn’t blogging!  Oh, ye of little faith!  We had plenty of car time with Jeremy here so I was able to finish the Must Have before we went down to the Alps so I could get some cool pics.  Don’t mind the ‘do.  Just look at the sweater and mountains.  My hairdresser is moving (story of my life) and you have no idea what it’s like to find a good hairdresser in Germany that speaks English well enough that you feel totally safe with your hair in their hands.  But I digress…

Wanna see something funny?  Just “met” another Army-wife-knit-blogger here in Germany today and she went down to the Edelwiess a few weeks ago. 

It really is a small world.  Now I gotta find out where she found that Phildar store!! C’mon, Allena, fess up!!

The color in the picture of the front is accurate.  The one of the back is all washed out but it’s a good close-up.

So, my first real cable sweater is finished and it didn’t take me two years to do.  I’ve done simple cables before but nothing like this.  Well… I did the Cables 101 Vest a few years back, but that was easy compared to the Must Have.  Dan’s been asking for a cabled sweater for years and now I have no excuse.  Dangnargit.  Just shot myself in the foot. 

Haven’t really decided on the next project yet.  I think I’ve become a one project girl.  I seem to get more done that way.  I need to do a few baby gifts and the next adult sweater is Dan’s.  I think it’s going to be this one.  It’s Sirdar 8313 that I picked up at John Lewis in Glasgow.  God, I loved going through all those pattern books.  I love Sirdar and Patons patterns and they were in abundance there.  Very manly man sweater.  Actually…. now that I look at it, lol, it kind of reminds me of an Army uniform sweater.  LOL.  Greeeaaat. 

It calls for DK and I’m using Elann Highland Wool (of course) in about the same color, so I’ll have to do some tweaking.  No biggie.  Weird pattern though.  It starts out with about 50 more stitches that you reduce at the end of the 3×3 ribbing.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before so I’m a little nervous.  Sound weird to anyone else? 

Finally got to start on the Must Have yesterday.  I have no idea why the color is all funky on the picture. It’s a deep cranberry.

I gotta tell ya.  Cables kick my arse until I get used to them.  It wasn’t until I got about three inches into the pattern that I finally started to feel like it was clicking along and the cussing pretty much stopped.

Though I ended up making up my own, a huge help for me was the “cheat” sheet that Kate made available to those of us on the Must Have KAL page.  When I first saw it I had one of those slap-myself-upside- the-head moments.  Duh.  Why didn’t I think of that.  Keeping track of different row changes in different cables is what has always deterred me from texture knitting before.  I’m feeling pretty good about this one.  I might just be a cabler after all!  Speaking of “cheat sheets” you have to see the masterpiece that Nathania (Nathania Apple) made!  All in color and everything. 

I did find an error about halfway down the cable on the left side.  It was a pretty easy fix though.   I just dropped those nine stitches down to the mistake and knit them back up on double points.  I almost like doing that.  Makes me feel powerful.  Like *I’m* the one in charge of the knitting and not the other way around.

Happy Valentine’s Day!  I greeted my guys with heart-shaped pancakes this morning.  Daniel thought I should try tree pancakes at Christmas next year.  What am I?  Pancake Picasso? 

Daniel’s at school so I don’t have a factoid for today.  I forgot to get one from him this morning.  I was kind of thinking they’d get a snow day today because we got dumped on all night and it’s not supposed to stop for a couple of days.

I finished my red scarf for the Red Scarf Project.  I used two 50gr balls of merino DK that I found here at my German yarn shop.   That’s sounds easy enough but colors over here are not the same as they are in the States.  I was a little worried I wouldn’t be able to find a true red, but I did.  Most are really orange, yellows are mustardy and greens are limey.  It looks a little deeper thank it actually is.   Hard to fix the contrast of the snow.  I cast on 40 stitches and used the subtle mesh from Barbara Walker Charted Knitting Designs ; I really like the way it turned out. 

Dear Secret Pal,

You’ll find my SP4 Questionnaire answers on my About page.  This is gonna be fun. I’ve been collecting stuff for weeks to send to my Secret Pal!  Weeeee….

I just received my Knit Picks catalog on Friday.  I saved it for bedtime reading.  Got all cozy that night and was flipping through it when…. Ha….. Check this out.  It’s the Midwest Moonlight scarf from Scarf Style by Pam Allen.   Throw some garter stitch into my scarf and it’s the same thing! 

I need some help.  I want a drumcarder.  It’s one of my Christmas gifts but I’m really on the fence.  I was convinced that I wanted the Deb by Patrick Greene, but I’m torn between it, the Fricke Finest (though it’s a little steeper than I wanted to go for a first carder) and the Louet.  I’ve even thought about the Fricke Petite since I probably won’t be a carding maniac after the first month or so.  I work with medium to medium-fine wools like Romney, Falkland and blends.  Let me hear from you!

Didn’t mean to scare anyone with that title today.  That’s probably a huge faux paux in the knitting world, but what’s the deal?!  Two projects in a row now where I ended up coming very close to running out of yarn.  Actually, I did run out of the gray, but got lucky enough to find someone who had extra.  Here’s what I had left in the black

From now on I’m ordering two extra balls of yarn!But I made it.  Whew!  The Hardangervidda is done.  After several false starts on the Red Scarf Project scarf, I gave up and decided to listen to you and get Dan’s sweater done.  Glad I did. All you get is sneak peeks today.   I’ll post a picture of Dan wearing it tomorrow.  It’s upstairs blocking but I took a few pictures of putting it together.  The finishing took me all day. 

The zipper was the hardest part but once I got it in there right, I was pleased with the finished result.  

Once I sewed the sleeves in I had to go back and sew the facings down that  were knit into the top of each sleeve. The facings do a beautiful 

job of hiding that mess from the cut edges. 

I also took a close-up to show the puckering that I was trying to show in the Hans.  You can see in the picture to the right how puckery my stitches are in the back.   This will all come out in blocking.