It was cold, so I was wearing my Hot Pink Mittens. Adam says it looks like I am wearing oven mitts. The pucker at the waist can and will be blocked out–I haven’t washed and blocked it yet.

Pattern: Garter Yoke Cardigan, by Melissa LaBarre, in Knit.1 Fall/Winter 2008. [Ravelry link here.] This is (and I am not dissing Melissa/Knitting School Dropout here, because it is a beautiful and clear pattern) a women’s cardigan version of Brooklyn Tweed’s Cobblestone Pullover. Same garter yoke, etc.

Yarn: 6.5 balls of Debbie Bliss Tweed. This yarn has extremely minimal yardage, beware. It has 97 yarns of aran weight yarn/ball, which is very little for the price. I can’t remember the exact price for this, though I have a receipt floating around on my desk somewhere. I bought a bag of 10 balls on discount when Yarn Connection went out of business. I’m guessing maybe around $70-80/bag? It seems to retail for $10/ball, and I remember there was about a 20% discount on the yarns, if not more. If I paid $8/ball and I needed 8 balls, then I paid around $64 for the yarn for this sweater. I found my receipt–I paid $77.50 for a bag of 10, and I used 6.5 balls (I originally put 7.5 balls), so 7 x $7.50=$52.50. Plus another $7.50 for the buttons. Knitting, not always so cheap.

Anyway, the prototype of this sweater was knit by Melissa in a tweed yarn (the one in the magazine was knit in a solid yarn), which is where I got the idea for my tweed version.

Needles: various types of no. 5 needles (circs and DPNs).

Project started/finished: Started January  2009, finished January 2010. One year!

Notes: When I started knitting this sweater, pretty much right when the magazine came out, and if I had finished it, I would have been the fourth project or so on Ravelry. Now, there are more than 700 projects–almost 800–on Ravelry alone. Basically I started knitting this sweater and then a couple of things happened.

First of all, life. I remember when I got laid off, I thought, “Ooooh, I can finish that sweater,” but you know how things go. Anyway, I did actually knit the majority of it in a couple of months, but then the second thing happened.

That would be the sleeves. Ugh, I hated how I had tried to taper them (a personal modification not in the pattern), but I SO did not want to rip them out and re-knit them. So I stuffed it in a bag in a drawer and hoped that magical elves would come and reknit them for me. Finally I had to face the music. (Like all of life, I suppose.) I ripped out the sleeves and re-knit them to bracelet length, which meant less work and was also more attractive, I think.

Anyway, this pattern is super clear. I found no mistakes.

The buttons! Aren’t these cute? They are pretty standard leather woven buttons. We went to 38th St., which is like button/accessory central in New York (it’s part of the garment district) and we passed by this crazy store:

SPANDEX!!! I have never seen so much spandex and glitter. It was like drag queen paradise in there. Anyway, I probably drove the button lady crazy because I first asked for these woven buttons, but then I asked her to pull down other colors and wooden buttons and stuff before changing my mind and going back to my original choice. $0.75/each–I’m not sure if that’s cheap or expensive or what, but at least they were affordable.

This is only my second sweater ever (the first one had no sleeves, so it was basically a tube). Came out pretty well, even if it took forever!

(1.) My first resolution is to finish this sweater. If you look at the photo above, you can see where I decreased at the sleeve to make it narrower (near the cuff). I knew it looked weird (my own pattern mod), but I didn’t want to rip it out, so I just stuffed it into a bag and ignored it. But I finally realized that I had to do something and I ripped it out. I now have to reknit that sleeve end and the other sleeve.

(2.) General knitting resolutions: More sweaters / knit down the stash.

I have more life/career goals that I may or may not share on the blog, but I should be able to at least finish that first resolution, right?!

I’m back in New York, arriving on the red eye this morning. Here’s the state of the sweater when I left San Francisco. I just need one more arm. Or I could wear it asymmetrically, I guess.

I have a work project and I’ve been sucked into reading a couple of mysteries that a friend gave me so my blogging has suffered this week. I had to stop reading tonight because I don’t want the book’s images to be the last thing I read before I go to sleep. (Also, interestingly, the mystery–Grotesque, by Natsuo Kirino–it’s kind of a mix of seedy pulp noir, Gossip Girl (it’s set at a girl’s school), and Notes from a Scandal, all set in Japan, is right at the point where they’re talking about this ugly scarf that this loser character has spent weeks knitting. Sigh. Maybe I am a loser knitter.)

Anyway, I’ve moved to the sleeve part of the sweater (above). Voila!

I’ve tried to stick to only knitting on my blog here, but with this new post-a-day resolution, I may have to introduce other non-knitting topics, due to dearth of knitting info. Anyway, today, I saw the best hat–I cursed myself for not bringing my camera.  It was a pointy knit hat, in red, but the entire thing was covered in a loopy stitch–so fun and cute. It was worn by this awesome little old lady chatting with her friends–it was like woolen version of those funky bathing caps you see at the pool.

I belong to a posh gym*–though I am giving up my membership in favor of a cheaper option when my current membership runs out–and I manage to only take the uncool, frumpy classes. The best is this AWESOME aqua-aerobics class, where the teacher has this great mix–it builds up slowly, and then the most strenuous (and I’m not kidding, aqua-aerobics gives you a workout, despite its lame reputation) exercises are set to Journey (”Don’t Stop Believing,” natch) and then the cool-down exercises are set to that Feist counting song. It sounds lame, but you can tell he put some thought into putting together the mix, unlike the other aqua aerobics teachers who teach the whole class to this generic club music the whole time, and there’s no arc. Yes, I am arguing that the best gym classes have an arc. (Knitting related link: I have long thought that I should adopt the blog Exercise Before Knitting’s name as a life philosophy.) I went to the gym today, and it was pretty empty, which is another nice benefit of a flexible work schedule.

* Doogie Howser has been spotted working out at my gym. Though I am not sure that that is so impressive.

I haven’t been working on my socks because I’ve been churning out this sweater, Garter Yoke Cardigan, from the latest Knit.1 issue instead. I’m normally an accessory knitter, but I’ve been feeling the call of the sweaters this year. It’s going well, and I’m using some Debbie Bliss tweed that I bought on close-out from The Yarn Connection. It’s good subway knitting actually, because it’s pretty straightforward, and also good for knitting on while yelling at my computer, which is the slowest computer known to man. I think I knit an entire inch today before it allowed me to pay a bill online. Sigh. Technology. Sometimes, it sucks.

Here are six skeins of Rowan Scottish Tweed Aran that I bought at Purl (they were 40% off, and I had a gift certificate from Adam, so it ended up only costing me $24) to make this:

It’s Kate Gilbert’s Equestrian Blazer in the Winter 2006 Interweave.

It calls for a 6 needle, but I seem to have a really loose gauge, so even when I knit on a 0 needle, I think my swatch might still be too big!

Also. It has gotten really hot here (Memorial Day! The start of summer!) so I’m feeling a little less enthusiastic about knitting with wool.

But meanwhile, here’s what the traveling sock has been up to:

Riding the Cyclone, visiting police precincts, drinking and hanging out.

It’s almost a finished object! Because all it needs is weaving in of the ends and a washing and a blocking.

Pattern: Knitscape custom pattern (this is Artfibers custom version of the Knitware software)

Yarn: Artfibers kyoto, 4 skeins

Needles: Clover circulars in size 9 and 10.5 for the body and Balene circulars in 9 for the neck and armhole.

Skills learned: Picking up stitches, casting off loosely, slanted decreases facing right and left, increasing in circular garment knitting, three-needle bind off (for shoulder seams).

Other thoughts: This was a good first sweater project because it was pretty easy. Only problem was the nasty cast off. And now it’s fixed! Also the bottom of the armhold is a little loose, but that’s okay.
Click through for more views of the sweater.

Here are some other views:

Photograph by baba lu.

Pattern: From the software at Artfibers (sleeveless turtleneck)

Yarn: Artfibers Kyoto (silk/mohair/wool)

Needles: 9 / 10.5 Clover bamboo circular.

This sweater is temporarily on hold while I finish the scarf, and since it’s a spring sweater (having no sleeves…though it has a turtleneck), it’s fine. Artfibers is a very Bay Area, and since I grew up there, I can make that comment. All of their yarns have vaguely ethnic names, and it has a somewhat strident hipster San Francisco vibe. But I do think this yarn feels nice, at least while knitting, and the free pattern deal is useful for a beginner knitter like me. What I have learned so far is…really, don’t twist your stitches when you link them together, otherwise you will end up with a mobeius strip like me, and then have to rip them all up.