Watch One, Knit Two

It's done!  The sleeves didn't turn out quite as matched up as I had hoped but they aren't as bad as I feared so I decided not to frog and re-knit. Overall it was a nice, easy project and I'd do it again but probably with a different yarn.  The Moda Dea Tweedle Dee yarn worked well enough in its bulk,the variety of colors in one colorway and its blockability, however, I'm learning that I really don't like self-striping yarns. I've tried them on socks and now I've tried them on sweaters and both times there was a bit of frustration.  So now I'm going to stay away from such yarns no matter how much they call to me in the store ... well at least I'm going to try ... and obviously all the self striping yarn in my stash still needs to be used up :)

As I said, the pattern was a very easy knit and I liked how simple it was to personalize.  But for as much as I love knitting in the round, the raglan collar drives me batty. Not it knitting but in wearing. Every time I sit down or hunch over, it slides up and sits in the middle of my neck.  Blocking helps somewhat but it's still a little annoying.  I think I'm going to be much more selective about the neckline of my next "in the round" sweater.

In the end, even with all this nit-picky complaining, I like this project and am very happy I did it and hope to be wearing this sweater often :)

Back to the pointy sticks Grandma's Shawl awaits ....

I've been listening to the KnitPicks Podcast for a while now. In general I really like it and pay attention to Kelley's tips however one of her recommendations I've pretty much avoided.  Her claim that one needs to have a bunch of different projects on the needles has never sat well with me. For one, unlike Kelley I'm not a process knitter I get little joy from just making stitches one after another, I'm a project or result knitter - my joy comes from looking at the growing sweater or sock or shawl that's on my needles. On top of being a project knitter I like to stay focused on the one thing I'm working on since when I get sidetracked I tend to forget about the thing that had been consuming my attention.  But recently I've discovered the beauty of having multiple projects on the needles.


As I've mentioned in my last post I've been working fevereshly on my Raglan Sweater and it's been growing quickly.  I was hoping to have it finished this weekend but no matter how I tried it was not going to happen.  One of the things that interfered was my daughter's piano recital.  I knew that there was no way for me to bring that giant bit of knitting into those close quarters.  However as I thought about it, I realized that I had Grandma's Shawl tucked away in my knitting basket. It was in progress but I had put it aside since I was so focused on the sweater.  Since it didn't take much room at all I took it along and worked on it the whole hour.

So now I must admit that there's quite a bit of value to having various projects on the needles especially a small one that is easy to take along no matter where!

Back to the pointy sticks ...

So here's the Raglan that I've been working on and I think it's looking pretty good :)  I love the self- striping yarn but right now I'm a little concerned about the sleeves.  How am I going to be able to match the striping on the sleeves?  I think it'll look really weird if the the color changes don't match on the right and left . *bites nails* 

On a side note - I've not done any knitting on Grandma's Shawl or the Blue sweater. Also I've somehow managed to loose my cloth tape measure and have been using the metallic one that I use for hanging pictures *rolleyes* 

Back to the pointy sticks.....