Osborn Fiber Studio

Zing Zang Zoom, I finished two things. Two things that were so near completion when I last showed them to you, that I will compress their Finishing Announcement into one big post with lots of pictures, and more words than is either just or fitting.

Week 1 of potty training, when it wasn’t about wiping pee off the floor, was all about Patricia’s rainbow sweater. It was the perfect project to hammer out while I stared continuously at my older daughter’s naked bum all day long for days, and to continue when she was asleep and I was nearly catatonic with exhaustion. It is hard to get bored of stockinette when you get to change colors every eleven to thirteen rows.

The pattern was Hannah Fettig’s Sock Yarn Sweater, Child Edition. It’s the sort of pattern that was so simple that I was a little irked at paying for it. But she had done the work of figuring out the numbers, and I didn’t feel like doing it myself, so she had a right to my money. And I was inspired to the whole project by the beautiful colorful sample at Yarns Unlimited, where I bought the yarn and pattern, so they quite deserve their cut.

The pattern is clear, and includes a vast variety of sizes. Though I can hardly imagine myself knitting a teen-sized plain sock yarn sweater, unless said teen is incredibly appreciative of handknits. And does all the yardwork I don’t want to do, just out of love for her mother.

That said, I did my fair share of alterations. I couldn’t quite handle putting something so plain on a little girl (not that you could call anything with so much color “plain”) so I added a neck opening. Just added 3 stitches to the cast on #, and knit the yoke back and forth with garter stitch edges, and a few guesstimated buttonholes thrown in. It appears to have worked out.

The color instructions, you may care to know, are NOT included in the pattern; I received them with my purchase at YU, and I don’t know if someone there made them up (that is my suspicion). That said, I changed that up too, putting longer stripes on the body than on the sleeves, so the sleeves could include all the colors (in the sample, the last color was only on the body).

The yarn was a collection of “Gumballs” from Knitted Wit. These colors are so saturated. Oh, what a joy it was to pour through the bin of colorful bitty skeins to figure out what I wanted to do, and then fuss about with what order to put them in! It was a creative experience akin to spending a gift card at a truffle shop. A series of tiny but satisfying indulgences.

(If you ever wonder, none of these artists or stores give me anything for linking to their websites. [Though if you are an artist or a store, don’t let that stop you.] I do it as a courtesy to them, as a thank you for producing something lovely, which I hope any other knit blogger would do for my original work. And even more so, I do it as a courtesy to you, in case you are so delighted by my work that you are moved to throw your talents in the same direction. Because I expect my knitting to throw you into absolute coniptions of rapture, don’t you know.)

So that was one thing done. As you know, I’m making myself finish two projects for every one that I start, with the goal of getting down to one project. I wanted to check another off the list quick, so I buckled down during the first few days of Week 2 of potty training, and finished spinning the little batch of black punis.

This was one ounce of punis, a blend of merino, silk, angelina, and cashmere (and maybe other bits and bobs thrown in; I lost the tag like a dope, but then it took me like six months to get around to finishing), in colorway “If Jem Were a Misfit,” from Gourmet Stash.

When you boil it down, spinning and plying is pretty much always the same, so there’s not much to do but give you the stats and show you the pictures. (Also, it’s rather harder than I thought to take pictures of a mostly jet-black yarn.)

 

I’ll spare you the details, but I was suffering some pregnancy-related digestive unpleasantness when I sat down to ply this yarn (did I consider waiting and doing it another day? NO), so I was inadvertently in a bit of a rush, and may have underplied this. It’s certainly terribly unbalanced. But that’s what happens when you don’t pay attention – sometimes you get lucky, and usually something goes wrong. Sadly, nothing project-threatening enough to make me change my ways.

1 oz., ~160 yards of thick-ish lace/very light fingering. I’m quite surprised it wasn’t more; apparently I didn’t average as thin as I thought. What on earth am I going to do with 160 yards of lace? No idea. Ok, probably a cowl, because I am predictable like that.

So now that I have moved two lovely projects from the WIP basket to their finished post, what is going to the new thing I start?

One big project that I am lumping together to call “Christmas.”