Turtleneck With a Capital "T"

The past few days have me cruising along on my Banded Turtleneck sweater by Kathy Merrick.  And, when I say turtleneck I mean TURTLENECK!  Wow, did it come out big!  Even when I made it a whole two inches shorter than specified in the pattern.  What do you think?  Is it too much?  I'll definitely be warm wearing it and with the sub zero Fahrenheit temps we've been having in Minnesota I better hurry up and finish it.  The body and neck are completed and I only have the arms left to knit.  Will see how it goes, but so far it's slow as increasing while keeping in pattern I find a bit difficult. 

I noticed something while knitting the arms that I find dismaying and humorous at the same time.  Look at the above swatch and see if you can see it.  In the first row of blue there are squares of the oatmeal colored yarn and on the top blue band there are dashes.  Now, the first is correct and the second is not.  So, which row style did I knit the whole sweater in so far?  The dashes of course!  Yup, I just glazed over that row in the chart over and over and over again.  There is really nothing wrong with changing the pattern, but I do prefer the look of the squares to the dashes. With so much already completed though, the dashes with continue on the arms as well.

My son and I finished the Blackwell Pages' last book Thor's Serpents by K.L. Armstrong and have moved on from the Norse Gods too reading about the Greek Gods in the hugely popular Percy Jackson Series by Rick Riordan.  We are on book 1 The Lightning Thief and enjoying it thus far.  It's a bit sillier, faster paced and more humorous than the Blackwell series which I think I preferred, but it's a bit too early to judge.  I gave my son the DVD of the movie based on this book as a treat to watch after we finish reading the book.  What books are you reading now?

Joining in with Nicole for Keep Calm Craft On and Ginny for Yarn Along

A Thing About Turtlenecks

It drives my husband nuts that I have a thing for turtlenecks.  Make that a deep resounding love of turtlenecks.  Cowls are a close second, as they almost do the same job, but turtlenecks oh they snuggle my neck, take away some of my chin and keep me pleasantly warm.  My husband though, likes to sneak up behind me while I'm busy in the kitchen to give me a ticklish kiss on the neck (which always makes me jump and give a little shriek), but with turtlenecks he's instantly thwarted.  Ha! So, now that you know how much I adore turtlenecks it won't be a big surprise that I am currently working on two turtleneck knitting projects.

The first is the lovely Hugo turtleneck poncho I talked about last time.  He has since been put in time out for the moment.  His issue, because of course it couldn't be my fault, is that the purl, ktbl, ktbl, purl detail I used to replace the cable pattern is looking rather wonky.  The increases occur on either side of this "seam" and as you can clearly see the one side is nice and tight and the other is all gaping.  I knew this for some time, but kept on knitting thinking it would go away if I knit fast enough, but alas it's here to stay.  Since it really irks me I will indeed be frogging back to the collar section to begin again, probably to use the original cable patterning.   With there being quite a bit knitting to frog back I need to steel myself to do it hence, the time out he's taking in his project bag.

Because this girl can't go without knitting for more than a few minutes I grabbed the nearest project and volia! another turtleneck found it's way into my hands.  This is Thea Coleman's White Russian pattern which I last knit and blogged about this past June.  I have only progressed about 3 pattern repeats since last time, but I'm only 5 more repeats away from separating the sleeves from the body.  That will be an exciting moment dropping those extra 160 stitches.  It should make the body rounds feel like they just fly by right?  Since this project and I are getting along well I think it will become my project for our upcoming road trip to Madison, WI.  Five wonderful hours of car knitting there and then another five coming home - yay!  We're going to the WI Sheep and Wool Festival which is about a 1/2 hour to the east of Madison.  My husband and I both went to UW Madison for college so it will be fun to show our old haunts to our son.  I'm taking an all day class on natural dyeing at the Fairgrounds while the boys go exploring in Madison.  Then we will spend the next day at the Festival and round it off with a night in a hotel in town (we're camping for the first 2 nights.)  Leaving us a final day with all three of us together in Mad town.  I hoping it's lots of fun for everyone and not just this the fiber enthusiast.

Joining in with Nicole for Keep Calm Craft On and Ginny for Yarn Along.

Sweater Weather?

The weather has turned to summer here in Minnesota so of course I'm knitting a thick turtleneck sweater.  What?  Well, I finished my husband's cabled vest and for some reason instead of going back finishing my 2nd fair isle mitten I turned to this WIP I started in December.  It's a Baby Cocktails pattern called White Russian, although mine is decidedly brown ;) , by Thea Colman and the most exciting part is I'm using my own handspun yarn.  I think what swayed me was working on Hubbie's Shetland Vest which also was knit with handspun.  Thus, it will be a balmy 91 degrees Fahrenheit  (that's 33 degrees Celsius for you all outside the US) today and I will be knitting a winter sweater.  Weird?  Yes.  But, I have better luck finishing projects if I go where my mood takes me instead of trying to adhere to my "To Knit" list.

The handspun is a lovely mix of Blue Faced Leicester and my favorite Shetland all grown and processed right here in Mora, Minnesota.  It turned out so bouncy squishy soft I wish you could feel it through your computers monitors (hmm...maybe in the future.)  Anyways, the wool spun to a DK weight making a total of 1327 yards (1213 meters.)  This did limit me a bit for finding a sweater in my size being a bit on the busty side.  What I really wanted to knit with it was this cardigan sweater but I didn't have enough yardage.  The White Russian pattern has been in my Ravelry queue for a long time because I love, love, love turtlenecks and after perusing through it I was surprised to find that I had enough (plus a bit extra) yarn for my size.  So, I cast on in December right after spinning the yarn and knit the turtle neck section, it's a top down knit, and promptly put it all away into a project bag for another day.  Maybe I'm going to sweep through my WIP's this year.  Wouldn't that be cool?  Now, I'm simply thankful for air conditioning making this whole winter sweater knitting possible on this decidedly summer day. 

Oh, and to update from this post I made the plunge and went to my first Knit Night with a lovely group of ladies who I found on Ravelry.  It was wonderful.  They didn't look at me blankly when I discussed different bind offs for sock cuffs as my husband frequently does, they talked about stashes and yarn buying freezes and so much wooly fun.  It was good.

Joining in with:

Nicole for Keep Calm Craft On

Ginny for Yarn Along

Beth for Whatcha Workin' On?   Wednesday