unnatural born

apparently i'm pretty awesome at this spinning thing.

did i mention that i only started with a wheel over christmas?

don't mean to brag or anything. but that's two months to the date.

seriously. don't mean to brag.

oh, fuck it. i know i'm awesome.

newlyweds

there has been a sharp and rather unforgivable decline in the amount of knitting i've been doing in the past few weeks.

here's why.

yes. i have been lured into the dark side. she's new, she's gorgeous, and she's mine.

exactly

nonchalant

so we went to the TNNA winter show last weekend.

i love how casually that rolls from the tongue.

just flew down to long beach, hung out with madelinetosh, took a dump at the stall next to beth casey, you know, the usual stuff.

with some delightful food-baby-walking-dead marathons scattered in between

for that completely nonchalant occasion i made two cowls and a scarf, all in company yarns, because i figured it would make me look even more professional than i falsely think i am.

the first one's a highly classified test knit which i cannot explicate further at this time. it's a cowl, and it's green. that's all.

the next two i cranked out in five days prior to leaving for the show. during those five days i also worked full time as well as moved my ever-increasing earthly belongings to a new apartment, so i suppose it's safe to say i'm pretty fuckin' fast. not that i'm one to brag (although i totally am).

22.5 degrees by martina behm

ravelry link

sweetgeorgia cashluxe fine (111g / 3mm)

cabernet cowl by monika sirna

ravelry link

sweetgeorgia cashluxe fine (54g / 3.5mm)

pretty things, aren't they?*

*the question above is not a rhetorical one and only has one correct answer

reine

i'm such a brooklyn tweed whore. you know that much if you've read any of my stuff anywhere, ever.

give me any pattern curated by the magical jared flood, and i'll be salivating all over it like them more girly knitters are doing to pictures of ryan gosling right now.

(personally, i don't find him that hot. but that's because my girly bits have recently dried up and withered away because of an involuntary and tragic lack of use.)

reine by alexis winslow

ravelry link

size 33.75

bc garn semilla dk (350g / 4mm)

reine was the ultimate piece of comfort knitting back in october. just a smooth relaxing sailing from skein to skein, from piece to piece. the pattern was extremely knitter-friendly and the top down, short-row set-in sleeves produced a sweet fit at the shoulders. it was such a perfect pairing between yarn and needles that i just wiggled my fingers every now and then and somehow from that a cardigan emerged. the sleeves took maybe 3 hours each, that's the level of simple comfort we're talking about.

but because i'm not very smart, it never occurred to me to consider some of the essential differences of semilla and the intended yarn. you may or may not know (and if not, why the hell not?) that BT loft and its delightful woolen texture allow it to be knitted up with a gauge of anything between light fingering to DK without losing any fabric integrity, drape or general awesomeness.

at 250 meters per skein, one could squeeze out this cardigan with just 200 grams of loft. semilla, as wonderfully soft and ever-so-slightly rustic as it is, is just 160 meters, so for me it took 350 grams--which is just enough for gravity to do its dastardly deed. and so the cardigan turned out droopy.

oddly, back in my LYS days, i was definitely smart enough to publicly ridicule anyone not familiar with the pitfalls of substituting yarn, i.e. those considering only one factor of the holy trinity of needle size, gauge and yardage. material obviously plays into it as well, but i don't know what you call a holy foursome in a fancy biblical way. quadrility? anyway. i know i'm a horrible person.

horrible, AND with a stupid face

but i can live with the droopyness, because the cardigan is just so freakin' comfy. and the pockets are perfect for those moments when you're feeling awkward among half-strangers and know that if you resort to your usual i'm-uncomfortable-so-i-need-to-do-something-with-my-hands routine and keep on twirling your fingers and tearing off pieces of fingernail in a visible manner, it will only contribute to making you seem even more out there than you actually are, therefore rendering the moment unbearably awkward and possibly fatal. but with this cardigan--voila! pockets.

my hand could be doing anything in here, and you would never know

not a word about the quality of seaming, though. i'm a knitter, not a fuckin' seamstress, okay? seaming makes me aggressive, which doesn't go well with my otherwise gentle manners. fuckin' seams.

again thanks to miss R for the photos!