Bandwagon jumping

I not much of a bandwagon jumper. I don't necessarily HAVE to knit what everybody else is knitting, in fact, I would rather not knit what everyone else is knitting. Even though the chances of meeting up with someone wearing the same hand-knit as me in my regular life is pretty slim. But, if I see a pattern that I like, the fact that 2398 other people are knitting it is not a deal breaker.

This was the case with the February Lady Sweater. I was feeling the need to knit a sweater, still am actually, and this fit the bill. It wasn't going to be too heavy and was going to be relatively quick. Especially if you are trying to avoid a certain pair of socks with grape leaves on them.



The pattern was very well written, I had downloaded my copy after the discovery of the giant error, and seems to be error free. I followed the link in the pattern to do the buttonholes, which I worked over 3 stiches.



I seem to have more rows after the eyelet increases that most, I probably *should* have frogged back to the raglan increases at that point and done more, sort of a s/med hybrid, but I didn't want to have too much ease in the sweater and left it as is. The lace pattern is a simple 4 row repeat over 7 stitches and goes very quickly.



I really like this sweater. I used Dream in Colour Classy in the Happy Forest colourway (I am well situated on this band wagon) and I love it. It's green, it's happy, and Classy is amazing. I have read about growing issues with this yarn so I swatched (yay me) and washed (yay me again!) the swatch the way I will wash my sweater, which is not in the machine. The swatch grew a tiny bit, enough that my tension was now correct on the 4.5 mm needles (it was off before washing). I did make the sweater I little bit shorter to account for the weight pulling it down when I wear it, and it did grow a little after a soak and a spin. Just enough actually.

I'd show you a picture of me wearing it, but they are out of focus and I have issues with showing projects using out of focus pictures. I tried to use the tripod and the timer and got lovely sharp photos of the fence behind me. The 4 year old isn't allowed to use my Nikon, so, all you get are on the deck pictures. Sorry. Now, I need to be done with green for awhile in the recent past, 2 green socks, 2 green sweaters, one green vest, one green shawl. I think that's enough green for one year, time to climb out of that box.



February Lady Sweater, by Pamela Wynne. Based on February Baby Sweater by Elisabeth Zimmermann
Dream in Color Classy, Happy Forest. About 3.75 skeins
4.5 mm Addi Turbos, with a 5mm for the cast-offs

Dinner at the IL's in 8 days, will Vintage be finished?

Hats for Boys

Late last winter the big boy (8), asked me for "a hat with flappy things hanging down". I promised him I would find a pattern and knit him one.

Well, I found such a pattern, by one of my favourite bloggers tiennie knits. It's the Norwegian Star earflap hat, and he absolutely loves it.





It's knit with Cascade 220 in two shades of blue, on 4.5mm needles. The pattern is great, well written with both a childs size and adult size. It knits up very quickly too. I used just under 1/2 of the skein of Navy for this hat and because big brother had such a cool hat, Small Boy (almost 5) wanted one too. I used a 4.0mm needle for his hat, just to make it bit smaller. Worked perfectly. He is equally enamoured with his new lid. Now trying to decide if The Girl needs one too.





These hats conclude my sad participation in Project Spectrum, and I'm not quite sure how Socktoberfest is going to go since there is still a sleeve left on the September (now also October) Lady sweater. Then, I HAVE TO finished the Vintage socks. Have. to.

And RSC package arrived last week too...stop now if you don't want to see it. Love love love.