Update!

Only 11 months since my last post. Let's check in on the state of the knitting, shall we?

On the needles:

Husband sweater. Mr. Husband asked for a sweater - machine washable, and basic.  I'm knitting this from Ella Rae Classic Heathers Superwash, using the set-in sleeve recipe from Ann Budd's Handy Book of Sweater Patterns.  The color is darker, richer. Oh, and the back is now 15" long.  So I've made some progress since the photo was taken.

Augusta Cardigan. I have had this yarn for six years, and now is the time to knit it.  It's 100% alpaca, Peruvian Tweed, held double throughout.  There is much to say about this sweater, but not this post.

 

In Dreams Shawl.  A beautiful lace pattern, knit from an apparently uncapturable shade of purple in Knit Picks Glass lace.  I am omitting the 5000 beads.  This has been mostly set aside as I get distracted by the above sweaters.

Pink sock. A movie theatre sock (so easy I can knit it in the dark), with an afterthought heel.  Knit from Knit Picks Chroma.

Recently finished:

Thrummed mittens.  Thrummed mittens for my walks to work in the winter.  Knit two at a time with Cascade Cloud 9, and roving from Picnic Knits, who has moved from the dying business to the designing business.  I kept the color changes in the roving lined up, more or less.  Very very fluffy.

 

Gaptastic Cowl.  Ann, owner of the fantastic new yarn store in town, Yarn Folk, knit up a GAP-tastic cowl sample, and I think there's been an outbreak of them around here.  I knit this up in less than a week from two skeins of Plymouth Baby Alpaca Grande.  That stuff is like heaven to knit with.  So soft, so squishy, so wonderful.  

Running:  

North Olympic Discovery Marathon.  Back in June I ran my first ever marathon.  And I finished it in a time of 5:11:43.  I'll count that as a victory.  I'm pictured here eating the best croissant I've ever had.  I hurt for days, but I've never had a grape popsicle as amazing as the one I had after I finished running.

I kind of fell off the training wagon since then, but have my eye on a local marathon at the beginning of April...  Time will tell whether or not I go for it.  But if I do, training will start the first week of January!  Not that I've drafted out a long run schedule or anything.  

FO: Aidez of Uncertainty

For me, gauge is not a science. I'm apt to knit a swatch and call it "close enough." So when I decided to knit Aidez, I wasn't sure I had enough yarn. I had seven hanks of Wool of the Andes Bulky, and I just wasn't sure. But I went for it.

And it worked.


For a bulky weight sweater, this design has a lightness and an ease. Which is probably why it has 2500+ projects on Ravelry.


The cables are great. I went with a popular modification to the lattice cables, so it was a true lattice.


I knit the sleeves two at a time, but without a stitch marker, so I ended up knitting one sleeve more than another. At one point, I discovered that I had crossed the cable to early, so a repeat was short about 5 inches back. I fudged it. So one arm has a short repeat and a long repeat, while the other stayed nice and even.


The only thing I'm not really happy with is my seaming. I tend to tug on the fronts and it exposes gaps in the side seaming. It doesn't drive me crazy, but I'll be a bit more careful with seamed projects in the future.

This sweater will get a lot of wear. I've worn it twice already and it's only been finished for about a week and a half.  Hooray for successful projects!