A Knitting Affair

So I am having a ton of fun with Picnik – a program that works with Flickr to edit photos. My favorite at the moment is the text option and framing options. Yes I am a geeky girl sometimes.

In case you are wondering, yarn is Malabrigo in a beautiful pink. Garter love baby. Garter love.

When its just this fucking beautiful…

I have a finished project to talk about. Wicked was my project for the 2008 Tour de France KAL. I am pleased with how this sweater turned out. I put in bust darts which was the first time I have done so in a sweater. Initially I was a little bit confused about how to do them, mostly because I was trying to figure it out late at night. But once I stopped over analyzing the process and just started knitting it worked out and made more sense. I find that is what I need to do with most knitting if I am having a confused knitting moment. The bust darts gave me about an extra 1.5″ length in the front. I will be incorporating this knitting modification into pretty much every sweater I do now. I also did the shaping that the pattern suggests with increasing for my hips so it is not snug.

I loved the yarn. The wool silk blend is beautiful but the fact that one skein was so poorly dyed was disappointing. Basically, the gray was more of a gray/peach color. Its hard to explain but I’m sure you can envision it. Anyways, I wasn’t about to send the yarn back as it would have delayed in finishing the project. I was on a time limit after all. Instead, I used gray dye that I had in the house. After soaking the sweater for a half an hour in luke warm water, I placed the dye directly onto the portion of the sweater with the discolored yarn. Then I added the sweater to a dye bath of gray and “cooked” it for an hour on a very low setting. I did not want to felt the sweater which I know can happen from previous experience in working with a wool silk blend.

All in all the sweater turned out great and I am happy with it. I am wearing it today as the Calgary weather isn’t that warm and our office is cold with the air conditioning. If you want to see more pictures and are on Ravelry, the project page is here.

It seems as of late that I have not been consistent with my updates and then do one massive one. But, such is life at the moment. Nothing much has changed, it has just been very busy at work and I have been spending a lot of time with the BF. We have been out at the polo field when its not raining and my “at home” time has been spent working on my Tour de France and Tour de Fleece projects. I have completed my TDF sweater, “Wicked” and have pictures on my camera. The other TDF is going well too and I am almost at a point of plying a ton of singles!

Happy Father’s Day …

I called my step dad today to wish him a happy father’s day. A bit morbid but I told him that he is the only dad left in my life so he gets all the attention. He knew what I mean. The fucker better not die soon.

A very cool thing happened to us KFB girls. We got a shout out from the great ladies at Lime and Violet’s Daily Chum. It was a pretty awesome feeling!! I think my words were … “HOLY FUCK” … as I read the email letting us know that they were going to post about us.