6.20.2009

I'm back

Yes, I've been gone for a long time. Actually, I'm still actually gone. In December I left my home of over 33 years and moved to the other side of the world. 6 months later, I'm still down under, and things are going well, and I'm getting some knitting done! Like this sweater.

My Owls Sweater

It's the o w l s pattern by Kate Davies. I used my Ayany yarn, finally. I got this stuff years ago, and have started 3 different projects with it. Before this one, it was a long coat which I got almost done, when I decided since I wasn't making gauge it was turning out too tight and I didn't like it. That project sat in my knitting bag for over a year till I finally frogged it last month.

The yarn, a 100% merino bulky, hand spun by a women's cooperative in Kenya, purchase through a co-op (but now also available on Etsy) is nice and rugged. Due to the fact that different balls are spun by different women, there's variation in thickness through the project, but not enought to really show. I had 6 balls of green and 6 balls of brown, but for some reason I was constantly running short on brown. I even had to rip back after I got halfway through the owls because I was clearly going to run out of brown, but had plenty of green. I went all the way back to before the color-switch under the bust so that I could knit a few more inches with the green.

This turned out to be a good idea anyways, because the shaping of the sweater as written in the pattern is a bit odd. It asks for you to decrease and increase on either side of the spine, only on the back. But with the way the numbers worked out, you'd end up with many more stiches on the back than on the front as you get up in the bust region. I don't know about you, but most women I know have more going on on their front than their backs. My second time around, I moved most of the increases to the side, so that the front has more room, and it fits really well now.

I've actually knit quite a few items since my last post, but I'll leave it at this for now. I hope to show more of it soon though!