WiP Wednesday: This-n-That

Lots of little going on around here.

Baby Surprise Jacket is just a few buttonhole rows away from finished. But who knows when I’ll pick it up again. It’s just not calling my name at the moment.


The Musique socks are getting a bit of air time. Watching the colors go by and enjoying the base yarn remind me of why I do as much as I can to support Roxanne at Zen Yarn Garden and her work. Love!


The minute I finished my CCS vest, I had an overwhelming urge to start another sweater. So I did!


It’s the Mondo Cable Pulli in The Fibre Company Terra. Wild Clary colorway. Loving it. And hoping it fits. I picked a size that’s a bit small, planning to shrink into it by the time it’s cool enough to wear it. I have 16 balls of yarn, and just started my third after picture taking.

Oh, and there’s another big WiP around here. We’re just about done with a really amazing stone mason working on our house. Spot re-pointing on the entire house. First time that’s been done on a 60-year-old house, so no too bad. He’s also re-setting the middle 80% of our front walk. This pic is from this morning when there were a very few stones left to fill back in. They’re all pointed now (that means there’s mortar between the stones) and they’ll finish up in the morning. It looks fantastic.

Celtic Cabled Slipover

I had 900 yards of a really pretty blue MadTosh DK I’d picked up at Natural Stitches. I’m still a big fan of vests and I’d seen the Celtic Cabled Slipover pattern advertised on Ravelry and liked the look of it. The yardage requirements fit, so following a gauge fail false start, I was off to the races.

Three cheers for mannequin access!

It’s the little details that make this a nearly perfect vest. The cabling on the back is unique as the two outside cables flare out with a growing reverse stockingette background in between.


The calculations are perfect for the cables to meet up atop the shoulders, where the fronts and back are joined by a three-needle bind-off. Quick, simple, stable and perfect.


The seed stitch edging continues all around the vest. A three-stitch seed stitch faux seam goes up the entire bodice. The bodice is only 8” deep. Actually with the 40” size I wound up knitting, it should only have been 7” but I went a little farther. I would have gone at least another inch if I had been confident about my available quantity of yarn, but I was afraid of running out, so I stopped at 8”. The one change I wish I’d made was to knit the body for another inch or two before dividing the fronts/back. Of course, I have plenty of yarn left over, but oh well.

Anyhoo, the small seed stitch faux seam grows to frame the bottom of the armhole, then grows up each side of the arm.


It is also quite present atop the back of the vest, another nice detail.


A matching seed stitch panel goes up the center-front of the vest before dividing for the neckline. Nicely done by the designer. The one thing I couldn’t see on the pics on Ravelry and the pattern is the two-row purl bar between each cable cross. It’s more noticeable in person (I think) and looks just fine.

The slip-stitch edging looks nice and neat, and meant that there was virtually no finishing to this garment. YAY!


I’m quite happy with the finished project. I’m sure it will get lots of use, especially once we hit fall and it no longer feels hotter than the surface of the sun outside.

Celtic Cabled Slipover

Pattern: Celtic Cabled Slipover by Jean Clement
Yarn: MadelineTosh, Tosh DK
Colorway: Betty Drapers Blues
Yardage: roughly 3.5 skeins/800 yards
Needles: US 8/5mm 36” Addi Turbos (US 7/4.5mm for garter lower hem)
Started: 7 July 2010 (2nd start date. Started 7/1 but frogged)
Finished: 24 July 2010
Mods: Knit fronts simultaneously, which isn’t truly a mod, but is a departure from pattern instructions. Added an extra inch to the instructions for my size. Wish I had added more, but was worried about running out of yarn.

WiP Wednesday

One new project this week. I needed a plain pair of socks to keep me entertained while working a fundraiser golf tournament on Monday. I’m on a Zen Yarn Garden kick, so here’s some Musique from the Art Walk club. Subscriptions are currently open, and it’s a month-to-month club, so there’s no big outlay of cash or long subscription.


In other news, I’m Baby Surprising along. I need to do a little knitting tonight at Hurricane Knitters to be ready for the third and final class tomorrow, but that shouldn’t be a problem.


And, in other news, the fronts of my Celtic Cabled Slipover are finished. I’m not going to run out of yarn (something I was worried about, which was one of the reasons I didn’t lengthen the vest before splitting for the neck and back/front). I’ll do a full detail of this pattern when it’s done. I think it’s going to fit just fine, but there are a few things I’m still puzzling over as to how the finished project is going to come together. Rest assured you’ll see/hear all about it when it’s time for the FO-to shoot.


Still crushing my to-do list. I’ll try to write a little bit of that tomorrow. Have a great week!

WiP Wednesday: Just Under the Wire

Hi! I made today a bit of a “Me Day” and visited my very most favorite not-so-local quilt shop. I was greeted with a very nice “Hi! How are you?” from the store owner and a perfect “Where the heck have you been?!!?!?” from the store manager. Love. It.

I’ve been destroying my to-do list as well. Maybe I’ll blog about bits of that tomorrow.

Meanwhile, in the land of knitting …


I’m Baby Surprising along. This is in a Zen Yarn Garden worsted weight that I got as a club yarn a few years ago. Much fun. I’m knitting along with a class I’m teaching at Bloomin, and I’m all ready to roll for Thursday’s second class.

Oh, and the vest I frogged last week? It's racing right along at the proper gauge and size.


Shortly after taking that picture, I split for the neck and started binding off for the armholes. I’m now chugging away on the fronts (I’m knitting them simultaneously). Hopefully, this is in the home stretch and I’ll be motoring up the back towards a three-needle bind-of sooner rather than later.

Sweater Fail(s)

I’m not quite sure how it happened, but I have less on the needles now than I did last week. Well, yeah, actually. I do know how that happened.

I was cruising along yesterday on my Celtic Cabled Slipover when my knitters intuition started to kick in. This thing was looking HUGE.


I checked my gauge, and it was a bit fat. Weird, since I swatched and rarely have jumps in gauge once I start a project. Then I put it on holders and let it spread out. Yeah.


That shows that a 44” vest is measuring over 50”. This is why I travel with a nostepinne pretty much anywhere I go. Vest got ripped out. I re-swatched during the Netherlands-Uruguay semifinal and am ready to cast on at knit night tonight.

In other news, I’ll show you my Sweater Fail on Pavillion.

I finally picked that sweater back up to finish the knitting two weekends ago. Counted stitches and realized I had a problem. I had missed an entire set of neckline decreases, so I was off by 10 stitches on either side of the front.


So I picked up my US3 needle that I had used for the ribbing and picked up stitches on either side.


And then I ripped out about 40 rows on each side. The whole thing is knit now and laid out in my basement. I’ll take it with me to Hurricane Knitters tonight for seaming. Here’s hoping there will be more forward progress by this time next week!

YPF: MadTosh DK

There is one more skein of yarn from Maryland that I haven’t shown you, but since you are about to see the following yarn on a WiP Wednesday near you, I figured I should probably put it up for YPF.


When Natural Stitches got one of their inaugural shipments of Madelinetosh in to the shop, my spies mentioned there was a blue or two I’d probably like. So I hustled my butt over to the store and checked out what was on their shelves.


I came home with everything they had in Betty Draper Blues in Tosh DK (formerly known as tosh worsted). I have four skeins. 100% superwash merino, 225 yards/skein. I only have one complaint: When I wound the last three skeins tonight, the first thing I discovered when I un-twisted skein #1 was an obvious knot that had just as obviously been hidden by label placement. Bush league, in my opinion. But that’s OK. I’ll just use that skein last.


This project was bumped up in the plan of attack since we will be getting this yarn in at Bloomin rather soon. Which means that my vest can be a shop model for a little while. Rationalization is my friend.