More NaKniSweMo

Argh!

So I thought I had 10 balls of yarn.  Turns out I have 9 balls of yarn.  Of a discontinued yarn.  So my plans for a nice deep rib are out, and its most likely going to be 3/4 length sleeves.  But I’m still confident that I can get a sweater out of the yarn that doesn’t look like its been short changed.

Current stitch count: 41,860

I put the body stitches on a holder cable and worked a ball of yarn on the sleeve just to see how far a ball will go.  I have two balls left plus the one in the picture.  I’m planning to knit the rest of that ball, use one for the left sleeve and the final ball to do the ribbing on the sleeves and body.  I will have little choice but to play yarn chicken.  Hopefully, I won’t need to unravel my swatch…

On the plus side, I absolutely love the sweater.  It has knit up sooo nice and soft, fits perfectly and I think I will be wearing it a lot!

NaKniSweMo Challenge

NaKniSweMo is short for national (or should it be international?) knit a sweater month.  It was inspired by NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) which challenges people to write 50,000 words in November.  Swap words for stitches and you have NaKniSweMo.

I’m not sure if my sweater has the required number of stitches but my challenge for myself is to knit and finish a sweater in November.  Emphasis on finish because its not unusual for me to finish knitting a sweater only for it to languish for longer than I’m willing to admit waiting to be sewn together and blocked.

I’ve stacked the odds in my favour by picking a top down sweater that’s knit in the round.  Seriously, the only thing I have to do is sew up a few inches under the arms and block it.  It shouldn’t be too hard, right?

I’m making Arendal from Drops out of stash yarn; the sadly discontinued Rowan Lima.  Its a gorgeous blend of 84% baby alpaca, 8% merino, 8% nylon and knits up so soft.

So far I’m on track to finish, wish me luck!

Still Knitting

I’ve spent quite a bit of time on my allotment recently, but I am still knitting I promise!  Currently on my needles is a pattern by Cath Ward called Lazy Ocean Shawl. I’m making it out of Fyberspates Scrumptious Lace a luxurious, 55% merino and 45% silk blend.

I cast on sometime in March (I’ve gotten really slack at updating my project pages on Ravelry and I can’t remember when exactly).  Its on 2.75mm needles and laceweight yarn so I’m not expecting to finish it any time soon either, but I’m past the halfway mark and really enjoying taking my time knitting it.

The pattern only has four other projects on Ravelry but I can’t imagine that staying that way for long as its a lovely design and well written with both charts and written instructions.  In fact, I recommend checking out Cath Wards pattern page as its full of pretty lace shawls and scarves that are all available for free.

I made a few modifications; I added some width, omitted a couple of the eyelet stitches at the edges and didn’t do the border at the start as I wanted to have as much of the stole in the lazy ocean pattern as possible.  If you’re interested in the details of the mods, you can find them on my project page.

I think of this as the ugly duckling stage of lace knitting; it doesn’t look like much now, but I know this will be beautiful when finished.