i am a butterfly…

Posts Tagged ‘a cardigan for arwen’

I finally got around to taking photos of Arwen.

Overall, I’m happy with how this sweater came out. My one complaint is that the sleeves are SO long. The strange construction of this sweater made that kind of a given. I’ve been wearing it with the cuffs turned back, but the sleeves are still pretty long even like that. Not to mention, my wrists get really hot with a double layer of stockinette and cables, which makes the rest of my hot since that’s a pulse point. Still, I suppose I’ll really like that when it’s very cold.

The yarn is Araucania Nature Wool. It was a great yarn to work with, and I love the color. Kettle dyed yarn is my current favorite, because I love those subtle color variations it produces.

I am so happy with how the cables turned out, and damn proud of them, too. I’m already considering another cabled hoodie, but one that I hope is better constructed than this one. The weird way Arwen is put together wasn’t fun to finish.

All in all, not too shabby for my second sweater.

I haven’t been blogging much lately, mainly because I’m so overwhelmed by being so far behind in the ABC-Along. Every time I think of something I’d like to write about, I think about the letter H and I freeze. Which is nuts, when you think about it, considering that the ABC-Along is meant to be fun! So I’m going to set aside anxiety over that and try to post more often about other things.

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On the knitting front, I was recently struck with a serious case of finish-itis. Yes, that’s finish-itis, not start-itis.Arwen, the hooded scarf, and Scott’s socks are all done. I’m more than half-finished with the crochet border on Lizard Ridge, leaving only the log cabin crazy quilt, which is going to be an ongoing project to use up scraps of worsted. The only thing keeping me from marking things as completed in Ravelry is that I want to get photos of them first.I’ve such a case of fnish-itis that I even just brought my Top Down Raglan Shrug out to the living room to re-knit the sleeves. I’ve never been happy with the straight edge of the bind off and I’ve always wanted to re-knit the cuffs. I added lace cuffs that should have been knitted bottom up and knit them top down, which ruined what should have been a pretty scalloped edge. Since I’m going to re-knit anyway, I may also shorten the sleeves to above the elbow.

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Last weekend, my mother and her husband spent the weekend in the city. We saw them on the 4th – and on Sunday, but on City Island – at the Millenium Hilton downtown. They had a suite there and they got Scott and me a room for the night, so we were able to sit in the room and watch the fireworks over the East River. The windows opened a little, so we were even able to hear the booms. It was really a nice way to spend Independence Day.

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This weekend, we’ll be in Pittsburgh. We drive out on Friday and home on Sunday.Scott’s mother got married in January in a small ceremony with no reception. This Saturday they’re having what I thought was to be their reception, but they’re calling it a family reunion. Scott and I have never met her husband, and this weekend will be inundated with his entire family, so it should be interesting. It’s strange for Scott, since neither he nor any of his three siblings have children – we’re the only ones who ever really wanted to, and Scott’s the youngest of them all at 45 – but his mother’s new husband has kids and grandkids and great-grandchildren galore.I think Scott’s mother is a little, I don’t know, embarrassed maybe is the word, that she has no grandchildren to show off to her husband’s family. As a result, she’s been asking us about the IVF stuff a lot more frequently lately, even though before the new husband, she changed the subject immediately whenever Scott mentioned any of our plans for adoption or IVF. She never wanted grandchildren and was happy before that none of her kids had children. This is a real turnaround, and Scott and I are her only hope. It’s weird, to say the least.

Jury duty seemed the perfect time to start breaking in the Total Knitting Tote Scott gave me for my birthday last November. So I carefully packed with with the right side of Arwen and a fresh yarn cake, because I’m near the end of the current one. I had visions of using all this wonderful time with no distractions to knit like crazy.

Total rows knitted on Arwen during jury duty: 8

Instead, I’ve been spending my time reading the most ridiculous drivel of a novel I’ve read in ages. I picked it up at the CVS across the street from the courthouse when I went in for tampons.* It’s a Mary Higgins Clark novel called, something like, I Heard That Song Before. This book is so poorly written and silly, but for some reason I’m sucked in and spending all my jury time reading it instead of knitting. Maybe it’s because it’s set in Englewood, NJ and MHC makes sure to make sure the reader understands that part of Bergen County. (Nick Greco was driving through Cresskill, a town near Englewood.) It’s all just so absurd, and I can’t stop reading it.

I just remembered that MHC does live somewhere around there, because when I worked at a bank in Hillsdale, she was rumored to be one of our customers. So she does know the area well, and now she’s gone and proved it in a novel.

*Yes, my period arrived on May 7, exactly on schedule. But did I have tampons packed in my bag? Of course not.

So, Arwen? Yeah. Frogged. Down to the hem fold line.

I was nearly done with the left sleeve, but I had a serious mistake in the cable band at the wrist. A mistake that spanned several rows. There was another mistake in the front left cable band. I was determined to ignore them both, but then I somehow lost count – using a counter – of how many sleeve rows I’d knitted. At that point, I said screw it and frogged it almost all the way.

I’m happy I did, though. I’ve begun re-knitting, and I’m much happier with the second go ’round.

I cast on for Arwen about 2 weeks ago, but haven’t made much progress so far. The cable band took a lot of swatching, because I wasn’t reading the chart properly, so I had to frog several times and resort to writing it out by hand and swatching with some old Wool Ease until I got it right. Now, though, I’m so glad I did, because the cables are gorgeous.

The yarn is Araucania Nature Wool, which I’ve never worked with before. It’s a little rough and tumble feeling, but I’m sure it will soften up with a soak. The color is strange. Most of the time, in low light, it looks green to me. In sunlight, it looks yellow, sometimes quite vividly so! The colors in the photos here are probably closest to its true color. One of the things I really love is that the dye was absorbed unevenly, which gives a kind of mottled effect. That’s from the kettle-dying, I guess?

I’m still working on the front left, and should be able to cast on the additional stitches for the sleeve soon. I was hoping to finish this to wear in the spring, but given my current pace, it will more likely be an autumn sweater.