Works In Progress

[caution: knitting heavy post below!]


A couple of WIPs to show, but first one F(inished) O(bject). This Crest of the Wave stole has been finished for about a month now, just getting around to taking pics now. I used the Andes wool I posted about back in July, and very much enjoyed making this, my first lace project! It has a few mistakes, and the size is weird, but overall I like it and it comes in handy when beachcombing. I used almost 3 skeins, isn't it weird how the colors pooled in the 1st and 3rd skeins but striped almost perfectly in the 2nd?


I finished the stole just before our last trip to Portland, so while I was there I visited one of their many wonderful yarn shops (The Yarn Garden on Hawthorne, more about that below) and purchased the yarn to make a variation of this starfish sweater (my first sweater!) for Lilly:

Here it is in situ, the back, front and both sleeves are done but I need to get a #5, 13" circular needle before I can do the neck. So close to finishing! Again, there are mistakes, but it will be ok. I used the recommended yarn (Plymouth Wildflower DK cotton) but changed the colors a little. I really like the pink I chose, it has a strand of orange, a strand of red and a strand of purple along with a few strands of pink in it which gives it a really nice depth of color. I also changed the starfish/contrast color from yellow to orange.

Once I realized I was going to have to wait until my next trip to a (better than the one in Seaside) yarn store to get the needle I need to finish the Starfish sweater (after trying to knit the neck on a 16" circ and finding out just what a bad idea THAT was), I decided to start another sweater. This is one Brittany asked me to make for her birthday which is coming up in October:

{photos to come later, I've been trying all day to get Blogger to let me add more pics and it just won't. Blogger's way of welcoming me back, I guess!}

She chose the yarn, which is Plymouth Encore (100% wool) worsted in a spiced pumpkin color. As you can see, I've barely begun the sweater. It's the first time I've done cables, and that along with the the enjoyable yarn is making it a lot of fun to work on. I got the yarn at the local yarn store here in Seaside, after over an hour of shopping, debating, and deciding. This store does have a fairly decent selection of yarn, for a small-ish store, but oy. They are just NOT very friendly there, and utterly unhelpful. They had never even heard of the book Mason-Dixon Knitting (if you're not a knitter, you probably haven't heard of it either, but if you are, then you know it, it's hugely popular). They are just basically ICK and I hate to give them my money, but the only other yarn shop in the area is in Astoria and while they also have a decent selection, with TONS of patterns and very friendly and helpful staff, I don't get to Astoria very often.

The Yarn Garden in Portland, I have to say, is an absolute delight. If I lived closer I'd have a hard time not going there every day, seriously. What an awesome store! If you get a chance to go there, it's well worth your time. I'm hoping to make another trip to P'land in the next couple of weeks and I'm definitely going to try to set aside a couple of hours for Yarn Garden. Last time I even took my hubby along, they have a coffee shop attached to the store so he sat in there and read magazines while I shopped and drooled and basically wandered around the store in utter awe.