Time for some FO's and WIPs

You may have noticed that the What's on my needles box in the sidebar didn't change for ages. Sorry. Sheer laziness on my part. The Refined Aran was finished in the summer. Tonight, I finally got around to getting a photo taken.


Pattern: Pam Allen's Refined Aran from Interweave Knits, Winter 2007.
Yarn: Jamie Possum's Possum+ , DK weight yarn in the Denim colourway. The yarn is 80% merino, 20% possum fibre. It's very soft and warm, but has quite a halo and sheds/pills a lot.
Modifications: None. If I make this again, I'd take the buttons further up the band and make the sleeves shorter.

Finished Object number 2:


Pattern: Baudelaire socks by Cookie A, from Knitty, Summer 2006.
Yarn: UK Alpaca's Alpaca Sock Yarn in Charcoal. I had 75g and used almost all of it. Have about 1.5m left.
Needles: Started on 2.75mm circulars, because I couldn't find my 2.5mm one. Once the toe was large enough, I swapped to 2.75mm DPNs. This made them slightly larger than usual.
Modifications: I cast on 24 stitches instead of 16. The leg is only 39 rows high before the ribbing, which I knitted in parallel (knitted the first sock to the ribbing, then the second to the ribbing, then joined the first sock to the other end of the ball and ribbed a row on one, then a row on the other until I was almost out of yarn, before casting off).

Tips and tricks:

1. Dangle a row counter from you needles to act as your row marker.
2. I determined the leg length by weighing the first sock. When it weighed 35g, I noted the row number and started the second sock.
3. I used highlighter tape to keep track of the chart. I bought my highlighter tape from Knit Foundry. It's great stuff - you can reuse the same piece hundreds of time without damaging the page.
4. When it got to the cable sections on the leg, I marked the cable rows with an asterix.
   

Now for some works in progress:

The travel knitting project. I started this one in the summer. It's lace-weight and small enough to fit into a make-up purse. Ideal for travelling. I've done both sleeves and most of the back.

Pattern: Bolero Cardigan from the Summer 2008 issue of Verena Knitting .
Yarn: Wagtail Yarns Kid Mohair 4 Ply in Charcoal. I have two skeins. It is soft and silky, not like any other mohair I have handled.
Problems:: The only problem is that the yarn is so fine that it is easy to knit into the stitch below the one you should be working (think Fisherman's Rib). I don't know how many times I've fixed that error.
It will look like this, when it's finished:
(picture from Verena.)

My current main project is a cardigan:

Pattern: Brown Cabled Cardigan from Heathland Hebridean.

Picture from their website.
Yarn: Heathland Hebridean's DK, bought in a kit with the pattern. The yarn is very springy and probably felts like a dream. It may be itchy if worn directly against the skin.

And, finally, I'm making a hat for DH:

Pattern: Montreal Tuque, by Veronik Avery from her book, Knitting Classic Style.
Yarn: Wensleydale Longwool Sheepshop DK in blue. This is a nice yarn to knit with - it feels a bit like knitting with Alpaca.
Modifications: I tried the tubular cast-on specified in the pattern, following Veronik's instructions from the back of the book. It went OK until I unpicked the waste yarn after I was about an inch into the project. Don't know what I did wrong, but the result was awful. Ripped out the whole thing and started again with my regular, cable cast-on.

- Pam (now to change the sidebar)