Wishful Knitting

Another finished object : ) This is Hourglass from Last Minute Knitted Gifts- I finally finished it tonight and have been wearing it for several hours. It definitely deserved the Cosmo rather than your typical glass of wine. What a marathon. I love it so far- the yarn, Karabella Aurora 8 (my nemesis) is so fabulous. It's like a warm snuggly hug! More later on the details. Also, a few swatches were underway with my handy helper.

I hereby swear I will never knit with Karabella Aurora 8 again. Even though it is soft and wonderful, it can be hateful when it comes to gauge. I think I said earlier that the gauge really changed after it was washed. What I should have done was to wash all the yarn and then re-knit the gauge swatch and then knit the sweater. (Who thinks that sounds like fun???) What I tried to do (and failed) was to knit the gauge swatch, then calculate how much bigger the swatch became after washing, then make the size that would fit AFTER washing. The opposite of shrink-to-fit. Uh, yeah, not so much. The sweater was just too small. I decided to frog it and start over. It wasn't fun to have all that kinky weird yarn. Then I gave the yarn a bath, and with the trusty help of my two elves, dried the hanks. Now, re-knitting the sweater bigger, I think I am going to run out of yarn! Lovely. By the way, I didn't re-do the sleeves even though every OCD bone in my body wanted to. So, t...

It's the weekend...so, we are lucky enough to get a visit from my sister. (We don't have too many weekends left : ( So, what's a girl to do? Make her sister try on her new sweater! Looks great on her- not too flashdance with a tee underneath. She was kind enough to pick up that extra ball o'yarn for me. And yes, we have decided that I am one skein shy of a sweater. Here's a photo of the kids, just because. Oh, and mom, you can make comments right on the blog if you want. No one has ever tried, so let me know if you do. Where's your blog?????

I know, these are TERRIBLE pics, but I thought they were better than none-there's one more at the end. Maybe not. Hey, since it's just me reading this, and I want a memory of the 2 am photo shoot, I am posting them! Yeah, in the mirror, not pretty. About the Aurora 8. So, while I was knitting, it was SUPER tight. I gave it a quick bath and it fits great! I am amazed and have a renewed faith in the whole swatch thing. Usually, I don't wash the swatch first, but I will start. Here are some terrible pics- hubby was sleeping as it was 2 am when I got done. I wanted before and after pics. I got the before, but not the after. I tried the sweater on several times while it was damp and it looks to be just fine. Amazing. I also read on another blog that someone else had the same experience with this yarn. That made me feel a little better too. The only thing is that the neckline has stretched out a ton. It's way too flashdance for me, so I will reknit it and add an...

These are stitch markers from Good to be Girl. (see sidebar- it's too late to link : ) They say "I knit with Greys" and are soooo fun. Maybe I will get better with indoor photography....maybe not. When I learned to knit, I was living in France as a foreign exchange student. My french grandmother taught me. I don't remember any details about the lesson. Not a thing. Really strange, nada. I know that she was trying to teach me and my french host sister at the same time. My "mami" didn't speak a word of english. I think I just watched and she said, "Non, non, comme ca!" a lot and that was that. I eventually learned to read french patterns and I made 2 sweaters while I was there. One was hot pink synthetic mohair- hey, it was the 80's after all. The other one was a nice cotton short sleeved "pull." I don't have any pics of me wearing either item. Sadly, we didn't discuss gauge and the sweaters were CRAZY huge. I mean so big ...

In keeping with the time theme, I need to keep working on Hourglass from Last Minute Knitted Gifts . Of course, I am about a year (or more) late. All the KAL's are long over. The party is over, everyone has gone home. I don't see this posted on anyone's blogs...but still, it's new to me, and I really like the style. I think most of the errata have been corrected in my version of the book, so that's an advantage to starting late. This is the first time in a long time that I am making something for myself. I would like it to fit, but that's another story. We'll see how it goes. This is being made out of Aurora 8 from Karabella in green. I figured it's my tribute to the Emerald City. It feels heavanly soft and keeps me warm while I knit it. When hubby was gone, I got most of it done, and now I have stalled a little bit, for no good reason. I had tons of knitting time last night and instead of working on this, I started a new project.... Kate . I don't ...