I love the smell of wet wool. It means one of two things:
1. I have completed a project
2. I am swatching for the next project
In either case, there is excitement. Today it is both. My Metro cardigan has been in the classroom blocking for two days now and is finally dry enough to photograph. The swatch for the Austin hoodie is finished and also wet and blocking. The Tosh merino light is delectable! I can not wait for our next order to arrive.
This pattern was pretty straightforward.
A bit of cabling and some “light increasing and decreasing” but mostly this was a “sane” Connie pattern. There are some that aren’t so much “light increasing and decreasing.” If you knit a lot of Connie, you know what I mean. The most challenging thing in the pattern, in my opinion, was grafting the ribbed collar at the back. I hate grafting. Most of you who take my sock classes know this. It makes my head hurt. So grafting ribbing isn’t high on my list of things to do in a pattern. Luckily this came last and not first, or the thing might have never been finished.
I decided to wait on starting the Austin Hoodie to allow many of you to get ready to go for a potential knitalong in September. I will be doing a bit more of a tutorial on that one on the blog, with photos and instructions to help move through the pattern. So instead of casting on for that one… (I will be honest, i sat down to cast on and saw that it was a provisional cast on and decided that I just wasn’t in the mood for it) I went through my basket of abandoned things and found the Balloon Sleeve Jacket by Olga that I started nearly a year ago. The entire body is done. It needs sleeves and a collar (and that really really long belt of seed stitch). The yarn that I am using (Blue Sky Alpacas Worsted) isn’t as drapey as the yarn that Olga used, so the sleeves just aren’t working out as a balloon. After some convo with the designer herself, I think that I will do something more like this sleeve from the Minimalist Cardigan or this sleeve from another one of Olga’s designs, the Tailored Retro Cardigan.
Rather than make this decision last night, I started the collar. In the meantime, I guess I can start to find the buttons and belt buckle that I will need for it. Hopefully round two on this project will stick.