Lightweight Lace

A few months ago I started to get into knitting lace, but then got distracted by other projects and haven't been doing much of it lately.  I was just home in Arizona again last week and of course one of the highlights of my trip was my visit to Knit Happens.  In addition to the Debbie Bliss Donegal Luxury Tweed I'm using for the red fox, I found several fine gauge yarns that I will be using for lace.  Here is what I started today using a fine 100% merino wool called Harmony.  It's going to be a little "capelet" to wear around your shoulders.

The waves are produced by
making four eyelets
then making four decreases

Summer Stripes

As I've mentioned, I am a big fan of the UK fiber and design company Sirdar.  For the past few months I've had my eye on their new cotton/acrylic blend Summer Stripes Dk and the Summer Safari design book they have released with it.  There are so many beautiful, modern designs that I knew I could learn from, so on my recent visit to Scottsdale's Knit Happens I decided that purchasing this book was a worthwhile investment to put on my credit card write off as a business expense!


It was a tough choice whether I would start with the Boat-Neck Top with Turnback Cuffs or the V Neck Tank...and the color choice was even more difficult.  Ultimately I went with the Boat-Neck in their color choice, Oasis (312).


I finished the first half within about five days, meticulously choosing which skein to join based on keeping perfectly ordered stripes.  Now on my second half (pictured below), I decided to mix it up a bit, and you can see there is a little "reflection" in the middle where I changed yarns and started backwards with the new skein.  I can say for sure now I think it's more interesting to mix it up when using a self-changing yarn like this than to try and keep perfect order.

something for myself

     This past week I decided since I was sort of on vacation that I would do something for myself.


     Having just gotten the grasp of how to knit, last April I started my first sweater from a pattern book by Sublime (a division of the UK fiber company Sirdar) using their organic cotton dk yarn, all purchased from Scottsdale's Knit Happens.  I finished knitting all of the pieces in January but have been procrastinating on sewing it up, mainly because until now I didn't learn how to do that.  But with the onset of Spring (which I consider March to be) I really want to start wearing this simply sublime sweater soon.


     I'd also like for the project not to take me an entire year to finish!

Vertical seams like this one
up the middle of the hood take mattress stitch.

As with most things, the hardest part
was getting started.