A Productive Weekend

This is going to be a long post - I have a few days to make up for. I've made lots of progress on "making Christmas", and started a couple of new projects. My big adventure was a trip to our local charity shop on Saturday - I love browsing there. I found a rather hideous men's sweater, but in nice "100% virgin wool". I've been wanting to try taking a sweater apart for salvage, and at the price I paid, even if it didn't work, it would have been a worthwhile learning experience. Here's the sweater:

Hideous, isn't it? I like the colours, but it's as if the designer was trying to show off knitting skills - intarsia, fair isle, textured stiches, this sweater's got them all! It didn't show much wear at all which is really not surpising! It's an Eaton's brand sweater, but from the way the ends are woven in and the seams are sewn, it looks as though it was done by hand. Made in Hong Kong.

So I had a fun evening of frogging:


(On a side note, see the wrist brace? It appears that on top of an old strain injury that tends to come back now and again, I'm now showing symptoms of carpel tunnel syndrome. Typing all day at school and knitting at night are not complementary activities, it appears.)

I learned a few lessons here. First, frogging intarsia knitting is no fun at all. All of that crossing over and untangling were trying. Secondly, fairisle sections (like the grey diamonds above) are great, because they have a lot of yarn in them and they come apart easily. Anyway, the end result, after a soak in water and a bit of shampoo, is this:



Many, many yards of co-ordinating coloured wool drip-drying in my bathtub. I haven't figured out the yardage yet, and I'm not sure what it will become. Possibly a felted project or two. We'll see.

Would I do this again? Maybe if it were really nice yarn. But no intarsia. No way!





In other news, I finally blocked the blue lace scarf (and finally found out that the lace pattern is called "ostrich plume"). Here I am modelling the finished product. I think this is going to go to hubbie's grandmother for Christmas. She's a avid and very talented knitter in her own right, so I think she'll really appreciate the amount of work that went into it.















I also finished the purple branching out scarf. Here it is being wet-blocked on my floor. I really need to get some sort of better surface for blocking, but for now I'm making due with towels.













And finally, in an effort to use up some of the stash sock yarn, I started a pair of fair isle socks. The pattern is "Fair Isle Options" from the Patons booklet Classics in Kroy, and the yarn is mostly solids of Sheepjes Invicta Extra (a sock yarn that I've discovered does not wear well at all. I will not be buying any more of it.), along with odds and ends of whatever I had. I started these on dpn's, as the pattern suggests, however, I found that I had really bad ladders at the joins. After a bit of ripping back, I decided to figure out the two circular needle method. I found these instructions really helpful. At least now there are only two joins, and the ladders are much less pronounced. It is a bit fiddly to get the hang of, but the big advantage of using the circulars is that you can easily try on the sock without taking it off the needles. Fair isle socks always run the risk of being too tight to get over your heel. These are a little tight, but I can get them on fine. I haven't decided yet if these are going to be gifts or if I'll keep them for myself. This is an earlier photo. I'm just starting the heel right now. I'm doing dark blue for the main colour, but I'll probably do a contrast burgundy heel and toe because I only have one ball of the blue. I don't want to run out and have to buy more - the idea was to use up yarn here.