One dratted skein...

So as I discussed a while back, my aunt Grace picked up a skein of Filatura Di Crosa Gioiello [Ravelry link] yarn when she was in Italy, and asked me to knit her a scarf from it. There were just two problems:

1. This yarn looks like puke knitted up into anything but stockinette.
2. Knitted into stockinette, there was not enough yarn to make a scarf.

Not insurmountable, surely? Well, I tried a few different patterns, and they did, indeed, look awful. Finally I decided to chart a very simple lace pattern that would look chiefly like bands of stockinette separated by some dropped stitches. There are a number of these. What I ended up with was this:



I'm not 100% thrilled — obviously there are still problems with this yarn knitted up (too bad, it looks lovely in the skein!), but I am pretty happy with the end result. And the scarf, using all the yarn save maybe a meter, is a perfect size.




Of course I think this would have been nicer with a different yarn, but even so, I may write up the pattern in case someone else has a single crazy skein of fingering-weight yarn and needs a pattern that will work for it...

Losing track of what I've shown you and what I haven't!

I think that means I've been doing a lot of knitting.

Anywhere, here are a couple of recent triumphs:

Judy Alexander's Bavarian Tulip Mittens from the most recent (Fall 2010) Interweave Knits. I accidentally knit the top in stockinette instead of reverse stockinette, but I think I like it better this way -- the tops match the thumbs -- so there. This is in one hank of Sundara Worsted Merino (Blue-Green over Yellow). It's a perfect application of the Sundara yarn, so if you have a single skein of it in your stash, you might think about these lovely mittens!

These are for my friend Becca. I hope they come close to fitting... I haven't seen her in years!

My friend Sandra has been begging me for a pair of fingerless mitts for several years now. I don't know why, but having someone ask me for something makes me slower about making it. Which is really stupid. I basically improvised this pattern, including charting the simple braided cable, and it took me less than 24 hours to knit from Elsebeth Lavold Chunky AL (leftover from Rob's pullover). Hopefully these will fit — she has tiny hands. These are wet and blocking:

Should dry fast, we have a Santa Ana rolling in. Hot desert wind.

I've got more sinus surgery on Monday, and will be home for a couple of weeks. That'll slow knitting down at first, then probably speed it up, for a while.

Time to cut my losses?

I've been surveying some of my unfinished projects and one of them is this Mariner tunic, which I started way back when I first learned to knit, in 2006:



This sat around for a long, long time because I couldn't remember whether I'd used long-tail cast-on or Twisted German cast-on (which effectively adds a row), and I wanted the front and back to match.

I took it out to look at the other day and realized I have another problem now: this thing is not going to fit. For one thing I'm a slightly different size since I first started knitting it. It is coming out about 46" (well, the front is coming out about 23"). You've seen the vest I recently knit, which was 45" and just doesn't fit me. This is not going to fit either.

I'm rather tempted to frog it and start over. Or leaving the front intact while I knit another one, so I can actually see the difference in sizes before I have a happy little frogging session.

There's the secondary problem that this color is just a little too bright for my tastes. When I first started knitting, as is true for many of us, I was horrified at the cost of yarn, so I was buying yarn on eBay a lot. I was buying the exact same yarn each pattern called for, except that I generally bought whatever color was cheapest. I like magenta, but this is a very bright, crayon magenta.

Still, I think I'd wear it if it fit. But I think I need to knit the next size down.

Hrm.

The biggest problem may be the lack of desire to knit this project at all, right now.