WIP Wednesday - for Chris

Good morning everyone! Thanks so much for all the support and enthusiasm you've been showing with this weeks pattern sale! Who doesn't love a sale right? The shawl that was pictured in Monday's post is already being test knit and I hope to have the pattern ready to roll out next month. So glad you like it!

So, this week seems to be the week I cast on for a new project every night... I started a pair of socks on Monday night and then a sweater last night and am seriously considering starting another wee sweater tonight because honestly, Rowan is growing just way too fast and I have a few skeins of Green Label Tartan lingering that would make an awesome little hoodie. So... yup, I've decided, another new sweater will be cast on before the day is done. It's a good week for starting fresh!

I haven't knit a new sweater for Chris in ages. And that's a real shame because he is the best person to knit for. He wears his knit items with pride extremely regularly. He is more than knit-worthy. He's still rockin' a hideous (but sweet in it's naivety) sweater that I knit for him back when we were dating. It's huge and made out of acrylic yarn, but it has hearts on the sleeves and he likes it. I've been wearing my Reverb a lot lately, it's shocking how that golden Hayloft colourway goes with everything (who knew?) and every single time I throw it on Chris comments on how much he likes it. Last night, I'm in my Reverb, thrown on over jeans and a crazy pink plaid shirt and Chris says: "You look great tonight Tan." And then I realized, it's the sweater! Because let's be honest, I did not look great. He's obsessed with Reverb. So I asked if he would wear a Reverb of his own and he very enthusiastically gave me a "hell yeah!" So, there ya go, how could I say no? I dug through the stash, because I was pretty sure that I had a sweaters quantity of this really awesome rustic wooly wool that would be perfect for his sweater. I found the yarn, a few skeins had already been balled up and ready to go, and cast on immediately! I will be making a few mods to account for gauge, but I'll fill you in on those details when I figure them out myself. The yarn is from my favourite Nova Scotia sheep farm Lismore Sheep Farm. 

Ok, so then there is this pair of socks. Knit in the Burberry colourway of Turtlepurl striped turtle toes yarn. I'm knitting them bottom up since the yarn comes in two matching skeins so I'll knit each skein until I run out of yarn maximizing each and every yard. I bought this colourway with Chris in mind, thinking that he would love some classy Burberry inspired socks, but he's not showing me the love that I expected him to for this project... so they may end up going to someone else. I'm loving them however, hand dyed, self-striping yarns blow my mind. So beautiful, so labour intensive, I couldn't do it. 

And to end off this morning's post. Here is a picture of two skeins of Cosmic Blue Label Frost that I snapped yesterday afternoon. I was packing up orders and shipping them out, I had a pile of yarn on my desk and these two skeins were glowing in the afternoon sun. They looked angelic! This photo doesn't really capture the moment as well as I had hoped, but trust me, Frost in Cosmic Blue Label is amazing. 

That's it for me, happy hump day! What have you cast on this week? 

Watcha workin' on?

I've got several projects on the needles these days that I don't think I've mentioned at all on the blog. So, here's a little update on what I'm working on. 

First up is a new design I started just the other night. I'm knitting it in Aurora in the new Amber Label base and so far so good! I have no more details to share about this bad boy as it's still in a very preliminary stage and I have no idea where it will go from here. Hopefully somewhere, possibly nowhere. 

My official Ravellenic Games project: 

When I released the Cavalcade Sock pattern as the January Year In Colour Club pattern many of us agreed that the back pattern alone was pretty enough for a sock. I'm knitting a pair of DK weight socks for my sister in law in the Saffron colourway using just the eyelet cable ribbing motif. Should be such a quick knit, but things have been so busy these days that it's proving to be quite challenging to find the time to work on it. 

My Follow Your Arrow mystery shawl:

I've tried very hard to work each clue the week it came out, and up until now, I've managed to stick to the timeline. But now I'm on the last clue, Clue number 5. I've opted to pick option B for every clue, it's going to be great, but it's going to take forever to work this border. The pattern is ingenious, but I've gone ahead and decided to make things uber-complicated by working the border in intarsia! The results will be so worth it, and I don't think I'd like it half as much if I didn't, but man, this is a pain in the butt to knit. I will persevere and finish this eventually but it will certainly not be finished by Sunday night. Sigh. My project page with yarn details can be found here. I was considering intarsia for the border, figured it was foolish, but then saw this version and now there is no going back!

So, those are my main knitting projects these days. Other than that I'm trying desperately *desperately* to get photos of Rowan in this hoodie for the pattern I'm wrapping up. He is almost too big for it now and is so much more mobile than he was just a few week ago. There is a very good chance that the pattern shots end up blurry and that Rowan is squeezed into this hoodie like a little blond sausage. 

So, what's on your needles? Are any of you doing the Mystery KAL? Ravellenic Games? Crazy intarsia projects? Baby wrangling?