Sweater Details + a little background on my life

Hello again,
Thanks for all the feedback about the sweater! As of right now (I haven't knitted yet today) I don't have much progress to show you, I've only done five or so more rows past the armpits at this point. I never thought i'd say this, but its a breath of fresh air to be doing 140 stitch rows instead of like, 250 stitch rows. By the way, I just wrote fresh hair instead of air. I'm tired.
Anyway, here is the details of the sweater I'm making for anyone who is interested.

The pattern is the 'Lodi Cardigan' by Tanis Gray, from the summer 2011 issue of knitscene magazine (by the way, if you haven't checked out that magazine, I highly recommend it, they always have really cute projects). It's a simple top down raglan (duh, first sweater and I like to watch tv while I knit) and I really haven't had any issues with understanding the pattern at all. I had to frog it a couple of times at the beginning, one time that was particularly frustrating because I realized a few rows too late that I had to knit a stitch instead of yarning over. When I ripped it out I couldn't figure out how to pick up the yarn overs and I had to undo everything. Irritating.
Anyway, here's a link to the pattern on ravelry: check it out. By the way, my username is longridehome on ravelry if you aren't friends with me yet and would like to be.

I'm using Vanna's choice yarn on size 9 needles. I kind of hate vanna's choice yarn. Please don't ask me why this is what I chose if I don't like it, I'm just stupid. Seriously. That's the only reason.

Anyway, I've also realized that while I've talked a whole lot about knitting here, I haven't really told you any background about myself other than what you see on my little about me blurb. I'm in graduate school working on my master's in social work and I've just begun my second and final year. I've had a lot of free time this summer, but my life gets pretty crazy during school. I'm a full time student and I have an internship three days a week, which can get pretty stressful. I just started yesterday (Monday) and I had my first week of classes last week. If you are curious what I'm doing at my internship, I am working in a college counseling center as a counselor (that was repetitive). Since I just started, I don't have any clients yet, but I'll keep you updated on how things go. Last year my internship was in in a day program for severely mentally ill adults running lots and lots of therapy groups. While it was interesting, it was always really really hard and I didn't like it very much. Working with students one on one is a lot more geared to my skill set.

Thanks for reading!

I have divided and conquered!

...AND MY FINGERS HURT LIKE A MOTHER@#(*@#.

Okay, so let me tell you what happened today.

I knitted all day long.
Seriously. All day.
Because I wanted to get to the point where I had to divide the body and sleeves, the exciting pivotal point of the sweater.
Has this ever happened to you? Where you just want to finish some knitting, or get to a point in your knitting, and you are like, it's only ten more rows? Or five more rows, or two?
Let me tell you. It's never just five more rows, not when your rows are with 200+ stitches! Gosh. It took way longer to get through those last 'just five' rows than I thought. And my hands are aching. But I just had to.
I was really worried when I tried it on before dividing the sleeves and the body that it was going to be really big, because it was looking really big. But at this point, it seems to look pretty good! I'm really more worried about the arms now, because I've got skinny little arms and they might be a bit big. We'll see.

...and yes, I'm wearing my pajamas like in yesterday's picture.

Don't judge me.


PS: I realize I've given you no information yet on the pattern, except I will say its a top down raglan if you haven't figured that out yet.

I'm nervous. So let's not talk about it too much, okay?

The saga of the first sweater.

Blank face is blank

FO: Garter & Ribbed Cowl

Hello again,
I finished it! I mentioned in the podcast I posted on Thursday that I've had the cowl I mentioned in June on the needles without working on it since....June. With some encouragement from Cecilia (don't drool on the wool blog) and in my disappointment with the karius scarf (curl city), I picked it back up again last night.
Since it's been a while since I've blogged about it, I'll give you the stats again:

Yarn: Bernat Softee (leftovers from two scarves I made for my boyfriend and for myself...both were made out of the 'scrunchable scarf' pattern on ravelry, which I love)
Needles: size 9
Pattern: CO 36, 1x1 rib for 6 rows, 6 rows of garter and repeat

When I was working on the cowl in June, I was debating doing a pink stripe in the cowl. When I picked it up last night I decided to just go for it, and I like the result. The colors are impossible to photograph, the pictures really don't show the colors well.

P.S.:
Here are pictures of the original scarves:

yes, that's his 'i'm modeling' pose. uhhhh...

I love this scarf. I wore it all last winter, it's my fav.

P.P.S. Check out my new haircut! Goodbye split ends, that's for sure...

Podcast??

Hello hello,
Today I have a podcast for you! I'm not sure if this will be a regular thing, but I was in the mood for something different.
I discuss:
My curly scarf of doom?
UFOs
Caron Simply soft-yay or nay?



Here are some pictures of the scarf:

A trip to the lion brand yarn studio

Hello!
As I mentioned in my last post, I recently visited the lion brand yarn studio in New York City. Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures inside the store, but you can take a virtual tour at their website here. The store was really, really lovely. Unfortunately, I was so exhausted and sweaty from the heat that I didn't get to appreciate all the yummy yarn goodness as I normally would (but this only means I'll just have to go back!). The store was great-the window display was a yarn masterpiece, and everything in the store was covered in yarn, including the outside door handle and the exposed piping inside. One wall of the studio is lined with small cubbies filled with all their yarns, as pictured on the website. In the front portion of the store they had a display with some projects they have featured on their websites. It was really cool to see the actual projects that I recognized from the photographs of some of their patterns in person! You could touch and feel everything, it was incredibly cool. Also in the front portion of the store is their sampling wall, where they have about eight large spools of yarn ready for you to sample. Here is a picture of the yarn I took to sample:

The sales folk were super friendly, walking around the studio (knitting the whole time, might I add) ready and willing to help. The man who was by the sampling station said to take as much as I wanted to sample, and he offered spare knitting needles or crochet hooks to try it out. As you can see, you could wind the yarn onto this bookmark-card. You might be able to see a ruler on the card, something I thought was a really smart touch, so you could see how many wraps-per-inch the yarn gauge was. I sampled what I believe is an LB collection yarn, but I can't recall the exact name of it. 

In the middle section of the store was a large table, where you could sit and try out the yarn samples. There were baskets already on the table with swatches of various yarns already on needles that you could pick up and knit. They also had swatch booklets of their yarns crocheted/knit up so you could see how they all looked. The studio offers private lessons, and there were several people at the table being taught to knit. 

They also had a table featuring their relatively new "LB Collection" yarns, which is not currently sold in stores. It was really cool to see them in person, including their cashmere, wool, steel wool (more later on this), angora, and mohair yarns. They had shelves in the back with books and magazines with patterns featuring their yarns, and a weaving station. They also had crocheted baskets full of their needles and other accessories, including yarn bags and tape measures (I picked up a lantern moon tape measure I'll show a picture of). They also had several computers you could browse patterns on, as well as print them out. 

Overall, the atmosphere was very friendly and really cool to see. I highly recommend checking it out if you are ever in the NYC area. 

Anyway, the important part: what i bought. lol

A lantern moon tape measure. The tape measure comes out of a tab on the right side, you may be able to see it in this picture. They also had crocheted ladybugs and a turtle, as well as a few other sheep shades, but the button that retracts the tape measure didn't work so well on some of those, so I chose this one. I've always admired the lantern moon tape measures, they are pretty adorable. It was cool to see them in person. 

This is really adorable- its a mitten keychain kit! It gives you the mitten keychain and a pattern to make a mitten to put on it out of sock yarn. I thought it was unique and I'll definitely be giving it a try. 

Just to give you a size comparison.

I bought a skein of the lion brand wool stainless steel yarn! I've been so intrigued by this concept. For those of you who don't know, the concept originally came out by the brand habu, and this is lion brand's knock-off version, essentially (for interests sake, the label says made in japan, which is where the habu yarn comes from...hmm...). Its a laceweight thread, and because of its stainless steel component, the knitted or crocheted material is pliable and sculptural. They had a few projects that used 2 spools of the yarn, but I only bought one just to experiment with. I'm not sure if I'm going to make anything out of it, but I thought it would be really fun to play around with.

Here's a better picture of the color- the colorway is called "wine", which is essentially what it is. A dark wine/burgundy/brownish color, with what looks like a metallic thread (which we know is the stainless steel) running through it. Very pretty. 

I hope you enjoyed this post and please let me know if you are planning on ever going to visit the studio, or have visited it!

-Abby

wait, its been a month?

Oops.
Yes, its been almost a month since I've posted and I'm sorry! I haven't had any FOs to show, and what I've been working on has been pretty boring and not really WIP post-worthy. But i know, I know, these are just excuses. I've had ideas for blog posts that don't require actual knitting. For instance, I recently went to the Lion Brand Yarn Studio in NYC, and I am planning on posting a review of the store and the goodies I came away with. Does that make up for the lack of posts? I sort of hope so.
ANYWAY, here are some pictures of a bright yellow scarf I just finished the other night. It's 2x2 rib (CO 36, i think) made of Caron Simply Soft and I used size 8 needles. I've had this yarn in my stash forever, so I finally did something with it. Nothing exciting at all, except for the fact that it's obviously ridiculously bright yellow. So yeah...not the most stylish thing, thats for sure.
Sometimes 2x2 rib on and on and on is enough for me, it makes for good tv knitting.

 Yeah...sorry for looking completely awful, I'm currently sick with an awful cold/possible sinus infection.
Anyway, here's a WIP i've been working on, another simple ribbed scarf. I started it the same day as the yellow one, but clearly I worked on the yellow one way more frequently. It's a skinny scarf in 1x1 rib (CO 24 stitches, size 7 needles) made of Caron Spa yarn, which is beautiful and silky soft, but ridiculously splitty.

(awful picture, sorry...)

Anyway, I'm in a bit of knitting rut right now, but I'm kind of okay with it. I started some mittens a few weeks ago as well, but haven't worked on them. Michael's stopped selling a full stock of clover needles and only sell metal boye DPNs, which I kind of hate to use, because they are so heavy. I'm thinking of ordering some plastic lion brand ones I tried out at the lb yarn studio that I surprisingly enjoyed using, and then maybe i'll get back to working on the mittens. 

Hope to talk to you soon!