My supremely clever (and super-adorable) knitting/designing buddy, Annie Watts, designed these mittens:

(The palms look like this.)

I am going to use these charts on a sweater for Sam. I’ve done the math and it works perfectly with the yarn I plan to use at the gauge I get with said yarn. YAY!

My concern is how to distribute colors. I was planning to do navy blue (Lake) and light grey (Beluga), but Sam would really like his sweater to have some yellow (Firefly) as well because his favorite colors are yellow and blue.

I’m thinking navy for the hem, skyline, and robots; grey for the background; and yellow for the sky/rest of sweater. What do you think? Creepy or awesome?

And once we’ve worked THAT out, where should the robots be placed? I was originally going to do a cardigan, which would be easy: a robot on each front. But then I realized I don’t have any interest in stranded knitting flat, so fuck that. It will be a short-sleeved pullover. Robots on the front? Back? One on each?

This is not actually the first shawl I completed this year. (Well, technically the first of my 13 in 13 is a cowl. But why confuse things.) As it is the first one that I photographed, however, it gets the #1 spot.

Believe it or not, I did not knit this beauty for myself. It’s for my friend Mandi. Normally I do not knit for other people, and I’ve only made a very few exceptions, but Mandi is deserving of handknits. This here is Mandi’s wedding gift.

Let’s just ignore the fact that the wedding was five months ago.

Mandi and her husband Michael are very dear friends of ours. They game with us. Sam and Grace adore them. I can call them if I need help–like the time my car was in the shop and Mandi picked up my CSA box for me, or the time our TV broke and they gave us their old one. One time we discovered that they had two PS3s and we had two Wiis, and we swapped.

We were not able to attend their wedding, which made me very sad. Knitting this for Mandi made me feel a little better–and she loves it. Win!

I haven’t been posting about my 13 in 13 project for two reasons. 1) I don’t think I’ve been knitting enough shawls to make it (can I switch to 13 hats in 2013? I’m probably halfway there), and 2) I don’t yet have any pictures of the progress I have made, and who wants to look at words about knitting? (Scroll for photos of someone else’s knitting.)

So my mom closed on her new house last week. She is back in Woodstock. This paragraph really needs some exclamation marks but I can’t seem to work them in naturally. Please just take my word for it–I am SUPER-PSYCHED. I’ll be visiting her in the fall. Like, the third weekend in October. Knitters, you know what I am saying, right?

(I am going to the New York Sheep and Wool festival, aka Rhinebeck.)

So obviously I need to get moving on my Rhinebeck Sweater. I decided on Woodstove Season and bought the pattern (plus the matching little girls’ pattern because duh) but I’ve been stalling because I am nervous about the fit. I don’t know what size to make and also I historically look rotten in raglan sleeves. Um. Should I forge ahead or just buy Bloody Mary?

And then I will need shawls. I am not certain I can even finish one sweater, so there’s no way I’ll make one for each day, but I can make shawls. I recently acquired this stunning skein of yarn which I believe you will agree NEEDS to be around my neck, and will go quite nicely with the sweater yarn.

I’m basically decided on knitting a shawl by verybusymonkey and have possibly narrowed it down to these two:

The first is Paralucia and the second is Coast Starlight. They are both shaped like Damson, which is my most wearable shawl, but Coast Starlight’s edging is knitted on side-to-side.

Votes?

A brief recap:

Fell in love with the hat in a painting.

Swatched.

Knitted a sample.

Discovered that I had lost my notes.

Backward engineered the basic instructions based on the sample, and started knitting a new sample. I chose a looser gauge for the new yarn (Malabrigo Rios), and a new and improved method of decreasing.

And then I realized that the fit of the hat would not be what I want. It needs a tight gauge, even with the fatter yarn, to create a stiff fabric that will work for the 1920s shape. (The same sort of fabric, or at least a similar sort, could be achieved by lightly felting a loosely knitted hat–but not with Rios, which is superwash!)

So I cast on for a third sample. Luckily, the second one only lost me a day’s knitting–and was totally worth it to work out some kinks! I also figured out a way to improve the short rows, and better/easier/prettier short rows are always a win. This time my notes should be much harder to lose (I typed them, which always helps). Up next: a photo! Once I finish knitting!

I’m working on two knitting projects that are very challenging. One of them should have been done a month ago and the other has to be done by the end of the month. I’ve been so stressed out about my knitting that I’ve kind of started hating it. I keep trying to start easy projects for TV knitting in the evenings (because everyone knows the reward for knitting is to knit more) but my concept of what’s easy is questionable at best.

Over the weekend I started something completely different. A log cabin blanket made from sock yarn, most of it left over from old, favorite projects. “Hey, there’s my Whippoorwill shawl!” “My favorite socks that I wore so much they wore out!” “The Liam sweater I knitted for Gracie!”

It’s nothing but mindless garter and picking up stitches. I LOVE IT SO MUCH. In fact, I am having trouble putting it down to work on the other stuff. Heh.

Thank you, leftover sock yarn, for giving me back my love of knitting.