Tuesday, May 29, 2012

wips for rebeccawip

I have been knitting away on zephyr.
What gorgeous yarn!! the color, the feel, the hand.  not very drapey (in fact the collar kind of lifts away from my neck - hoping the weight of the sweater will fix that), but still very lovely. and so warm! i put just the small neck band around my neck to see how it was evolving and i immediately felt plush cushy warmth spread around my neck!

So i at first was thinking : WHAT ON EARTH! why would someone torture their soul that much just to get out of sewing up a few seams or picking up stitches for a button band!  I mean, really! that contiguous sleeve method is all whack-o!  but, now that it's unfolding, i can see the beauty of it - the sleeves fall in a graceful manner over the shoulders and i've never seen any other shoulder style do quite that.
have any of you done a contiguous sleeve construction?  what do you think about it? do you know excatly what the advantages are?

so, i'm past the separating off of the sleeves! Thank goodness! Because you have a bazillion stitches on the needles and then all of a sudden lots less lol!  I'm going to finish out this skein i'm on and then put the body on hold to go do the sleeves as i'm about sick to death of that button band which is quite a PITA and purling back on every single row :P  i hate purling, i'm slow and inefficient at it.  so knitting those sleeves in the round should be a little mindless glorious interlude ;D .

As for the apron...ugh!  I'm stuck on this stupid thing and it's due to go out...today. So i'm officially late.  What i have left : fixing a few spots on the bias-bound seams where i missed either a tiny bit of one of thetwo sandwiched fabrics or a tiny bit on the bias itself, because i can sew in a straight line so well obviously lol.
Then I have to seam up the straps and then make "buttonholes" for the straps to go through.
I dont want to do the straps because i neveer can getthe stupid things turned out the right way (though i did buy a special turn-outy thingie at the faric store) and these have a pointed end, created by sewing a curved seam at the ends, which i cant get my head around because if i do that on both ends then how the heck am i going to turn them out?  where will the whole to pull the inside outside be?  and then the button holes... ugh!  how do i fix the width without having a button to put in my button hole foot?  and fixing up the seams?  ugh :P
so, here i am, stalled out, yet needing to FINISH and get this out to a friend who's waiting for it.
grrrrr

well, i have just a few ends to weave in to finish my first of year one of 7 small shawls by Rosemary Hill.  And the shawl has been sitting like that for 2 weeks.  well, it's not just the weaving in of the ends, it's also the blocking. oh.my.goodness! that is going to be a night-marish blocking job 8^O!!!! And i have no blocking wires -  double 8^O
I want to knit these 7 shawls to gift to 7 special women in my life.
This one is for Christy.  That's another reason i'm having finishing it. i'm embarrassed to gift it to her (more on that later)
I am going to knit Merope next, for Dianne (not my sister but my friend here in France, though, and i know i'm not spoiling a surprise here, because it's an absolute given, my sister dianne will of course be getting on e too lol).  I picked out yarn from my stash - well, narrowed it down to 2 skeins.  Either a light glacier blue called theory of heaven in the sanguine gryphon's eidos 100% merino - very plump round tightly spun yarn.  should yield n excellent stitch definition. Or in cookie a's deep dark secret ( a deep midnight blue) in Lorna's Laces shepherd wool yarn base.  The eidos would be a little more luxurious but i'm not sure which color would be better.  Dianne is a winter, according to discussions we had one day, she indicated she was a winter.  Her hair has grayed (towards a pretty white, more than towards gray) her skin is very light, with a nice pink underglow, and her eyes are blue.  I'm not sure which of these two blues would look better on her.  i had also thought of a red but that's so iffy.  and i dont have any in my stash anyhow.  i would have liked to use a cashmere based yarn but i dont have any of that in stash either and really want to avoid buying any more yarn as my current stash is already so large i'm uncomfortable with it.  what do you think?

I am not going to let myself cast this on until i have finished both Taygete (the shawl i just mentioned for christy) and the apron! NO! NO CASTING ON!!!!  But i want to finish this shawl by the end of our parenting class (dianne is leading this class - more on that later too lol). 
That should be motivation enough to get those two dudes finished!

Hoping i can still get in some crafting time now that i'm back to work! grrrr :P

Hope you (2 or 3 lovely friends and sister and sometimes mom ;) )are all well :D
lots of  love!

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