The weather this spring has been spectacular, and I have been spending lots of time outside. I’m in heavy training for the Boston marathon, which means hours of running every week. It is cutting into my knitting time, but I only have a few weeks left until the event. Running is going well – which means that I have not been injured. My finish time will be slower than in the past, but that is to be expected. I’m working on accepting that, so that I won’t be disappointed with my time, whatever it is.
Because I have had some weeks at home, I’ve started designing again. It started with wanting to re-knit a sweater that I made when first playing with ITR. I wanted to see how it would work with a non-wool yarn. I used Classic Elite Allegro for this sweater, and was working on it when I ran my first Boston marathon in 2008. It came out well, and I wore it in my first Interweave DVD, “Inside Intarsia”. The yarn is no longer available, and I thought it would be fun to re-knit it with something else. At Stitches West, I picked out some Miss Bab’s Yummy Toes in several colors that I thought would be terrific. But when I got home and started playing with swatches, the yarn “told” me it wanted to be triangles, not squares. So, instead of a raglan it wanted to be a yoke design. And, it wanted to be a tunic, maybe even a dress. And, it might want sleeves. So, suddenly I am knitting a yoke sweater/tunic/dress on size 3 needles. OK.
Raglan sweater with Classic Elite Allegoro, knit in 2008 when playing with the ITR technique for garments.
Miss Bab’s Yummy Toes! Casting on, going to be a yoke tunic.
It took lots of swatching, a muslin yoke, lots of calculator time and math to see if I had enough yarn for all of this, but I am well on my way. The yoke is done and now I am happily knitting the body. The yarn really is yummy. I’m playing with shaping the body and having a wonderful time.
I put Ziggy Zaggy on hold, because I want it to be in progress when I teach Intarsia Garter stitch at Interweave Yarn Fest in a few weeks, and it was progressing so fast I had to stop knitting! I just love knitting that pattern stitch. Linda, from Stitches West, sent me a photo of her completed Dizzy scarf from Intarsia Garter stitch class. She did a great job!
Linda’s finished Dizzy scarf, started as a swatch in Intarsia Garter stitch class, Stitches West. Love the colors – great job.
This beautiful swatch, knit by Linda, is the first one I have ever seen that actually matches the class chart! That was fun to see.
My big trip is coming up, to Colorado, Boston, and Minnesota (Yarnover, and teaching at StevenBe’s YarnFest), so I am planning travel knitting and starting to pack. I sent a box to Missy at the Yarn Garage this week, so if you are going to be there in April, check out the trunk show!
Jasmine Koski is a friend of Bill’s – they do photography projects together. She also is a knitter, and creates fun knitting bags. At their last photoshoot, she sent home this Star Trek bag for me, wasn’t that nice of her? I love presents! Bill says her bags are available at a yarn store in Sellwood, which I take to mean Yarntastic. So, check them out. It’s a cute little bag, and I want to use it, which means starting a SMALL project. Seems to be against my natural instincts, but it really would be nice to have something this portable to work on. I’ll think about it on my long run today – mentally shop my stash of yarn and patterns for something fun to cast on.
Knitting bag with classic Star Trek theme, by Jasmine Koski
Have a great weekend, everybody!