Persephone

Every knitter had those meh projects. Projects you work and work on, and when you finish you look down and just think... eh... not for me. Persephone was that way for me. I taught a class last March about cables and this was the featured project. The original is a scarf, but I got so tired of the cables after about two feet that I turned mine into a a cowl with buttons.

I should have known I was never going to be able to finish a whole scarf in this pattern. 1) I dislike knitting scarves in general because they feel like never-ending swatches. 2) I dislike scarf patters that are not reversible because I am anal and the fact that the "wrong" side shows drives me bonkers. 3) I dislike heavily cabled projects because they make my hands crampy when I knit them. 4) This pattern is not charted, it is only written, and I strongly prefer to  All of these things and problems related to my personal knitting preferences, not problems with the pattern.

 I didn't write down my modifications, but they were dead easy. Basically I stopped knitting the body after 2 feet or so and then in the final garter stitch portion I threw in a row with 3 evenly spaced button holes, then finished the garter stitch portion. Then I played around with the best placement for the buttons and decided I liked the "folded over" look. I sewed on the buttons and ta-da. 

The yarn is Madelinetosh DK (I know, you're not surprised) in Moorland. It blocks out in cables amazingly! Their plied yarns are not the softest (except for Pashmina) but they have amazing stitch definition and they are plied nice and tight so they wear forever without looking ratty the way that some yarns get after a while. Basically the yarn was fantastic, but I still feel meh about the finished project.  

Oh Hai

Ah hem hem... So hey... How's it going? Been a while... Almost a year you say? My how time flies. I feel like I should say I'm sorry, but really I'm not. The last year has brought a lot of changes to my life. I don't even think I mentioned it in my last post, but when I wrote it (February of 2013, I know...) I had just gotten my first job as an attorney 5 days before the post. I was commuting a long way to work every day and felt just exhausted by the end of the day. It's hard to even imagine, but really I stopped knitting from pretty much February through July. Dark days.

Ryan and I stopped being a couple in May, and that was sad. In July I moved closer to work. Sadly, closer to work meant further from a lot of other things, including my knitting group. While I had my suspicions early on, by July I was feeling like my job was not a great fit for me (that's the extremely reserved, internet appropriate, way to describe how I was feeling anyway...) By late October I decided a new job needed to be at the top of my priority list and by the end of November I had an offer on the table. Mid-December I started my new job (still attorney work, just a much different office atmosphere) and it's been fabulous so far.

The new job came with the caveat that I would have to take the Washington state Bar exam. Portland being so close to Washington, my new office does a lot of work in both states so I need to be dual licensed. If you're thinking now that my miraculous return to blogging may have something to do with procrastinating studying for a test that is one month away... Shut up.

Look. Knitting.

That is the extremely popular Selbu Modern hat by Kate Gagnon Osborne. It is available for free on Ravelry. I had wanted to make it for a very long time. When I started teaching a series of hat classes at my LYS focusing on different techniques, I chose this hat as the colorwork-focused class project. 

The yarn I used was Madelinetosh Tosh Merino Light in Antique Lace and Clematis. Antique Lace has got to be one of my favorite Madelinetosh colors. It's sort of a boring neutral, but something about it is so enticing to me. Of course, I love pretty much everything Madelinetosh so maybe it's not very surprising that this was so enjoyable for me. Even being knit on tiny needles (US 0 and US 2) this was a very fast knit for me. 

Sadly, that hat was knit last January, and I'm just now getting around to showing it to you. It's kept me nice and warm for two winters now and it's the hat I grab above my others if I can find it... I am not high-functioning in the morning, so it's good I have so many hats--there's usually one that's within grabbing range as I'm leaving the house. On the other hand, it's probably good I have a few projects back-logged, since it will give me things to show you on a semi-regular basis as I get back into my knitting groove. Feels good to be back.