January

It's almost the end of January, can you believe it? You know, January is usually a time for reflection throughout the blogosphere. For crafters they go over projects from the previous year and think about what they've learned, and in general there is reflection about the previous year and the events therein. Some big changes happened for me last year, the biggest that I moved to Arizona, half way across the country. I also lost my craft mojo for a while , but as I'm sure you noticed, it's been back for a while. I think it's just hard to knit when it's 110* outside.

And, lucky for you, that's about all I have for reflection. I'm more about the future, or at least living in the moment.

Now for the real reason that I started writing today, my January sweater. It is not, as the name may imply, finished, but I have gotten a big portion of it done. I'm very pleased with the progress, especially since it involved cabling pretty much every right side row. It's based on the September sweater tutorial [Ravel it!]. I've already made some big changes, but those are partially because of the significant size difference. The cable patterns that I'm using are different from the original sweater as well. The main cable (the encased cable) has a different number of knits/purls so that it flowed better with the 2x2 ribbing. I also used a braided cable pattern from The Complete Book of Traditional Aran Knitting by Shelagh Hollingworth. First printed in 1982 this version is probably from 1989. I picked it up for $6 at a Half Price Books. It has some great cable patterns in it as well as some great traditional aran sweaters.

I almost have the top half finished. =)

This is the Briar Rose yarn I got a Rhinebeck that was a different failed project a while back (almost a year ago exactly, huh). The color is really difficult to photograph, it always comes out too red. With a little tweaking I got this picture to be more or less the right color.

Also this month I finished a pair of worsted weight socks for my dad and I started Volna by Grumperina. I knew as soon as I saw the pattern I wanted to knit it, and when my dad came to town earlier this month giving us a reason to drive to San Diego (also to visit my Aunt & Uncle where I turned my Aunt into a budding knitter and yarn snob ;-] ) I needed a more portable project. I'm making it out of Noro Kirameki in, incidently, the same colorway as Grumperina, although I didn't do it on purpose per-se. It just happened to match the Noro slouchy hat that I made!

Anyhow, that's all for now, folks. =)