Sweaters

I really want to start a new sweater. Sweaters are my favorite type of projects. I like to knit them in the round so I work on the body for a while then set them down, start a small project and then come back to a sleeve. They take long enough to really sink your teeth into. I’m on a yarn diet though and pouring through all the sweater patterns on Ravelry just seems cruel. So I thought instead I would share some of the pullovers I’ve made in the past.

This is one of my favorites I made it when I found out I was moving to London. I made it from free pattern from Drops that I modified to have long sleeves. I knit it in Knitpicks Stroll in Fedora (brown), Dusk (blue), and Peapod (green). The sweater is about two years old and it barely shows it. It’s one that I look forward to putting on each winter. In fact I am wearing it now.

I finished this Leyfi when I was staying in a tent in Yellowstone National Park on my Honeymoon. As you can imagine I have some strong memories attached to it. It’s knit with New Lanark’s Donegal Silk Tweed Aran. I love the lace on the neckline.

This sweater is another modification of a Drops pattern. I changed it from a cardigan to a pull over. I wanted it to have some negative ease. Negative ease and cardigans don’t play well together. I knit it in Blue Sky Alpaca’s Alpaca Silk. With the drapey yarn and the shaping between the lace panels, this sweater is the most flattering sweater I own. I can look nice and be warm. I love the way it looks with my pencil skirt! 

Finally I have the warmest of all, my Green Stripey Alpaca Sweater. It’s a simple top down raglan. I neither followed a pattern nor took decent notes. I used Artesano Alpaca 4 ply which is 100% alpaca. When it’s really really cold out this sweater is perfect. The rest of the time I have to be careful not to wear it and my heaviest coat so I don’t suffer heat exhaustion.

You see I don’t need to make another sweater. I will not freeze if I don’t. I can wait until the end of the month to start another.

Yet another yarn diet

I am on a yarn diet. I have enough yarn. I do not need more. While my stash is not as large as some, I don’t like having too much yarn sitting in my stash drawer feeling abandoned. Yes, I anthropomorphize my yarn. This is part of why I always cast on with new yarn as soon as possible. When I buy too much yarn at once I want to start all the projects and quickly get frazzled trying to get everything going. So to avoid this happening from now until the end of November I will only work with my stash. Bits of yarn have sat there all abandoned for too long. I just need to remember what I have and use it up.

I still have my WIP’s like my What does the fox say? shawl and more long-term projects. It’s been over a year since I’ve added to my sock scrap blanket. This blanket keeps my feet nice and warm during the winter and the more I work on it the more of me it can keep warm. I also have plenty of scraps I can add.

My Princess Shawl has been sitting in the freezer for way too long. I need to bite the bullet and repair the hole and get back to it. The shawl won’t get finished sitting in the freezer.

I also have yarn that can make whole new projects. There is this ball of Collinette Jitterbug. I tried to turn it into a shawl a while back but I couldn’t get the shawl to work. I think I’ve figured out what the problem was and can correct it.

I have an idea for a shawl made from lace weight scraps. There are always so many of those and I think I know how I could use them up.

The only difficulty is my desire to start a new cardigan. I know exactly how I want it to look and what type of yarn I want to use, a woolly sport or dk in a solid or semi-solid, but I don’t own this yarn. I need to wait. But what could be a better reward for holding off on yarn than getting to splurge at the end with a sweater’s worth?

Yarn Diet

I am half-way through a two month yarn diet. The last thing I bought was BFL Sock from The Knitting Swede, except for some extra yarn I needed to finish my silk shawl. The first month was relatively easy. I had plenty of projects to tide me over. I could play with my new yarn, old yarn, and projects and be more than happy for two months. I would finish off some WIP’s and start the sweater that I first talked about doing quite a while ago.

So far I have finished off some WIP’s but I’m getting bored with what I have to work with. I know this could be solved by finally starting my purple and green sweater or fixing the hole on my Princess Shawl and digging back into that behemoth. I torture myself every week by going to Knit Night at a LYS. There are so many pretty yarns there I want to play with. New things. Fun things. I don’t want to work with what I have.

I will NOT give in. Instead I will thing of new projects I can make with what I already have.

1. I can make a necklace with the left over silk from my shawl.

2. I can finally start the sweater.

3. I can try to spin again and make more new yarn for me to play with. (I already have the drop spindle and the tops, just limited patience with my inexperience)

I have enough. I can still be creative with the yarn and projects I already have. If I decided to I could probably go for an additional month on the yarn diet. But I won’t I’m not crazy. I need to start planning my next yarn purchase when this diet is over. I think it has to be the some more of BC Garn’s Jaipur Silk Fino. Or maybe some Skein Silky Merino Sport? Whatever I get next it will be enough for a large project to reward my self control.