Tuesday, January 25, 2005

WIPs: mid-January

The Dandy scarf is finished, except that now it's too cold to wear. I knit it using large needles and a semi-lacey pattern that does nothing to block the cold. The ribbon scarf is still on the needles, somewhere at the bottom of my knitting basket.

The major project that I'm working on now is a hat/scarf/mitten combo using some Alafoss Lopi which was procured during various visits to Len's Mills in Guelph, and the Manos I got in Fergus at Thanksgiving. Originally, I had purchased three or four different greens of Alafoss to match the Manos, but I ended up not liking the combo.

There was an olive green Alafoss that I really liked and sort of matches my eye colour, and it went very well with the Manos (which is a verigated green). I didn't have enough at the time, but subsequent trips home provided me with opportunities to get more. In retrospect, this was not a good idea as I've ended up with yarn from three different dye lots - but, it works because I've used one dye lot for the hat, another for the scarf, and the third is for the mittens.

The hat is ribbed, and the pattern comes from the first Stitch n' Bitch. The hat is made from the Alafoss and is edged with some Manos. The scarf is a pattern I made up, knit lengthwise on circular needles - two rows Alafoss, two rows Manos repeated several times. It needs to be blocked because it doesn't look very wide.

I started working on the mittens last night while watching Firefly on DVD. They're a basic pattern from The Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns (which is sometimes not clear, but it's good for basic patterns.

I'd like to have everything done for next week for when I go to the OLA Super Conference (am I the only one who wants to do a Molly Shannon/Mary Katherine Gallagher whenever I hear "Super Conference"?)