FO: Orangina

Presenting Orangina:

(Click for bigger)

This is the last surprise FO for awhile, I promise. Remember when I said in my last post I hadn't blogged awhile because of some major facepalm moments? And that one of them entailed a major gauge error? Well, that would be the summertime tunic.

I kind of fudged the gauge swatch and never realized it because of the way it was bunched on the circular needle. I worked on it at the beach, at the movies, while reading the last Harry Potter book, and then I checked it. It was about 10 inches long and I was all "hmmm, I wonder if it's time to start the armholes," so I put it on scrap yarn. And then I was like, "my hours of long, tedious work have created a gigantic, shapeless sack....DAMN YOU, GAUGE! DAMN YOU AND YOUR SICK, TWISTED SENSE OF VENGEANCE!"

It was literally 10 inches long by about 48 inches wide. And I admit I am a bit busty, bit I'm no Dolly Parton. So after carefuly measuring gauge as if I had just made the world's biggest gauge swatch on purpose, I ripped it all out and sat on the yarn for a few days, humbled by the defeat. I also came to the conclusion that the summertime tunic would probably look terrible on me anyway, and make me look more frumpy than carefree. I'd bought the orangina pattern awhile ago and decided to use the yarn for that instead.

Yarn - 5 skeins of Knitpicks shine (60% pima cotton, 40% modal, 110 yards), sport weight, in cherry. This yarn is awesome! It's really soft, and (perhaps not shockingly) shiny, and totally worth getting since it's super-cheap. The downside is that I have 4 skeins of this yarn leftover, and I'm not really feeling making another tank top out of the same exact yarn.
Needles - 29" size 6 Inox circular, which gave me a gauge of 20 sts x 28 rows = 4 in stockinette.
Pattern - Orangina by Glampyre. I'm apparently working through her entire catalog. The gauge I got was significantly looser than what was listed in the pattern so I calculated the number of stitches needed to fit my bust size (200ish) and made the size that came closest to that number (XS, with 206 sts). Here are my other mods:

• I worked it bottom-up, not top-down as written. I did this mostly to start in the round and to get the ribbing out of the way. I also wanted to eliminate seaming and be able to kitchener the shoulders together.
• I made the ribbing 5" long and the lace section 16" long, which is longer than specified for the XS size.
• I have tiny, wee little shoulders. They also slope down kind of dramatically. This means that I have issues with bra straps falling down, the straps of shirts and dresses being to long, and that I get a weird wing effect with square cut tops that have no armhole shaping (like this one). When it came time to separate the front and back to make armholes, I bound off 5 sts and then alternated knitting 1 row plain and decreasing 1 sts on the edges until a total of 9 sts were decreased on both sides. I basically eliminated and entire lace repeat this way.
• I grafted 3" of the shoulders together instead of 2".
  

Hello again

I have oodles to share with you! Lots of new stuff I'm working on, some stuff I've finished, and even stuff that's not knitting-related. We'll start with the non-knitting stuff because it kinda leads right into the WIPs.

My computer's back! It's actually been back for awhile, but I went on vacation basically as soon as I got it. I went to my friend Tamar's beach house in Amagansett, which for those of you not born to the WASPish upper-crust, is in the Hamptons. Anyway, me and my grungy, dorktastic friends hung out there for the better part of last week, being loud and uncouth in ways that I'm sure pissed off the classy neighbors.

I have pictures and all, but at some point, my camera got messed up. Not seriously so, but enough that we're taking it in to get looked at. Some luck with electronics I have, huh? Kinda brings out the Luddite in me. Once it's fixed and all, I'll post them so that you can live vicariously through me. Anyway, that brings me to the knitting. Since my camera's out of commission, you'll have to suffer through the sub-par picture I took using the photobooth feature on my recently repaired Mac. On to the handiwork!

I. Sockpal news
Check it out! I started my pal's socks. I'm using the yarn I posted about before and I'm making her Baudelaire socks from Knitty. I'm about 1/3 of the way through the gusset so far.

I know that there's been a lot of Murphy's Law happening to me of late (arguably there's a bit going on in the start of this post), but these socks are positively serendipitous. I'm working the large size on 2's...which is exactly the right size for her feet! And the yarn isn't pooling or striping as I feared it would! Though I may have terrible luck with expensive electronic equipment, I take heart in the fact that my knitting mojo remains intact.

II. Beach knitting
I started the Summertime Tunic from the last issue of Interweave Knits while on vacation.

I'm about 1/3 of the way through. I have to say, it's perfect beach knitting what with it being mindless (just endless amounts of stockinette in the round) and cool to work with (I'm using a cotton blend, Knitpicks Shine Sport, so it's not unbearable to work with outside). Now that I'm back from the beach, I'm going to make it my movie theater project.

III. Craziness
I'm working on a sweater. I know that doesn't sound too crazy, but wait for it....the sweater is made from mohair and wool and is a densely cabled super-cozy winter sweater. See the crazy now? See how crazy it is that I'm working on it when I have the air conditioner going full blast and I'm still sitting around in my underwear? Yeah, thanks Muse of Badly Timed Inspiration.

But if you can get past the seasonal craziness of it, it's actually kind of cool. I decided I wasn't that happy with the mohair sweater after all and ripped it. I thought it might be cool if paired with the gray tweed I got on sale a few months ago and started swatching in the round...which turned into a sleeve. I basically made up the cable panel as I went along, but really liked it, and expanded and elaborated it to make the center panel of the body. Now I'm about halfway through the body.

Check out my guns!


I tell you, this baby has a life of it's own. I'm calling it the Eton pullover because the more I work on it the more it seems like the person wearing it should be a scrawny upper-class British boy playing cricket at an elite boy's school. Which, you know, means I'll be pretending I went to Eton whenever I wear it despite my gender/nationality/build/atheleticism.