Wednesday, July 09, 2008

Summer Knitting

Yes, I'm still here! I have precious little time to knit these days, and even less time to update the old blog. But I do have some things to show!

I made myself a sweater. This is the 4th sweater I've made myself this year. And the first one that I'm not frogging. Yet. I still might. It's Rowan All-seasons cotton in a beautiful shade of brown. I love it. I thought I wasn't going to have enough to make a full sweater so I started making a wrap shrug. But I had more yarn. So it grew, and grew, and ended up being a wrap sweater. Which looks like total crap on because it was never designed to be a full sweater. But I do love the lines of the fronts.



Here you see a chair modeling the sweater in wrap position. I'm trying to figure out how to reknit the sweater preserving the lines of the wrap without it looking like total crap on anyone but a ladder backed chair. In the meantime I wear it like this:



which does nothing for the lines of the front but at least it looks like only partial crap on. In the meantime the Divine Miss M needed a sweater for ballet class so I made the wrap for her.



It's not the best thing ever but she loves it. She loves that it's cropped and the sleeves hit above the elbow, which was what she specified. I made matching leg warmers but they're far too baggy. I used a wool-cotton blend from Plumknit and it has less memory than I do, which is really saying something. So I'll reknit those before fall.

In the meantime, I've been obsessively trying to develop the perfect mesh bag. I've got a lot of old cotton ease in a shocking shade of orange and I'm using it up. I use (and love) Chicobags for shopping, but what I need are small mesh bags for carrying wet bathing suits and toys back and forth from the sprinkler park. The first attempt was knitted.



As you can see, I was experimenting with stitch patterns to find the one that I think works best for this application. I wasn't thirilled with any of them so I gave crochet a try.



It ended up a little too narrow and tall for my taste. Also, this version doesn't compress as much as the knitted one so it's not as portable when empty. But I like the drawstring. I prefer the handles on the other one, though.

I've got another knitted one on the needles but it's turning out to be ginormous. So I'm planning to frog it but I'm kind of over the orange mesh bag thing for a bit.

8 Comments:

Blogger Sue said...

Love the ballet wrap, so cute. Pity we didnt see how lovely your one looks on you. I hope when you reknit it it turns out how you would like it. There is a cute pattern called Eliza's bag tote which is a knitted bag. I am sure there is a KAL too.

8:04 PM  
Blogger a friend to knit with said...

i LOVE your sweater. really. so much!
and a ballet sweater. oh.....i wish i would have made my daughter a ballet sweater.
and an orange mesh bag. sounds like the cheeriest market bag, ever!!!

9:22 PM  
Blogger Lisa said...

Both sweaters look great!

9:03 AM  
Blogger tiennieknits said...

Glad you're back! I think the sweaters are beautiful. I hope you don't frog it. Great bags too!

9:24 PM  
Blogger The A.D.D. Knitter said...

It's way too cute to frog, imho:)

1:25 PM  
Blogger Robin said...

I like the wrapped sweaters. I just finished a knitted mesh bag that had some interesting stitches I had never used before. You might like it. If you go to my blog, there's a link to the market bag on Knitting Daily ------------ www.fortheloveoffiber.typepad.com

10:26 AM  
Blogger Meri said...

nice!!! have you been knitting more since then? ;)

TAG - you're it - details on my blog, if you want to play along! :D

6:02 PM  
Blogger juli said...

Love your grey wrap sweater! Looks like a keeper.

5:18 PM  

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