After a long summer break I'm back on the needles and I've already finished some of my projects.
My BFF socks in periwinkle Shibui are finally done. Took me only 5 months.
And here is what I've learned from that: If you start something, keep on and finish it in a timely fashion. Especially when fit is an issue. Because I stopped so often to work on other projects, the project dragged on and in the mean time, my gauge changed. Which is also due to getting comfortable with all those cables.
And this change in gauge resulted in very funny pooling patterns. The first sock started with beautiful helix striping and proceeded to pool when it came to the leg part and the necessary increases of the stitch count. The second sock had weird pooling on the foot, but gorgeous striping on the leg. Well.
And I also needed almost two whole skeins (97g). So remember: Cables are yarn hungry!
For my second finished project, I have also practised self-disciplin and used yarn from my stash instead of always buying new and made a pair of Jaywalkers out of a skein of Opals "Lasst Blumen sprechen". Since this too is a pooling/striping yarn and a very noisy one as that, it wasn't easy to find a suitable pattern. Most patterns shine due to their stitches, but add colours in the yarn and it quickly renders all those finely detailed stitches invisible. The only patterns that work with striping yarn besides stockinette and ribs are chevrons. And lo and behold the Jaywalker does it. And not only that, it needs heavy colouring. Uni coloured yarn would be just too boring here. Fancy that.
Since colourful yarn with long colour repeats often results in a very visible and annoying horizontal line break above the arch right over the heel, I tried an afterthought heel. And I love it. The fit is excellent. And the colour proceeds beautifully from the leg over to the foot part. Only to start pooling immediately because of the gauge change: The Jaywalker doesn't have a lot of give and the pattern actually draws the fabric in. So instead of my usual 60 sts with 3mm needles, I had to increase to 68 after the cuff to compensate. Which wasted about 4'' of already committed effort, but since this is a very easy and fast knit it wasn't such a drama. But it shows again, that while an educated guess can give you a good starting point and oftentimes shows great results, you can't rely on it.
I've also taken up my Owl sweater in Malabrigo Rios in Ravelry Red again. But somehow it didn't work out. Some part of me was strangely reluctant. I worked most of one sleeve, which as my first ever sleeve with self-calculated decreases was actually quite well-fitting. But the rest of the sweater was rather, well, awful. The yoke style isn't so great for me, and I made far too many owls. Three or four less would have been way better. As it was, most of the sweater was far too roomy for me and I knew I would never wear it, so I made the sensible decision to frog. Maybe I'll try the owls again some time, they were rather cute, but not with this yarn, it did nothing for this pattern and the long body part in plain stockinette was not enough action for the yarn. It is capable of so much more.
