New Knit

I've made some good progress on my next project and as I was getting ready to write and share with you what it will be, I got the urge to keep this one under wraps. Not because it's a gift or because I want to tease you guys with suspense. More because I think a big reveal at the end of several weeks will just be more fun. There's a lot of color in this knit and I think I'll just give you a glimpse for now. I'm loving it so far. It's being done on my Size 11(8mm) Options needles in Noro Iro (no spoilers if if I mentioned this to you before).

This yarn has such a nice even flow of stripes and because it's all natural fibers, I use the spit felting method to add new skeins and just keep knitting, knitting, knitting. When this project is finished, my knit wardrobe will be up one garment and my stash will be down 660 yards - assuming I use it all up. Whatever doesn't make it into this project will become a scrap bag or a modified Calorimetry.



Progress Report: My Central Park Hoodie is now hooded! I am at the point in the hood where I would normally bind off the row and then seam that row later to join the top of the hood. Thanks to suggestions over at the Knit A Long I'm going to leave the stitches live and use Kitchener stitch to join the two sides instead. I left live stitches on the shoulder seams for a 3-needle bind off after doing short row shaping for the shoulder edges, and I really prefer this to the traditional bind off seam. You can read some more about that here, or email me if you have questions on doing this for your own project. The remaining items to get this hoodie on my back - sleeves to set in (shudder), and a ribbed button band to pick up and knit. I have decided against making actual button holes, so this should be fairly standard ribbing. Like a good knitter, I have already marked off my rows in sections of 20 stitches to make it easier to know how many stitches I will need to pick up in between each marker. The trick will be re-calculating that stitch number now that blocking has...shall we say "extended" my row gauge quite a bit. Note for next time - wash the swatch.

Love it when you come by, let's do this again real soon, ok?