One more time for Thanksgiving

I thought you might want to see my favorite looking sweater. It's done in Noro Silk Garden (no more really needs to be said...but of course I will).

I designed the sweater after a designer at Simply Knit did a similar woman's sweater in the same mitered squares fashion. The sweater is light and warm and everyone who sees it loves it. Thought I should share it with you too.

Hi, Me Again

Just got back from my second Thanksgiving dinner and I was killing time on-line. I thought to myself..."Joe, now that you've got the picture thing going, you might as well show the lovely audience the color of the Peruvian Kid Alpaca that you're making a bed spread out of.

Well, here it is:



Not the most beautiful color in the world, and remember, this is fine baby-weight yarn that I'm knitting on US1 needles...ugh!

Thanksgiving Week

Given that this was a short work week, and there weren't a lot of client "boss-like" people around, my work days were short and my knitting evenings were long...yay!

I had my niece's purple, zippered, cabled, hooded pullover with me and got about 10" done on the back section. I'm realizing I will need at least one more hank of the Cascade Leisure to be able to finish this thing. I'll have to stop at my local yarn store to get two just in case.

You'll note that I was finally able to figure out how to post a decent picture. One of these days I'll be able to let users click on a "thumbnail" photo and see a larger version, but for now, the smaller pics will have to do. Here's a picture of a sweater of my own design. It uses three different pattern stitches separated by a few ridges of garter stitch. It also uses a shallow v-neck design which is much more flattering on me than the standard v-necks.

What am I Thinking?

What am I thinking?

I can't believe I started another project, but I couldn't wait to use some exquisite Kid Alpaca I ordered based on a Knitlisters recommendation.

Robin and Russ Yarns

They have fingering weight, Kid Alpaca in 175 yard skeins for US$1.00 per skein. At that price I bought enough to make a bedspread, and still only paid $60...what a deal!!!

The color is natural brown (can you picture an alpaca?) which isn't my first choice. I may try overdyeing the finished bedspread (if every finished...see below). The brown looks like it would take a deep red dye very well (or so I've been told by my dyer friends).

I cast on 412 stitches and I'm knitting a simple diagonal lace pattern on US1 needles. I've done two inches so far, so I have a lot of work between now and its completion, but I'm looking forward to each and every stitch.

First Attempt at Posting Pictures

First Attempt at Posting Pictures

Here we go with my first attempts at trying to publish pictures to my blog. I just finished sewing up the sister-out-of-law sweater. It came out very well, but I'm concerned that the fabric may be too stiff and thick. I'm glad she lives in Massachusetts, otherwise she might never get to wear it.

Second Lame Post

Second Lame Post

I should have known that my blog would be really lame. I have so little time that I want to give up to be able to keep this thing up to date...but I must. It also took me 11 days do decide whether I wanted to pay to have pictures...hopefully I'll figure out how to add pictures now that I've paid the premium.

I ended up finishing the knitting part of my sister-out-of-law's sweater from Scotland. The design was fabulous, the yarn, scratchy. It is a beautiful color. Once I figure out how to use my new upgraded status, I'll post a picture.

I started on my partner's niece's sweater for one of her Christmas gifts. The first (and only) sweater I made here years ago was a beautiful child's cardigan that I did in leftover yarns from a Kaffe Fassett kit that I made. I used mostly purples (her favorite color still), and did multi-color stripes, interspersed with black stripes. It truly was beautiful in those Rowan yarns. I wish I had a picture...I wish I knew how to post a picture.

Anyway, when I gave her the first sweater (she was around 4 years old), I gave it as a Christmas gift. My partner and I kept telling her how much she was going to like this gift because we were so excited about it. But as any of the readers who are parents will already know, she could have cared less about a "stupid sweater". She actually cried from the disappointment. She didn't wear it for over a year after I gave it to her. When she did finally start wearing it, she liked it a lot. So much so, that she has asked me to make her a sweater for this Christmas (she's 11 now).

The sweater is a purple cabled pullover with a zipper and a hood. I got the pattern from White Birches (as part of a monthly installment of patterns to add to a binder collection). The yarn I'm using is Cascade Leisure, a Alpaca/Cotton blend boucle. The manufacturer calls for US10.5 needles, but that has got to be a mistake. I'm using US8's and I could easily go down one more size. The boucle doesn't show the cabling very well, but it is incredibly soft. I think she'll like it.

My burnt umber, patterned pullover (my own design) got rave reviews at dinner with my sisters and mother last week. My sister Kathy asked me to make her one (just not in burnt umber). That will be my next project, but I will also probably start on the bedspread using the kid alpaca I just purchased. So Kathy won't get her sweater for Christmas, but I told her not to expect that anyway.

Welcome to the first entry in my personal knitting blog!

Welcome to the first entry in my personal knitting blog!

First, a little about me. I’m a 43 year old gay man, and I’ve been in a relationship with my partner for 19 years (as of Friday of this week).

I’ve been knitting for about 18 years, and it is my primary passion in life. I learned to knit by reading a basic pattern book from the early 1900’s from Paton’s. As such, I taught myself to make men’s underwear as one of my first projects. They were made in fine baby-weight merino wool, and looked a lot like the boxer-briefs that you can buy today. Going back to my roots, I just purchased some off-white baby-weight merino to make myself underwear again.

I’ve knit sweaters, socks, blankets, felted purses and slippers, toys, afghans, hats and gloves. I make a lot of gifts, and I also knit a lot for my partner and myself. I always have multiple projects being worked on. Right now, I’m actively working on a sweater kit from Scotland for my partner’s sister (I call her my sister-out-of-law). She bought the kit expecting to knit it herself, but never got to it. I finally convinced her to bring it to me so she could at least have the sweater as a remembrance of her trip to Scotland (instead of a bag of wool).

I’ve also got a Koigu kit for an Oriental Jacket that’s ¼ finished, an afghan experiment to replicate something my partner’s grandmother made for him, and a few other projects that I wouldn’t exactly say were being actively worked on.

I do some designing for a local yarn store near my home, so you can see additional pictures of me modeling some of my work if you go to http://www.simplyknit.com/.

I’ll eventually be putting pictures of my handiwork out here as I work on it so you can get a sense about how much I actually knit.