baked goods

While knitting, and crafting in general, had taken a backseat to all the beautiful, long-lasting and only slightly dented IKEA pieces needing to be built, I think my brand new Boston Back Bay apartment is finally set-up enough to welcome a crafty atmosphere. There are multiple projects in various states of unfinished-ness, but instead I decided to start some new and fabulous baked goods.

Yup. I've been whipping up a storm with plenty of cupcake frosting to go around.


I found a great pattern for cupcakes in One Skein (by Leigh Radford, Interweave Press 2006), modeled after the Anthropologie cover a few years back. The icing topping knits SO FAST - under 10 minutes! - that I already have four tops and counting. I still need to start the base "papers", but it reads as though they shouldn't take too much longer. It's already been a great way to get rid of extra yarn, as all I've bought so far is the novelty fluffy stuff to make the top softer and less knitted-looking.

I figure these cute little things will be a nice homemade touch to all my streamlined antiques and IKEA pieces. I just hope no one tries to eat them..

Scarf!

It's kind of hard to tell in this photo, but this scarf is in two different colors. The first half was done in Manos del Uruguay's French Blue, yarn that I'd bought in Oakland on the way to the San Francisco airport in anticipation of a long delay. I cast on 26 stitches in k1, p1 on 5.5mm needles (in honor of my 26th year of life, which was starting 3 days later), and ended up wanting a longer scarf than one hank created, so I had my Oakland buddy Darin go back to the yarn store for more from the same dye lot. Sadly, they were out, so over the phone, he described various other colors. We ended up settling for Juniper, which has a teal-green cast to it.



There is a straight-up swap of the two colors about halfway through the scarf (the Juniper hank ended up knitting about 6 inches longer than the French Blue), and with a wrap around the neck, you've got two shades of bright blue in front! And it's warm......

Cardigan!

Sock #2 has been abandoned temporarily (though it's still traveling around with me in my bag) as I enter full on SWEATER MODE!




(note also handmade hat from the pre-Christmas mega-hat-making extravaganza)

Starting a Sweater...

So when I was in Colorado, I bought some decadent yarn (Mirasol Sulka, 60% Merino Wool, 20% Alpaca & 20% Silk) to make my first cardigan. I made a tension swatch that was one stitch too many per 4" width. I made another swatch that was far too few. Another that was far too many. I'm sticking with the first set of 6mm needles as suggested by the pattern, and if the sweater is too small, Emily gets to say I told you so.



This is what it is supposed to look like, but mine has a base color of a dark almost-black blue, with deep red and silvery-gray for the stripes.

Hoo-rah!