Flower Sweater Done!

I finally finished the flower sweater! I finished up the knitting bit of it on Tuesday and it took until today, Saturday, to sew on the flowers and leaves and to tuck all the loose threads in. I loathe finishing. Here's a photo of it blocking:


Yeah, I just lay sopping wet clumps of wool out on the floor and call it blocking. I straighten out the patterns and when it's a little less sopping wet I'll straighten my hems a bit more, but that's about it. The only measuring I do is to make sure the arms are the same length. The rest I eye ball. Don't judge me lazy blocking. It's not nice and my sweaters still turn out pretty.

I've started my next project and even written something that vaguely resembles a pattern. Here it is:

CO 252 (size 8 needles)
knit 31 rows
knit body of shawl
knit 10 rows stockinette
k4, k2 tog
k5 rows
k3, k2 tog
k5 rows
k2, k2tog
k 8 rows
Bind off.

Know what it is? It's a tubular shawl/wrap/thing inspired by the Totally Tubular Boob Tube designed by Stefanie Japel and published in Stitch 'n Bitch Nation. Here's another photo, one of the book and the started project:


I'm planning for more curled hem lines and I'm thinking the body of the top will be mostly double knit with asymmetrical lattice cabling going on a diagonal from the right hip to the left shoulder on the front. I haven't entirely decided yet though.

The yarn is merino wool that was donated to me to make something for the holiday craft sale that I do so much of my knitting for. My next project for myself will probably be a dark brown cardigan with wide lattice cabling on the back and some other sort of cabling on the front and arms. I haven't worked out the details yet. I'm waiting for Lion Brand Fisherman's Wool to go on sale at the local big box craft store. I'll need two skeins for my project, so if I can get on sale it'll be under twelve buck total, which would be pretty awesome.

I'm still spinning my big box of wool up. I'm slowly adding to the wool wrapped around one of my kitchen chairs. At last count it was around 100 yds. Once I have two hundred I'll set and dye it. I have two packets of Kool-Aid waiting to meet my yarn and turn it into a blue/purple varegated lump of wooly love. If it turns out, it'll become an entrelac scarf for my mother. Shhh...don't tell her.

Here's a close up of my freshly spun wool:


It's getting a lot more even, which I'm attributing to a longer staple length and splitting the roving into eighths instead of fourths. The extra split means less drafting, which I suck at.

In mostly unrelated news (I'm feeling chatty), I baked my first loaf of sour dough bread today. I made the start myself and I think it needed to mature a bit more. The bread has an awesome sourdough flavor, but didn't rise quite enough.