Looking Ahead, Part 2 - Works in (sort of) Progress

Is it strange to be looking ahead when I have two sweaters in the super-active queue already?

The hot pink sweater came off the needles and went straight to the blocking boards Tuesday night which meant that a navy sweater got cast-on Wednesday evening.

I have vowed to get some WIPs taken care of in the new year. I start way too many sweater and then just abandon them. There's really no rhyme or reason to how this happens: both fingering and aran sweaters, both cardigans and pullovers, both plain and advanced, there's no rhyme or reason as to why one sweater gets started and finished almost without break and others spend years in the WIP pile.

My Fisher Queen WIP is in the lovely madelinetosh erin (which I hoard as a rule) in thoreau

and it is going to look excellent with my J. Crew cream colored wool mini skirt

and it's early to the waist of the body AND on super big needles! I have no excuse not to power through it.

Or how about the ubiquitous (in my social knitting circle) Grace? It's in one of my favorite colors, madelinetosh's brothers grimm (whose discontinuation god himself can't explain), will perfectly match one of my fave summer dresses from Anthropologie

and be amazing with nearly everything else I own (ok so I own several dresses from Anthro that will go well with a cardigan)

AND I solved my problem with the cardigan which is that I didn't like the plain shoulders next to the lace rest of it so mine has lace all over the yoke. It is also finished to around my waist.

There is no reason, I repeat no reason, why I don't have a finished Cocktail(Dress). I am making it in the phenomenally amazing Duck Duck Wool Singleton in metalware and this photograph DOES NOT DO THE YARN JUSTICE

because the yarn legit glows. To prevent attention from being drawn away from this awesomeness, I've used madelinetosh merino light in onyx and dirty panther, aka black and as dark as grey can be without being black, as the contrast colors. It's so friggin' cool. To say nothing of the fact that this is a wheelhouse dress like no other - I own at least 1 million pairs of shoes that would go with this (1 million might be a slight exaggeration, but I do own quite a number of shoes I can wear with this dress). Including, should they go on super duper extra holycrap sale, these eminently covetable (and seriously unaffordable) Gucci booties which, I assure you, look ridonkulous on.


On another tangent, do you ever find that while you love a designer, you haven't actually managed to knit any of her (or his) patterns? This is my monumental problem with Julia Trice (aka mindofwinter). I have stashed for her patterns, swatched for her patterns, and the closest I've come to knitting any of her patterns is the 3/4 of the yoke of Yukiya Pullover that sits in a pile with the other accusatory WIPs. And again, I couldn't be more fond of my yarn choices: I'm using various Buggas in grey, black, and red - so again, just my kinda thing. I think I'll don a cheapo black tank dress from H&M or Forever 21

(this is among the best 7-13 bucks you can spend - I own gobs of these cheap, disposable dresses which are totally camouflaged by a blazer and completely wonderful on the kinds of vacations I take - size up, this stuff is made for tweens - in fact, I took a break from writing this to purchase 5 more), and wear booties or knee-high boots.

I wasn't going to admit to all the WIPs I want to get through in 2015, but I think it will keep me honest, so here goes. I've had Cromarty on the needles since 2012 and despite the fact that I'm making it in a decidedly purple yarn,

no longer have the black pants it would go with (they were from Uniqlo and died a sad, though not wholly unexpected, death-by-hole), and really don't know when I will ever wear it, I feel compelled to finish it. This, realistically, might not get done in 2015.

The same cannot be said for Birchbark which I would happily have worn today with my flippy bcbgeneration skirt

and my riding boots

and which is going to make me so happy in this wonderful Polo & Co. neutral,

so why is it not already mine?!? I would also wear it with the jeans I need to buy from Old Navy

now that I know the secret to Old Navy jeans is to bring 10 pair of the same size into the dressing room and buy the one that actually fits because their quality control is shite.

And finally, 2015 will be a WIP success if Northdale becomes reality. I have a couple of inches knit and it's so much fun, but also tedious, time consuming, and not something I can do mindlessly. I also don't know what I'll wear it with, though guessing a navy skirt isn't the most ridiculous guess one could have.

I'd also like to say that there won't be a Part 3 of this series, but there will be, because we haven't tackled things I want for 2015 that I have managed not to cast on and abandon - and believe me, I have a list for that too.

Follow Friday | September 12

My entree to the world of hand-dyed, dare I call it luxury, yarn was madelinetosh. I don't remember how it happened, I just know that it happened all at once and then I looked around me and there were sweater quantities piling up faster than I could justify paying for them. I've knit a lot of madelinetosh sweaters. I don't know if it even occurred to be back then to search out other dyers, but I know I didn't. Fast forward 50 sweaters or so and I got antsy. It wasn't that I no longer loved tosh, I mean take a look at my stash and you'll see it's still heavily represented, it's just that I had been so pleased with my projects in tosh yarn, I hadn't been motivated to see what else was out there.

Over the past year or so, however, I have been actively seeking out other dyers. People are doing amazing things with yarn and, as you look closely, you can notice that some dyers have a way with certain colors. I like to think of it like a trip through Paris. There are many MANY excellent shops to buy bread and pastries, but there are specific shops that do specific things the best. And you're a winner because you're walking around Paris sampling the best things from the best places. Ok, that was counter productive: now I want both a kouign amann and to be in Paris.

So I've been having a delicious time learning about new dyers and what they excel in. But then it happens, you realize that there are people you really ought to have tried by now and somehow haven't. Which is annoying. Because you already have 7000 projects you're supposedly actively working on, a guest room that you hesitate to call a guest room since it is really a bed you've staked bags of yarn on, and a retirement plan that really ought to be funded with something non-yarn-based. But you'll find something to do with that yarn, right? I've got my eye on two must-tries and two opportunities to try them and two reasons why. This has the added benefit of giving me fodder for two Follow Fridays! I'm sneaky like that.

First up is Shalimar Yarns which is having/has had an update today (I really intended for this post to be done by now). I solved the problem of never having tried the yarn by, for no good reason and with no project in mind, buying a heap of the Equus worsted in Toast Points. Sigh. I didn't want to retire anyway. The yarn has always looked amazing; I am amazed I limited myself to one sweater quantity. I don't consider myself a nature person, though I seem to become a little more of one each year (I SWAM IN A VOLCANO THIS SUMMER!), but when I see the posts on the Shalimar blog of the color that have been inspired by the nature around the dyers, I do get a little purple mountains misty if I may mix metaphors in a cringe-worthy fashion.


© mindofwinter

But if I want to point fingers at why I just bought yarn I don't need, I don't need to look far. Stand up and take a bow, Julia! Julia Trice, aka mindofwinter on ravelry, aka the best example of surfer-chic mom I've ever seen (I mean look at her perfectly slicked hair - how does that even work?), designed this gorgeous sweater, the Yukiya Pullover with Shalimar yarns. Specifically with the colorway Toast Points as the main color in the design. If you can stop looking at her effortless hair for a moment and focus on the sweater (which I have languishing on the needles in grey, black, and red, because I am nothing if not predictable), you will see what an incredible advertisement it is for the yarn. As soon as I saw the sweater pop up on the ravelry feed, I knew that color was destined to be mine. I also knew I needed the sweater. And that's the problem with Julia - she's doubly dangerous. She chooses amazing yarns for her amazing sweaters and you discover you're going to HAVE TO HAVE both (I have yarn stashed away for her Reverie and I have no idea when I'll get to that).

So there you have it: two Follows for the price of one Friday. Stay tuned next week when I admit failure and possibly have exciting news (the two things are not the same).