Mixed WIPs

I haven't blogged for a while, but I also haven't finished anything for a while!

But I do have a truckload of WIPs. First my Noro Bohus vest. It's coming along, I'll be at the underarm quite soon. Meanwhile, the patterns and color combinations are proliferating in unexpected ways



I've also had some good progress with my Bog Jacket. I'm past the critical point - the point where you remove the thumb trick stitches and graft the two ends together. Quite nasty, but it came out... not invisible, but not that frankensteinian either



Some other TV knitting (and lots of episodes of The Wire) is my Cobalt Jacket. A top-down raglan of my own design. The earlier version was knitted on bigger needles, but the most recent incarnation is on 4 mm, relatively small for the thick mystery yarn I'm using



Last, but not least, I've knitted most of my Aeolian for Vibeke, shhh! My first and probably last piece of beaded knitting. But it does look good, and I'll be done soon (just unraveling several rows tonight, but that's a temporary step back. Lifelines? No)

Rescued Baroness

I needed a gray hat. And how often can you really truthfully say that you need to knit something?? I wanted it simple, so I picked the Baroness Beret pattern by Susan Power at Knit Therapy. A pretty good pattern, with the exception of the use of k2tog tbl which looked bad, so I used ssk instead. It uses a tubular cast-on, which I hadn't tried before, but it was not terribly difficult with these directions. The hat turned out perfect, but when I washed it, it sort of collapsed into a streched huge bag. Noooo!!!
After storing for a few days to consider my options, I rescued it with a very thin elastic thread through the rib:This solved the problem perfectly, so now the hat looks like this, just what I imagined (although maybe a hot iron wouldn't harm it):

Tulip time baby sweater

Tulip time is a baby sweater by Patricia Tounge Edraos. I knitted it in Cascade 220 on 4.5 mm needles.
I think it came out OK in the end but... there was a reason they warned me against this pattern at the knitting store. I was looking at the pattern, liking the finished model, but being told the pattern was really badly written. Meanwhile, another lady was eyeballing it, clearly wanting it too - there was only one copy. So despite warnings, I had no other choice than quickly snatching it in front of her!

I have to say the pattern is quite confusing, and has a pattern chart where I had to decide what must have been the intention. I have no problem reinventing a fully functional pattern as I go, but in this case there was no choice, so I would not recommend this to anyone who really needs a pattern to follow.
The nice part about the design is the way the sleeves are made. The entire sweater is knitted in one piece, starting at the back. The sleeves are added by casting on additional stitches. I finished them by three-needle bind off, so there is no bulk under the arms. The only finishing is the sleeve and side seams, the designer gets points for that!