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)

Finally February, Baby!

Everybody is making the Zimmermann February Baby sweater, and I always want to be like everybody else! Bought the wondrously cheap Knitter's Almanac and some cotton (3 skeins Mirasol Samp'a, 50 g and 110 m/120 yds per skein). The pattern of course calls for wool, but had seen the February knitted in cotton and wanted to give it a try. Why, I actually don't recall, as I really don't like knitting cotton....
Well, here's the beginning, the neck opening is at the bottom in this picture.So far so good, but here is a close-up of the armhole:What's the problem in this picture? The knitter is trying to out-smart EZ. Don't try this at home. The pattern tells you to work the sleeves first, and then continue with the body. I did it the other way round, saving the stiches for the sleeves until the end, so the knitting had to strech a lot when I continued because of the extra 7 cast-on stitches on each side of the saved sleeve stitches. This would not happen if I had followed the pattern... the good thing is that it did not show in the end, though. I worked the sleeves until all 3 skeins were used up, that looked like this:
Hmm... are short-sleeved cardigans in fashion?? Well, the good thing was that the cardigan was bigger than the baby, but could actually be used anyway because of the short sleeves. Meanwhile, I went back for another skein, and the sleeves have now been lengthened:
It actually wasn't too annoying to do, as I only had to unravel the lower garter-stitch edges. The sleeves now measure 20 cm from underarm to edge. Hope it fits now! The overall proportions still look a bit strange to me, but I think it actually really does fit, as the shoulder area just under the garter-stitch yoke stretches, so the distance from top to armhole is not longer than the distance from armhole to bottom when worn