Archive for November, 2006

Mystery Quilt Begins

Sunday, November 26th, 2006

As I mentioned to some of you at Thanksgiving, Quiltmaker magazine has a new Mystery Quilt series starting in the current (January/February) issue and going through the next five issues. I will admit that I’ve been becoming less and less inspired by the designs in Quiltmaker — I’m not sure if this is because their designs are getting objectively less interesting, or whether it’s because my tastes are growing in a different direction — but I’m intrigued by this idea.

(I’ll also admit that about 80% of my intrigue is because of the beautiful palette of fabrics they’ve picked for their rendition of the quilt, another 10% is the coolness of the first block, and the remaining 10% is because I love a surprise.)

It’s very difficult to select fabrics for a quilt whose design is a secret when you start, but the whole quilt is done in tone-on-tone fabrics of varying values, which makes it a little easier. I bought a few fabrics over the holiday weekend, and supplemented with fat quarters and various scraps from my stash:

Fabrics laid out for the Mystery Quilt

Only five of these fabrics are newly-purchased. My early stash-building strategy was (unbeknownst to me) heavily oriented toward tone-on-tones, so there are a lot of fabrics in here that I bought long ago. Also, you may not be able to tell from the photo, but there are leftovers from at least four different projects in there, including two baby quilts. (!) I still need to purchase some longer yardages of very light and very dark fabric, but this is a start. Anyone care to join me in the project?

Norwegian Sweater Sleeves

Sunday, November 12th, 2006

As I previewed several months ago, I’m finally working on my Dale of Norway sweater. The sleeves are done and blocking! I did them first so I could perfect my gauge before diving into the body. I think my gauge is a wee bit off, so I’ll have to do some calculating and pondering to figure out what (if any) needle and sweater size changes to make for the body. The good thing about drop sleeves is that there is no shaped sleeve cap so I don’t need a match between body and sleeve proportions. I made the sleeves from the kids’ size 10 directions and was planning on the size 12 kids’ body (both with appropriate lengthening), so even if the sleeves are a bit wider than I’d planned, they’ll just be closer to the size 12 sleeve measurements.

You might be wondering about me making a kids’ size sweater – these patterns are quite oversized (see the picture of the pattern in my old post), and I’ve chosen the size to more-or-less match the size of the Norwegian sweater that I already own (thanks, Dad, for deciding that you think wool is itchy!). Having a finished sweater with measurements I like has been immensely helpful in figuring out how to do this project).

SedalenSleeves

If I’ve posted the picture correctly, you should be able to click on it to get a larger version.

Poncho!

Friday, November 3rd, 2006

OK, Crackpots, here it is: the quickest, easiest project I have finished in a long time. As I may have told most of you, I wanted a “wrap” that would be warm, but not as warm as a winter coat, dressy enough to wear to a local symphony concert, and neutral enough in color to wear with almost anything. So this is it.
poncho

It was knit on size 15 needles, and the gauge was 2 sts/in.! Rebecca, since you seem to be interested in the technical specs, I used Lamb’s Pride Bulky yarn, an 85% wool/15% mohair blend, in “oatmeal,” along with “Jewel” yarn from Universal Yarn, Inc. It’s a blend of 57% acrylic, 28% mohair, 9% cotton, and 6% polyester.

You all may notice that, even though I have chopped off my head in the photo in the interests of internet privacy, you need only look at the shoulders to determine which Crackpot is modeling the poncho.