sweater weather

Yay! It's finally cold enough to comfortably wear a woolly sweater and flannel shirt! To celebrate sweater weather, I wrapped up the finishing touches on my fringe and friends improvised top-down kal sweater. So pleased and truthfully, surprised at how well this turned out, considering that it has been quite awhile since I made anything with sleeves. Here's a visual rundown of the process:

dreaming and planning

(mis)calculating

suspenseful knitting

randomly adding another design element

the part that gave me a migraine

sleeve island

plotting woolly tattoos (hmmm flowers, unicorns, donuts...finally settled for trees)

happy sweater dance!

last days of summer

We have been soaking up every last bit of summer these past few weeks. Next Monday is the little guy's first day of middle school, so in between....

visits to the beach

bike rides on the island trail

and local camping trips

....there has been some behind the scenes preparations for what looks to be a fun school year. I love back to school season and all of the excitement that it brings. New beginnings & possibilities. Also, to be honest, a little anxiety. And, thank goodness, always a little mindless knitting  to help with that last bit.

Notice the cute project bag? It's the Rosemary Bag from Della Q and since receiving it to try out, it's accompanied me on all of our end of summer adventures. I love the smooth lightweight fabric, the cute dumpling shape and the just right length of the handles. It even has a handy outer pocket and is the perfect size for my current favorite on-the-go project, socks. I also started a Cancun lacy box top with some sparkly rayon yarn in the stash which matches the pretty colors of the bag. Love when that happens :) The top was an impulsive cast-on but I am really enjoying the simple lace stitches. It will probably be put on hold until next summer though, because with back to school season comes the alluring call of wool. Right now there is an improvised top-down sweater knitalong happening over at Fringe Association which you can follow on Instagram using the hashtag #fringeandfriendskal2016. Lots and lots of lovely ideas and projects. Here's how mine is shaping up so far:

I hope that you are all finding time to enjoy these last few weeks of summer. Hugs go out to those of you who are saying goodbye to your first-time-away-from-home college kids. I can't even imagine! I know that I will be wiping away some tears on Monday and it's just middle school!

amanda cardigan

I can't believe that I am wearing my Amanda cardigan not in the sweltering heat of July but on an overcast snowy winter's day. It's my first finished knit of 2015 and I absolutely love it.

The cardigan was a joy to knit, mainly because I was in such excellent company. It was also a pretty easy and straight forward project. The only difficult part was towards the end with the vertical seamed-in button bands. It was my first time working up this type of button band and I was a little clueless at first but am very happy with the finished results. Probably the best looking button band that I have ever made. Just don't look too closely at where I sewed on the buttons....must look into how to properly do this one day!

You can find my original post with all of the project details here. Also, check out the lovely finished and in-progress knits from this KAL using #fringeandfriendsknitalong on Instagram. I am finding knitalongs to be quite contagiously fun and have already started on my next one (Ysolda's follow your arrow 2)! What was your most recent KAL and was it a good experience?

you know it's time to...

...try on your Amanda when people start complimenting you on that baby sweater you are knitting.

Whew, it fits!

knitting along

shhhhh.....I know that I already have a million things on the needles, but the Amanda knitalong over at Fringe Association is too tempting to resist. The energy and enthusiasm that Karen has put into this is infectious and I am looking forward to learning so many things from the most excellent panel of experts that are also knitting along. Here are the deets on my Amanda so far:

yarn: Knitpicks Wool of the Andes in the dove heather colorway. A terrific workhorse yarn at a budget friendly price point.

swatch: US size 6 & 5. I was initially dreading swatching for this project but this detailed post by Kate Gagnon Osborn really helped to guide me through the process of knitting & measuring a cable swatch. 

cast-on: the easy, fast & reliable long-tail.

size/ease: size 35 medium since I want a little positive ease. 

concerns/trepidations: keeping the knitting energy flowing smoothly...and getting this knitted before the season is over, since the last heavily cabled sweater I made (Aidez) took nearly a year to finish!

body construction: using the same approach as for my Aidez: knitting the body in one piece & the sleeves flat two-at-a-time. Also plan on incorporating faux seams for the body.

button bands: really excited to try out the button band as written. It looks lovely in the project photo so fingers crossed!

other mods: none so far, but who knows? That's half the fun! Here's a close-up of how I am keeping things from going haywire:

color coordinated highlighter tape + talking stitch markers = scary organizational skillz or just plain scary?