Summer Sweater KAL Antrorse

I'm done! I'm done! I'm done!!!

I've finished my second sweater for the Very Shannon Summer Sweater Knit Along!  This one is Antrorse, designed by Shannon Cook of Very Shannon.  I won the pattern in a knit along in her Ravelry group last Christmas and thought it the perfect choice for this year's Sweater KAL.

I had initially started knitting my Cascade Eco+ pullover at the beginning of the KAL, but summer being summer, it quickly got way too hot to have mounds of warm wool piled on my lap, so I did put it aside for a few weeks while I worked on my Sunshower cardi I showed you in my last blog post.

Like Sunshower I had some adventures in knitting my Antrorse.  Not nearly as bad as Sunshower - I didn't have to reknit anything and it was certainly nothing design related, but I did get off to a spectacularly rocky start with my gauge swatch.

I spent and agonizing and hellish time trying to get my gauge to work out.  In a momentary lapse of all reasoning I actually was going the wrong direction needle size wise to try and get gauge.  I kept going smaller and smaller and gauge was getting so far off I couldn't fathom what was going wrong, I started suspecting a problem with the pattern.  Let me tell you, I felt pretty darn silly when moments after I posted something to that effect on Ravelry (wondering all the while nobody else seemed to note any problems with the pattern) it hit me that I should be using larger needles instead of smaller. More stitches to get gauge = needle too small not needle to big, obviously.  Sigh...  Oh gauge how you continually vex me so.

As soon as I got that sorted out, gauge was easy to achieve and knitting in earnest began.  No further problems were encountered other than the heat and knitting Antrorse was an easy, stress free task.  I knit it exactly as written and it turned out exactly how I hoped!

I'm really loving my new sweater!  I'm especially loving it this morning!  It was 3C when I crawled out of bed this morning.  Brrrr.  But Antrorse to the rescue.  I'm sitting here cozy and snuggly warm!  The Cascade Eco+ in the Lake Chelan colour way - possibly my absolute favourite colour way of all time - is warm but without the heavy weight you'd expect from it.  It's an absolute dream to knit with and pretty darn economical too!  Each skein has a whopping 478 yards of bulky goodness on it, which means a whole lot less darning in of ends too!  (always a nice bonus!)  I'm definitely going to be looking to add some more Eco+ to my stash the next time I have some extra yarn funds!!

So, for me, another Summer Sweater Knit Along comes to a close and I have to say it was yet again a great experience!  The knitters in the Very Shannon Ravelry group are all very chatty, encouraging and motivating, which makes the KALs held there so much fun!  I'll definitely be signing up again next year!!

Now it's time to switch gears for a wee bit before jumping into the next KAL (Andi Satterlund's Penelope KAL over at Untangling Knots Group).  I'm going to be getting a start on some hush, hush holiday sewing and knitting for the next few weeks!

Summer Sweater KAL Sunshower

I'm happy to report that I've got one finished object done for the Very Shannon Summer Sweater Knit Along.  The KAL was to officially end yesterday, but it looks like most everyone voted for a two week extension, which is all kinds of awesome, because it means there's a good chance I'll get to finish my second sweater before the actual deadline!  Whoot! Whoot!

The purpose of the summer sweater knit along is to keep knitting through the hot months of the summer so that you have a shiny new something ready to wear come the cooler temperatures of fall.  It turns out that finished project number one for me goes with absolutely nothing in my fall wardrobe, but no less than four dresses in my summer wardrobe.  Ooops!  But that's ok.  My fall wardrobe needs some boosting up anyways.  I'm sure I'll come up with something that will work with my new bright red Sunshower cardi!

(as an aside... I'm looking for inspiration in the fall sewing department!  I'd love to hear any suggestions you might have for me!  I've had a couple suggestions for Tilly and the Buttons Coco dress.  I'm thinking of Closet Case Files Ginger Jeans.  What else do you have for me?)

Anyways, back to our regularly scheduled posting about my new cardi.

Like all of Andi Satterlund's designs I've knit so far (Salt, Miette, Hetty, Myrna, Marion, Vianne and now Sunshower) it is an easy to follow pattern.  I love the way her patterns are written up, and I love the vintage vibe of her cardigans.  They're perfect for popping on over a dress too.  Did I mention this latest one goes with four dresses in my closet?!?  LOVE, LOVE, LOVE that!  My only modification to this pattern was my usual one that I do on Andi's cardigans which is to eliminate some of the waist shaping so it doesn't have quite so much negative ease.

I used Ella Rae Classics in Monarch red from Webs for my Sunshower.  It is a bit scratchier than I remember Ella Rae Classic being - but then I've not used this particular yarn in about six or seven years and that was for a pair of mittens so maybe I've just forgotten.  Or maybe it's not actually that scratchy in reality and the hives that suddenly appeared on my arm this morning (what the heck?!?!) are just making me a bit more sensitive.  Who knows.  I normally wear Briggs & Little without batting an eyelash, so c'est la vie.  Scratchy or not, I think this cardigan will be getting lots of wear in the future!

Knitting of this one was a bit of a challenge for me.  Not because of the pattern mind you, but because sometimes I'm just a bit daft about things.  I posted a week and a half ago about my fudging the pattern and then having to go back and re-knit it.  Well, things like that just seemed to keep happening.  Maybe I've been distracted or maybe I've just taken leave of my senses as of late.  I am not sure, but whatever the case I was glad to finally make it to the sleeve cuffs without further incident!  I had initially planned to do the sleeve caps individually then continue the rest of the sleeve two at a time, as I normally do, but my circular needle was both too inflexible and too short for it to be a convenient method.  I was driving myself batty dropping stitches and trying to keep sorted where the centres were.  I gave up a few rounds in, put the sleeves back on separate needles and zipped through the first sleeve up to the cuff in an evening.  The next evening I tackled the second sleeve, then put them back on the too short, too stiff circ for the cuffs.  I hate trying to keep track of ribbing and I figured it was easier to suffer through the TAAT with a bad needle then count rounds.  It worked and I finished it up pretty easily a few days ago!

Next up is going to be finishing up my Antrorse!  I'm so close - six more rounds of the bottom band, then onto the sleeves.  I have a beautifully long and flexible circular needle so it should be no problem to two at a time them!

I had told myself that after Antrorse is finished I would focus on holiday gift knitting exclusively, but Andi's gone and thrown a big ol' wrench in that plan.  (Yep.  I'm blaming her.  Not my lack of will power in the face of a new pattern.  Nope. Not that at all...)  She's gone and published another cardigan pattern this week and I'm completely smitten with it.  Not only that.  She's planned a Knit Along for it.  I resisted for about 30 seconds and then decided I'll spend the rest of this month focusing on gift knitting so that when the KAL starts the beginning of October I can knit, somewhat guilt free, on Penelope.  Take a look at those gorgeous scallops and tell me that you would have been able to resist.  I didn't think so! If resistance is as futile for you as it is for me, you should join the KAL on Ravelry.  It'll be fun!  (and Andi's even got a discount for the pattern going on right now!)  I'm dreaming of colour combinations right now and thinking that I have a nice caramel coloured DK for the main colour and if it works a really nice wine colour for the scallops and the button band already sitting in my stash... Fate?  I think so!

Summer Sweater KAL Works in Progress

Let me just say, first of all, that I am in denial that it is already September.  Summer has flown by at break neck speed it seems.  This time next week I'll be getting the boys lunches packed up, making sure their back packs are ready and mentally preparing myself for the first day of school.  It's going to be an especially hard one this year given my last baby will be off to kindergarten.  What am I going to do without my littlest side kick with me?  I'm going to really miss his non-stop chatter and stories.  (He tells the best, most involved stories ever!)  It's going to be an adjustment for sure and I'm pretty sure there will be some tears involved - mine, likely, not his.

So instead of focusing on that, I will, instead, focus on knitting.  Not only does summer holidays come to an end next week, but so does the Very Shannon annual summer sweater knitting KAL.  I always enjoy Shannon's knit alongs.  There's lots of chit chat in the thread on Ravelry, oodles of motivation and inspiration and it's just down right fun.

This year I was really eager for the KAL to start because I was planning on knitting Shannon's pattern Antrorse.  I'd purchased my wool with my birthday money and was chomping at the bit to get going on it.  I dove into knitting pretty much as soon as the KAL started, although I had some issues with getting gauge to start with - only because I was being really daft and kept going down needle sizes instead of up when I was knitting my swatch.  I was getting desperate and thinking there was something really off on the pattern when I'd gone down to about a 4mm needle (using bulky yarn none the less) and still couldn't get gauge.  I even posted about it in thread.  And then felt really, really silly, when I suddenly realized what I was doing wrong about half an hour after posting.  D'oh! There are days I should just put down the needles and back away slowly.  Ha ha!

Anyways, once that issue was out of the way it was smooth sailing.  I really love the Cascade Eco+ I'm using.  It's so soft and cozy but feels light.  Winding those gigantic skeins is a bit of a beast though.  Turns out my ball winder outright refuses to wind the whole 478 yards, quitter that it is.

Really?  That's as far as you'll go??? Slacker!

I was doing really great with the knitting and it was really coming along, but then it got really hot and muggy and I just could not face having all that bulky wool sitting on my already too warm lap.  So, what's a girl to do but cast on a different project?

Deck knitting Antrorse and drinking a wine cooler
(non-alcoholic of course, because alcohol and knitting don't mix!)

My second project is an Andi Satterlund design (Of course it is!  I can't resist her patterns!) I'm working on one of her newest patterns, Sunshower, and it's so pretty.  I had really hoped to finish it last week for my girls' night out with my sisters and cousins, but alas.  No go.  I made a pretty epic mistake in my pattern that required me ripping everything out from the start of the second pattern chart at the bottom of the sweater all the way to the beginning of the left front.  Oh how that hurt.  But on the bright side I learned my lesson.  You see, I got a bit cocky with my "reading" of my lace and started thinking I was off a bit on my stitches.  Things had been looking a bit wonky for awhile, but I put that down to it being just because all those stitches were squished on my needles.  But then I started fudging rows here and there because things weren't lining up the way I assumed they were supposed to be lining up.  Of course all that fudging led to a wrong stitch count and so my new pattern chart wasn't working out.  At that point I was advised (by (BF)G none the less) to rip it out and start again. Oh how smug he is that he was right about my knitting.  Ha ha!  Long story short, I am really glad I listened to him and ripped it out, because I would've been really disappointed in the end result otherwise. I quickly realized I'd been totally reading the knitting wrong, stuck to the chart, used stitch markers with wild abandon to make sure I didn't get off track with the increases and got it done.

After all that crazy push though to try and get it done, not only did I not finish in time for girls' night out, I ended up with really sore wrists and had to take a week off of knitting to let them rest.  I'm back at it though and have just finished up the button band tonight.  Tomorrow I'll launch myself onto sleeve island.  My plan of attack is my usual one.  I'll do the short row sleeve caps individually and then put both sleeves on the needles and do them two at a time.  No second sleeve syndrome for me.  No siree!

Body is done!  Sunshower just needs some sleeves!

After I finish up Sunshower, I'm going to jump back into finishing up Antrorse.  I'm so close!  Just one more pattern repeat on the body, then the garter stitch band at the bottom, then sleeves.  I'm hoping I can get both done by then end of the KAL, but that might be a wee bit ambitious.  We'll see!

So that's what's up for me in the knitterly side of life.  I've been sewing a bit here and there too - a few new projects and techniques under the belt, but I'll save those for another day.  In the rest of life, it's been a whirlwind of gardening, canning, harvesting garden veggies, (beware of zucchini and cucumbers... if you turn your back on them they multiply quickly!  At least I think they must!), visiting, and spending lots of time with the two littlest. I've even managed to have not one, but two visits with N and his girlfriend in the span of a week (He even cooked me lunch on one of those visits - having a chef for a son has it's perks!) and then G and her boyfriend were out too this past weekend.  Now all I need to do is pin the elusive J down for a visit and I'll have it made!

Splish splash!  These two little guys and I have had a fun summer!

I guess that's about it for me tonight.  (BF)G just came into the kitchen shaking his head at me likely for being a night owl again.  (I stay up way too late, then am always so darn tired during the day.  Go figure. He thinks I'm nuts.  He's probably right in that assessment!  LOL) I should probably hop to it and get the things done that I need to do before I head off to bed for the night.

So I'll bid you adieu and hope you all have had a great summer in whatever way you've spent it!