Lady February Sweater

My Lady February Sweater has not left me since I finished.
I love this sweater, the knitting, the yarn and wearing.
I used a little over 14 balls of Jaeger Extra Fine Merino Aran in Dahlia.
The pattern is free on Ravelry or here.
I made some modifications to the pattern.
I made the sleeves wrist length and I decreased.
I positioned the buttonholes one more stitch in. I don't know if that made it better or worse.
This is a pattern I could see myself knit again. I have knit the same baby patterns again but I never thought of knitting an adult pattern again, besides socks!
I made Miss N take the photo of me. She only took one and said it was OK.
I have gone back to only have one project on the go. I am happy with that - for now.
Lady February took three weeks to knit.

Thanks to Ravelry

My Lady February is finished. I am hoping somebody will take a photo of me wearing her.
As soon as she was off the needles I started on a new project.
Once I got that lovely skein of Dreams in Color Smooshy sock yarn in Ruby River, I looked on Ravelry to find something nice to make with it.

There are plenty of projects were knitters used the yarn, over 6800 projects.
I knew I wanted to knit something for Miss T.
I looked through almost 32 pages of baby projects knitted with the yarn. Well I found 6 knitters that knitted Boheme with the Smooshy yarn. I had come accross this pattern some months ago but since it only goes up to 18 months I did not even put it into my queue. Only now after knitting the Lady February did I realize how easy it would be to make any top down project a perfect fit.
The usual worry of course is the question if one skein is going to be enough? But while knitting from the top down I don't have to worry to much about it.
I did increase more stitches and knit more rows on the top than the pattern. Also after looking at some other Bohemes I am going to knit a garter stitch border similar to Lady February down the front.
I love the fact we can try on whatever I knit to last night. So far it seems a great fit.
Perry has suffered some more. Somebody put her bib on him. He didn't mind and walked round the house with it.
We have had a stormy few days here in London, at least we did not suffer any flooding.
Perry doesn't like going out, I think he doesn't like it when the wind ruffles his fur up. He has spend more time indoors and seems to like all the attention.

Growing body

The body of my Lady February Sweater is coming along nice. (Sorry about the selfportrait photo).
I finished knitting up ball No. 13 and thought I'd give it a quick try, I am surprised I have reached my waistline. I'll knit about another inch of pattern and then the garter stitch border. I love the construction of this sweater. So far I am happy with the outcome of the sleeves. Only time will tell if it is practical.


Cat with Dishcloth and Dreams in Color Smooshy yarn.
Miss T has become aware of the concept of Princesses. I know she watches a lot of Disney channel, she loves Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and Special Agent Oso. In between the shows, Disney has been advertising its Snow White and other DVD's. I did not think any of it, now she likes to drape stuff around herself and play Princess. It also took me a few days to figure that out, she calls it Prin-ten.

Every Princess also has a handbag! Oh and the Prince. Meet Prince Perry. He had to have bits of yarn and a new! dishcloth draped over him.
Miss T doesn't like wearing Jeans, she will change into leggings once we are back home, socks get ditched as well.
Perry likes to be fussed about, it takes a lot for him to get fed up and leave the house.
It looks like he was not happy having his photo taken as Prince and then plastered all over the internet!

February Sleeves

Since my last post I have knitted about 1 1/2 sleeves on Lady February Sweater. My intention from the beginning was to lengthen the sleeves. I thought the nice warm yarn is better suited for winter wear and I prefer long sleeves.
My next thought was to decrease the sleeve width. I also wear a coat in winter and did not think it would be easy to squash a wide sleeve into the sleeves on my coat.
I surfed around on Ravelry and looked at different Lady February's and saw a few with shaped sleeves.
I did my own version of the decreases. In total I decreased two repeats. I am happy with the result so far.
Yes I will finish the body once both sleeves are done. The whole things twists around while I knit round after round on the sleeves.

Meanwhile Miss T is busy with her own thing.
Sitting in her downstairs toy basket is just one of the things.
It still amazes me how she can squeeze herself into tiny spaces.
Perry the cat, likes to nap in one of our beanbags.
Miss T makes sure he has some of his toys with him.
It is cold and wet today, not much fun outside.
Apparently the weather forecast predicts gale storms over the weekend. Oh what fun!
Hey, time to spend indoors and knit ;)

February in November

This photo is for my Mum, she did not believe me that this would ever have flowers.
Proof, flowers in November. It is a Camellia.
I am not a very gardener, my Mum knows a lot more about plants than I do. She did not think it would survive being outdoors in the winter.
Apparently it does here in London. We had snow in February and a few frosty nights.
It has gone frosty around here. In our quest to save the planet and some money, we have turned down the heating by a degree. As if I needed more reasons to knit and wear handknits.
I love knitting on Lady February Sweater. I started a week ago and have knit myself through almost 6 balls of yarn. I am using Jaeger Extra Fine Merino Aran in a lovely pinkish red called Dahlia. I bought the yarn a few years ago in the Liberty sale. I thought it was bright red. Only in daylight does it show its pink hue. So much for the murky lights in store.
The pattern is free on Ravelry but it is based on the Baby February Sweater in the Knitters Almanac. I have not been brave enough to knit the baby sweater, the pattern is only a few paragraphs long and I think it is hard to figure out. The lady version is much easier to follow.
It is knit from the neck down and is absolutely seamless.
I thought it may be easier to knit the sleeves before the body gets to long. I am using my new set of Knitpro needles. Easy to leave the body on the long cable and use the same needle tips for the sleeves. I can try on the garment and check my progress, it is fabulous.

Operation Christmas Child two

The hat and gloves for the second shoe box are done.
The gloves gave me problems. I had to keep adding rows to make them longer. I am surprised how big the hands of my 11 year old daughter are. Her thumb is almost the same length as mine.
She choose the hat pattern, I searched free hat patterns for Aran yarn on Ravelry. She then picked this one, it is called short-row wavy hat. Because I used a tweed yarn there are no waves on the hat.
It has a very interesting construction and is knit back and forth.

I am not sure what the yarn is. I got the yarn from my friend Johanne a few years ago.
I do know it is 100% wool and looks slightly felted.
I used exactly one skein for the gloves and the hat.
We think the yarn could be Rowanspun Aran.
I have been looking on the internet to find a shadecard with a colour match but I have drawn a blank. The colour is also very hard to capture on camera. It is a beautiful deep purple.
Now I have to finish off both shoe boxes.
Next Monday I will take them to my daughters school and then they are on their way to make somebody happy, or I hope so.
It has been fun to knit a few small projects. I decided against a scarf, the shoebox would have been to full.
I started another knitting project, The Lady February Sweater. Again I came accross this pattern on Ravelry. I am using stash yarn, yeah, yeah. I have 17 balls of Jaeger Extra Fine Merino Aran in 552 Dahlia. The colour is a lovely reddish pink.
More about progress on that in a few days.