late october in pictures

Even though I haven’t been able to squeeze in a ton of knitting time this week, my sweater’s been coming together, slowly.

It’s also properly autumn now, with swirly leaves and sweater temperatures, which always makes me want to start to make time for homey things, knitting included. My cardigan is looking much more like a real sweater, and much less like an unseemly blob of knitting.

I hear it’s Halloween this weekend. I live in an apartment, so I doubt I’ll be getting many trick-or-treaters. But just in case the zombies do come for me, my cat’s willing to keep me safe.

finished: austin hoodie!

It has taken me a surprisingly long time to photograph this sweater. Ravelry tells me I finished the knitting on Sept 12! (Of course, it sat on my desk for a fair while after that, waiting for me to weave in the ends. . .)

Anyway.

It’s done, and it’s my new favourite favourite sweater. At least until I knit my next new favourite sweater.

This is the Austin Hoodie, made with 4 skeins of SweetGeorgia Superwash Sock (her 100% merino, not the 80-20 merino/nylon) in Mist. I knit it almost exactly to pattern, once I’d finished fiddling around with needle sizes to get gauge. The only thing I changed was the turned-under hems at the sleeves – after doing the hem around the body and deciding it was too short for my taste, I didn’t want another tiny flippy hem around my wrists. I finished the sleeves in six rounds of garter stitch, instead, and they’re fine.

The fit on on this sweater is exactly what I was hoping for. It doesn’t feel tight, but it’s definitely fitted, which I could use a bit more of in my handknits. And I cannot say enough good things about this yarn. It’s cozy soft, but not so soft that I’m worried about it holding up to wear, and the colour is absolutely fantastic. From a distance it looks purple, but up close it’s got blue and white tones that made it a delight to stare at for a jillion billion miles of fingering-weight stockinette, and make a really cute sweater.

The only thing I could wish for in this cardigan would maybe be a button to keep it closed. On warmer fall days, it’d be nice to be able to wear this done up, instead of a coat, like I do with my store-bought hoodies. Maybe someday, I’ll get ambitious and add one.

sweaters = work life balance

So even though my life is keeping me on my toes, now that fall TV has started up again, I’m finding it much easier to find time to knit. We will ignore what this says about my priorities – the point is, I’m much farther along on my new cardigan, and super excited about it.

I find the alternating cables really fun, and this pattern is one that’s extraordinarily easy to memorize. After the first repeat, I didn’t need to look at the chart at all, except to keep track of whether or not I was on a cable row.

I also had dinner with Laura a couple of days ago, near Koreatown, and while I was waiting for her I wandered down the street to see if I could pick up some of the snacks I used to love while I was living there. And then I had a bit of fun playing with cookies and my macro lens.