Finally the FLAK Front is Finished!

Finally, after three nights of knitting whilst watching Carnaval, I finished the front of the FLAK sweater down to the same length as the back. I'm going to take a breather until Janet's site is up again with the sleeve part.
Friday I went shopping at the Salvation Army. I found a good $1 sweater which I plan on unravelling for the wool--it's got a hole in the back so it's not any good for anyone to wear anyway. Look at the nice buttons too!





I bought this last week. I needed a second pair of Addis to knit the front of FLAK (I wanted to keep the back on the ones I had which will be long enough to knit in the round when I get to that point), and didn't plan on buying a book. However, I wanted the pattern for felted fish, and the LYS didn't have it separate, so I ended up with this. I'm glad, because they have some other nice patterns, and reading about the shops is interesting.


These came in the mail last week, too. I saw a photo on someone else's blog of one or two of the patterns, and just had to track them down (even though I still haven't finished my first pair of socks!) You can buy all 5 patterns from www.sweaterscapes.com for $12. The top parts of them are knit flat in intarsia, then sewn up the back, and the rest is knit in the round. Doesn't sound too difficult, although they do use a lot of colors in a small space.

The FLAK front is joined!

After not working on the FLAK sweater for a few days, I picked it up on Monday night, picked up stitches for the left side of the front, and knit a couple of inches until I felt the neck was big enough. Last night I did the same for the right side, joined the two, and knit the first row back. From the center of the saddles, it's about 3-1/2" down. (I hope that isn't too big; I knit until I'd increased 8 stitches on either side. I don't like very tight necks in wool anyway) I cast on all of the stitches, both the increasing ones on the neck sides, and the ones at the front, using the cable cast-on. When picking up stitches from the saddles, I found it much more difficult on the right side of the front, which is the left side of the saddle. I remember it was the same when I picked up stitches for the left side of the back (from the left side of that saddle). I wonder if it would make things easier to add an extra stitch on the left side of the saddles, at least ones with a little cable at the edge like these?

Now before I can continue, I have to decide something about the center cables. I realized that if I start the Xs and Os at the correct row number that corresponds with where I am with the sides of the front and the back, I'll be starting at the last cable cross of each letter, then starting the next letter a couple of rows down. This would just look wonky. So I'll have to start with whole Xs and Os. I think I'll probably start with the right-side row that's between two X/O repeats. It won't match up exactly with the back, but who looks at both the back and front at the same time? The back Xs and Os will finish up a couple of rows before the front, so they'll be a couple rows of plain knitting at the bottom, but I think that won't be a problem.

I didn't try cabling the inner snakes yet, either. I did the one on the left, as I had enough stitches to cross, but being so close to the edge, it seemed to pull the edge out of whack, and I thought it would be very hard to pick up neck stitches there. So I undid it, and knit those plain so far.

I finally got caught up reading all the FLAK postings. It sure is interesting what everyone is doing, and great to see all the different yarns and cables everyone is using. I'm glad the next part isn't out yet; it'll give me a chance to finish the front. I noticed that a lot of folks are participating in the Knitting Olympics too, during FLAK down time. Unfortunately I'm missing out on the Olympics, as we only have Globo, Brazilian TV, which keeps DH in touch with his home country. I don't care much for watching TV anyway, and I love the Brazilian novelas, so normally I don't miss having American TV. But I do miss being able to see some of the Olympics, especially the winter ones as I love to watch the figure skating. This weekend Globo starts carnival coverage for a few days, so I was thinking maybe I can do Knitting Carnival? Actually I have a past due wedding quilt I'm supposed to be working on (instead of a sweater for myself!), so maybe it'll be Quilting Carnival!

Here's what I worked on over the weekend:

It's not a lot of knitting, but I worked overtime Saturday and cleaned the kitchen Sunday after church, so I guess I really did accomplish something. I also finally got caught up on reading the FLAK postings. I'm glad the next part isn't out yet, to give me a chance to catch up.

I used up all of the four-color, sewed the sides together, and started I-cording for the handle with the three-color. I think I have enough yarn to go across once, then go back across a second time, entwining the two before I attach the second I-cord. I saw that in felted bag pattern from somewhere, and it looked good. So I really don't have much left to do before it's ready to felt! I think I'll put a zipper in the top.

I took both today's photos in the sun this morning, so the colors are pretty accurate.

Weekly Work

A whole week since I've posted--how the days slip by! At the end of last week I came down with an awful cold. Saturday I had a meeting of my Embroiderers' Guild chapter, and since I'm on the board I had to go. My usual medicine wasn't working, and I could hardly breathe all day. On the way home, I stopped by two Goodwills and a Salvation Army. At the S.A. store I found two hand-knitted wool sweaters:

The plain one is huge, and I plan to frog it and use the wool for hats or mittens or something. The stranded one I may keep as is. It does fit me, and I can wear it as long as I wear a turtleneck underneath. It's not the softest yarn.

By the time I got home, I also had a splitting headache, so went to sleep for a few hours. That, with a change in cold medicine, made all the difference. Sunday it snowed all day, so church was cancelled and I decided to stay inside. I took some of the natural-color yarn I'd frogged from the honeycomb sweater and Kool-Aid dyed it. I wound 240 yards of the yarn into skeins and dyed it using the microwave method, in a big pyrex bowl. It took a while for the color to absorb, as there was so much yarn, but it worked great! Four packets of Kool-Aid resulted in this medium orange:

I wound two of the skeins into balls. I'll knit the larger pumpkin first, then re-dye the rest of the yarn with more orange Kool-Aid to get a darker shade for the smaller pumpkin.

I continued to plug away on the back of the FLAK sweater, and last night finished it down to the armpit, which was 9" from the center of the saddles. I've decided to pick up a longer, 40" Addi Turbo, as I'll need it when the back and front are ready to be joined. I'll use it as a big stitch-holder for the back in the meantime. Hopefully I'll have time to swing by the LYS tomorrow morning; then I'll be able to start the front tomorrow night. (BTW, I'm using size 7 needles. I was using Crystal Palace Bamboo needels, but the bamboo part came out of the join right in the middle of a cable row! I like Addi's much better than bamboo anyway, so I'm glad to continue with them.) Here is the back:

The cables don't really show up good in the photo; the shading of the Quatro yarn is really subtle.

Tonight I decided to start on the felted bag made with the multicolored yarn from the honeycomb sweater. I cast on 55 stitches on size 10-1/2 needles, knit in stocking stitch for 4-1/2", and here is the result:

I can't wait to see what it looks like when it's felted!

Sweater demolition

I knitted a few rows on the FLAK sweater tonight but not enough to warrant a new photo. I didn't work on it at all over the weekend; instead I dismantled a sweater. I picked up a couple of wool sweaters at the Salvation Army the day before. Every Friday they have a certain color price tag on sale for $1. So I go every so often to see if there are any sweaters in good condition with nice yarn which can be taken apart. There are some really ugly sweaters out there whose yarn could be put to much better use! So here you can see this big sweater made of cream-colored yarn with green forming honeycombs, with blue, grey, red, and black in the centers.

I ended up with quite a few balls of cream and green wool. I intend to try Kool-Aid dying some of the cream to make orange wool, which I plan to use to knit the felted pumpkins from Knitty. Aren't they cute! I also ended up with a whole pile of short pieces of yarn from the intarsia centers. I thought "what on earth am I going to do with all these!?" Then I came up with the idea of tying all the pieces together end to end, making a multi-colored ball, which I plan on using to make a small felted bag. I'm hoping the little square knots will be unnoticeable once it's felted. There's a big ball which has all four colors of yarn, which I'll use for the main part of the bag, and a small ball of three colors from after the red was all used up, which I'll use for the handle.

Something else has grown...

Just look at this huge crop of mushrooms! For Christmas, I gave DH a mushroom growing kit. Just a week ago the soil was finally covered with tiny pinheads. Then 3-4 days ago the largest ones were about an inch high. We checked the box last night and this is what we found--a virtual explosion of mushrooms! So we harvested a big bowlful, and I tried out a couple of recipes from recipezaar.com. Mushroom and barley soup and wild rice with mushrooms. DH thought the soup was good. The wild rice was good, although it was way too salty (too much bouillon powder) so I turned it into meatloaf, which worked wonderfully!

(Update: unfortunately, after we harvested a big bowlful of mushrooms, I thought the soil looked dry, so I spritzed it with water. The next day the remaining mushrooms and pinheads were turning brown, and after started to mold. So our mushroom experiment turned out to be fun, but short lived!)

The stash has grown...

What is all this yarn? Why, it's from the Super Bowl Sale at the LYS! I couldn't resist 40% off! The periwinkle yarn at the back left is 10 skeins of Classic Elite Montera, intended for the braided yoke sweater in the last Vogue (Winter 2005/6). To the right of that are 4 skeins of Rowan Calmer. It's a nice purple which really doesn't show up great in the photo. This is for Jenna Adorno's Tempting II sweater, on knitty.com. Now I just have to find a pretty gold buckle. The red variegated is a skein of Mountain Goat from Mountain Colors, in Flathead Cherry color. I thought it would make a beautiful hat for myself. The other two piles are 6 skeins each of two colors of Berroco Cotton Twist. I don't have specific patterns lined up for them yet--I figured I'd buy enough to make whatever summer top struck my fancy. It'll all have to wait in my stash for now though, until I finish up some other projects.

FLAK Back...with photos!

I'm about three inches down on the back of the FLAK sweater. I'm using Cascade Yarns Quatro, color 5014, which is pink; each strand is a different shade. (The actual color of the yarn is about halfway between that of the large photo and that of the smaller photos) If I were to start again, I'd probably use a solid, as the cables don't stand out as much with this. But I'm continuing on, and hopefully I'll like wearing it when it's done. I usually wear darker colors, so this is a change for me. I changed the center cables to be X's and O's. I decided to cross the X's in the center. The rest is the same as Janet's directions, with the "snakes" mirrored. This is the first time I've knit a sweater with saddles. Picking up stitches along the sides (especially one) was not fun, but I like the way it looks connected.

The First Entry!

I decided to start a blog as I've joined the Janet Szabo's Follow the Leader Aran Knit-Along (FLAK). I'm looking forward to posting photos of my progress on the sweater as long as my other knitting, quilting, embroidery, and crochet projects, and also general life. And maybe having to post on a regular basis will help encourage me to finish some of my UFO's! I've never had a blog before, so I've got a lot to learn. Next I have to figure out how to post photos.