Off and on the needles

One sweater down:

Learning Curve Sweater complete!
Design: well, I made it up as I went along. A top-down raglan, knit in the round using a garter/slip stitch pattern. Top down design from Unpatterns, Slip stitch garter pattern from Sally Melville, but I take full responsibility for the dysfunctional marriage of the two.
Yarn: Cascade Sierra (80% pima cotton - 20% wool)
Photographer: me. can't you tell? family is out, camera remote has dead battery, can't figure out if camera has a timer.

I learned a LOT about knitting from the time I started this project last December to when I finished it yesterday. I even learned some things from the making of this sweater. Will I wear it? Yes, in the house, or perhaps in the yard, the back yard, where no one can see me. I would use the yarn again, I would make another top-down raglan, I would not use this particular stitch pattern again in anything but a washrag.

One blanket to begin:


One of the dangers of teaching your kid to knit and blog is that you lose some control over your private life. Like, does anyone really need to know we purchased a lot of yarn at the LYS yarn sale? Does my husband really need to know the word "stash"? Yes, The Nerd and I went shopping. Yes, we bought a lot of sock yarn, yes I bought some silky wool for a sweater (design to be determined). Most of the yarn purchased was Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece (80% cotton, 20% Merino, similar to but a little thinner than the Cascade Sierra) not egregiously expensive even when it isn't 20% off. The goal: a log cabin style blanket ala Mason Dixon. I swatched already and will wash it, just to make sure the colors don't bleed, before putting in all the effort on a full sized blanket.

The Nerd was the only male in the crowded store. Possibly the only customer too young to drink the complementary wine. Definitely the only customer wearing a hand-knit wool hat (It's April already, sunshine, flowers, etc). He enjoyed all the attention he got for the hat, proudly admitted that he knit it himself, and got as excited as anyone there over sock yarn.