He is a 1 yo male Maine Coon from Animal Care and Control of New York He reminds me of Baby when I first got her a few years ago. Doesn’t know quite how to settle down, always distracting me, getting in to places he shouldn’t be etc. Hes a pretty good cat so far minus his biting habit. 3 moreweeks before he meets my down who resides with my mom right now. I hope they will get along!

So a couple weeks ago I won some yarn from Annmarie’s bloganniversary contest. Annmarie, being a very generous person, allowed me to decide on the yarn or books from her stash. I like surprises so I allowed her to choose my prize. She surprised me with enough lace yarn to make a huge stole and my first yarn from Sundara. Its a very pretty pink and it came with a lovely pattern too. Thank you Annmarie! You are awesome!

I think all sweaters should be knit with the intention to minimize the amount of work require to finish it after everything has been knit. Take for example this Olivia cardigan. The pattern called for knitting the two fronts, back and sleeves to be knit separately, seamed up and then you pick up a bizillion stitches for the neck and also for the two sleeves to finish those respective areas. Too much work I say! So I radically simplified it so that I can knit this in class with the minimalist amount of thinking.

I arbitrarily decided the number of stitches I needed for the sleeves after knitting the written 91 stitches for the sleeves and seeing how humongously poofy it was. I did about an inch of garter stitches for the cuff and then switched to stockinette. I spaced out a bunch of increases to give the sleeve a little poofyness but not as much as the pattern called for. Some straight rows were knit before decreasing the sleeve to the written number of stitches.

The fronts and back were knit together up to the sleeves and then I did raglan decreases until I got it down to the number of stitches being picked up in the pattern. I then did a bunch of garter rows, added a button hole, decreased some more, knitted a few more garter rows, decreased again before casting off. And voila, a perfectly fitting sweater that I put minimal brain effort into (all my brain effort went into studying.)

This has to be my most nonchalantly knitted sweater. All my other sweaters I worried about getting the sleeve decreases correct. Constantly counting the stitches. This one was very different. I was confident that this will turn out alright, no worries that it won’t fit me properly. I guess that has a lot to do with having knitted a SWATCH! *gasp*. I was all anti swatching in my last few sweaters which caused me to constantly worry that it won’t fit me. So from now on, I’m gonna swatch!

Pattern : Olivia by Kim Hargraves
Yarn: Elsbeth Lavold Silky Wool, 6 skeins
Needles: Size 3
Time to Knit: about a month
Gripes: I may have to move the placement of the button, its a bit wonky.
Ravelry Page for this

Labor day weekend I went to Ikea with my mom and aunt to purchase a new bookcase since my book and yarn collection was exploding. This Ikea was undergoing renovation so it was a complete mess, like their kitchen stuff was mixed in with the bedroom stuff. In midst of this mess, they had a whole stack for curtain rods on clearance for 99cents! My mom snatched up six of them for drying out laundry. I quickly realized that I could use one too but for the purposes of drying yarn on the balcony. One rod could hold a lot but I’m thinking I should have probably gotten another one considering it was only 99cents.

School was crazy busy for the last few weeks so I did not touch the 10 pounds of yarn that I had ordered until this weekend, which is a four day weekend for me. So I spent most of Friday dyeing yarn. I love dyeing yarn. I don’t plan out the colors ahead of time. I dye one skein at a time. When I’m done with one skein I decide on the color of the next skein. I haven’t dyed enough skeins to run out of color combos so I try not to repeat a color. But somehow this time out of the 13 skeins I dyed, two of them came out quite similar. I’m very happy with how they came out with the exception of one which I may end up overdyeing it.

I’ll be posting them to my Etsy store over the next week but if you like anyone of them, I’ll be happy to hold it for you, just email me at jane AT okayknits DOT COM.

August few by quickly. I had a month of school already. Its quite weird that this is my last year of learning in a classroom, next year its onto the hospitals. My school instituted this mandatory attendance policy with fingerprinting in which I spend an ungodly number of hours sitting in a darkened room learning about how to treat diseases before we learn what caused the disease. Its so backwards! So I’ve taken my knitting into school and knit during class. I knitted a cute little pullover for one of my classmate’s new baby boy. Though it may be a year before the baby can wear it. I knitted a 6mo-1 year old size but I think its more like a 1-2 year size. Oh well that’s what happens when you knit without a swatch.

I’m still dyeing yarn in my spare time on the weekends. Its expanding. I’ve got 12lbs of yarn in my possession waiting to be dyed when I get the chance.

My dog has gone to live with my mom until winter break. I don’t like walking her in the morning, in the dark, in the cold. I am missing our afternoon long walks looking for cats in the neighborhood and chasing squirrels. In the meantime I haven’t done any dog torture for a while. She has either forgotten how muzzle stacking works or that the cheezeits are so yummy that she just can’t help herself, she was horrible at muzzle stacking. I only managed to stack one for maybe 2 seconds before she knocked it down and ate it.

I actually wrote a majority of this post last week but never posted it. I am only doing it now cause I have a huge 4 hour exam tomorrow and so I am procrastinating it (the weekend before the last 4 hour exam I was procrastinating by dyeing yarn). No dyeing this weekend however I am doing more knitting in between cramming information on the heart.

I’m knitting my own version of Conwy from Knitting on the Road. My version meaning after an inch in the leg, I can’t find where I placed the pattern so I did the heel flap and turn and stuff on a whim. I’m using my own handdyed Mumbi II yarn on size 0 needles. I am knitting this for my self but I am getting close to two dozen working pairs of socks in my possession. Is it too much? I am already getting overwhelmed by yarn yarn collection. I fully realized that I have more yarn than I can possibly knit in the next few yarns at the rate that I am going. Maybe I’ll get overwhelmed by socks once I reach a point in which I have enough handknit socks to last a winter without repeating!