...and the front:
This is my first adult-size sweater using fiber I dyed and spun myself. I Navajo-plied the spun Corriedale and knit the cardi in the round using EZ's percentage system, with a steek. I adapted a friend's Scandinavian yoke pattern chart, so there would only be two colors per round.
The dark chocolate and white are natural; the blue, orange and taupe were dyed as fiber using Koolaid and a little black food coloring.
For details on how I did the dyeing, go here.
I decided to put on an afterthought pocket. It's easy to do, and you can be sure of placement when you wait until the sweater is done.
Part of the body was knit during a performance of La Boheme, thus the name. What I learned from this project: button bands with the steek facing turned under will lie flatter than when the steek edges are enclosed in a faced band. Also, you can't use a wooly board for every sweater, just for the sweaters without sleeves or the ones with sleeves that go straight out from the armholes. Yoke or raglan sweaters tend to have arms that hang down a bit, so on a wooly board, the shoulders would bunch up.
I decided to weave in all the floats, so my fingers wouldn't accidentally catch in them when putting on the cardigan.
In spinning news, I took my KP drop spindle to my volunteer job at Sundance Film festival. There wasn't much time to work on it, but I was just standing around for a few minutes before the audience was allowed in, and that was when I whipped out my drop spindle. Also, I got some wheel spinning done. Here's what I have on my Sonata:
It's Gaywool Merino/Silk, 85% Merino, 15% silk, in "Wallaby," singles, shown on WooLee Winder bobbin for Kromski Sonata. (I showed the fiber in last week's blog post.)
Daphne is getting a new cardigan:
With the La Boheme finished, I could CO the "Natural Beauty for Baby" from Knit on Down using KP's Swish Worsted in Delft Heather. I'm calling it the Gretel Cardi because I worked on it during the performance of the opera "Hansel and Gretel" by Humperdinck.
Speaking of the opera, one of the regulars who always sits close to us brought her daughter, who watched me knit. The daughter asked me where I bought my yarn, complaining that every place she looked was too expensive. She has done quite a bit of knitting and didn't feel she needed help from an LYS. I took the ball band off my KP Swish yarn and gave it to her. She also got to feel the yarn, which she found wonderfully soft.
There's not much quilting news this week. Last time I took my quilting to my volunteer job at Sundance I had Matt Dillon and his friends standing there watching me hand piece. The wanted to know what I was doing, and then why! They were very nice, but knitting is self-explanatory and more portable than a bed-size quilt. However, I have signed up to take a couple of quilt classes using Jelly Rolls, one in early February and the other in early March.
Stars spotted so far this Festival: Danny Glover, Stanley Tucci, Julia Ormand, Paul Rudd and a few others. So far, my favorite film has been "My Idiot Brother," starring Paul Rudd. Not his usual fare, I can tell you, but very entertaining!
What's on my iPad iPod: Alexander McCall Smith's Tears of the Giraffe from Audible. Also numerous podcasts, including the Knit Wits.
What's on my primitive iPod iPod: Jane Austen's Persuasion from Librivox, which I haven't listened to for a while.
Until next week, happy knitting, quilting, spinning and film watching!
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