It's cold outside. Go knit a sweater. Or two.

Last year, I wasn't a garment knitter. I was all about the socks and mitts and hats. 2012 was also the year of shawls for me.

Then this year? Bam! I got hit by the garment hammer of Cast On All The Things!
I can kind of see what it is. When I started as a knitter, I could only afford single skeins of anything.  You can make a whole project out of one skein of exquisitely beautiful sock yarn. Your investment was much smaller.
Even if you screwed it up, you hadn't invested a lot of time or money.
Instant gratification.

But really, how many shawls can one girl need? Especially with the weather we're having.
I love shawls, don't get me wrong, but I might have reached shawl saturation. For now.

Side note: I still don't have enough socks.

So I was going to try it. A nice transitional pullover, knit out of cotton. I fell in love with the way Sazerac was modeled, and I had to have it. So I made one. And I love it. It's fabulous, and the cotton yarn is fingering weight, light enough to not be bent out of shape yet.

Then I made another cotton pullover, this time short-sleeved.
Then a Wollmeise cardigan. Then one with all-over lace. And a mystery sweater. And a lace cardigan.

Then I cast on a big, cushy pullover out of Tails DK, the squishy, cloud-like singles yarn I stock in my shop, in a colour I've been trying to create fora  while, a deep red with black overtones.

And then I cast on Sambuca, my latest obsession. It crept up on me. I bought the yarn in the backroom of Bendigo Woollen Mills, just to play with it. It's just a grey DK wool, non-superwash, how good could it be?
Pretty great, actually. I love everything about this wool. I'm going to add Noro to this project, because knitting with Noro pretty much guarantees I will love this pullover forever.
I'm even adding some shaping to it.

How will all of this turn out? Who knows? But I'm loving the journey.

Are you a garment knitter? Or do you prefer accessories? Or something else?

Cardigan update: Wanda Nell

As Nerd Wars and Camp Loopy and other shines distract me, the Wanda Nell cardigan gets pushed to the back burner a bit.
i still love it, I just never seem to make the time to actually knit on it.
It's coming out gorgeous though. I love it so much!
The colours are fabulous, the shape is, well, shaping up nicely, and that Wollmeise smell, well!
I really need to knit on this more.
Perhaps riiiight now.

Casting On: Wanda Nell cardigan

Something new on the needles today!
After the mixed success of the awesome-but-not-done Vivian cardigan, I'm changing things up with a gorgeous, fingering-weight cardi, the Wanda Nell by Jennifer Hagan.
I'm using Wollmeise in Wolke, a colour I've been in love with most of my life (I have a pen in that colour, and a dress in a couple shades lighter).
I think I want to add darker stripes and edging to it, but I'll see how I go.
It's a top-down, raglan cardi.
I swatched and measured and calculated. Hopefully, it'll all work out.
This will also be my Nerd Wars dissertation this round, drawing inspiration from BBT's Bernadette and her ubiquitous (and cute!) cardigans.

Big on Stripes!

Things have been happening around here. Yarny things.
But more on that later in the week.
What's on the needles this week?
Vivian is still not done (mainly because when I have time to knit, I don't have the brain power), but I'm about half-way up the hood. The end is in sight.
Still lots of yarn left over though! Hm.

But I needed something easier to knit, so I cast on some vanilla stripey socks. Because stripes have been on my mind lately.
The yarn is Austerman Step, and it's a nice yarn, except for the flecks of dye that have sprinkled into neighbouring stripes. Not the look I was going for.

Vivian Update

Just a quick update on the Vivian sweater.
Last time you saw us, the sleeves were just about to join the main body.
Which turned out to be surprisingly straight-forward.
What wasn't straight-forward were the decreases to fuse the two together permanently. It got better though, once i switched from the K2togs in the pattern to P2togs. By then, I knew where I wanted to be, and which stitches to eat. Looks better now.

The saddles were easier than I expected them to be, but my stitches are rather large and loopy. I might have to tighten those up, if it doesn't come out in blocking. Does anything ever come out in blocking?

I also managed to add a design feature at the last minute.
Can you spot it?
Here's a hint, look at the two front tops.
Yeah. Brilliant, that's me.

What's on the needles?

March has been all about casting on, and progress.

I have one project finished that I can't show (yet), but I can say that I love it very much and it's been going places with me.

Apart from that, I've been knit-knit-knitting away on the Vulpix shawl and the Vivian cardigan.

Looks like this week's WIPs are brought to you by the letter V!

What's on the needles?

 It's all about new things on the needles in March for me.
Some call it startitis, some call it stash-down, but for me, it was a matter of shaking things up.

I've still got projects languishing on the needles, like the colorwork mittens I started in Hakuba, or the intricately twisted, gorgeously bright pink Wollmeise socks.
Never mind my plain-ish ribbed striped socks.

But I started the Vivian. A complicated cabled cardigan out of a gorgeous Madelinetosh DK. The color is called Maple Leaf, but it reminds me of apples. You know, real apples. Not that fake apple red of coloring books, or the bright red of hand-turned pretty-but-tasteless apples. Real apples that taste of crisp fall mornings.
I love it.
I've already finished the sleeves and have made a bit of progress on the body.
The Vivian is supposed to be my birthday sweater. I splurged on the yarn and the pattern, and knitting it is all about me. I wasn't expecting the yarn to get this quickly to me, but the elves at the Loopy Ewe worked some miracle magic. So how could I resist?

I even swatched, and things are turning out great.

And then the new Stephen West shawl club pattern got sneak previewed. It's called Vulpix, after the adorable six-tailed fox pokemon.
I haven't been too wild about the patterns in the shawl club so far, but this one, I had to knit.
I love the way it looks, but I really got sold on the name. I'm a sucker for names, as we all know.
So I cast on a Vulpix in Wollmeise in Sanguinella and 47Ag. it's a very bright, in-your-face combo, kind of movie Goth or vampire-y. It's striking, but I'm not sure if it's really me. okay, I'm pretty sure it's not, but hey. Don't let that stop me!

So yeah, these two are taking up all of my knitting time.
Well, not *all* of my time. There's also a little something I'm designing right now, but that's a secret for another time.