Finishing Up Loose Ends

This morning I woke up and realized I had NOTHING on my needles. Now, that never happens. Ever. I usually have 3 projects going on: one lace, one pair of socks that stays in my bag, and one garment. Sometimes it goes up to five. I've been tearing through things, though, and decided to finish the pair of socks that has been languishing since March.

They, however, are not making it to this post. A lot has happened since then!

I have been admiring Juliet from afar for a while now. Towards the end of last summer, I bought some Knit Picks Shine Sport and I thought it would be great to combine the two. The yarn knits up at a much smaller gauge than Juliet, but I thought since it is cotton it would work well. I did some adaptations and came up with this:

The raglan increases at the shoulders. I love Cat Bordhi's method of doing left- and right-increases from New Pathways for Sock Knitters. I use them all the time now, because they turn out so neatly.

I saw one project on Ravelry that had a button on either side of the closure and a tab across it like a military jacket. I decided to adapt that look, and made large i-cord tabs with delicate buttons.

I'm very happy with how it all came out. It was hard to tell whether the lace was right when I was knitting it up. I did stop a little bit earlier than I thought, because I knew the cotton (and lace) would grow and lengthen. Now it hits me perfectly at the hip. I would give you more information, but I don't remember any of it. I think I used size 3 needles, but I'm not really sure.

I've begun spinning some more, but more importantly, I made my first project with my handspun! I ended up with a lot of yarn left over, so there may even be a second project in the future with it!

This is Cat Bordhi's Moebius Cowl. I found it on Ravelry, and got to fiddle with the Moebius cast on. It's unbelievable how you knit both sides at once.

I love the way the colors change so gradually. It's much more subdued than I anticipated when I spun the yarn. It's just too bad that the weather is getting warm enough that I barely need to bring a jacket with me, much less a wool cowl!

And lastly, I bring you something not crafting-related:

This is another project I have been working on, with five other people. I wrote about a third of the top book in the past two months. It's what has been sucking up my time, especially when a colleague and I had to edit and format the entire two-part document into 450 pages of useful text. Now it's done and in the final form, and I'm proud!