Vintage, Baby!

During our vacation to Vancouver Island this past summer, I cast on for Audrey in Unst thinking that I would get to wear this little cardi over summer dresses.  Yeah right, summer is long gone and we’re well into fall and all I can think about is piling on warm woolies and cranking up the heat!  Even though I don’t think that I will wear this cardigan anytime soon, I wanted to show you my very own Audrey in Unst, or Audrey in Van Isle as I call my version:)

 I love the vintage inspiration for this design and the Shetland lace at the yoke.  Also, this was my first time with seamless set in sleeves and me likey a lot! 

The fit is perfect and I couldn’t be happier with my finished Audrey:)  Vintage never goes out of style!

Audrey in Van Isle

Pattern: Audrey in Unst by Gudrun Johnston
Yarn: Sundara Yarn Sport Merino in “Flower Studies #152” 
Needles: Size US 4 & 5 /3.5 & 3.75 mm

The Shetland lace pattern originating from the island of Unst was Gudrun’s twist on this classic sweater style. 

The yarn is lovely to knit with… you can’t go too wrong with Sundara yarn.  But for this project, it was all about the pattern ♥♥♥

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Urban Woods

A five minute walk from our house leads to this trail

The perfect Sunday evening walk when you have a couple of stir crazy kids who just want to get out of the house

Who wants to stay stuck indoors when there are leaves to be kicked

Or treasures to be picked (am I the only mother to discover stones and sticks and pieces of string and scribbled notes stuffed into every pocket?)

Or whispers to be listened too

And if we hadn’t gone out and hit that trail, we would have mostly definitely missed this

Daylight Savings is upon us which means the sky looks like this at 4.30 pm, yes you heard that right, 4.30 pm!!  It’s not all bad though because I was grateful for the extra hour of shut eye “fall back” provided on Sunday morning 😉

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Trick or Treat

The kids were out till late last night trick-or-treating and they came back with a stash so awesome that I’m tempted to call dibs on some of their goodies.  But I shall refrain since this is their stash, so I’ll stick with yarn! 

Being a part of a smaller community like ours is great for celebrations like this where everyone gets involved and it all ends with a good old late night BBQ.  This huge sucker wasn’t on display in our town last night but I had to share this picture since it was Pumpkin Day yesterday (picture taken at the Fort Langley Cranberry Festival)

And now the kids have enough candy to last them well into 2011!  Fun times!!

…and because I’m biased being her mommy and all, more cuteness…

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The WIP, It Grows

I’m in complete sweater knitting mode right now.  This maybe the reason, no?

Being the (mostly) monogamous knitter that I am has helped with the latest project on my needles.  Emelie is growing at a steady pace and it won’t be long before I separate for the fronts and back.  The construction of this cardi is almost like Audrey.  While there are similarities in the two designs, they are quite different and so the knitting has been very enjoyable.  Add to that the joy of knitting with Bugga!  Oh yeah, I’ve told you all about that.

I was aiming to get this cardigan knit in October, but um…reality check…not going to happen. 

I am terribly behind on my IntSweMoDo2010 goals.  The journey and process has been nothing but positive and I’m glad that I joined this group.  I may not repeat this Sweater Dodecathon in 2011, but I plan to continue knitting useable garments and accessories.  What better satisfaction than a closet full of warm and comfy handknits!!

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The Emerald City

Only 3 hours south of us by car is Seattle.  We took an impulse road trip there last weekend and it was fun!  I love unplanned adventures like this and the kids were great about playing along.

My favorite Seattle sight was Pike Place Market especially the flying fish with the singing fishmongers. 

Check out these funny lamp men!!

Wonderful stuff all around

Post Alley outside Pike Place Market was very interesting with the famous Great Wall of Gum and fantastic graffiti.

Ewww germy and at the same time, Wow!

Poster graffiti

Seattleites, just like us Vancouverites love our Starbucks.  In fact, I’ve seen a crossroads in downtown Vancouver with a Starbucks on every corner.  That’s 4 Starbucks-es at one traffic light, sheesh!!  Here’s the first ever Starbucks…

We didn’t get a chance to ride up top the Space Needle, but seeing that this won’t be our last Emerald City visit, we have to leave some excitement for next time, right?

Just before lunch, I snuck in a visit to The Fiber Gallery and did not leave empty-handed.

Look at what jumped into my shopping bag…

Tosh DK in “Baltic”

Malabrigo Rios the new Superwash merino in “Paris Night”.  I also couldn’t resist a copy of New England Knits.

Lunch was at the famous Red Mill Burgers. 

The reviews about their burgers :: all true!

This city gets a major thumbs up from me.  Definitely a great place to visit.

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Next Up

My Bugga! adventure begins now.

Bugga! yes folks, that exclamation point is intentional and rightly so.  Bugga! is MCN… which means that this yarn is 70% superwash merino, 20% cashmere (ooh la la) and 10% nylon.  Warm, durable and luxurious!  I never thought that durable and luxurious could ever go together:)

I have to say though that even thought it is labeled ‘sock yarn’, it doesn’t feel like sock yarn more like a light sportweight and since I am not afraid of skinny yarn (hello Geodesic and Paper Dolls!), knitting with this yarn should be lovely too.  

I just picked the wrong season to use my Bugga! to knit this number.  If I hadn’t dawdled like I did with my Audrey, I would have knit this pattern when it was still warm out.  But life, lemons, lemonade etc etc!

Emelie was a gift from a wonderful friend.  She saw this pattern sitting in my Ravelry faves and she also knows all about my cardigan obsession (ahem::IntSweMoDo::ahem)  That was so thoughtful and sweet of her and she’s a knitter too.  Thanks so much, dear friend:)

Swatch? Check!  The color is a bit off in these pictures.  The pink is a bit more plumy and less pepto.  My first up close encounter with Sanguine Gryphon goodies.

Let the knitting begin.

Oh oh, I got new yarnz from our Seattle trip this weekend.  Show and tell soon, ok?

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Thankful

Today, I’m thankful for so much and all you wonderful people are right up there on my list!

Happy Thanksgiving from the Great White North!

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Goodbye Sleeve Island

Knitting the sleeves on my Audrey took longer than I expected, waaaay longer!  I was stuck on Sleeve Island for so long that funny things were happening to my knitting mojo.  But we’re back on track now, my mojo and I. When I’ve knit a couple more rows of the button bands, this cardigan is going to be done!  I have yet to track down buttons and get the blocking board out to officially finish, but the knitting’s almost done, hooray!

This was my first time knitting set-in-sleeves top-down.  Sounds technical, huh???  Set in sleeves, in my opinion, give a much tailored look to any knitted garment.  But now that I’ve discovered the joys of top-down-try-as-you-go knitting, knitting the sleeves separately and then attaching them to the body always has me throwing a hissy fit.  This happens when I realize that the two pieces just don’t want to merge.  Thus ending up with a sleeve that looks squishy and puckered at the seam where most certainly a vast amount of fudging has taken place.  Square peg – round hole syndrome! 

The solution :: set-in sleeves that are knit top down using short rows.  Genius! 

The best part is that the math involved in this process is minimal aaaaaand….you get to try it on as you knit, knit, knit – giving you the perfect sleeve cap-armsyce marriage!  No ugly, puckered seams!!

Audrey in Unst has this very sleeve construction.  Now, there’s no turning back for me in the sleeve department!

*Please excuse the very blurry pics taken by 11-year-old who was already out the door to school when his mommy dragged him back in to take pictures of her sleeve.         **And please also ignore the fact that said mommy is in her PJs!!

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Reset

I’ve been off the radar for a while.  Life happened, computer crashed….yada-yada. 

It’s time to hit Reset and begin afresh!

The summer went by real quick which means….bring on the cool weather knitting!  I’m plugging away on my Audrey in Unst (uh-huh, that’s still on the needles), but I want to begin knitting Emelie (Ravelry link) and this year maybe even knit a few woolly Christmas presents.

Back with actual knitting content soon – I have to show you the completed sleeve on my Audrey.  Have a great weekend everyone:)

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Random

I’ve been trying to think of something meaningful to blog about, but all I’ve got is random.  But random is better than silent, right?

So….I’m craving raspberries ever since I heard the weird but cute Peter MacNicol (a.k.a Larry Fleinhardt) say that the Milky Way must taste like raspberries.  The Audrey cardi on my needles is the same color as those delicious berries, which doesn’t make things any easier. I cannot ignore this craving any longer…. and no folks, I ain’t preggo!

Another bit of randomness is that I saw my first bunch, yes BUNCH of grizzly bears in the wild last weekend.  We were taking the Peak2Peak Gondola ride up in Whistler to the tip of the mountains in the picture above and there were so many bear families foraging about in the brush below.

Please excuse the blurry picture, but aren’t they sweet – the Mama and her cubs

The abundance of bear is probably because the Fraser River has just had largest salmon run of the century – 30 million sockeye salmon!  Now, that’s A LOT of fish in one place. Speaking of salmon, I can smell our dinner cooking – Salmon that’s been glazed with mustard and maple. Ridiculously simple and deadly yummy!

The sleeve (yes, I’m still on the first sleeve) of my Audrey is going slow.  But I love the whole set-in-seamless-sleeve construction.  This is the first sleeve I’ve knit using this method and I don’t think that there will ever be any turning back for me where sleeves are concerned.  I’ll blog about all of the technical details in a future blog post.  But first, I gotta finish this sleeve!!

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