A month of months

The sweater is done! The stand-in sweater was promptly stuffed in the donation box! I really want to knit something on big needles with no cables now! And I have a new camera that takes pictures in which you can see stitch definition!

If you are on ravelry, you can see more of it here.

It's a pattern from the first of Vogue Knitting's vintage reprint books "Knitting in Vogue" called Round-Necked Cable Cardigan from 1951.  After an arduous search for a heathered light blue yarn (why is light blue so rarely a heather-y color?), I settled on Jamieson's Double Knitting in Sky Blue and for the trim used Prussian Blue. I went down one needle size on both the ribbing and body.

This is the second time I've made this sweater - the first one wore out, and I liked it so much and it went with so many things already in my wardrobe, that I had to make it again.  The first one was on even smaller needles. Maybe by the time this one wears out, I'll be able to find yarn with the correct gauge. And I'll be 63.

And my knitting basket is almost empty for the first time in probably a decade! I just need to mend some gloves and then it will be truly empty!*

* I think I'm using the exclamation points to make up for not getting the same sense of relief as after I finished my replacement brown cardigan.

Footnote: My hair (which you can't really see) is in a "messy bun" based on instructions in the Babes In Hairland book.  It's really easy, however the style in the book is for shorter hair.  I used almost the entire box of bobby pins.

I can't tell you how glad I am this is done.  I love it!  I've been working on it pretty steadily even though I: 1) hate cables and 2) had many other things to do.  And of course, just as I finished, the weather got warmer.

The pattern I used was a previous cardigan I picked up at a thrift store, debating all the while because it was "expensive" for a thrift store sweater, which I then wore out because I loved it so much.  It was originally Banana Republic that someone had felted a little bit, and I added the front button band and neckline bow from the Tri-Stitch Cable Sweater in "A Stitch In Time" by Susan Crawford.

You can see a teensy bit of the skirt I recently made (and love, too!) in the pic, too.

The shoes have been put on hold while I waited for the book to come back to the library, so I switched to...

Making a swimsuit for a vacation that was also, however, put on hold while I waited for the fabric to be pre-washed, so I switched to...

Making things from my stash, which was what I had originally planned to do in January, but was sluggish and unmotivated at that time, which worked out ok because pattern review is having a stash-busting contest.  Based on the person who's already sewn 24 yards¹, and the next who's sewn 14, I won't win, but whatevs.

So I've:
- gotten to the point where I'm going to finish the upper and wrap it around my last
- croquised my swimsuit and decided on a design
- made a beach cover-up
- finished the pinstriped dress
- re-fashioned a mohair sweater
- shortened another sweater
- made a headband
- made 3 t-shirts


I'm also working on getting some music I recorded about 7 or 8 years ago up on bandcamp. I need to make some sort of album artwork, and I think I'm close to being done with that.

1 Oh, pardon me, it's actually 36.