I can't stop myself!

Okay so I'm really losing it now.

After finishing that CUTE Loop-d-Loop Ballet T-Shirt in just Two Days I just had to do another one!

I was at The Knit Cafe showing off the green one and before I knew it I had purchased four skeins of DELICIOUS Manos del Uruguay cotton yarn to make another one!

The green one is a bit tight, so I got daring and this orange one has 4 more stitches in it. I cast on 2 more than the pattern calls for at each underarm, then made the necessary changes to the number of stitches before and after the increases and decreases. No biggie and it worked great.

Here's a shot of the whole thing:





Unfortunately, I found an interesting comment about this yarn - that it stretches a lot! - AFTER I finished the top. No matter, it's so soft I just want to SLEEP in it!

My last embellishment was the one All Purl row three rows from the bottom, followed by three knit rows and a knit bind-off. This makes a nice "double hem" kind of thing because otherwise I don't have to tell you about stockinette rolling.

Here are two shots of the bottom edge:






Also, today I joined my first webring! I can't figure out how to get the correct image for the link, but it's up there anyway!

Zip, Zip, It is DONE!

This is awesome - last Friday I got a copy of the new Loop-d-Loop book at Knit Cafe. They are having a trunk show - almost all the projects featured in the book are there in the Knit Cafe for us to look at in person.

What a cool thing that is! It makes SUCH a difference to be able to see the actual article in person.

Needless to say I bought the book.

At home I checked my (ahem) yarn stash and found a 170yd skein of Suss Cotton in a lovely lime green. I'd used the better part of another skein of this to make the Frankenstein Sweater and had maybe half a skein of the lime left, plus I had two balls of a cool variegated lime-ish yarn of about the same worsted weight, so these are what I used for this project.

It's solid lime until I ran out, and after that it's lime plus the variegated (this is worked two-stranded). I think it came out GREAT and can't wait to wear it in to show Mary Heather.

This is the Ballet T-Shirt and it's supposed to be cropped, but I went an additional 5 rows in just the variegated to get a bit of length because there's a good amount of me to cover with the shirt.

This is a DREAM PROJECT -

The directions are super-clear and utterly straightforward, and the thing knits up in two days! You courld reasonably knit this while on a long plane ride, plus it's all done in the round so there's no seams! Finally, since it's a top-down deal you can even put the thing on yarn and try it on if you feel like it.

Ya-hoo!

This is my first post using Blogger's Add Photo button - so bear with me -

Okay here are the pics:

Knitblog is ONE!

Yes, today marks one year since I started Consolidated Lint.

I have another post to make today - I fixed the SuperGiant top - but in case I can't get to it today I for sure wanted to wish my blog a very happy first birthday.

In the meantime, thanks to Jenny I now have a proper LINKS section. Wheeeee!

Soooooo.....

I still haven't decided what to do with the bamboo, but I will warn you that it's a bit pricey and the skeins are a bit short*. And maybe it's just me but winding it with the swift and ball winder nearly made me insane - the stuff is finer than it seems I guess, and the winder really wanted to make a mess of it. (No, I've never had trouble with winding before.)

*This post is officially amended - Mary Heather tells me I was reading the band wrong! It's not the number of yards; it's the number of yards PER OUNCE, then a handwritten number for how many ounces. Duh. Time to refigure....

You're knitting with WHAT now?

It's BAMBOO!

Yep, for real. And no picture can convey how super-soft and fancy this stuff is. It's got a silky shine to it but it's not silk - very cool.

Now I have to figure out what to make with it.

Here's my swatch - it's a little more than 5 stitches to the inch on a size 6 needle in stockinette, but as you can see it's much different with other stitches.



Stockinette looks fine, seed stitch is lost, and ribbing is also okay, but K2 P2 is better looking than K1 P1.



Notice my lovely KNIT CAST ON - it makes the cutest squiggles at the bottom edge!

All right, all right

Okay so here's the photos

Realizing what a tease that last post was, I screwed up the courage to snap some pics of this thing on me. Just don't laugh too hard looking at them.






You can see the neat yarn and the fancy stitch - and also the horrible horrible fit. The shot of the back doesn't show how low it really hangs - in fact it comes almost to my waist when I'm just standing up (not contorting with a camera).

Interestingly, I like that bare back thing, just not for me.

So all right, Knit Community - can it be salvaged? Since it's two yarns together I REALLY don't want to have to rip the whole thing out....

Crappity Crap

Boy nothing like a resounding failure to bring you down from a nice knitting high.

Last week I got these two awesome yarns at UNWIND and figured I would whip out a nice and easy tank top with them and be wearing the thing within a week. The yarn was pretty expensive but hey I'm no novice, right? This project should be a done deal.

Like a good girl, I dutifully did a gauge swatch, and determined my gauge was about 4.5 - 4.75 stitches per inch on Size 6 needles. That's about average for what I've been doing lately, so I just did some quick math and cast on for the bottom circumference.

Well you know how once you're into something it just doesn't look right? Since the yarn is shiny ribbon I decided to do a snappy stitch instead of just stockinette (although that was what I swatched in). About 4 inches up from the bottom I changed to two rows stockinette, then one row knit, YO, knit, YO for the whole row. The next row of course was knit, drop the extra, knit, drop the extra.

Do I have to spell out what ended up happening? Even with some pretty major decreasing at the waist this thing is MONSTROUSLY BIG. So big I'm ashamed to take a picture of it on.

Instead of being a tank top, when I put it on it's more of a very low cut minidress - for a woman twice as big around as me! If I get the nerve I will post pictures, but right now it's just too humiliating.

I am of course open to all suggestions on how to salvage this garment. I wouldn't mind if it were a dress really - but I have to do something to fill in the upper front and back - right now the back is a very saucy dip to well below my bra line and the front is four inches too low too.

Aaargh!