Hello Knitty

Contrary to what it may seem by my absence, I have not fallen into a bottomless pit or been abducted by aliens, nor am I on the run from a yarn mafia.

I wish I could say that our home buying process is going smoothly, but at this point it isn’t going at all. The house we were buying fell through because the owner is a big cranky pants who wanted us to play by his rules and his rules only. So we’re back to looking, which is not a good place for me to be. I tend to get a wee bit obsessive compulsive about these things, and by a wee bit I mean completely and totally.

I’ll post about my current work-in-progress soon.

My modified Anthropologie-Inspired Caplet is done!

I love it. I wore it to work today and it just seems like such a me thing to wear. I might have already bought yarn for a second one.

There were a lot of modifications from the original pattern. Obviously the length of the body and the sleeves, but also everything was measured perfectly to fit me so there were extra stitches here and there, I went with a different gauge and different needles (oh boy did I use different needles. I’ll explain in a sec), I only did ribbing on the collar and so on.

I’m fairly certain that I used size 9 needles for the body. But somewhere between the bind off of it and the start of the first sleeve I somehow ended up with a size 8 and a size 10, which I didn’t notice until I was picking up the stitches for the second sleeve. I wasn’t about to go back and frog an entire sleeve, and it didn’t look any different, so I continued, knitting the second sleeve in the same way. An 8 and a 10 even out to a 9, right?

I learned a valuable lesson making this capigan. After I had finished the body I decided I wanted to go back and take about an inch away from the collar. I figured it would be the same as ripping stitches from the bottom up, but let me tell you it is one great big giant pain in the ass. I managed to get the collar the way I wanted it, but not without a lot of effort.

I think it was worth it though!

This morning I finished the cardigan I was working on, but that can wait until tomorrow. Today is for something very special. Today is something very big.

One hour ago, Nathan and I signed the paperwork on our first house.

If everything goes according to plan, we will be moving in on or near Oct. 15. In the mean time we have a lot of packing and cleaning to do, and I’m going on vacation at the beginning of next month. So if things are quiet around here over the next couple months, you know why. But we’ll get moved in and settled, and then the snow will start to fall, and long months of nothing but knitting will more than make up for it.

Soon I’ll take more pictures and tell you more about it. Our home.

Today I received my August shipment of yarn from the Sundara Seasons Club.

Mahogany over Marmalade

100% silk lace, 1000 yards

Honeyed Hibiscus

100% silk lace, 1000 yards

Midnight Meadows

Merino wool, 350 yards

Crushed Cherries

100% silk lace, 1000 yards

I’m not sure what I’m going to any of them yet, but they are very pretty. Crushed cherries was especially hard to photograph.

Remember last week how I said my husband and I were looking to rent a house? Well, somehow that has evolved into us putting an offer in to buy a home. We’re excited. We’re scared. The bid went in Sunday night, and we should hear something back by 5 p.m. tomorrow. Cross all your fingers for us!

My caplet turned cardigan is coming along smoothly. The body is finished and I’m halfway done with one sleeve.

It should take me only a few more hours to finish. And then I’ve got to get going on socks for my sister!