Weekend Wrap up

This week seems less product knitting wise but that is probably since I started several projects this week.

My only FO is a dog sweater for Kiwi one of our dog breeder's dogs.

I used STR heavyweight in Alina and Spinel. The solid is Spinel and the varigated is Alina. I used the fibernachi number series to do the striping. I missed up in my row count. For some reason I thought the dog was a 28 inch doxie. I was inspired to knit this stripe series when listening to Brenda Dane on Caston.

This is my first project with STR. I am in love. I like the colors and I like the feel of the yarn. I can't wait to make socks from this yarn. They will be so delish.

You will probably see many more dog sweaters of this basic structure since I am making several commission dog sweaters for our breeders.






This here is Sheldon the Turtle of the famous Knitty.com. This will be for my youngest nephew who is turning 1 at the end of the month. I dragged my feet to start this because the pattern is 7 pages long. Once I got it start it flew through my fingers. I have two more legs and his shell left. You can check out other people adaptations at sheldon's blog.

I am going to embroider the eyes on so that they stay and are less of a chocking habit.

This swatch is of the Indigo Ripple from the Spring Interweave. I got gauge before washing the Knit Picks Cotlin that I decided to use. Upon swatching for the lace section I discovered a mistake in the pattern. I emailed Kat Coyle the designer. She sent me the correction and helped me understand things better by sending me a close-up of the lace. Plus stupidly I also misread the psso as ssk and was getting some bizare other lace pattern, but when i charted it out things looked weird. After much head hitting and frogging of the lace, I started again and slowly read the pattern and thus discovered my mistake. I am so excited to start knitting, but first I want to finish Sheldon.


Now since have have had more than 20 hits on my blog looking for a review on Cotlin, I will do my best. The yarn knits up to 20st and 29 rows in a 4 in square on US 6 dpn bamboo needles. The yarn has a crisp hand that feels nice and cool for those perfect summer garments. Once washed the swatch grew width wise and shrunk only slightly in row count, washed it became 18.5 st by 30 rows. It might have been more stable at a tighter gauge, but I did not try it.

This yarn will not take kindly to agressive frogging. The light twist in the yarn makes the fibers separate after frogging a section multiple times.

Once knit up the fabric has lovely drape and flow. I can't wait to have a completed garment out of this summery yarn.