It’s not like I have nothing to show you. It’s just that my life has been kinda weird. While I was in NYC, I was so busy I didn’t have time to think, let alone blog. Now I have no structure, and I’ve noticed a tendency I have when I feel pressured about something to want to get that one thing done before I do anything else. Which totally blows multitasking. And totally explains the condition of my apartment (no, I’m not posting photos of that). So now I have to find a way to do a variety of things each day.

I have just uploaded 22 photos. This’ll take awhile to get through, folks! Here we go:

I knitted this sweater last year for my Dad. (Mom gave it back to me when in was NYC.) He had pancreatic cancer and passed away this past March. He was always cold, so I made him this sweater. I’d been thinking about making him a gansey for years, and, well, it was now or never, so I designed and knitted this in about 6 weeks. He got it mid-November.

A few details. I knitted this in the round, starting with the body from the bottom up. I started with a nice rolled-edge rib:

Obviously, I had to join extra balls of yarn when I got to the underarm and work the back and front on either side of the neckline separately. When the body was done, I cast on invisibly for the neck gusset/shoulder saddle, and worked that from the neckline to the armhole, catching a stitch — sometimes two — from the front and back body every other row.

Then I picked up around the the armhole, letting the body selvage stitches show on the outside. The lower half of the underarm gusset is knitted with the body; the upper half is knitted with the sleeves, worked downward to cuff. The cables on the shoulder saddle are continued down the center of the sleeve.

He liked v-necks, so that’s what this was. I wanted to carry the center cables around the neckline, which posed a difficulty in matching the patterns on either side of the saddle. To solve that, I mimicked the v-neck at the back:

Finished off the neckline and sleeves cuffs with Kitchener stitch rib so they matched the cast-on:

One day I’ll write up this pattern. Along with a few others.

My Mom also gave me some socks I’d made for Dad.

The brown ones on the left were the last pair I made, last Thanksgiving. They’re meant to be bedsocks, or lying around the house socks, they’re worsted weight and a bit thick to fit into shoes.

The other two pairs I made two years ago for Christmas, the year everybody in the family got socks. They both have ribbed cuffs (the blue ones also have a cable), and include a little trick I have for shaping cuffs: Hide shaping decreases in purl ribs (assuming you start from the top; make increases when working toe-up). That way the cuff can be roomy and comfortable at the top, without the ankle being baggy, but no shaping is visible. The knit ribs stay the same. Here’s an inside-out shot of the grey socks:

The blue ones were done toe-up, so I did increases, not decreases (this is also inside-out).

These both have short-row heels with a gusset for extra heel depth, but I didn’t photograph closeups of those. It’s just this: Before starting the short-row heel, increase about 8-10 stitches over twice as many rounds each side of the instep, do the short-row heel, then decrease away the extra instep stitches. Works the same way whether you knit top-down or toe-up.

Here’s the socks I’ve been working on in between other stuff (in other words, hardly ever):

Here’s a closeup of the cables:

And this is the inside, showing decreases.

Let’s see, what else we got here. Oh, yeah. Last year I made these for Mom:

She loves them, and says she gets compliments on them all the time. So my sister thought she’d do me a favor and see if some stores near her, in Berkeley, would be interested in carrying them! Sorry, people, I am not about to sit around knitting cell phone cozies until they’re coming out my ears. But Mom kept pushing, so I allowed as how maybe a kit for knitting your own cell phone cozy might be okay. She went on and on about how fabulous metallics are, and so I wound up getting some Henry’s Attic fingering weight rayon yarn from Catnip Yarns. It was white when I got it. Not anymore.

I dyed it to look like copper. Even put in a little verdigris green, see:

It was a closeout sale; I bought the last 3 cones. The other two will be silver and gold. Then I have to write up a pattern that will work with this stuff, figure out how much yarn it takes, skein off the appropriate amounts and make little packages. More about that when I get back to it!

I mentioned watching John Pitblado spin mohair bouclé at the FiberFest. I thought I’d try my hand at that, so I bought a pound of raw kid mohair (online somewhere, sorry, I don’t know where now), and Mom and I dyed it. She had a ball! So did I.

Of course, I had to scour it first, but I didn’t take pictures of that process. Or any “before” pictures of the clean locks, either. Just didn’t think of it. Next time!

As promised AGES ago: The fiber I got at the the FiberFest. Here’s the bombyx silk from Nancy Finn, three 2-ounce hanks:

And here’s the soy silk from Conjoined Creations:

And finally, this is a baby sweater I’m designing for use in a sweater finishing workshop, to be donated to Stitches From The Heart when completed. It’s going to be a little more complicated than the usual baby sweater, so it can be used for teaching finishing techniques likely to be needed on adult sweaters, like front button plackets and necklines, and set-in sleeves.

Speaking of sleeves, the piece at the top is meant to be a sleeve, but it’s WAY too big, as you can see below. Gotta rework that!

That oughta hold yiz for awhile!