calmer, take me away!



plain, buttoned version of Ava from Rowan #34 in Calmer (color Calmer)

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After sewing on 13 tiny buttons and weaving in about a bazillion ends, I finished ava, just in time for the Olympic closing ceremonies tonight. My summer olympic finishing marathon is complete. And she gets the gold!

On to ava details. I love the fact that it's a light cardigan with really good waist shaping. Boxy cardigan + me = no way. And I so enjoyed using the Rowan Calmer. It's soft to work with and feels heavenly on. The gauge was a little different from the wool cotton that the pattern called for, but I was able to use the numbers from a different size to adjust. Still the pattern is a little weird. The sleeves as written were incredibly long (Nora mentioned that she had the same problem when working on her ava). I ripped them back and reknit them, leaving out a few increases near the top. That seemed to do the trick.

I really like this cardigan. I think I'll get a lot of wear out of it. I'm always chilly and with some basic, goes-with-everything cardis like this one, I'll be able to bring one with me all the time. I must admit to having cardigan issues - I don't really understand when to wear them and am always feeling like they're just light jackets and I should take them off when I get inside somewhere. But I'm hoping that a lighter, more feminine cardi like ava will change that. I can bring it with me as a light jacket, simply wear it like a sweater, or layer it on even cooler days. With ava, the cardi raye, and my paris loop poncho, I'll be looking forward to sweater weather!

Keeping on track for my Herculean Effort at finishing four projects during the Olympics, I hereby annouce the triumphant return of ava!

Remember how wrong she went a while back? Well, I ripped and reknit the first sleeve, finished the second sleeve, sewed them both in, slipped them on and they're just right now. I've got button bands and buttons left to do and she's all done. I think I can, I think I can, I think I can...

Doesn't ava's first sleeve look a little long to you??

uh oh.

Oh yeah, all the way down to the first knuckle on my fingers. So, out it goes. I'll be ripping back to the last increase to shorten it (and narrow it - as long as I'm ripping...). Luckily, I have yet to start the second sleeve, so I can just knit it once to match this one. Once again, sew-as-you-go saves the day! Still, I hate taking out seams and reknitting. Aaaargh!

To cheer myself up, I started another piece of the fiesta tea set. Here's the sugar bowl blocking.

any UVa fans out there?

Linen drape therapy is over. I now have a little callus on my middle finger from holding the tension on the yarn. So, it's back to ava. Oh how lovely calmer feels again after all that Sugar n Cream on US3's and linen drape on my callused finger.

First sleeve underway.

Here's ava - fronts and back - sewn together. It's an avavest, if you will.

Now to make some sleeves. What me knit?

When one of my boys drops something or can't get something that he wants, he says "oh no, what'da gonna dooooo?" I blame Boots the Monkey for modeling this behavior. But I found myself saying this more than once in the last few days whenever I thought of working on my cardi raye. Still no green yarn - oh no, what'da gonna doooo?

I've resorted to knitting ava non-stop. She's coming along nicely. The back and one of the front panels are done.

Not that I'm not enjoying ava, but I just keep thinking that Dora would have some green yarn in that backpack of hers!

I was feeling well enough yesterday for some simple straight knitting, so I worked a little on my Ava cardigan. The unfinished back was downstairs, whereas I and the kleenex were upstairs, so I just started another piece, one of the front panels.

Calmer is such a wonderful yarn to knit with - perfect for recouperative knitting. In fact, I think the Calmer's done more for me so far than all the Robitussin, Tylenol and Afrin put together.

While I was waiting for my yarn from the Netherlands that I need to knit the last piece of the cardi raye, I started sewing the other pieces together. Just a few inches seamed so far, but enough to get me really psyched about finally finishing this sweater!

We recall that in another still-no-yarn moment of weakness, I put the frankensweater aside and started Ava. Although I love the Calmer yarn, I still haven't gotten much further than the armholes on the back. I guess my eyes were bigger than my needles!

And in the meantime, the knitalongs went rolling on. Shannon, Colleen, Kathleen, and Larissa all finished fabulous spring fling projects. There are at least THREE linen drape projects already well underway (Anne's, Becky's, and Amy's). And because my swatch for the Vintage Knits lacy ribbed top did not come out looking anywhere near as good as Anne's or Hope's, I've changed my mind about what pattern I want to make with my linen drape. Now I'm thinking maybe this one?

Thank goodness my yarn is here. Who knows what other trouble I could have gotten myself into!

After a little spring reorganization of the handknits and the stash, it became suddenly clear to me that I'm in a real blue phase right now. So far this year I've completed my blue sweater, blue sweatpants, my beautiful blue Banff, and have just started the frankensweater in blue Summer Tweed. And the future projects line up this way:

Cornflower blue Linen Drape, baby boy blue Calmer, and blue and green Sugar 'n' Cream! The Linen Drape is for the Vintage Knits top I keep talking about by can't seem to start. The Sugar 'n' Cream is destined to become a fun little granny square project. And the blue Calmer? Ooooh, the blue Calmer. Well, I've already started that one.

The very first beginnings of Ava from Rowan #34. I'm making the plain, buttoned version (there's a picture of the designer Louisa Harding wearing it in the designer bio section of the magazine). It seems like everyone is knitting a classic era movie star these days. There's Audrey, Kate, and now Marilyn. So, I just had to knit up a movie star of my own, don't you know!