fishie’s aquarium

Finally found my camera battery charger so I was able to take some pictures of my finished sweater. I finished this a week and a half ago, I think?

The back. You can see the scoopy-hem of the bottom pretty well in this picture.

The sleeve caps are worked in short rows. I’d never really done these before.
The right sleeve was fine. But the left sleeve…

Friends don’t let friends do short rows drunk.

Detail of the diamond-lace pattern

All done!

Item: Sahara Sweater, FIRST SWEATER EVER
Pattern: From Stitch Diva
Needles: Body: 24″ size 6 circs, Sleeves: 16″ size 6 for main sleeve, 16″ size 4 for lace detail. Rest of the lace detail was 24″ size 4s
Yarn: 5 skeins Tahki Cotton Classic in Khaki Green and 1 skein Karabella Glimmer in Green/Gold
Time to Complete: About 2 months, on and off
Unusual Knitting Location(s): Knit almost entirely at work or in the passenger seat of a car. Also in Kate’s hospital room after she got her appendix removed
New Skillz: Short rows, lace knitting, picking up stitches, provisional cast-on, cable cast-on, perfected my M1L and M1R increases (still hate them), mattress stitch, LOOSE bind-off (tee hee), perfected my technique joining two skeins of yarn
Notes: There are definitely some areas where I could have done better, but considering how much I learned while knitting this, I think I did pretty damn good. I would definitely knit this again, and I may have to anyway, with longer sleeves. My one concern is that the yarn in the lace edging will be a little itchy.

More or less finished.

I’ve got some of the trim yarn left, so I’m thinking of finding a way to make a skirt using the leaf pattern from this scarf to go with the sweater.

I’ve still got loose ends to tie up (lolz) but other than that and maybe some sleeve blocking, it’s done.

So I’ve been needing SOME kind of motivation to get knitting again.
I bought lots of yummy yarn for an even yummier shirt, but it’s still not enough to get me going.

Before Chris embarked on a long journey to California leaving me all to my lonesome, I wanted to go yarn shopping so I’d have something to keep me occupied in his absence. I knew what I wanted to make (see yummy shirt link above) but I didn’t have the materials to make it. There’s a yarn store within walking distance of the house, and I’d never been there before, so there we went. It being close and a nice day, we went for a walk, and Chris took Athena. For those of you who don’t know, this is Athena with me as a size comparison:

So we’re walking walking walking. And I’m wearing my flip flops because pfft like I wear real shoes anymore, and we’re walking walking walking. Athena likes to walk RIGHT in front of Chris, which is inconvenient since the leash is about the length of her body. I was walking behind Chris at one point in a cross walk because other people were crossing the other direction, and I was walking too close behind Chris and OW! my toe!! The back of his shoe hit my left big toenail as he was lifting up his foot. I didn’t pay too much mind right away since he’s done stuff like that before, and at this point my feet are getting used to being tortured. I mean, the nasty black part of my right toenail just fell off, so why should I try having normal looking toenails?
After we’ve crossed, my feet are REALLY hurting, and I look down. And see this:

Not one, but THREE toenails were damaged in the incident. Normally my big toenail just gets bent a little. No, Chris tore it RIGHT OFF. Luckily I had a napkin in my bag, so I had something to wrap around my GUSHING toe when I wandered around the yarn store and bought

I spent $127 on knitting paraphenalia. But I bought four sets of circular needles, so the yarn wasn’t actually THAT expensive, and I joined their $10 annual fee club deal, where after I spend $250, I get $25 of store credit. $250 isn’t a whole lot of stuff, and I’m halfway there already after one purchase.