FO: Shopping Tunic

Another Twinkle sweater. This was a real quickie! It only took about 3 nights of knitting to complete. Loved the design of this and the pattern was very clever. The sweater is knit in the round, in one piece, and then flipped inside out so that the purl side faces out. I finally got to use the Soft Chunky yarn that I had stalked since the book came out, and it was worth the wait. I am only sorry that I couldn't have waited to use it for the Best Friend Cardigan. It is so soft, drapey, cushy, in fabulous colors and decent yardage for the chunk. It has a lovely pearlescent sheen that makes it look as luxurious as it feels. Obviously, I like this sweater. It's the first Twinkle sweater that didn't have to grow on me before I wanted to wear it outside the house

I love the pockets.

Details: Shopping Tunic from Twinkle's Big City Knits. Used 3.25 skeins of Soft Chunky in "Urchin". I knit the xs size and lengthened both the body and the cowl by 2" each. If I hadn't added to the length by 4", I may not have needed to break into the 4th skein. The pattern actually calls for 7 skeins of the stuff, but I learned from this blogger's experience http://knitlit.blogspot.com/2007/03/twinkle-dust.html#links, that I could get away with 4 skeins. Thanks for saving me some $$$!

I got my spring/summer 07 Vogue Knitting and have fallen in love with this:

I'm such a sucker for knit dresses. Actually, I am a big fan of dresses and wear one almost every day. I really like to feel feminine, but I also find them comfortable and they make getting getting dressed for the day really easy- one piece and then you're done, a no-brainer. So I could see myself wearing it a lot. I would make it shorter since this would most likely be longer than knee length on a shorty like myself. I think the Filatura di Crosa "Zara" that i used for my capecho would be perfect for this, light and soft yet durable. I'm gonna swatch it up and see what happens!

FO: Best Friend Cardigan

So here's my finished Best Friend Cardigan, or as I like to call it, my Gorilla Smurf sweater, which is what I felt like when I first put it on. It didn't help that my two coworkers gave me the crazy look when I wore it to work on Friday. After that dose of humiliation, I felt like frogging it, but it is slowly growing on me. The chunky yarn and chubby seams make my shoulders about 4 inches broader, but maybe that's not such a bad thing.


Then, while my man was taking these photos, I remembered that I have the perfect belt for this. Voila! More feminine, less gorilla smurf, right? I think I just need to be careful about how I wear it, and try to keep the bottom half of my outfit as streamlined as possible, i.e. cigarette pants, skinny jeans, pencil skirt. I was wearing a poofy patterned skirt when I left the house on Friday, which may have been cause for my coworkers' befuddled looks.

I think I'm going to keep her!

Details: 6 skeins of Cascade's Lana Grande (double stranded) on size 19 circs. I had barely 1 foot of yarn left over after seaming. This was really quick and fun to make. I knit it up single stranded first, then decided I didn't like it, frogged the whole thing, and then knit it up again and it still took only about one week to complete. I got the jumbo buttons at Britex downtown.

I just picked up another 6 skeins of soft chunky at YarnPaperScissors in Burlingame. The owner bought way more colors and skeins than Imagiknit, which suprised me, because it is a much smaller store. I bought a nice yellow called "Canary" that I am going to knit the hoodie with. Yippee for quickee chunkees!

Now that I am starting to plan my cross country move, I 'm getting a little sentimental about San Francisco. Also, I have a good reason to finally buy this necklace that I have always coveted:

My diamond would be over San Francisco, of course.

I think I saw it about a year ago on daily candy, loved it, forgot about, and now I need it! They are available here http://www.stateofmine.com/ and you can get it customized for any state and city.

Twinkle Twinkle, NYC

I went by Imagiknit today with a hunch that Twinkle had landed, but it still hadn't arrived when I checked at noon. Well my hunch was correct, but it was only four hours premature. I got the call later in the afternoon, so I sped over so that I could get first dibs on colors. Unfortunately, they only ordered 4 skeins per color of the soft chunky, and only in about 6 colors. I can't blame them, it's not really a spring or summer weight yarn. I took home 4 skeins of Urchin, which I thought was black when I looked online, but is really a deep dark gorgeous purple.

There's my Soft Chunky, posing in front of the Best Friend Cardigan.

I really wanted to buy 6 skeins, so that I can make the groovy sweater dress or the hoodie. Would it be so bad if I bought skeins from another dyelot? I could be sneaky and use a separate dyelot for all the ribbing sections, or would that be too stripey and weird? After looking at the patterns again, I see that there aren't many that I can do with only 4 skeins, except for the Best Friend Cardigan, which I have already almost completed in Lana Grande.

My wool winder could hardly handle the Twinkle jumbo skeins.

I've got big news: my man just got his acceptance letter from Columbia University! We'll be moving to NYC this summer. It's going to be so hard to leave our beautiful apartment, my sweet job, my cute scooter that I go everywhere in, all of our nice furniture, not to mention our friends and San Francisco itself! I'm excited for the new adventure.

Holy crap! We're moving to NYC!

FO: Twiggy Tunic

Here's my finished Twiggy Tunic, with a disclaimer: my boyfriend took amazing pictures of this. I have to admit that it is really not very flattering, doesn't fit well, and is difficult to wear.

Details: I used Berroco Bling Bling yarn that I bought on closeout about a year ago. It is a cotton/acrylic blend with gold flecks. I knit the xs size on US 15 needles.

The fit is drapey and loose to the point where it actually slips off my shoulder, and could potentially completely fall off. I have tried to remedy this by attempting to shrink it in the washing machine in the hot cycle. No luck. This cotton sack is only going to get bigger, I'm afraid. The sleeves are especially big around my shoulder/bicep area. I know that a lot of people are concerned about the 22" finished measurement of this sweater, so let my experience soothe your fears. My 22" sweater stretched to about 36" and stayed there, which is unfortunate given my wimpy 29" bust.

I did enjoy knitting it, especially since it took about a week to complete. I still want to knit more from Twinkle's book, specifically the Best Friend Cardigan. I might pick up some chunky wool today, which seems sorta crazy given that it has been 80 degrees in San Francisco for the last four days.

*Update: On the craftster knitalong, someone suggested that I crochet a single chain inside the base of the neckline ribbing to pull in the color. This totally worked! I wore it to work on Friday, and I ran around all day without having to tug it back up onto my shoulders. Yay!