The knitting front hasn’t been nearly as productive as I’d like. Babywrangling has kept me very busy this summer. However, I managed to not fall asleep immediately upon getting the kiddo to bed enough times to finish my Liesl:

Not without a lot of headaches, however. First of all, I hated the yarn. Hated! The Yarn! It was truly terrible. I wanted a cotton sweater to wear over summer dresses, which makes sense except for the fact that I hate knitting with cotton. Hate it! I don’t know why I was incapable for remembering this until it was too late.

Speaking of problems noticed too late, you’ll notice the neckline of my Liesl is different than the pattern. While I think the pattern mod is pretty and it definitely came out looking a lot better than I thought it would, I didn’t go into the knitting process planning for it. Oh, no. What actually happened is that I made a mistake lining up the pattern stitches in the yoke of the sweater and I didn’t notice it until i was 3/4ths of the way done.

Had I been knitting with a yarn that didn’t make me hate life, I would have frogged the whole thing and started again. However, I decided I wasn’t going to do any more cotton knitting than absolutely necessary, and I had COME TOO FAR to turn back at that point. I finished the sweater, and let the mistake lie.

I tried to be okay with the sweater at that point. Really, if you weren’t a Ysolda fan you probably wouldn’t have noticed the issue. It was small. However, it was there, and I am far too anal retentive for my own good.

So. Sweater surgery. I threaded a yarn needle with fingering weight junk yarn and went back and inserted a lifeline through a plain knit row between pattern repeats, just below the mistake in the yoke. And then, I cut off the yoke entirely. With a big pair of scissors. I was determined. The yoke needed to die. it was a gory, messy process, with little bits of cotton yarn flying everywhere.

With the yoke finally gone and all the residual yarn bits removed, I picked up the stitches from my lifeline and added a plain 5 row garter stitch neckline. I added the eyelet row in the middle both as a decorative element and so I could adjust the size of the neckline into something that wouldn’t slide off my shoulders.

Isn’t it a beautiful sweater? I’m totally into it:

The weather turned chilly before I got a chance to wear it, but I’m looking forward to enjoying it next summer.

Here’s the other reason I haven’t been very productive lately:

I’ve got a cashew on the way! Well, I’ve got another ultrasound in two weeks, at which point I’m hoping to see something more baby-like and less bean-shaped. We’re looking forward to a fully cooked human arriving sometime in early March.

In the meantime, I’m back to soaker knitting, because two little ones in diapers at the same time is a lot of diapering.

I’m doing that one in Cascade Ecological Wool, which is a yarn I absolutely love but I’m not sure it’s bulky enough for what I want in a soaker fabric. It looks very bulky in the skein but it’s light and airy. I want to do a pair of longies in the purple Eco+ I have, but I’m thinking I might knit them with the yarn held double. I’ve gotten down to the body of that soaker since I took the above photo, and I’m using size 5 needles to get the fabric density I’m looking for.

I’m also working on the epic blanket of mindless knitting here and there, but it’s sort of in the background right now. I like working on it when I’m too tired to do anything requiring thought.

I’m hoping to squeeze in a pair of Veyla mitts at some point soon. I bought some sexy sexy baby alpaca + silk yarn for them on Wednesday:

I don’t have any buttons yet but I’m having a fun time thinking about them. I love buttons.

Oh, one more thing: I found a better photo of the Emporio Armani dress I drooled over in my last post:

I love it. And someday, twenty years from now, I will totally knit myself a cabled dress. In the meantime, I was thinking it might be cool to try to knit one for the kiddo. She’s much smaller than me and requires much less shaping.

Anyhow, that’s it for me. I hope to update this a bit more frequently in the future, but with mommy-type responsibilities it might be a while.

It’s from the Emporio Armani Fall 2009 Ready-to-Wear collection and I want it.  I want it bad.  That being said, I’m not sure how to construct the damn thing.  Lookie here at this close up of Anna Arendshorst modeling it:

I thought those swirly things were cables, but apparently they’re braided bands of 1×1 ribbing that are somehow sewn together, with triangles of plain knit fabric filling out the body.

Hot damn.  I still want one.  I’d knit one long enough to wear in public, or I’d knit a short one like this and wear it with pants.  I wonder if it has sleeves or straps, and what they look like.   Regardless, I would totally wear the F out of that dress.

Oh, dress.  You are so dead sexy.  Be mine.

In other, knitting-centric news, I plan to cast on a Liesel bolero later today, in the misguided hopes of finishing it in time for the Lamb’s christening on Sunday.   (I have a wearable dress for the occasion, but nothing seasonally-appropriate to wear over it.)