I Want To Wear A Starbucks Gift Bag

I saw this gift bag at Starbucks before the holidays and I fell in love it the buttons.  My photo there isn't very good quality so you will have to take my word on it - the buttons are pretty cool.

As the winter progressed, I was working on a sweet little short-sleeved, swingy cardigan for the Girl.  It is yellow with red buttons (see crap photo below):

I started thinking it would be sweet to make it in red with yellow button for me (even though I will have to do some math since this pattern is for kids only and, if you have read any of my posts about the Urban Aran, you know that isn't my strong suit . . . ).  Then, I couldn't stop thinking about the buttons from the Starbucks gift bags.  But no way was I going to spend that much on buttons.  From a gift bag.

Flash forward to after the holidays, sale area of Starbucks.  Giant stack of gift bags - 50% off.  I buy three.  Now I have my buttons.  I have the yarn too.  But now I want to incorporate the green from the gift bag into the design somehow.  I even have yarn that is the right color . . . this is getting crazy.  I want a sweater that looks like a holiday gift bag from a coffee shop.

I should be casting on this weekend - for real (not like the Urban Aran pipe dream/mistake).  So we shall see how it works out!

Greetings and Ribbit

I don't have much to say.  I haven't been to into blogging lately.  I have been very into knitting , thinking about knitting, and looking at knitting related things on ravelry!

I am overwhelming myself with knitting projects and ideas (as usual) and my brain is so swimming with thoughts and ideas that I have been making tons of mistakes - from gauge being waaay off on multiple projects, to just plain old sloppiness and missing stitches, etc. on very simple patterns.

Must focus.  FOCUS.

Hey - right here - look here - FOCUS.

Better.

Oh - and happy new year!

Photo credit: Blog*Bittersweet*Blog

Perils of Urban Planning, Part II

And then (pause for dramatic effect) the pattern arrived Monday night. And my hopes and dreams were abandoned.  The gauge for the pattern as written is 15 stitches and 20 rows over 4 inches and the Rowan Denim is 20 stitches and 24 (shrinking to 32) rows over 4 inches.  This would bring the sweater in at a trim 33" which is somewhere between 8" and 10" bigger around than I would want it to be for the Boy. No way no how, based on the schematic, will this going to be the cake walk I had happily lead myself down the primrose path into believing it would be.

WAH! WAH! WAH!

OK.  Enough.  Dry your tears and get it together, Woman.

Now I really have to work if I want this to become a reality. And I do want this sweater to exist in the real world. I desperately want to be one of those knitters who can create what the mind's eye sees.  DESperately.

So to work.

First, what makes the Urban Aran so great looking?  What elements need to be reproduced to at least elude to the Urban Aran?  Obviously an intricate center cable that can be easily divided into a cardigan and also worked up the sleeves.  The longer arms and slim cut.  Wide ribbing.  And those nifty diagonal cables.  I think the diagonals are really where it is at for this sweater.

So these are the elements I need to be able to incorporate into a sweater for the Boy to end up with something reminiscent of the Urban Aran Cardigan in Denim for a size 4T. To start, I found, at my local library through inter-library loan, the Rowan Junior book. There are two possible starting points for me here in terms of zip-up cardigans - one with cables on either side of zipper and one written for Denim, which will help take some of the math out of the thing for me.

I also found pattern on knitty.com which could offer me something to work with - the gauge for the "boy" version of the sweater is the pre-washed gauge for the Denim and the "girl" version gauge is the post-washing gauge.  This is a ribbed zipper cardigan.  I see possibilities (which is better, I would imagine, than seeing dead people.  At least in this context.).  Also, this pattern offers me the (probably false) hope that my original plan to just knit the Urban Aran as written with the smaller yarn without having to do any math since the chest on the finished 4T size is 34" (and if I did the calculation correctly, the Urban Aran would be 33" as written in the Denim).

Also, my friend Mary suggested graphing the whole thing on knitter's graph paper.  So I've printed out a bunch of pages at a 1/1 scale and once I have read the three or four patterns and processed the information, I can start graphing!

More to come.

Read Part I of this adventure here.  Read the next installment here.

I Won! I Won! (or The Perils of Urban Planning)

I have been thinking about knitting with Rowan Denim for quite awhile. Maybe too much Mason-Dixon? Maybe the upcoming Smurf movie? I don't really know for sure. I have been thinking about an Aran sweater for the Boy. I have been thinking an awful lot about Jared Flood's Urban Aran Cardigan. And all this thinking has lead me to dream of how cool that cardi would look in the Denim on my Boy. So I've been reading a bit about the Denim on ravelry and Mason-Dixon which in turn lead me to an amazing looking adaptation of a man's sweater into a boy's sweater using the Denim. Now I am thinking, "I can actually do this."

So in my fully deluded state, I hunted down the pattern and ordered it from a shop in western New York.  And then, knowing I can't get the Denim locally, I started looking for a good deal online. This search ultimately yielded (the most reasonably priced) fruit on eBay. This weekend I was compelled to place a (winning) bid on 10 skeins of the Denim in Nashville. And, seeing as how I was the sole bidder, I won! I won! I won! The price was good, the shipping was free, and it is on its way to me now from the U.K.

It is on! Toddler Urban Aran Cardigan here we come!

To be continued . . .

Photo credit: Breibeest via Flickr