Unraveled Wednesday, July 12

Geez lousie, guys, where is July going?! I can’t believe we’re almost halfway through the month!

I also can’t believe I’ve been been working on a project for two weeks that I haven’t shared here yet!  I’m well on my way on a Vatsland Jumper, designed by Ella Gordon:

Since the sweater’s knit from the bottom up, I started with the sleeves.  In theory, I love this idea for lots of reasons. A sleeve is a good size for a circular gauge swatch.  And if you tend to lose steam on sleeves, getting stuck on sleeve island, as I’ve heard it called, it’s great to get them out of the way first thing: once the body’s done–usually a big bulf of the knitting–the momentum is all in your favor for a quick finish!

In practice, sleeve knitting (for me at least) sucks a little joy out of that new project excitement.  I mean, it’s hard to be excited about sleeves.  But after working on them here and there, I had them finished by last weekend and got to move on to the fun part:

The combination of simple lace and stripes in colors that I adore made this part a joy to knit … in fact, I flew through it in a day!

The only thing that slowed me up was figuring out what to do about the many color changes — each color repeats every six rows, and I was worried it might be too bulky to be carrying four colors up over those sorts of distances.  At first, I figured my only option was to snip each color and rejoin.  But after asking for some help over on Instagram, I tried something new to me … I spliced each new color in, measuring it out so that the color change happened just where the new row started.  That made me feel pretty fancy.

Pre and post splicing!

I’m loving this pattern, and knitting with Brooklyn Tweed Shelter (which I broke down and bought at LYS Wollhaus — more on that soon.)  We’ve had house guests all week, which, coupled with some late nights at work, has curtailed the knitting time a bit. But my guess is it won’t be too long before I have this lovely off the needles!

On the reading front, I finally finished Consider the Fork.  If you like cooking and like history, I’d definitely recommend it.  It’s a really engaging account of technology, food, and the kitchen, and how that has changed–and stayed the same–over time. I haven’t started a new book yet, but I have been listening to Ponzi Supernova over on Audible.  I’m about halfway through, and it’s an absolutely fascinating investigation into Bernie Madoff and the financial sector — I’d definitely recommend it!

Linking up with As Kat Knits for Unraveled Wednesday — go see what others are up to this week!