Nothing and Everything is Working

I feel like the last month has been all about lessons learned and things breaking or otherwise not working.  I set out to fix some projects that had problems in September.  I worked and worked on two sweaters to fix the sleeves on one (the originals somehow made me look like a linebacker) and the whole top of another (the neck was too big, the armholes too deep, the shoulders too wide).  So in September, I merrily ripped these out so pleased with myself for deciding to fix them so I would wear them more.

While I was doing all of these (which all used US 5 needles), the finish on my Knit Picks nickel plated size 5 needles wore off.  They're sending me a new set of tips as I type.  I can't live without my 5s.

Well the first sweater (the one with the wonky sleeves) has less wonky sleeves, but I still feel like I didn't choose the right style.  They look much better, but I don't love them. 

Here was the before, somehow I don't have an after yet, probably because laying on a flat surface, they look the same (I really need to look into getting a tripod):








This is the sweater with the too big shoulders and the too wide neckline.  I've pretty much finished "fixing" it, but now it has new problems.  I need to rip out the crocheted edging and redo it and might need to rip out the shoulder seams again and add more length, but it needs to be blocked before I decide either of those.

This is what it looked like before (yes, that is an insane amount of yarn behind me, I was in a yarn shop - they have lots of yarn).  Right now, the sweater looks like a mess.  In removing the sleeves, I managed to cut the knitting on one of them.  I can easily graft it, but just one more thing that didn't really work as intended.  The keyhole doesn't quite look right and I'm not sure the armholes are deep enough.

These are Skew.  These socks hate me.  See that left one?  I knit it three times.  I only knit the right one once.  When I put them on (a tad of a struggle, even after about 5 modifications to the pattern), they seemed perfect.  Then I wore them for about an hour and a half.  I think that they STILL don't fit, either one.  I haven't blocked these yet either.  If they get 1/8" bigger, they will fit.  Given how things are going, they're not going to do that.

Now this, I'm reasonably happy with (I think the back looks pretty awesome, so I'm showing it off).  This is Forest Fiesta from the book knit, Swirl! by Sandra McIver.  I knit it in Malabrigo Rios.
















The only things that came out great in September were my spinning yarns.  Given that I've only been spinning since March, I'm exceedingly pleased with these:

This is Blue Faced Leicester in the Lucky Star colorway from Frabjous Fibers.  It turned out as a 3-ply light sport weight yarn.  It's some of the nicest dyed top I've spun so far.

This is the very first fiber I washed from raw fleece, carded, and spun.  It's a two-ply lace weight yarn, Cormo, from the Spinning Loft. 

It looked like this when I carded it (kind of a mess, but a fluffy mess).