Fresh air will do you good

I always come home from a trip to Grandma's house with lots of inspiration and a renewed creative bent, and this time was no exception. I always take a knitting or craft project because I actually have time to sit and knit/craft there. I took some yarn with the intent of making a smal Aran-type cable knit sweater. In the meantime, I took a trip to grandma's local yarn store, which is quite a bit nicer than anything I have near me. I picked up two more skeins of my favorite Cotton Fleece yarn (by Brown Sheep). I also picked up a new book of baby sweaters, and found lots of new ideas! I had been using the same 2 patterns over and over. While they're great patterns, it gets a little boring after awhile. I've set aside the Aran pattern and have started one from the new book I got.

The new pattern that I just started appeals to the math teacher in me. The sweater is made of two hexagons sewn strategically in a few places. There's also a set of pants that are an octagon also sewn very smartly. I don't entirely understand yet, but it looks cool so I hope that it all comes together in the end. In the meantime, I'm finding that I need to get longer needles! There are a lot of stitches in these hexagons and octagons. You can kinda see the ridges separating the 8 panels in the picture. One edge will be the front waist, the opposite edge will be the back waist. From there, well, I'll figure it out when I get there.

Before leaving for Wisconsin, I raided my "current project" pin and found that I had been more prodcutive recently than I thought...I found 3 finished sweaters that only needed some final finishing. The yellow sweater is from my favorite pattern by Elizabeth Zimmerman. In talking to the lady at the yarn store, she offered me $0.10/yard in merchandise to knit up a pattern of this sweater and send it to them. It turns out that it would only be about $30 for a few days work (and that doesn't take the cost of the yarn into account to begin with). So I'd earn about $14 for 8-10 hours of work. But I just keep cranking these things out, so perhaps I'll take her up on it. I could use some new needles!

The pink sweater is made from the "Wonderful Wallaby" pattern. I kept telling my mom how nicely and easily it knits up, so I talked her into buying a pattern and some yarn. By the time we got back to Cleveland, she already had most of the body of the sweater done. She hadn't knit in years, so it was fun to see how much she was enjoying knitting and how easily it was all coming together for her. (note - I couldn't get the picture of the pink sweater to upload for some reason....)

The brown sweater (which I may have posted before) is based on the same pattern as the yellow sweater. I just switched the texture for a color pattern. It worked out nicely. (note - brown one not uploading either. I'll try again later...)