Studio Marlowe

I’m pretty excited about the way this Habu pullover is developing:

Pretty cool, right?  I really wanted to keep this piece simple and streamlined, with just the one dramatic detail of a large shawl collar (still in progress).

After the collar, the final decision is how long to make the sleeves.  I had originally planned 3/4 length, but now that I’ve tried it on I’m really liking the idea of keeping the sleeves on the short side.  Of course, it’s possible the decision will be made for me–since the collar is such a yarn eater I may be forced to go with short sleeves in the interest of economy.  Either way, I should have some new clothes soon!

Celia spent the better part of last weekend (and early this week) blocking on my living room carpet.  So now she’s ready for a little test run on an actual body:

Like it?  I do still need to figure out the closure thing, although I’m leaning pretty heavily towards hook and eye–I think a zipper would probably ruin the effect.  Although I would also be open to buttons, assuming the “right” ones can be found.

Tomatoes in their infancy:

Although there isn’t much call for him to use it these days, my father enjoys trying to keep up with his French, and we sometimes have rather short little French exchanges to “practice”.  So, in honor of my father’s efforts at maintaining a level of bilingualism, all posts related to his socks will be titled in French.  If I feel especially ambitious I may manage an entire blog post in French as a finale, but only if any actual French speakers reading this blog promise not to laugh first.

And after that rather lengthy and only moderately relevant preamble, the beginnings of the first sock:

It is, of course, toe-up.

I’m now a solid few inches past the underarm join on my Habu pullover (which needs a better name.  Thoughts?):

This “set-in” sleeve is working out pretty much just like I’d wanted it to.
I’ve been finding the Tsumugi silk really lovely to work with, it’s very soft and the tweedy nature of the yarn makes it visually very appealing as well.  The strand of merino is a good addition to the mix also, it’s resulting in a subtle mottled look in the knit fabric (I know “mottled” doesn’t always sound like the best adjective but in this instance I really do mean it in a positive context!).

This past Saturday I hied myself downtown and bought some new yarn:

Shibui sock yarn.  Yes, it is black (although believe it or not, there is some very subtle shade variation worked into it).  The plan is to make socks for my father, since his birthday is approaching in a little less than a month.  I couldn’t really see him wearing anything overly bright or variegated, so the black seemed like a good choice in that regard.  Of course, black is not the most fun to knit with and it is certainly hard to photograph.  But the primary goal is to make a nice gift for Dad, and black definitely was the most suitable option to that.  And for me, the lovely texture of the yarn will more than make up for the drawbacks of knitting with black.

We’ve been having heaps of rain (comparatively) here the past couple of weeks.  This morning I came out and discovered that in the wet, my peas had progressed from flower to fruit:

These are supposed to be shelling peas so there’s still a fair bit of growth to go.

And, the zucchini I planted a few weeks ago is starting to poke out:

I happened to notice today that there’s an error in the Manus gloves pattern.  The yarn called for is Jamieson’s Shetland Spindrift, which is a 100% wool yarn with 115 yard/25 g ball.  However, the pattern has it listed as 115 yards/50g ball.  Obviously if you’re just using the yarn called for it’s not a big deal (the number of balls/yardage used is still the same), but if you’re subbing yarns it could trip you up.

I’ll be getting a corrected PDF up later this evening.  In the meantime, I apologize if the error has caused confusion or project problems for anyone.

The Habu pullover is coming along:

Earlier I had blogged that this time I was crunching all the numbers (for all the sizes) before casting on.  Now I’m knitting strictly according to the “pattern” for my size and so far…it’s working!  Which on the one hand was not that surprising, and on the other hand is kind of magical.  I especially like how my sleeve set is working out, although the final verdict on that is going to have to wait until I hit the underarms.

Saturday afternoon I had some friends over to do a little Valentine’s day single girls baking.  Our objective: produce one of these.

We scaled the project down pretty immediately, however as suitable fondant proved difficult to find and I didn’t feel like making it from scratch.  So instead we just made a pile of cake truffles:

From start to finish the truffles alone wound up taking over 4 hours (they’re very easy, but there was a lot of sitting around drinking and waiting for things to chill in between steps) so it’s just as well that we ditched the box, no?  And the truffles by themselves are delicious!