The Thirteen Dollar Sweater

I finished the Garter Yoke Cardi in a day over a month. Although that month was February, so technically I finished in 29 days which is less than a month for every month except February. Point is, this was by far the fastest knit for a sweater.

It was also the cheapest! I used Lion Brand's Fishermen's Wool. It wouldn't be considered a high end yarn, but it's warm and I have read that it tends to soften up with several washings. The best part is that it was $6.40 a skein with a coupon and I only needed 2 skeins. Can't beat that! I did spend an extra $5 for the buttons (with a coupon of course!), but I had store credit, so I don't really count that as part of the cost.

The sweater is a perfect fit, which is one of the benefits of making your own clothes. My one minor criticism is that it ripples a little where the buttons are, but I was assured that it doesn't stand out too much because of the color of the yarn. I can deal with a little rippling on the button band (although I would like to learn how to avoid this) if it means the sweater isn't baggy.

It has been really rainy and cold here, so it is the perfect weather for a nice cozy sweater.

Quick Knit

As I try to finish up my cardigan, I felt that I needed a quick knit. I also have a baby shower to attend next month. I made a baby blanket already, but figured I might add some other knitted things to the gift. I finished this bib:



The pattern is Quacking Up and I was able to use some cotton yarn from my stash. There are several other bib patterns on the Down Cloverlaine blog and I would definitely like to make some more. So cute, quick, and easy.

In non-knitting news, my job has been going well. Part of my job entails meeting with families and collecting some sample work. I usually meet families where there is free wifi so that I can work in between appointments. I won't say where I was, but I bought this sandwich for over $8 (no drink) and was super disappointed:



Seriously!?! And the bag of chips...are you kidding me. You may not get the full effect of how few chips there are so I dumped them out and took a picture before eating a single chip.



I don't even like potato chips that much and I was sad about this. Maybe this is my American portion size crazy talk, but I know I could get more sandwich for less money elsewhere. Oh well. Live and learn. The next time I had a meeting there during lunch I got a clam chowder bread bowl. It was much more filling and less expensive, so I guess that's the way to go.

One last picture that I must include. DH and I sometimes have what we call "date night," which some times means going out and other times means watching a movie at home and laying on the couch. Apparently the cats felt that they were in need of a date night as well.



It actually cracked me up because they don't lay like this often, if ever.

Baking and Recreating

I woke up this morning and felt like making something different for breakfast. On the weekends, DH and I usually make a hot breakfast as opposed to our usual cereal that we eat during the week. This morning I woke up early while he was still sleeping I baked scones.



They turned out pretty good and it's kind of fun to rediscover what you can create with some simple ingredients most of us already have on hand.

As for the recreating...I started the September Sweater in January and I finished one sleeve (I decided to make it long sleeved):



That's as far as I got. I love the way this sweater looks and I really wanted to own it. After getting this far, I decided that it had become a "dreaded knit." I love the way cables look and I can handle knitting them, but I think this sweater had too many cables throughout the whole thing and I just decided I didn't want to make myself finish it. Also, I felt like the cables got lost in the yarn that I chose for this project. I should have used a solid color yarn. I really wanted to complete another sweater for myself and this wasn't the way to do it. It just took far too much concentration.

So I started something EXTREMELY simple. This was better for me because I could mindlessly work on it while watching TV or while talking at knit night. I wasn't quite ready to frog the sleeve I had finished on the September Sweater, so I used the rest of the ball of yarn to start the Garter Yoke Cardi. Finally I came to the point where I needed to use the yarn from the first sweater so I am knitting straight off of that.



This way it feels less like frogging and more like recreating.