HMF & HKF

It's Hand Made and Hand Knit Friday! What hand made pieces are you wearing today? To make up for skipped posts due to crazy holiday prep, I'm decked out with two hand made beauties today. Happy New Year!

HKF

It's Hand Knit Friday! Are you wearing hand knits today? The weather is beautiful today--sunny, a little breezy, and not too hot for hand knits. This sweater is one my favorites, Chimney Fire from Stick Chick Knits.

HMF/HKF

It's Hand Made Friday and Hand Knit Friday! What hand made pieces are you wearing today? I'm wearing an inspirational pendant and Chimney Fire designed by Stick Chick Knits.

HMF/HKF

It's Hand Made Friday and Hand Knit Friday! What hand knit or hand made pieces are you wearing today? I'm wearing the Chimney Fire Cardigan by Stick Chick Knits and a hearty heart heart necklace.

HKF

Hooray for Hand Knit Friday! What hand knits are you wearing today?

I'm wearing Stick Chick Knits' Chimney Fire sweater.


Chimney Fire

HKF

Hooray for Hand Knit Friday! What hand knits are you wearing today?

I'm wearing entrelac socks and Stick Chick Knits' Chimney Fire sweater.


Chimney Fire


A Step Above socks
Project details on Ravelry

HKF - Best of Show in my book

Hooray for Hand Knit Friday! What hand knits are you wearing today?

My choice is Chimney Fire, a gorgeously textured cable sweater designed by Stick Chick Knits and knit in Valley Yarns Northampton from WEBS. This piece was my entry in the California State Fair this year and it didn't place. Why, I'm not quite sure... they said there was a lot of competition. Well, it's not as if the judges and I have seen eye-to-eye on entries in the past, right? To each their own.

This is one of the best sweaters I've ever executed. Check out the fit, it's perfection! It's as if it was custom made for me. (This may be the one and only time I want a selfie stick.) ;)

It wins Best of Show in my book.


Chimney Fire

Fixing an "oops"

We're crazy busy at work again, so of course I started a project. You know, to keep me sane.


Chimney Fire

The pattern is Chimney Fire designed by Melissa Goodale of Stick Chick Knits and I'm knitting it in Northampton from Webs.

After trading a few tweets with Mel to confirm the size I should make, I dove in and knit a few rows here and there while waiting for reports and emails. Everything was going smoothly--I even divided the arms & body this week.



Can you see it? Can you see the mistake? Here, I'll point it out:



The cable crossing at my thumb is supposed to look like the cable crossing at my index finger. Oops. To make it worse, the mistake is ~16 rows back and there are, oh let's just say there are 250 stitches per row. Ack.

I decided to try and drop down to fix the cable. If I messed up, I could always rip it out, but dropping down would be a lot faster. I called on my Twitter & FB friends to wish me luck and did my best to channel YarnHarlot to fix the problem, 'cause you know she's been successful at fixing a cable or two.

Ripping back to the cable row was a little nerve-wracking. So much spaghetti!



But re-knitting the cables wasn't too bad. Getting the tension right was a little tricky, but I figured I could adjust it manually after the repair was finished. Hey, there's the missing cable.



And once that was done, the rest fell into place. Ugh, the tension will definitely need to be futzed with.



As an added bonus, I was able to try the sweater on for the first time today. I think it's the right size. It'll grow a bit with blocking and that should be fine.



I got another bonus after fixing the cable--Stephanie replied to my tweet. How cool is that??