Juliet Update
As you can see, the knitting’s already done. In fact, it’s been done quite a while ago. I haven’t gotten round to putting on the buttons because I’m not sure I like how it looks on me. I did the longer version in the pattern and on hindsight, I think I prefer it shorter. Plus the lace portion flares out quite a bit so I’ll like to reknit it with a smaller needle.
The stitches under the armholes (where they are joined) are loose and loopy. Anyone has any idea how to improve this? If I’m ripping out the lace, I’ll probably rip to the armholes and certainly hope to make this look better. Also, the bind-off at the bottom certainly can be improved. Gaah.
Central Park Hoodie
Being relatively new to knitting (only picked it up last year) meant that I’m only slowly coming round to knit patterns that were wildly popular months or even years ago. One of such patterns is the Central Park Hoodie which was published in 2006.
I love hoodies and wear them all the time. Well, only in air-conditioned places of course, outside weather in Singapore is not exactly hoodie-friendly.
I’m knitting the hoodie in the Rowan All Seasons Cotton yarn I scored on eBay. Before I started the pattern, I even made a proper swatch, blocked and all! Of course, I also cheated and didn’t make a full size swatch but hey, for someone as lazy as me, it’s a miracle that I even swatched at all!
The pattern is really simple so far and works up pretty fast. I decided to go with short rows and three-needle bind off for the shoulder seams after reading the posts on the CPH group on Ravelry. The short rows did kick my arse a bit as I’ve never done it before.
I’m only up to the left front piece so far. I wonder if I can get this finished before June is out. I’m dying to start on the fabulous February Lady Sweater! I’ve always thought the baby version looks so cute!
Knit Picks & eBay Will Bankrupt Me
Previously, every time I wanted to buy some Knit Picks yarn, I’ve always joined a spree. This time, I decided to do everything myself. Knit Picks doesn’t ship international so I had to use VPost (third party shipping service). From ordering to receipt of delivery, it took about 2 weeks. Not bad at all. However, the shipping fees aren’t exactly cheap so I’ll probably only do this when VPost has one of those $10 promotions.
I bought a little bit of everything from needles to books to yarn. I even bought a view sizer. I also bought some pocket pages for the new needles to put in my binder. Now, I don’t know if the ones sold separately are of a different quality from the ones that came in the options set but when I tried to use one of the newly purchased pages, the zip broke into pieces. Annoying.
As for the yarn, I bought some Cotlin, Comfy, Gloss, Merino Style, Essential and Risata. At first glance, although the Essential and Felici appear to have the same yarn base, it’s not really the same. Felici uses finer Merino so it is softer. Kind of disappointing for me actually. Oh well.
Of course, after I placed my order, I realised there’re still a couple things I’ve forgotten. Oh well, gotta wait till the next time I place a big order again which could be months from now.
Unfortunately, I’ve also discovered the joy of eBay yarn shopping. Very dangerous for my wallet. I ended up buying 40 balls of Rowan All Seasons Cotton. Yes, 40 balls.
Individual yarn pictures will be up on my Ravelry stash page and Flickr.
