FO: Ingenue

It just occurred to me today that I forgot to blog about my finished Ingenue! And Ingenue was finished 2 months ago. *hangs head in shame* I have posted them to Ravelry, but forgot to update here too. So here you go...

* Front

* Back

* Artistic sleeve


* Collar


* Trying to look happy wearing a mostly wool sweater in 80+ degree weather

Audrey Hepburn is my favorite actress of all time. In fact, I have a poster of her posing as Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany's on my wall. So when I saw this pattern and it made me think of that scene in the movie where she's knitting and wearing a similar, turtle-neck sweater, I knew I had to make it.

Pattern: Ingenue from Custom Knits by Wendy Bernard

Yarn: Rowan Soft Lux in Amethyst

Amount: 7 balls

Needles: US

Mods:

Added extra 10 rounds before shaping waist,
Did extra 8 rounds before increases,
Did extra pair of decreases/increases,
Did extra 3 rounds before beginning Ridge Stitch,
For sleeves, I worked the Ridge Stitch another repeat longer since I wanted to maximize my yarn. In the end, I had only a little bit of yarn left!
Instead of sewing down the collar, I was lazy and crocheted it down. It looks much better, is invisible, and provides a very strong seam. :-)

Knitting News

I am happy to say that Backward Cabled Pullover has finally been finished. That has been my longest FO yet, totalling about 2 months. It still needs to be washed and blocked, but I promise I'll get my FO pictures posted soon!

In other news, Ingenue is zipping along quite nicely. I had to frog back about 3-4 inches last night though because I had placed the decreasing markers in the wrong place after my mind stupidly read over the notes section and I should have been following directions more closely. Luckily, it was no biggie and here is what I have so far...



* Forgive the bleak, bathroom lighting.

* An accidental, "artistic" shot that shows the true color of the yarn better.

P.S. Oh, and that trip to the mall over the weekend, I did manage to score a grey, cabled sweater (totally hand-knit looking) for only $20! It was the last one in the store, but better yet, it had wool and alpaca content!!! It's pretty rare for me to find sweaters with alpaca content in department stores that don't cost $200+. :-)

A Bad Habit

Lately, I've noticed that I am beginning to develop a habit of beginning a new project while I am in the home stretch of finishing another project. In my case, this translated to casting on for Ingenue from Custom Knits over the weekend. I'm going to use the 7 balls of stash RYC Soft Lux that I purchased from Elann.com a while back. I'm excited because it will hopefully be just enough! I decided to go with the Soft Lux because there are metallic strands shot through the yarn making it a bit shiny like the Karabella Marble called for in the pattern. However, it's a bit funny that I'm making two purple sweaters in a row. :-)



Even though I have finished the neckline, body, and one sleeve (which I will probably frog and re-do since the ribbing looks too tight) for Backward Cabled Pullover, I simply couldn't resist the call of Ingenue. I'm the type of person who usually works and completes projects one at a time, but at the moment I have 3 WIPs on the needles. The crocheted Companion Cube is also in the home stretch, but I'm not too worried as crochet goes by quickly. The harder part will be sewing/joining the pieces together and stuffing with fiberfill. But I am a little sad that Backward Cabled Pullover is one of my slowest sweaters yet and I'm not feeling the motivation to do the sleeves. Maybe I wore out my patience with the short rows fiasco that led to at least 10 restarts?

In any case, Ingenue is making me happy although I'm a bit worried about the collar. It came out narrower than the pattern, but hopefully I can just block the heck out of it. I am a major fan of Audrey Hepburn, and I can't wait to wear it like she did in Breakfast at Tiffany's. :-D