WIP Wednesday - Ritalin and sweater edition

WIP Wednesday again! I had to re-start my Ritalin cowl. I realized that I don't have enough of the teal yarn to make the cowl as long as the pattern calls for. I'm disappointed because I really wanted a long cowl. Maybe I'll do it again sometime with more yarn. Anyway, I'm making it half the size now - I cast on 126 stitches, on 24" circular needles. I think I'll like it as long as it's long enough for me - about 30" or so. (The yarn is cotton, viscose, and silk. This is a warm weather cowl. I don't want it to be snug at all.) If it comes out too short, I will give it away. Here it is so far:

The eyelet row surprised me. I wasn't expecting the holes to be so big! It looks cool, though. It's a quick knit at this length. After the raspberry color, I'll do the teal, and then mint green. These colors look so great together. The photo really doesn't do them justice.

I really love Debbie Bliss Cathay. It's one of my favorite yarns. It's also been discontinued. I wish I could stock up on it via Ravelry - lots of people "de-stashing" it - but financially, now is not the time. I also used this yarn for my Cranberry Cowl, pictured in this blog post (it's the #09 Cowl pattern). It's a little splitty, but the texture is delicious and the colors are amazing.

After last week's post, I finished the left front piece of my Liwen (or Design Three or whatever the heck it's called) jacket/sweater:

Yay! I finished a piece of a sweater! Ha. Now I just have the right front, back, sleeves, and neckline/border to go, and then I'll have to block it and sew it all together. What a daunting project. Fun, though! I haven't started on the right front yet since I've wanted to knit fairly mindless stuff for the past week, but I'll start it soon. I really hope the finished sweater will fit me. It's hard to tell, but the yarn is very stretchy. We'll see. It's definitely not going to be oversize, but I knew that when I started.

It's WIP Wednesday again!

Yes, it's that time again. Sorry for not posting last week, but I really didn't have much to post. This time, I've made a little more progress on my sweater:

Again, this is the left front panel. I've done some armhole shaping and neckline shaping, as well as more cabling (woohoo!). I haven't done more only because this pattern involves some serious work keeping track of which row you're supposed to do what. It's not the best pattern ever, but I'm pushing through it because I want the finished result. Others have done it successfully - so can I! (Right? I sure hope so.) Anyway, in order to work on this I have to really concentrate, and I've been on some painkillers lately for a medical condition and have been a little afraid to work on the sweater while dopey.

Here's a cable close-up:

I have also started a Ritalin Cowl which has been somewhat disastrous so far. I twisted the beginning row by accident and tried to fix it and wound up with some weird-looking stitches that I've decided not to go back and fix (it's such a long cowl that I doubt anyone will notice a few wonky stitches on the seam, though of course you might now - oops). The cowl starts with 6 rows of moss stitch. Easy, right? So I sat down to work on it last night (when I was also doped up on painkillers). Bad idea. I picked it up in the middle of a row, and wound up working in the wrong direction! D'oh!! Thankfully, I noticed what I was doing fairly quickly. I still have to undo the damage, but it shouldn't be so bad. It's just discouraging. And here I was looking for an easy knit.

I'm using these colors:

I think it's all Debbie Bliss Cathay yarn, but the gray and teal were both given to me without labels. Anyway, I've started with the gray and am going to use the colors in this order (left to right). Should be very pretty, if I can manage without totally screwing it up. Haha. I do find it funny that I'm working on 2 projects and of the 2 of them, I screw up the easy one and not the complicated one. I'd better stop laughing about it before I mess up the other one, too! ;-)