Monday, March 23, 2009

Pioneer Update

What a great weekend we had here in SouthCentral PA. Absolutely beautiful, spring weather, perfect wear a cute little sweater and take your knitting along with you type of days. In fact, I did just that over the past two days as I continued to work on the Pioneer sweater in Swizzle as I was out and about.

The pattern is easy to memorize. Terribly easy, which makes it perfect take-along knitting. I got lots of ooohs and aaahs from my family and friends as my Pioneer made the rounds. Since Swizzle is a relatively new yarn for us, this is the first time I've spent any serious quality time working with it on an actual garment. Let me tell you, it's a lovely yarn. Lots of good drape and a serious amount of squishy touch me factor. I'm knitting on size 5 needles and I'm one of those annoying knitters who doesn't knit tight or loose. Pioneer is primarily stockinette with some columns of a two stitch cable worked along the sides and down the back. Several others have made the modification of adding a column of cables down the front middle. I did not do this, but seriously considered adding one as well.



I am making the 'small' size and right now I am over halfway done and I'm only about half through my second ball of yarn. The pattern called for four balls of Swizzle, about 800 yards needed, but I'm not sure I'm believing that. I'll keep you updated!

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

New Knitty thoughts

We always get little-kid excited when a new issue of Knitty is published. Everyone has their favorites, of course. Beth is especially fond of Hanne, Tasha likes Pioneer and Angela is drooling over Decimal. And of course, we are all swooning over the two lace projects, Shipwreck and Aeolian.

We've decided that we want to take some of our favorites and show you how they will look worked up in our yarns. This should be a fun task each issue pairing up Knitty genius with alpaca yumminess. We are going to start with Pioneer, done in Academy Blue Swizzle. We think it will be a delightful pairing and we will be sure to keep you updated with regular progress photos.

Here's a sneak peek to get your creativity flowing. You can check out more photos on the Ravelry project page. Be sure to comment us if you have any suggestions which AYC yarns might work well with the newest Knitty. We always love to hear your thoughts!