Saved!

Bethe to the rescue! She has very generously offered to relieve my knitting stress by offering up her skein and leftovers of Cork! She also got it at Webs, so odds are it will be the same dyelot. Once again, I am in awe of the generosity and breadth of compassion in the knitblog world. We are an amazing bunch! I hope I can help someone out of a similar bind one day! Thanks again Bethe!!!!

In a knitting and football filled weekend (Go Pats!) I got quite a bit of knitting done. Denmark the first is complete, and I have cast on for the second.

It fits perfectly and is squishy soft. The Kona yarn knits up really nice and is super soft. The entire heel and foot were knit Saturday afternoon. Socks go nice and fast on #3 needles! I'm already thinking ahead to which pattern to tackle next. My sister loves my handknit socks, and I know she'd like a thinner pair to wear with some of her other shoes (though she loves the DNA socks and gets bunches of comments at work on them!), so those may be next. The yellow CTH I got a while back has her name all over it!

The Urban Aran also made lots of progress. I'm done with the front up to the armholes. I think I am going to make it a half-zip pullover instead of a full zippered cardigan. I'll get much more wear out of it. So, I measured some of the zippers in my fleece pullovers to see if there was a standard length. Seems like 6" was pretty common. It also seemed like most of the zippers start at the same point as the armhole. So, I plan on measuring the back to see how long it is from armhole to top and see if a 6" zipper will be long enough. If not, I know there are a few places out there you can order custom lengths, but I'd love to find a pre-made one locally. The color shouldn't be too hard to match. The half zip should give the sweater a little interest and make it just a little different from all the rest. I did find one pattern for a kids half zip pullover in Vogue Knitting Quick Knits - they used a 6" and it was for older kids with a finished chest measurement on the sweater of 42" (not sure what child would need a sweater that big!) which is actually a touch bigger than what mine should turn out to be.

Any good tips for making the area to install the zipper better? The center column of the sweater is 2 purl stitches, so I'll be splitting it right down the middle and having one on each side. I also plan on slipping the first stitch of every row to give a cleaner edge.

After the front, all that remains is one lonely sleeve. Then, I have to start thinking about a sweater for Project Spectrum - version 2.0 starts in February! Lucky for me, I have a sweaters worth of very pretty light blue yarn just waiting! Now, to find a pattern.....