tricotage dans l'obscurité

(knitting in the dark)

I managed to miss the deadline for the 1st intermediate sprint in le Tour de France knit along. I really meant to sit down to write this post in plenty of time to finish before midnight, Paris time. Zut alors! Instead, I've been making stuff....

In the past week, I've made a lot of progress on the Notre Dame de Grace pullover (my entry for le Maillot Vert). I cruised through the back:

and cast on immediately for the front. In my hurry (in part due to fear that I'm going to run out of yarn), I started the neck opening a little early and the shoulders much too soon. I had to rip back the shoulders a couple of times, but eventually got them to match the back:
At one point, I noticed something didn't feel quite right. The cable of my Knit Picks Options needles had pulled out of its metal connector end. I saved the soon-to-drop stitches on the cable, switched to another cable and kept going.

Here's the neck in detail. Also, note the areas of blue and areas of green....
This yarn has been hard to photograph accurately, but you get the idea: there's some significant variation in here. I'm liking it. Except, I won't be able to cross my arms when wearing this sweater. Look at the start of the sleeves:
One very green (and to my eye much like the majority of the sweater). The other, very blue. I've been knitting in the basement with minimal lighting to supplement the glow of Versus TV's broadcasts of le Tour. So, I didn't notice this color deviation until I took everything outside for pictures this evening. I suppose I could alternate skeins every couple of rows, but I know I don't have enough yarn to start dealing with extra ends to weave in. And, I hate knitting one sleeve at a time (so I could carry the yarn up the edge) because I have enough trouble keeping track of the shaping when I knit them at the same time. So, I've decided to accept the quirks of this gorgeous Wollmeise hand dyed yarn and knit on. C'est la vie!

I took a break from knitting this afternoon. Yesterday, I made a little pilgrimage to Crafty Planet. I picked up some fabric, which I prewashed yesterday, thinking I would wait a while to actually sew anything up. But, today, I was hit with a jones to sew. I thought I'd satisfy the urge by cutting out the pieces, but not actually finish anything today. I even left the house for a while after cutting, but I came home wanting to keep going. I now own a second Barcelona a-line skirt. This time in a hard-to-photograph green (seeing a trend here?):

The lining isn't very exciting this time, just a solid seafoam(?) green that approximately matches the mid-tone swirls. I think the sewing (and pressing), including hand-hemming the exterior skirt took about 4.5 hours. Not too bad, actually. Only needing to take over the dining room for one day is sign of a great project in my book. I think I'll need to make more of these.....

Next up for sewing projects, though: Fancy Pants. They were going to be attempted first in a big cream on brown floral fabric, but the pattern label didn't clarify (like I see the website does) how much fabric you need if you have one less than 60 inches wide. I did not have enough so I think that will become tote/shopping bags. I picked up some lightweight denim on sale at Hancock this afternoon. It's washed, dried and ready for cutting/sewing. Now, for the luxury of a whole day (or two)...