Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Back on the horse

My knitting-I-can-show-off and talking-about-knitting-in-public mojo were missing in action for a couple of months, but I've eased back into the swing of things with some slippers of many colours.

lopi slippers

I used Álafoss lopi with 5mm needles, for a finished fabric that's bulletproof-dense. They're knitted from the toe up, beginning with a figure-8 cast-on, and have plain old short-row heels. The cuffs are finished with a few rounds of garter stitch and a moderately stretchy crocheted bind-off. I was racked by colour indecision when I was planning them, so picked orange for the background and used all the rest of the colours I had available in the foreground.

These were a practice run at stranded colourwork patterns for a sweater I'd like to knit. There was a while where I wanted to make a lopapeysa for myself each year so I'd have a little archive of colours I liked or small repeating patterns that had been on my mind in years past in my closet. I got distracted from that ambition by about three dozen pairs of socks and discovering Herbert Niebling and cones of 2/28 silk thread, but now it seems to be back?

The sweater will include many or most of these colours, but toned down by having the grey in the background instead of, uh, screaming orange. I'm knitting it concurrently with some smaller-gauge projects as a break for my head and heart and hands and wrists; maybe by the weekend I'll have a pair of sleeves to show for it!