To make this a slightly less worthless entry, I will also tell you that I am plugging away at my Anne Elliot Spencer. I recently finished the second half of the front, and I just cast on for the first sleeve! I’m … still not done!

But actually, the whole point of me posting is because I want to enter another Grosgrain giveaway.

The first thing is this lovely dress! I am in love with the buttons down the sleeves. Just-above-elbow-length sleeves are my favorite length for sleeves! And buttons! The other giveaway is for these rose earrings, right here! I don’t know if I would be able to do them justice, but I want them anyway! Either way, it’s an awesome idea, which I will have to remember for Christmas time. I bet my sister would love a set of ‘Rose’ earrings.

Grosgrain is doing another giveaway, for a dress from Shabby Apple, and while I don’t really want the dress they are giving away, I am really liking a few of their other dresses. I’m really sad that the first one doesn’t seem to come in colors besides fuchsia and black. The second one comes in black and houndstooth. I’m really tempted, but their sizing kind of freaks me out for some reason. I think I don’t usually buy such expensive clothing online.

Instead of the stripes called for in the pattern, I decided to make these babies solid yellow, with a sporty red stripe across the back of the hand. I also made them extra-long in both directions for increased warmth. The first pair of these that I made came out nicely, but I would have liked them to cover a bit more of my fingers.

I haven’t actually gotten that much better at making the thumbs, but I have gotten better at knowing which stitches to pull together to get the holes to close up.

Have a wee little picture from my laptop’s webcam camera.  I’m too lazy to get up and get an actual camera.

The pattern gave no directions about what exactly was supposed to happen (binding off, what have you), so I just threaded a bit of junk yarn though the loops and called it a day.

Now for the rest of the garment.

Because of the way the pattern is written, it took me a while to figure out if I was supposed to repeat the row of knitting only  in between the rows with the YO’s that create the holes.  The answer is YES, but I’m a dufus and had to read the section on the clover pattern a few times before I realized that.

FULL STEAM AHEAD!

I am now nearly done with the back piece, and I’m hoping to cast on for the front pannels soonish.  Pictures to come!

The first is a pair of the Daisy Stitch Hand Warmers from Purlbee. This is actually my second time knitting them, and I like to think that making the first set taught me a lot about knitting. I’ve gotten a bit better at managing the tension so the knit-3-together part isn’t quite so painfully difficult. I’m also changing up the pattern in that instead of doing stripes of different colors, they’re going to be yellow with one or two red stripes across the back of the hand, above the thumb hole! It looks really cool in my head. I also need to go read some thumb/finger patterns, because I’m not quite convinced I’m doing it right yet. There is a lot of post-knitting tightening things up in that area.

My second project is Anne Elliot Spencer by Canary Knits. It is an adorable little cropped shrug thing, the technical term for which is apparently a ‘spencer’. Who knew? I’m starting that in a the nasty cheap acrylic from Red Heart, as I feel like I’m going to do some serious fucking up before I get it right. Somehow, I feel like I shouldn’t use the nice yarn until I am confident in my ability to make the actual pattern. I did cave and pick up a beautiful orange yarn for my second go at the spencer. I have some amazing dinosaur buttons for Jo-Ann’s that I feel will really make it an amazing garment!

I also have a pretty bright pink that is just barely hot enough for me to want to wear. I want to make it into a super-hot-yet-somewhat-badass cardigan/shrug item, but I haven’t quite found the perfect pattern.