Knitting Projects and Lace Doodles in Progress...

Hello, Readers! It has been entirely too long!

It's true that I've been neglecting this blog, but I haven't been neglecting my knitting!

The Year of the Sweater is off to an excellent start, I must say! Look what I finished a few weeks ago!

Pattern found here: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/plain-and-simple-pullover

I'm still waiting on some blocking supplies to arrive in the mail before I model this sweater properly. I'm VERY pleased with how the sweater looks, but I have to say that the yarn I picked out is....itchy. VERY ITCHY. If I want to actually wear this sweater outside of the house (which I absolutely will, once it's been blocked), I'll have to wear a long-sleeved shirt underneath.

Plus, I'm going to re-attach some of the buttons to make it just a bit more aesthetically pleasing. I'm not going to wear it with the turtleneck buttoned up, anyway.

Too itchy.

Serves me right for picking out the cheapest yarn. Ah well. It looks lovely, at the very least.

I'm making very good progress on sweaters two and three as well! I'll be posting those in the coming weeks.

In addition to the Year of the Sweater, I've been knitting lots of little lovely things for all of my family members who are having babies.

Three cousins have had their babies within the past two months. That's THREE knit baby gifts!

I'm VERY pleased with knit baby gift number one:

Pattern found here: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/foglie-su-legaccio---leaves-of-garter-stitch

Just needs buttons and blocking!

I'm also working the kinks out of a new crochet snowflake pattern. I've been inspired by some gorgeous macro-photography shots of snowflakes; one Russian photographer in particular has been catching my eye lately:

http://chaoticmind75.blogspot.com/

His name is Alexey Kljatov, and oh my sweet holy mother he takes gorgeous pictures.

I've crocheted a flake that's based off of this photograph here:

http://500px.com/photo/22899889

...and the finished result, I find, is just kind of "Meh".

The flake was also VERY sloppily starched. Yuck. 

The flake NEEDS just a little something, but I don't want to over-work it and make it into a jumble of un-necessary do-dads. In the few years that I've been designing crochet lace, I've learned a few things:

1. Less is More
2. Always make one more chain than you think you need
3. The popcorn stitch doesn't starch well.

I'm thinking the best thing I can do for "Kljatov 1" is to make it bigger, for one thing. I want the negative space in the center of the flake to stand out a bit more, and making it larger will give me a little bit more freedom in playing with the shapes that the negative space can create.

I may also do a row of single crochets along the outer-most edge, but I think that may draw the eye away from the center.

If anybody has any suggestions, I'm all ears! Leave me a comment, Readers!

Until next time! <3