After a very, very long delay, I've finally finished my variant on this, the Baby Eleanor!



I started to put on the netting fringe as in the actual Lady E pattern, but didn't think it was working well with this yarn, so I cut it off and made tassels instead.

Technical info:
Yarn: Patons SWS Natural Geranium. Including tassels, used about 4 1/3 skeins... I think. Could have been 5 1/3.
Needles: US 9.
Pattern: I used the actual Lady E pattern as a reference, but actually did just find a web page on entrelac and used that to figure out the actual stitches. The intent was to make one about half the size of a Lady E.
Dimensions, blocked: 63 inches long without tassels, 79 inches long with tassels, 10 inches wide.

I love the results, but hate entrelac -- at least, 63 inches of it. So I probably will never make another one.

My best finds:


4 skeins of vintage Spinnerin Frostlon Petite yarn, 67% mohair/33% orlon acrylic. I didn't like the color -- too beige -- so I overdyed it with Kool-aid and got a beautiful warm rose color. I also got a bunch of needles. Total cost for the yarn and needles: around $8, I think. I started knitting a Branching Out with it and it was gorgeous, but I never finished it. I'll do something else with this sometime.


The ball of yarn turned out to be nothing special, but I use this handbag as a knitting bag.


Knitting needles collected in various thrift store visits (not all at once... and I have more now).


A whole grocery bag full of this yarn, more than enough to make the Three-Hour Sweater.

The best finds that I didn't buy:

About 20 skeins of 100% wool, thick and thin brown yarn; I didn't buy it because the color was a bad shade of brown I'd have to overdye, and they wanted too much money for it even though it was a thrift store -- $3.00/ball of yarn

And the one that kills me: a professional knitting machine, all supplies and punch cards included, $25.00. I didn't really feel I could afford it that week. Got home, kicked myself, went back to the store the next day and it was gone.

Gorgeous! Different yarn, but almost exactly the same color as mine:


I made two of them, one for a gift and one for me. It's a fun and relatively quick knit, isn't it?

I was going to post this a couple of weeks ago when I first put the photos on Flickr, but I got sick shortly after and never got around to it. Anyway, I knitted a neckwarmer a while back, and was going to submit the pattern somewhere like Knitty, but never got around to taking the right pics for it, so I'm just posting the pattern on my blog instead. It's starting to get too warm here in Seattle for neckwarmers, but not always.



The yarn is one of the Jo-Ann yarns, which unfortunately seems like it might be discontinued! Which is a shame because I loved it. The color, with blues and purples and a bit of silver, was just gorgeous.

Anyway, it was a fun and quick project to knit and I might have to knit some for gifts this Christmas. The pattern is on my blog.

Now, I have a month to knit a first birthday present for a little girl. Any ideas? I'm thinking maybe a little jumper dress (in the American sense of jumper). With a lace pattern on the front.

I got a Macbook recently so I decided I had to knit a sleeve for it. So I did, and finished it yesterday!

(There are some other pictures of it on Flickr as well.

I had some struggles here and there. (Mostly because my stranded knitting was too tight.) But felting forgives many sins. And now I have a pretty red sleeve to keep my Macbook scratch-free!

I wrote up the pattern tonight and posted it on my website if anyone wants to make one of these. Here you go.

I kind of want to try some other motifs now, like little happy Mac icons or something, but I don't know when I will have a chance to knit another one. I have a bunch of other stuff to knit. And only one laptop!

Mostly but not quite done!

Results: It is slightly large but OK. Very fluffy and warm now that I washed the pieces before sewing (I like that yarn! Too bad they don't make it anymore!). Slightly long. 

It still needs crochet along the neckline which will stabilize it there a bit, and it needs the ends sewn in. It is possible that I might rip out the sleeves and redo them. They came out really too long at the armscye end for some reason, and it was difficult to ease in all the extra fabric because of the ribbing needing to match at the top. So the seams suck and look funny, though not nearly as bad when worn as when the sweater is off. I'm half tempted to just not bother with the ribbing on the top of the sleeves and just make plain ones. Or maybe I'll just leave this one like this and make adjustments to a new one.

Less than 3 skeins of 220 yards. It did not take 3 hours; more like a week. But it was easy and fun.

If I make another I will probably add some shaping at the waist. Incidentally, I used a large seam allowance at that part of the sweater to take up some of the excess fabric.
 
Oh yeah, pics!



Regarding see-through-ness, I'm only wearing a bra under it there, and I think I could get by with that but would probably wear a tank top or something else under it. And as far as size goes, I don't have the actual measurements of the garment here right now, but I have a 36" bust and (weep) a 30" waist, so that gives you some idea of the dimensions.

Thanks everyone 

Ok, to answer your question, my sweater used: 4 skeins barnet softee chunky yarn, size 8US needles on the ribbing and Size 11US on the main body, and size 10US on the yoke

OK, that is probably why your stitches look so nice. I might be the only one who is using the US15s as the pattern calls for... we will see how it goes. Mine is US10 for the ribbing, US15 for the body, and I didn't decrease the needle size at the yoke because I figured "it is ribbing, it will contract." But we will see if that was the right decision.

As requested, a status photo!



I don't know if I'll have any knitting time today, but if I do I might get all the parts knitted, at least. It will certainly need to be blocked when it's done!

You know, I was thinking -- this being a 1930s pattern, I bet one of the motivations for the pattern was not necessarily speed of knitting -- it was money. This does not use much yarn at all. I am still only on the second skein.

Progress photos!


You can see in the first pic that it is loose above the ribbing. The illustration with the original 30s pattern shows this looseness as well -- but in the 30s it would have been worn with this ribbing around the true waist and the looser part above that.  I lengthened the sweater as others here have done, which has the unfortunate effect of making the loose part hit me at the waist. (This dress form is made to be my exact size and shape.) Also, note how tight that ribbing is. This means that when I wear it it is probably going to hike up to my waist anyway. But who knows. It still looks kinda cute so far.

The second picture looks more fitted. All I did was smooth the back to try to even out the slack, and repin. But the ribbing is even tighter on this one because I pulled it lower. We'll see how this is affected by the addition of the front.

The color here is not as true as in my earlier post. It has more gray in it in reality.

This is not blocked. As I saw in my swatch, the yarn will bloom some once blocked, which will be good for the yoke section, which seems very open to me.

Hmm, based on the measurements of yours, it should work for me then (36" bust). I did the ribbing with 6mm instead of 5mm, and the body is on the 10mms, 3 sts/in. (I am not a loose knitter.) It is amazingly stretchy so far!

I got an inch in to the ribbing, took it off the needles in disgust, thinking it would be way too small, then stretched it... and realized that it probably would fit after all. It just couldn't stretch far enough yet while on the needles. So I started again and now I'm at the beginning of the body section, using the Brunswick Germantown yarn. (Color: Tornado.)

This is the swatch I did, and a picture of the skein and label:

You can see that the fabric is not as holey as one might have expected!

I'm in on this one now!



The yarn is Dale Baby Ull. I like Eunny's color choice much better, but mine was the best I could find at the yarn shop I was visiting. They mostly had the baby pastels in stock. *sigh* The needles for the cuff were some aluminum size 1s I found at a thrift store. The needles for the pattern section are size 3 Clover bamboo.

I like the Italian Tubular Cast On a lot! It looks a little uneven here in the photo, but when worn it looks perfectly smooth and even. Very nice and a good skill to learn.

In the spirit of living dangerously I did not swatch, but just started knitting the darned thing. I figured I might as well -- and that way it would serve as a swatch, and if the size was right, I could just keep knitting. It turned out the size IS right. Seems like they will be just about perfect. So lucky me, I get to keep going!