+ Juliet

I finished Juliet:

Think this means that Leo will want to make out with me in a pool?

Probably not considering he only dates supermodels. Although my Romeo was trying hard to get me to act like one for this photo shoot….

But I was so NOT down with the posing b/c you can’t see the sweater very well and that was sortof the point.

So anyways the details:

Pattern: Juliet from Zephyr Style. Here is my project page on Ravelry.

Needles: size 10.5 Knitpicks Options Needles.

Yarn: about 4.5 skeins skeins of Patons Shetland Chunky in Soft Teal – 121 yards per skein of 75% acrylic, 25% wool.

Modifications: Hmmm…. I don’t remember all of them but basically I knit a little bit smaller than a medium top part with the small bottom part. I didn’t want the skirt to flair out an insane amount and I didn’t want the top to be too big. So I just did the raglan increases until it fit and went from there. Also I lengthened the garter stitch part so that it ended just under my bust. I did 9 repeats of the lace in total after that. I decided with just a simple closure instead of 3 buttons like the pattern says. I’m pretty happy with how it looks although I think I want to tighten up the clasp a little… we’ll see.

Timeline: January 6 – Feb 17. Although in all fairness I finished the knitting part up in a few weeks and then it sat sadly waiting for me to block it and decide on the buttons for another few weeks. It’s a quick knit if you do the finishing part right away!


The Verdict: I like it. It’s trendy and fun and was cheap and quick. All good things. I think if I had it to knit again I’d only do about 7 repeats of the lace. It’s pretty long and seems to be stretching longer with wear. Washing it might get it back to normal, though.

Also? Leo was way cuter back in ’96:

I had my hair done exactly like that for prom. Oh yes I did.

And thanks to googling for that image I discovered the existance of and now own the Red Curtain Trilogy Box Set on DVD. Rock.

Yarn Bath.

I have finished plying the Fire Fiber. Just in time for Project Spectrum’s fire month, actually! Funny that. So yesterday to really finish it nicely I gave it all a bath:


Which worked really well to floof it out (yes that is a technical term).


I don’t have any good pictures of the finished yarn yet – it was swaying around too much to get a decent shot:

But stay tuned because it’s frickin’ beautiful. I’m sure an obscene amount of pictures will follow once it’s dry.

Also? Don’t soak yarn that you’re not completely sure is colorfast in your tub:

Uh huh. I was able to scrub all of the pink out eventually but still… using the tub in our bathroom and not the utility sink in our basement was not my brightest of moments. Eh.

In other knitting related news – I finished Juilet!

I just need to block it and decide on the button situation…


Other than that there hasn’t been much knitting going around over here. Lots of Life happening at the moment. We’re back in the mode of either going out of town or having out of town guests every single weekend. Add to that a lot of work crazy and there’s not much room for anything else… It’s all good though. The knitting will still be there when things calm down!

This is so not a good idea

So have you ever known something was a bad idea and done it anyways?


Yeah. That would be the start of Juilet. I do not have enough yarn to finish this project. Not even close. I have approximately 300 yards - the pattern calls for 600.


Uh huh.

See last night about 10 min before the Steelers playoff game (I’m a Browns fan but my husband is die hard Steelers so for the sake of a calm household I want them to win) I realized that all of my knitting requires paying attention.

I can’t pay attention during the playoffs.

So I looked in my basket (not time for stash diving upstairs) and saw the 2 and a half skeins of Patons Shetland Chunky in Soft Teal left over from the hat/mittens combo. Somewhere a little bell went off in my brain – didn’t Michelle knit Juilet out of this yarn?

5 min. later I had printed the pattern and was casting on. I did this with the full knowledge that my yarn reserves weren’t going to make it.

I just didn’t care.

But really, this is a commercial yarn. Somewhere in one of the many stores that sell this in the area hast to be 2 little skeins of this colorway, right? I’m going to go make some phone calls and find out…. although something tells me that this was a bad plan...

Edited to Add:

Thanks for all of the suggestions, guys!!! I actually spent some time on the phone on Sunday calling all of the area craft stores trying to track down the yarn. Noone has it. Apparantly it doesn’t exist in the greater Cleveland area. Eh. That’s what the internets is for! So I did a little googling and thanks to this fun website (which Andi later recommended, actually – thanks!) www.knittingwarehouse.com my yarn should be here tonight!