Busy Bea Knits

Happy belated Thanksgiving!  Hope you're still out there knitting and cooking away.  The cold weather sure has been perfect for lots of knitting.  I finished Mythos a while ago, but haven't taken the opportunity to blog about it...not without photos in hand.  It took a while for the right weather and some time to find the right brooch.  I found the brooch at Lisa Toland's hand made jewelry booth at the Harvest Festival.  She crochets wire jewelry pieces, each is so unique, delicate and exquisite piece of art work.  This particular piece has two different shades of purple wire with green baguette beads incorporated along all the petals and center.

I think a hand made brooch is a great compliment to a hand made cardigan, no?  I used my sock yarn stash to knit Mythos:  Colinette Jitterbug Velvet Plum and Mixed Berries, Koigu somewhat solid in burgundy, and Pagewood Farms Aleska 5 in Fuschia Fizz. I changed yarns approximately every 8 rows to come up with the striped effect you see in the final product.  I knitted a provisional cast on at the top of the sleeves and knitted the left and right body pieces first.  Then I grafted the two pieces together along the center of the back.  I knitted the sleeves last on double pointed needles and reversed engineered the sleeve instructions.

There were 100 stitches on each back piece that had to be grafted together.  It took less than an hour to kitchener stitch up the back, and I did take a break halfway through the grafting.  I'd have to say it was the most intense part of the whole pattern, but well worth the adventure.  The other intense part was the sideways construction...that alone made knitting this pattern so worthwhile.  I'd consider knitting a second one in the near future because I'm so happy with the look and fit of Mythos. 

After finishing this sweater, I've started and completed another sweater that's a hybrid between the February Lady Sweater by Pamela Wynne and the Cabled Feather Cowl by Cindy Craig.  It's blocking right now, but hopefully I'll have photos to share with you in the coming week.  It's knitted up in Classic Elite Yarns Wool Bam Boo.  What a beautiful yarn to work with.  I highly recommend it.  And today I cast on for the Cosmic Teleidoscope Vest.  It's basically an EZ-inspired Pi Shawl pattern knitted up into a vest (EZ is knit speak for Elizabeth Zimmermann).  I'm using yet more of my sock yarn stash to knit this beautiful vest and can hardly wait to show you. 
As far as cooking, I've been experimenting with an enchilada recipe that was a hit this weekend here at home.  I've got to get the proportions down in recipe form before I can share with you, but I hope you'll stay tuned.  I should have plenty of follow along photos and a recipe in the next week or so.  Have a great week.