Have You Seen These Bloggers? (And a Lorin Sweater Update!)

First, since photos of a stockinette tube (my niece's sweater at this point) are not so exciting, I'm going to start with something I've been meaning to do for a while. There are a few fabulous blogs I read whose Bloglines numbers are way too low for how fabulous they are, and I wanted to post a wee list of them:

• Cinemaknits
  
• Knits & Pieces
  
• Knotty Bits
  
• Mustaa villa
  

A fun fact: Almost Felted once put Fig & Plum on a list like this long ago! I'll probably do this periodically to share undiscovered gems!

My niece's sweater is coming along, though it looks as though I may need more yarn for the sleeves. It's a tad big... too big, do you think? Her waist measurement (the widest part of her at this point, I think) is 23.5", and the sweater measures about 28.5". I hadn't planned on that much ease, but (extra points for those who pick up on a theme here) I have a little problem with inconsistent gauge. The swatch was 4st/1". When I cast on the first time, I used 108 stitches and ended up with a sweater that looked to be heading toward about 24" around - much too snug. So I cast on again, this time with 120 stitches, and now it's about 29"!

As perplexing and frustrating as this is, I think I've identified some of the source of my gauge inconsistency problem. I knit in all sorts of different places. I swatched on the sofa. The first cast-on, I was knitting in bed, down with a cold last weekend. The second sweater has been done mostly on the subway. What's the difference? I think it's where I put my yarn when I knit in these different locations. On the sofa, the yarn's by my side. When I knit in bed, usually the yarn's on the floor. This distance creates tension. On the subway it's in my purse, but I usually periodically pull out some yardage with which to knit, so that yarn is fairly slack. Maybe that's where the difference comes in.

O the challenges faced by the modern knitter on the go!