new projects

When I went to the Mason-Dixon book signing at the BPL back in October, they had all of the samples from the book, and I tried on the Metropole coat. I'd never considered knitting a coat before, but this one fit me perfectly, and I'm not so satisfied with how warm my current coat is or how it looks. So I bought various colors of Cascade 109 (which is on clearance at Webs), swatched and washed the swatch, and the ordered more, in the color that I chose.

Those of you who don't knit might think it's funny that I decided to knit myself a coat. It is ambitious, but the pattern calls for a bulky yarn and chunky needles, so in theory this could be easily achieved. It's basically like a big sweater, really. (Sort of how a wedding is just a big party.)Problem is, getting 4 stitches per inch isn't the same as getting 3.5 stitches per inch. You can't really fudge that, and somehow I imagined that I could. I'm not really sure why I was surprised that halfway up the back of the coat I noticed that it was going to be way too small. I washed and blocked my knitting, and yes, it's still way too small. I've got to frog it and start over. It's very sad.

In other news, when I went through all my fabric on Sunday I came across this: I think it must have come in a bag of material that Terra gave me a few years ago. In any case, I like it a lot and there's enough of it to recover the old ottoman that came from my grandfather's house. It's a very similar green to what we painted the walls in our den, which could be good or bad. I'm going to go ahead with it anyway. I just need to learn a little about piping, and brush up on my upholstery skills. (I've done it before, but only for something that's used on a stage and therefore only had to look good from 30 feet away.) Any pointers?