Loving Ravelry

I think my current mental state is the most obsessed I've been about knitting since Heather was born.

I don't know if it is the recent success with the wrap sweater (Yes, I know, I owe you photos. It needs a bath first. Maybe this weekend.) or maybe it was my recent stash dive or my current obsession with listening to knitting podcasts during my commute. But I think a lot of it has to do with ravelry.

Last night I pulled out some hand-dyed wool/hemp yarn that I bought at the Wool Gathering 18 months ago. I swatched and once again found that I need to knit DK weight yarn on size 2 needles. (Yes, I am a loose knitter). I actually got okay fabric with the size 5's, but I generally prefer a tighter fabric in my sweaters for the structure. And every sweater I've ever made has stretched with wear, so I would rather the fabric start out a little tighter and have room to grow.

Anyway, I was able to plug my gauge and my yardage into ravelry and look up possible sweater patterns! I could even search in just the books and magazines that I own and search in free internet patterns. I love the fact that I no longer have to pull out every book and magazine I own or tab through knitty to find the right pattern! And along the way I found a few patterns for my queue that won't work for this yarn but that I want to come back to in the future.

I haven't settled on a pattern yet since I measured my gauge at 10:45 last night, but I don't think it will take me long to settle on something this evening after the peanut goes to bed.

I've also had a few knitting questions come up recently and a quick search of the ravelry forums uncovered just the answers that I was looking for. Nothing like instant gratification!

In other knitting news, I just have the ribbing left on the shrug, I've started my second fish for the fishy toy, I've learned the gender of one of my planned baby gift recipients and I have only one chin strap and sewing left to finish on the baby hat I started over the weekend. If there wasn't anything to do around the house I would probably have the urge to use every available moment to knit this weekend. :-) Darn laundry and vacuuming...