facing the facts.

2008-11-10T17:02:00.001-05:00

Last weekend, I finished all the end weaving, seaming, drawcord making for both gigi and the long neglected malabrigo cardigan. I know! I threw myself a little party. It was great. That evening I blocked out the cardigan, and this Friday, it was dry (!).

Does that mean I have FOs? Unfortunately, no, they both need buttons. Additionally, at least the malabrigo, and probably gigi too, could benefit from facings. Which means sewing.
Maybe the sweater's slow drying was to accommodate my reluctance to actually pick up a needle and thread and hand sew the facings. By Friday, I was ready to grit my teeth and get it over with (see, the title's a pun! I'm so witty...)

And it wasn't that bad. It was important to pin it first. Also, doing that back-loop kinda stitch where you overlap works better than doing a straight line. (and if that description of sewing terms doesn't convince you I'm a rank novice, I don't know what will) but it really did turn out well. Nothing tricksy about it, and the stitches didn't show out the other side. It was just monotonous, and make my shoulders stiff from tension. I'm not sure the silk will be as easy, since it's a much looser gauge, but I'm also not 100% convinced the silk needs it.

Now all I need to do it buttons (and button holes...) but I need to buy more thread first.

Also, my plan for my next project has been foiled. The sunrise circle pattern is no longer freely available for download, was never printed, and now cannot be had for love or money. It is rumored that it will eventually be available from the designer, but eventually does not in any way equal 'now'. There is a slim chance that it is on my computer back at home from the days when I downloaded any free pdf I liked 'just in case'. But I think I found that pattern after I decided doing that sort of thing was silly. That'll learn me, won't it?

Sooo... I'm not sure. I'm debating over the apre-surf in bright orange, but I can't decide if the one I found on colormart is a good, edgy bright, or a bad, too-bright 'I should go deer hunting in this' color. Also, their gauges confuse me. I will need to swatch what I have at home.

Also, I need a niddy-noddy, and a ballwinder, and a swift. kthx.

I am so stuck.

2008-10-03T13:25:00.001-05:00

Not in knitting, though I am - I can't bring my self to do the math (ahem, counting) to cast on the last piece of gigi.

No, in keeping with the completely off-topic posts genre of late, what I'm really stuck on is novels. When I stopped reading last night, I was not stuck. It seemed a perfectly reasonable, non-suspenseful place to break. One of the characters had done something a little odd - not really out of line with his personality, but not fully explained, and was off to do something else. So, that's fine - completely linear development is boring. A little suspense isn't a bad thing.

Then, at random, halfway through my day at work, (yeah, it's a little slow at work recently, my mind's been wandering) I think I realized his motivation. And suddenly, it is NOT a little suspense. It is a lot of suspense. Not only omg, am I right, was it really that? But if it is what is he going to do now?

And there is diddly I can do about it. Not until tomorrow morning or maybe even after that. Because, of course the book is at home, and tonight we're going to a friend's (to play D&D {nerd}) which I have been anticipating for most of the summer. And now I'll be distracted by wondering if I'm right about the book. We'll get home late, and tomorrow morning we need to clean in anticipation of having people over to watch football that evening.

So I'm stuck. Bah.

I wasn't originally going to mention what book I was reading, since it's irrelevant to my conundrum, and could be a little bit spoiler-ish (you know, if you happened to be in the exact same place I am or something). Plus, if I don't mention the book, it makes for easier deniability if I guessed wrong, or, you know, if everyone else realized that right off the bat. But really, it's not that big or obvious of a point to be recognizable - it just happened to be where I stopped, so I've changed my mind.

I re-read Dune a bit ago. I still don't understand why it's so incredibly famous. It's a good book and all, but it doesn't feel that impressively unique. Maybe it just did a lot of these things first? I don't know where it falls in timelines. Anyway, this time I knew what I was getting into, so it went down a lot smoother. Enough that I plowed on into the sequels M has.

I must say I did not like the first sequel. I think the only reason I kept going into the second was that I was sick, and it was there, and I really didn't want to watch more daytime t.v. Oddly enough, it was a good choice. It's like the ripped the original Dune in half, and put all the philosophical blather in one sequel, and all the plot and characters in the other (obviously, I prefer plot and characters - mostly characters - I'm a sucker for character). It's quite strange.

So, as to why I bothered to write all that: If you thought Dune was passably good, but couldn't stand the sequel I would highly encourage you to try the third. You could even skip the second if it bored you too much. There are a few different characters that might be a little jarring, but they do a good job of explaining how that happened if you wait it out. It's almost as if they didn't expect you to actually read the second. All you will really miss is some development of Alia and her husband. (Actually, I did start reading the wrong one - our books are a bad printing - one cover says 'book three' the other says 'final in the trilogy' it took a bit to figure which was lying). Conversely, I suppose, if you thought the second book was a vast improvement, I wouldn't bother with the third.

Stuff

2008-09-26T13:16:00.001-05:00

Well, there was a comment yesterday about what happened to the other blog content, which left me a bit befuzzled, as I always intended this to be a knitting blog. I guess I'd been getting more sidetracked than I realized in the past. (fyi, I do keep separate blogs for my house/garden and my pets, but it seemed a little schizophrenic to do them all at once - maybe I'm wrong about that)

In any case, I've had some random things bugging me recently, so this seemed as good as any excuse to let them out.

To begin with: There is a motivational-style poster near the elevators at my work that states 'Why can't an Engineering major enjoy a little Edgar Allen Poe once in a while'.

Our company deals with libraries, so it's a generally appropriate poster. Even better than that, I was an Engineering major (or Computer Science, through the engineering department at least - classify how you will), and I took offense at the professors who assumed we were in the major because we hated our english classes. I adore me some good literature, and will yammer your ear off about the revolutionary ambiguity in Antigone, the importance of context in appreciating Wuthering Heights, the complete contrast between 1984 and Brave New World, or how every male lead in a chick flick is in some way derivative of Mr. Darcy. Oh wait, I already have.

So why does this poster bug me?

Because nobody ever bothers asks the reverse. 'Why can't an english major enjoy a little fluid dynamics now and then?' or discrete math? How about Quantum, or even Newtonian physics? But those are hard, you may say. Or maybe irrelevant. And I disagree. They're no harder that Poe - definetly no harder than Shakespeare. Saying otherwise is an insult to english majors, and a disservice to engineering majors, who get their friends, family, and potential compatriots scared away from understanding what it is they really do. 'because it's hard'

hmm, I had other thoughts, but maybe that's enough for one day.

(oh, and there's another poster in that hall which proclaims 'no to libraries are alike, isn't that a wonderful thing' that I have many time wanted to rip off the wall and set fire to when our current project involved painstakingly going through every possible stupid idiosyncrasy anyone ever thought of and dealing with it, instead of just telling them to standardize their darn system already! -- thanks, I feel a little better now)

Dude, I seamed.

2008-09-22T16:48:00.001-05:00

And I'm not even done with all the pieces!

I started by tacking over the selvedge/drawstring place on gigi's shoulder, because, well, the tail I needed to use was right there, and I didn't want to do the counting involved in casting on a new piece.

And then I just kept going. I have seams and woven in ends on the 2/3 pieces I've completed. I'm not sure if this is a particularly well-written pattern*, or if I'm reaching a new level, but I'm doing a much better job at finishing on this piece than I have in the past. Finishing has been one of the things I've been unhappy with in my previous work, so I like this improvement.

* I must point out. This is the first pattern I've followed in some time. THAT MIGHT HAVE SOMETHING TO DO WITH IT, that someone else actually put thought into the finishing techniques so I saw them from the get-go instead of me looking back at what I've shaken out of my head and saying 'huh, doesn't look right'.

frogged and restarted

2008-09-12T10:58:00.001-05:00

I finished the back of the silk gigi by the end of the olympics - if you don't count weaving in ends, which I haven't done. That's why I don't go in for that sort of thing. Then I started the left front, and finished the (extended) ribbing, and looking at the instructions for the after-ribbing-stuff realized I'd futzed something up with the pattern and how the button band was supposed to go.

(what part of p1, (k1 p1)x3, k2 p2 to end looks like 'do the whole thing in 2x2 rib just like the last piece' to you? Apparently part of it did to me)

It was probably a good thing though, since in restarting, I noticed that a) I think I had two fewer stitches than I should have, and b) I was using the larger 'stockinette needles' for the ribbing.

Ah well, I have an inch or so done again.

Oh, and I am completely loving the tubular cast on thing. I can do it by memory now. It does help in the picking up if you use bigger needles for the flat part though.

Does this count as olympic knitting?

2008-08-12T13:33:00.001-05:00

I didn't do it intentionally, but last night, I cast on for gigi with my colourmart silk.

For once, things conspired in my favor, as the smaller gauge I was getting corresponded perfectly with the smaller size I wanted, as opposed to landing off the charts somewhere and requiring a lot of math and frustration as it usually does. (by the way, my target size for this is 26" circumference - it matches one of my T-shirts for ease)

I tried the invisible 2x2 cast-on outlined in the fall interweave knits (it is *so* novel to be receiving these magazines). It was great. Way easier than the tubular cast on's I'd seen before. Also way easier than provisional cast ons I see recomended. Every time I do one of those, it seems to unravel from the bottom. I know, it's not supposed to do that, but it *does*. Or it did. Maybe it has to do with it being ribbing?

In any case, winner on the invisible tubular cast on. The only change I would make would be to do the initial rows in larger needles. But maybe it said that and I didn't notice.

I'm glad I did find a technique I could use in that issue, as there really weren't any patterns I'd use. Maybe the colorwork sweater - maybe.

So, yeah, enough about cast ons. I started at the beginning of evening coverage, and stopped at midnight. Then I stayed up to watch the end of the men's gymnastics final because it was way cool. But I didn't knit for that half hour or so, because I was mostly asleep, and having problems. In that time, I knit about an inch and a half of ribbing. Yes, 104 stitches across, on size 2's, with roughly fingering weight yarn. But still, a little over an inch. There are 5 inches of ribbing total, and this is only the back piece, and I want to make the ribbing longer since I'm long waisted.

I guess it's a good thing I didn't make this official, because there's no way I'd finish in time.

House

2007-12-05T17:19:00.001-05:00

and, we have a house.

Good news? It's ~100 years old, and cute as anything, with great space, and a nearly 3 acre yard in the middle of the country.

Bad news? It's ~100 years old, and needs new floors, walls, and other things before we can move into it, which it's looking like will happen in January.

So, not much knitting now. Or blogging, though we have lots of house 'before' pictures I want to get on a webpage someday - but, y'know, I'm spending all my time working on the house!

Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search.

Now that's interesting...

2007-11-08T10:10:00.000-05:00

In reading my daily blogs, I found this announcement from my reader.
Sew, Mama, Sew! on the Move
Basically, they aggregated their top 1000 feeds to a list, and pointed some out.
What I thought was interesting, was the thematic analysis. Basically, tech stuff was king, then humor and news, but the final category they found noteworthy was craft blogs. The blog from the title, YarnHarlot, and a third that I didn't look into.

Huh.

Now, I haven't done any analysis outside of reading that article, so maybe their PR writer sews, and this is just an outlier because that's what she wanted to write about. Maybe it's old news to everyone else. But while I knew crafty blogs were popular, I wouldn't have pegged them over, say, fashion. So, huh.

In other news, the house sellers we've been talking to accepted our remediation, so we may well be moving out of the grandparents' soon. On the other hand, they haven't gotten back to us on when the septic is being done (which for various reasons, has to happen before close) so we don't actually have a close date... And soon is a relative term: we're thinking with the holidays, and the amount of work we want to do, we'll actually be moving sometime in January.

So I dreamed I went to Rhinebeck...

2007-10-26T10:06:00.000-05:00

That's a little sad, isn't it? M was a little taken aback when I told him I'd dreamed of a 'going to a yarn show' (his dream was a much more impressive affair of post-apocalyptic spain or something)

Rhinebeck was quite nice in my dream, though replete with odd spectacles like a lan-party full of high schoolers throwing pink balloons, and tossing second cuts over the crowd like confetti that I doubt were accurate representations of the festivities.

Really, though, Rhinebeck wasn't something I gave much thought to, it's a long way away, we're busy now, and I'm much more in a 'finishing' groove now than a 'stashing/starting/buying' one, and have only been to one fiber-fest-type ever before now. The only reason I even knew about it was everyone blogging about their exploits. So I'm a bit surprised it was on my mind enough to feature full dream.

Apparently though, I want some brooks farm yarn, as this featured prominently. Honestly, I can't believe how accurate my dream memory of this was when I looked it up this morning. I both dreamed an actual yarn company, remembered their lines (though I did transpose the fiber content of some) and had a valid reason for wanting to buy it at a festival. (I'm sensitive to mohair, and wanted to know if it was soft enough).

The way my dreams normally go, I would be fruitlessly searching for the special parrot-feather-and-rum yarn from scurvy pete's yarn booty or something equally outrageous (see lan-party with balloons, above)

in which I fail (again) at ordering yarn.

2007-10-12T08:56:00.001-05:00

So, remember back last winter when I thought I ordered from webs, but hadn't?

Well, I recently tried again at online ordering. First, I forgot that while I entered my new married name at the yarn site, they used paypal for payment, and my account there still had my maiden name - imagine what a mess that could have been. But apparently my credit card remembered who I used to be, and took the payment anyway. Phew. Disaster averted.

But then! I get an email from them: the USPS says your address doesn't exist, but we noticed you listed something different on the paypal. Should we resend it there? Ohmygosh. Back in the day when I registered on that site, I entered my then college dorm address (apparently partial/incorrect - who gets mail at a dorm anyway?). Somehow. I neglected to update that when I decided to place an order and told them to ship it there.

Note that this company is in the uk. So in order for the post office to tell them I'd entered some monkey poo instead of a real address, it presumably had to cross the Atlantic - twice!
I cannot believe that by this point someone hadn't thrown the darn thing in the trash as said to heck with this person who can't figure out her own order! I would have.

I've ordered on the internet before! I swear I have! I don't know why I fail at doing it now. But I think I should be banned or something. Only allowed to do so under strict supervision.

But in any case. If you're thinking of ordering from colourmart. Know that their customer service is *phenomenal*.

Wearing shawls in public

2007-10-10T09:23:00.001-05:00

I wore my fps to a concert the other night (and yes, I wore more under it than I did in the first pictures - a black camisole to be precise)

It was wonderful. It was light and warm-but-not-too-warm and really really perfect. I was astounded, and honestly, I didn't figure on it being too terribly practical, despite what I've heard from everyone else. Because really, it didn't *look* practical.

I ended up sort of crossing the ends over one shoulder without actually tying them, since tying looked a little frumpy. It was a *little* short for this to work quite perfectly. I'm not sure whether a shawl pin would help, or be to heavy and ruin the effect. It would be worth looking for a lightweight one at least.

Or I could trying using a bamboo dpn ;)

I tried to wash it afterwards and just push it into shape rather than going all out with wires and pins. We're in a strange in-between state with living and washing arrangements currently - not much space to stick pins in, and I don't even know where my wires are. I do not think it was a success. Too bad. Blocking takes so darn long I was hoping I wouldn't have to do that step every time I wore it. But I worry more about ruining it if I don't wash it every time, since it was next to my bare skin, and I don't want the oils to sit on it and cause it to deteriorate or discolor. Would this really happen, or am I worrying too much?

So moral of the story: I do like wearing shawls. I must make more shawls. The shawls must be larger. Blocking is a bear.

woolgathering

2007-09-18T10:31:00.001-05:00

My first fiber-fest!

It was a gorgeous day, and I must say I enjoyed the drive down nearly as much as browsing the exhibits (which is good, as it took about as long)

It was also perfect sweater-weather. Just the right side of cool. I've resolved that I need to make a better sweater for wearing in public like that. I felt a little embarrassed of my not-quite fitting felted tweed. FPS would have been great, but it was a bit nippy for that.

I didn't come home with anything (other than half a rootbeer float), which wasn't completely the plan, but not really unexpected either. I didn't plan at all to get things I actually needed, and the focus of the exhibits was spinning material, not knitting.

This was, honestly the first time I'd seen people actually spinning. It was fascinating. The techie in me is embarrassed to admit that I was paying so much attention to their hands I didn't even look at how the wheel was working - it was just magically twisting and sucking up the yarn. Too bad, I'm sure the wheel mechanics were fascinating too.

I was hoping a bit that I could get a basic 'learn to drop-spindle' set and enough instruction to set me on my way, but pretty much everyone was using wheels, though I did get to try one of them (fun! and not as hard as I thought!). I *almost* went over to the kids area where they were doing hands-on CD spindle lessons, but chickened out. There wasn't a heck of a selection of spindles to begin with.

Caribbean Bubbles?

2007-09-10T12:52:00.001-05:00

Proposed name for new stole. Pictures pending.

I did pick up my beads this weekend, and finished winding the lace (at last!) and cast on for my new shawl.

The beading was a little rough to start (ha! The first row took me forever and I stabbed myself a bunch and hated it - it was *agonizing* to start) but I am getting the hang of it, and things are much smoother now.

I also forgot to read the fine print on the bead site, where it said that 'a 1.10mm crochet hook is the appropriate size for size 8/0 beads if you string them first. If you want to put the hook *through* the bead, you will need a .75 or mm hook'.

Needless to say my 1.10 mm hook does not fit through the beads. So I improvised with guitar string (again). It works pretty well, though the ends are sharper than ideal. I can store about a row and a half's worth of beads on it without worrying about them falling off, which is convenient, and seems I wouldn't be able to do with the hook.

The hook does seem a reasonable size for repair and utility work though, so not all is lost.

I feel a bit conflicted about this project and the source of the design. Allow me to expound:

I started with the inspiration from The Baltic Sea Stole (ravelry) - essentially I saw a picture of it worked in variegated yarn and thought 'oh, that pattern (which I recognize as 'Japanese Feather' from Barbra Walker) looks decent even with the fairly heavy variegation. I think I'll try it.'

So I did, and, it did, and I began place to make a shawl with that yarn and that pattern. I decided I didn't want to follow the Baltic Sea pattern, since I didn't like the squared off edge - much prefer to keep the natural curve of the lace.

I also discovered that there wasn't very much distinction between the panels to show of the curves (I'd already forgotten that Baltic Sea Stole worked an extra yo there to create negative space between the panels). Instead, I figured a column of beads might make a nice divider.

Unwittingly, I ended up with almost exactly Beaded Lace Scarf II (ravelry). I didn't *mean* to reverse engineer it, it just sort of happened.

*Ok, I looked a little closer and feel a little better. 1) I think it uses a slightly different stitch pattern, not Japanese Feather. 2) the beading is done differently. I'm not sure how, but theirs sit sideways, and mine sit vertically.

Beads came!

2007-09-07T15:58:00.001-05:00

My mum let me know my beads have arrived. (I had them shipped there since our accommodations are so topsy-turvy right now).

But

I can't go get them!

We're making another offer on another house this evening (third time's the charm? I'm so jaded on this now you could make a bracelet out of me). So not tonight.

Then tomorrow there's *the football game* with M's work people. Much fun.

So, who knows.

I guess that means I should finish winding the rest of that laceweight. (would you believe the first thing I dug out of my yarn box in the garage was my paper-towel-tube nostepinne?)

sore

2007-08-24T16:47:00.001-05:00

So, I started 'working out'. I put this in quotation marks because I am doing really, really, pansy things that do not count as a workout in any definition of the word I believe.

Why am I writing this here? Because I'm sore and want to whine. Because supposedly, documenting things is good for keeping up at them. and finally, because I find it amusing the sorts of pansy-wuss things I'm doing that actually make me sore.

I started with situps (well, backwards situps where you lie on your back and lift your legs - they were easier). I could do five of these at a time. That bad. I did three sets of this, for a total of 15 situps before becoming completely exhausted. That was my 'workout'. See why I used the quotes?

I was really surprised that in three days of doing this, I was able to do ten at a time. I mean, that's still really pathetic (don't real people do 100's?), but I actually made progress by doing 15 situps for three days in a row. I think that's crazy. 15 measly situps?

So, it's been about two weeks, and I can now do 3x20. So, I started doing toe-touches. Or more realistically, toe-looks. Because about the only thing that I'm worse at than being strong is being flexible. I can get my hands a little past my knees. Bad. And really, toe-touches? Standing up and bending over? That's the sort of 'exercise' you do in 2nd grade gym. So I did 100. Because It seemed like a good round number.

Apparently those 2nd grade gym teachers were onto something, at least for wussy grown-ups. By about 50, I could actually reach my toes. (hey, combination of working and stretching muscles at the same time. Effective) But for the rest of the night I kinda felt like I was gonna fall over. I wasn't tired anymore, and I wasn't sore yet, but I didn't feel like I could trust all those 'stabilization muscles' you know.

Today I'm sore. From touching my friccin toes.

I packed my knitting

2007-08-23T13:13:00.001-05:00

In fact, it was the very first thing I packed. I'm not sure on the wisdom of this in hindsight, but at the time, it was a very clean 'category' of stuff that I could make a box out of.

Does this mean we found a house? Well, not exactly. But our lease is up, and we don't really like our landlord to begin with....so we're moving in with M's grandparents. This isn't quite as bad as it sounds, but it is still living with your grandparents. Right now, I'm hoping we'll find a house by x-mas. M's a little more optimistic, but I like to prepare myself (which is why, for instance, I'm not freaking out about moving in with grandparents, because I made peace with the possibility back in July, when it was a little less immediate).

On the other hand, fry boxes from Wendys (where my sister works) are a great size for moving. And no they don't smell like fries, they're cut up just frozen potatoes at that stage (this was a concern for me). It is funny to have all our stuff in boxes labeled things like 'cool ranch sauce', 'artisan foccacia bread' and the ever popular 'nugget shaped chicken breast fritters with rib meat'. Not as good as the liquor boxes my in-laws once moved with, but still good.

So no real knitting for a bit now.

:(

Finishing High & ravelry FTW

2007-08-17T16:22:00.001-05:00

After little progress of late, I've been knitting like a madwoman the past few evenings.

Maybe it's just because with this capelet, I actually feel like I'm accomplishing something every night, and may in fact finish it in the foreseeable future. Other pieces haven't been giving me that.

but anyway, got past for splitting the sleeves. Directions state 'knit 4 more rows, then start ribbing' (or something like that) I'm getting a little under gauge, so I do a little more than four.
Do some ribbing.

Think 'this still looks small'.

Awkwardly attempt to try on thing attached to short circular needle and various stitch holders. It looks like it will end approximately at my nipple. 'is that really how this is supposed to fit?' (pattern does not show on a person)

enter ravelry (cue music)
scan through pictures.

No, all the ones that fit well seem to reach slightly below the bottom of the 'bust area' (there must be more technical terms for these places than 'nipple' and 'bust area')

and now we know.

We may now rip a few simple rows of ribbing instead of a painful tubular bindoff and continue knitting with confidence. Hurrah!

*ftw = "for the win" I'm not sure if this is blog slang in general or just gamer slang.

Answering the question 'what do you wear under a shawl'

2007-08-16T16:37:00.001-05:00

...also showing just how flat-as-a-pancake I am.

Blocking shots...

...and pre-blocking shots. I used guitar strings as blocking wires, and strung them in before washing. It worked pretty well.

gorram it

2007-08-15T15:13:00.001-05:00

I went to the crafty-not-yarn store the other day, and completely forgot to buy seaming yarn for the ski sweater. Grouchy now.

(I did get yarn for grr, which is good, and did not find beads for baltic feather, which is ok, as I didn't particularly expect to. I'm now thinking of these or these. Will probably get both to be safe. And a 1.10mm hook)

Also did take pictures of finished FPS, and will post them when I get home today. But I was busy photoing and then editing. While good pictures are one of my favorite parts of other people's blogs, they're one of my least favorite parts of making my own. It feels so laborious and it's hard to make myself start (grumble grumble whine whine I know).

Instead (of posting photos), I was working on the anthropologie capelet. I got to where you split the sleeves off, and decided I didn't like the look of the ribbing, so frogged, and started over with doubled yarn in the ribbing. It looks much better (aside from the pile of frogged-but-not-re-balled yarn all over my couch). Thankfully, from how far I got, it does not look like I will have problems running out of yarn with this, which was one of the main obstacles in using the Davos from the beginning, I only bought three balls.

Finished!

2007-08-13T12:11:00.001-05:00

The FPS is done! It is somehow amazing to me that I have completed this. There was none of the finishing procrastination I often get with projects here - as soon as I realized I was down to the top triangles, I was in a frenzy to finish and block. It is a little smaller than I would do if I did it again (and my mother is already asking) as it didn't stretch quite as much as I thought it would, but perfectly serviceable. It is actually surprisingly heavy. I guess that's the alpaca for you.

Which leaves, what's next? Ravelry has been such an enabler here, as I am all keyed up to start knocking things off the top of my queue as opposed to having forgotten all the things I thought of to make when I was still in the middle of things. I've got three right now. I've already started frogging my failed Davos shrug in anticipation of turning the yarn into an Anthropologie Capelet (ravelry link). Then I need to run to the store after work today to get supplies for the other projects. basic cotton for Grr (ravelry) & a some beads for a Baltic Sea Stole (ravelry). What you say, that pattern has no beads? Well - yes. I'm not actually making a baltic sea stole. I'm just using the motif ('Japanese Feather' per Barbra Walker) to make a very similar stole (without the squared off edging btw - why loose the best part?), and decided it would look well with beads up the lines in between, since my yarn is fairly variegated, and you loose some of the distinction of the wavy lines.

This has me really pleased, since two of the projects will be using up 'problem yarn' that failed at it's first incarnations and has been waiting patiently for the right thing to come along. Here's hoping these are the right things.

p.s. do people agree with me on the double linking to ravelry & an outside source? On one hand, I think it has incredibly descriptive pattern pages, and I want people to be able to easily access the best description. On the other hand, I remember well my time on the wait list, and don't want to exclude those who aren't 'in' yet. Is this good, or just cluttered (or self-important?), and I should hold off linking there until it goes public?

Maybe it's the weather

2007-07-30T15:21:00.001-05:00

I've been knitting about as much as I've been posting recently. We've been house hunting all summer (I think we can now officially qualify ourselves as 'picky') with negligible results, which make me grouchy. That and summer t.v. is terrible. So, I haven't made any progress to speak of on the fps. But even 'no progress' adds up to something when it's been sitting on your couch for, what, three months now? The second ball is looking painfully flat and hollow, and the finished knitting now reaches to my chin when I step on the corners and pull. (describing this sounds like I'm doing such terrible mean things to my lace - stepping on it?! I feel a little guilty now) I've decided that 'as tall as I am' using the same measure will be appropriate, which equates to about (who am I kidding, it equates to exactly) three more rows. Finite. I might finish this thing.

[No picture - I can't think of a way to compose this without it looking strange and headless, and I'm an old-fashioned prude who things posting your pictures on the internet is a darn silly thing to do - you'll get a blocking shot soon enough (three more months maybe? everyone cool with that?)]

I also finished the grey fair-isle. But think I will re-do the bindoff on the neck to the kitchener style, since as-is is a little sloppy.

[What? you expected a picture of that too? okok, by 'finished' I meant 'knitting is done' not 'seamed' there is no sweater... but! I have a good reason for not seaming (I really don't mind seaming...) I think the yarn I used is a little to lumpy, fuzzy and tensile-weak to be good for seaming. So I need to venture out and procure more. I'm honestly thinking wool-ease. Smooth, strong, many colored, and cheap. Am I crazy?

Besides, it's a heavy, rough, worsted, outwear sweater. I plan to ski in it. Who needs on of those in August? There is no rush]

Also finished these sleeves. and started on the body. Buttonholes are going ok, despite much hand-wringing on my part. However, having passed the straight knitting part, I realized that I do not understand my notes, and thus must visit with the original again to figure out what the heck I was thinking.

wow

2007-06-01T10:45:00.001-05:00

note: wow is a video game. If you did not already know this, this post is apt to be very dull and confusing and I would advise skipping to the last paragraph.

So, I started my burning crusade trial last night. Actually, two days ago, but it took me that long to free up enough space and patch everything and get it going.

I was, perhaps, a little too amused with how much I'd forgotten. As in, 'oh yeah, I have buffs, I should use those' or 'I should spec. I think I used to be frost spec, there are a lot of frost buttons on my toolbar, so that was probably it' or even 'I can't steer!' It's coming back, slowly. I also have no idea what half (all?) the stuff in my bags was for. I have a ton of longjaw mudsnapper. I guess one of my alts was leveling cooking? I also have a ton of thorium - a lot more than the mudsnapper. That I at least remember, but it probably would have been more profitable to liquidate *earlier*.

Unfortunately, the expansion hasn't changed hillsbrad much - the main thing I noticed was that the tell you which quest are supposed to be for a group. Spiffy.

Which brings us to the main obstacle to joining up again. My 60 main is a warrior, which was probably not the best choice for me to begin with, and seems to be next to useless now compared to druid, or (f'in) paladin tanks. It's a good time to let her just drop I think. So I'd have to grind 35 levels on my next alt (oh, and switch servers) to get back to the occasional instancing with a good group of people I was at before.
Do I want to grind that much?
It was great nostalgia talking with one of the people who still had an alt on the old server, but I so hate being a lowb. otoh, a lowby mage/druid is easier to deal with than a lowby tank.

sooo... much as I want to take pictures, of the scarf, of the basil that has gotten huge this week, of the lettuce, which I think may be bolting. I don't think I will be. I'll be playing my trial during my home cpu time for the next 7 days to take full advantage. After that, we'll see.

In which I do not go to the great lakes fiber festival

2007-05-30T15:28:00.001-05:00

or make any progress on the FPS.

The FPS isn't a big issue - I did the color work on the last sleeve of my skye tweed sweater and got to maybe elbow length. Then in a fit of impulsiveness, cast on the strange yarn from Japan, and made a scarf over the weekend. It's nothing incredible, but the yarn isn't anything luxury level either. I think I did better justice to it than the garter stitch it was designed for, so I'm satisfied.

Great Lakes - well, I don't know what happened to that. I'd really been looking forward to it, and then, well, I didn't realize it was memorial day weekend for one. So the combination of having to go alone (some would have gone for company, but they are not 'yarn people' and I felt a little mean subjecting to so much) and not having anything that I needed *right now*, and honestly, the gas prices, and I just didn't. I regret a little - I could have picked up some unique lace or a starting spindle kit, but ah well, the weekend was good as it was.

2.5 more patches of FPS last night

2007-05-16T13:51:00.001-05:00

and that's all I have to say about that.

Well, almost, but I couldn't resist channeling forest gump for a moment there. I would have posted the pictures last night, but M absconded with my camera and cable to take pictures of one of the houses we saw. Once he told me where he'd hid them, there was no longer time (or light) for photography. I will try soon, but

note: The pictures I did post yesterday were from that one day when I did a bunch of my FOs. They really are rather lacking, both in subject (the front? the garment laid out flat so you can see the somewhat atypical construction method?) and in general quality. I attribute this to a combination of inexperience with the camera, and the fact that man, it was really dark that time of year! I intend to get better versions of them too.

But comments! I feel a little bad for not noticing them for so long, I gotten used to not having anything show up since it was so new, and sort of stopped checking. to answer 5elementknitr's question, I've oogled Habu on websites, but never seen it in person, as it isn't carried locally. This stuff is no Habu, definetly more on the novelty than luxury end of the Japanese yarn spectrum, but as a gift, I feel obliged to do my best with it.

I don't think I ever mentioned why I was receiving Japanese yarn to begin with. It makes a lot more sense in context. I sent my friend in Japan my first handmade socks (STR medium, I did get pictures, and need to blog them) around the beginning of the year, and this was the (unexpected) return package.

and, of course, houses. Since I've got houses on the brain nowadays. This weekend we saw two more, one that was nice, but not what we were looking for, and one that just might be - except - it needs at least 20,000 worth of work. Refinished floors, new kitchen, and all new windows are the big(est) items.

It would be a great place for us at a great price with it done. but.
a) That's, um, a lot of work. How much do we really want to do all that work?
b) Other people may not think it's as nice as we do. It is an older house, with a lot of attributes that (while they don't bother us) aren't good for resale. Like smallish bathrooms and master bedroom. It's also on a 50mph road in sort of a commercial district. It backs up to a subdivision, and has a big yard so you don't really notice, but 'Industrial Parkway' just doesn't have that ring people are looking for, and the road is likely to get busier. So there's a real concern that even if we get a good price, we could still not be able to resell it.

So, we're thinking.

It also needs a heck of a home inspection. Do the outlets have suitable ground? (1960's construction, there isn't any on the plates, I've heard conflicting things) Do the well & septic work? does the plumbing leak? does the furnace work? How many things are made of asbestos? It's a bank repossession, so nobody knows.

Tough call.

FO: White circle shrug

2007-05-15T17:01:00.000-05:00

This is the second of three iterations of the circle shrug concept. I know, start in the middle why don't I? It is, however, the best looking of the three. I found the idea in the craftster forums, and created my own pattern for it. It's a very simple recipe, essentially a folded rectangle which you pick up stitches from the long edge of and knit around for a ruffle. In this case, the rectange is the 'english mesh' lace pattern from some washcloth pattern somewhere, and the ruffle is my own figuring (I'm sure someone else has devised and name it before, but I haven't seen it).
Stitch pattern (roughly):
r1: k2tog yo p
r2: k yo p2tog
It's essentially k1p1 ribs with yo's in between and is completely reversible, which was the desired attribute.
Due to the heavy drapey nature of the yarn, it doesn't need blocking beyond laying flat to dry, which is nice.

So, vital stats (I honestly remember all of these - wow)
yarn: gedifira 'big', a cotton acrylic blend 3 balls. I bought this for a tube top, then realized that was a bad idea, knit another top for which it was entirely too heavy, and finally it found a home here, for which it is very suitable, soft and drapey.
needles: size 8 bamboo circular. The plymouth one with the joins I don't like, which is why I remember it.
gauge: er, it's lace. One repeat of the english mesh is 2 inches across and 3 inches tall. One repeat of the lacy rib is 1.5 inches across.

close up:

completely boring

2007-05-09T15:43:00.001-05:00

It's unfortunate that starting this blog coincided so closely with knitting the most boring thing ever from an observational standpoint. I'm starting tier 14 on the FPS. I did finish my first ball of yarn this past weekend, and take a picture on the lamp, (for scale) which I suppose I will post, even though it is *not* exciting. I still maintain that it is not boring or unpleasant to knit (pattern keeps changing, distinct chunks of gratification and stopping points &c. &c.) but it is nothing to show to others progress-wise.

(M declared last night that my wad of unblocked lace 'looked pretty' I disagreed, and told him he had just lost a lot of veracity points on his future complements. He told me that I would have to stop complementing how his guitar practicing sounds)

14 tiers in, it's a little longer than my shoulders are wide un-stretched, so I declare it half-done. How many tiers does the pattern say again? I think that I am not getting gauge with this. (not that I tried, I just picked some needles that made an appropriately lacy swatch. Measurements schmeasurements)

So, for interesting content we will have to go outside the knitting arena:

-librivox sounds pretty cool. Am I strange for being most interested in reading Sophocles and Plato (euthyphro in particular)? But all those greek names would kill me I'm sure.

-Saw the first inside of a potential house the other day. Was unimpressed. People had bought it to flip, and done a terrible job of it. They put in nice new kitchen cabinets and poured a patio...but that was about it. No appliances. No new windows. No replacement of the asbestos siding. The floors are also very un-level (though they put new wood on top of it - but it is so not flat it will not last) they also painted all the walls taupe. But, ah, didn't sand them first, and there are brush strokes all over the place, and they didn't tape the ceiling well enough, since there's paint there too.
It isn't *bad* but they really didn't add any value other than the kitchen cabinets, and they are asking a price in line with it being completely fixed up and nice. Which is too bad, since according to the realtor (this may be realtor-ese, who knows), the price is just their costs, and it will probably be difficult/not worth it to convince them that it just isn't worth that, and they'll have to take a loss. Looks like it would have been a decent deal before they fixed it, but unfortunately we weren't looking then.
*le sigh* it had such a nice yard too.

Strange yarn from Japan

2007-05-02T17:11:00.000-05:00

I received a box from a friend of mine in Japan. Among other (mostly tasty) things there were these two skeins of yarn.

I would say they're around fingering weight, and very oddly made up. They're several different kinds of yarn wound into the same skein. Here are some more close up shots, since we know that's what everyone really wants.

I ripped right into skeining the first one before I thought about documenting the unique form it came in, so part of the one type of yarn is wound into a ball already.

Here you can see the three distinct types of yarn, the pale purple two-ply, rainbow-ish novelty, and a small amount of white feathery novelty. The purple and rainbow have about even amounts, (which is hard to tell now, since the purple's all wound up, but trust me) and there's only a very small amount of the white.

Finally, a close up of the purple, to see the composition. The plys are definitely distinct, and I'm guessing at fibers. Possibly wool and silk, possibly wool/acrylic and rayon. The only tag was a little stub that said 'home spun'. Not even anything in Japanese.

The dark was considerably less photogenic, but it looks like equal parts black/rainbow in the vein of this one's white/rainbow, and some natural colored slubby cotton. No third yarn in that one.
The two skeins were tied together too. So, I'm wondering, what to make with this? I get the impression it might be some sort of a kit, intended for use in a single project, but I can't think what. Anyone ever seen/heard of a presentation like this before?
If I don't get any feedback, I'm thinking a length-wise scarf, so I can use the parts up evenly. I'd like to do a lace pattern rather than just garter like my Kochoran scarf, but I need to figure out something simple enough not to fight too much, and that won't object to having it's beginning & ending dictated by when I run out of a yarn type.
Oh, yes, and the rest of the stuff from the box from Japan. Tasties.

(actually, there was a little more than this, including some slubby black wool, but it's been redistributed around my house more than I wanted to gather back up again)

Our herbs have finally sprouted. Well, most of them. And I'm not sure how well they'll make out starting just now, and not getting a heck of a lot of sun. But we have basil.

and oregano.

To give you a sense of scale as to just how tiny these things are, here are the full pots. Basil is on the left. The oregano seeds looked like dust.

The parsley is visible at a somewhat more reasonable scale.

We also have one thyme, a little mint, and a second pot of oregano. But honestly, they look about the same, and I'm already getting kinda heavy on the 'generic green sprouts' pics as it is, happy as they may make me in their wee-ness. No Lemon Verbena yet.

the good, the bad and the ugly

2007-04-30T07:55:00.001-05:00

No, really, we watched that movie this weekend. *well, part of it. Do you know how long that movie is? Er, neither do I, but we watched until we thought 'man, this is a long movie' then checked, and were around halfway through. So we're finishing it this afternoon. It took me a while to figure out the dubbing scheme. I was almost positive parts of it were dubbed, since they were using the same two voice actors from 'bubba's budget dubbing' that I recognized from all the kung-fu movies. But then, it's Clint Eastwood, and he doesn't speak Italian, does he? It can't be dubbed. That and there really isn't much talking to begin with. So I was befuddled for some time. Apparently, it was released in both america and italy, so half of the scenes were done in each language, and dubbed to the other.
Apparently people like M know this.
And young clint eastwood isn't bad looking either. He reminds me of hugh jackman, or at least, according to M, he has the same two facial expressions, 'stern', and 'slightly confused'. Those work for me.

Knitting, you want me to talk about knitting? I'm up to tier 11. Are pictures really necessary? I probably have a tier and a half left on this ball of yarn.

I finally got my skye tweed order from webs from way back when. They aren't really that slow at filling orders. Apparently the first time I thought I ordered it, I never clicked the 'make it so' button, and thus spent the next month and a half wondering where my yarn was. But it has since been actually ordered, and come in, and of course, I had to see if the different dye lot would match well enough (it does, you can't even tell) so I finished one of the sleeves. I'd forgotten how rough this yarn was to work with. Almost sticky. One sleeve and seams to go. I should really get different yarn for seaming it too.

one sleeve done

I also finally got buttons for the handpaintedyarn sweater. They did have them at Hobby-Lobby. They're nothing special but they should work. Unfortunately, I think I will now finish the fair isle first, since I have yarn for that. But by-golly, when the time comes, I have buttons.

pretty good match

drip drip drip

2007-04-25T14:43:00.001-05:00

The weather forecast for my area is: 'A slight chance of showers in the evening...then a chance of showers and thunderstorms after midnight. Thursday: Showers and thunderstorms likely in the morning... then showers and thunderstorms in the afternoon.'

It looks like that until Saturday. We really haven't had much rain this month, so we're due for our April showers sometime now. but you think they could have made that forecast a little more - succinct? y'know 'showers and thunderstorms FOREVER' or something catchy like that.

Did two blocks and a triangle of FPS last night. Was darn tired by the time I finished the triangle. I'm now on tier 8. This is darned boring to blog about. I will not post another picture, because it looks exactly the same. Maybe another pic when I finish the first ball of yarn (coming up relatively soon here). Oddly, I'm not getting bored of actually knitting it as much as I thought I would. I guess the rotation of blocks provides enough variation for my simple mind. Either that or I'm born to be a lace knitter and just didn't know it until now.

My only complaint is that All Tangled Up posted a picture of her FPS, and her 8th tier is a heck of a lot longer than mine. Like, up & down longer, not width wider, which is obvious. Even when mine's stretched out it's not that long. In the store, the zephyr looked about the same weight as the misti alpaca I choose. What gives?

Oh, ok, I guess I have two complaints. While the concentration level is not such that I need complete silence, it's also not to a point that I can look up at a television while working. So I it's frustrating when there's nothing tolerable on t.v. for background noise, because I can't watch a movie or recorded show with M since I can't knit while paying that much attention.

We went house browsing yesterday, which was probably more interesting than my forest path travails, but harder to write about, particularly since I'm trying *not* to plan out gardens in all the backyards we see. Don't get attached and all that. I'm mostly failing. I could tell you where I'll put rhododendrons, and herbs, and a pond, and the lilac, and ask how to prune the ancient one that's already there, and say what I'd do the first year vs. the second vs. the distant future. But I won't. Because writing it down is even worse than thinking it.

stiff

2007-04-23T15:49:00.000-05:00

Busy, busy weekend. I think I knit, one triangle? 1/3 of a block? Something insignificant. I will try very hard to take pictures when I get home.

Busy, but good. We went on an off-trail guided hike at one of our local parks to see some old-growth sycamores. No pictures of those. Honestly, I was a little unimpressed by the sycamores, they look pretty much like other big sycamores. Yeah, a little bigger, but not so much that it's truly astounding. There were buckeye and box elder trees down there which were quite large given they are typically understory trees. Those were more interesting, but not terribly picturesque. (they looked like trees, in particular, trees without leaves)

The weather was gorgeous, sunny and breezy and mild. Perfect. I did manage to pick up a sunburn hiking through the leafless woods. We are finally developing that elusive 'green haze' on the bare trees. It seems long overdue.

The lettuce sprouts, however, are not thriving. They aren't exactly dead, but they're not getting much bigger either. There probably isn't enough sun. Too bad.

Lest you think a simple hike could prevent me from progressing on fps, we also ate and saw pan's labyrinth with friends we hadn't seen for months. (My vote was for grindhouse or 300. I was vetoed), weeded garlic mustard out of my MIL's yard. There wasn't much, and it was quite satisfying. And went to a housewarming party for one of M's friends. And in-laws are a good drive away. So busy. But good.

I'm not sure if the stiffness is from the hiking or the weeding. I didn't get it until today, but it's all in my derriere and thighs.

Finally, pictures! (from the back porch)

'The Lump'

stretched out some - note tier 7 otn

Housing

2007-04-20T10:07:00.001-05:00

I only knit one more patch (well, two half-patches) on fps last night. I think I've done four or five since the last post. Maybe a little more. I'm on the 6th tier. I figured it takes me a little over an hour to do a patch. (ah the precise timing achieved by knitting with the t.v. on) This leads to very easy math on how long it will take me to finish.

I am very carefully avoiding doing this math. I don't want to know. I'm pretty sure it will be something obscene like over 100 hours. I don't need to be aware of that sort of thing.

I'm completely digging the nupps too. They are my good good fast-patch friends. I had a devil of a time with them on the swatches and failed first attempt, but here, they're great. Even a little on the loose side if I don't think about it. The trick is looping the yo's over my index finger and holding them out until I knit the stitch after the nupp. Good stuff.

Anyway, on to the title of the post. Ever since the Germany thing fell through (yes the Germany thing fell through, so sad), I'd been nervous and postponing searching for a house. We'd done some preliminary looking before, but kept on the conservative side of what we thought we could afford, which resulted in houses I didn't particularly want to live in.

Well, tonight my dad called, and announced that he had fresh-caught trout which nobody else in my family wanted to eat (crazies). After dinner we talked some finance. (my Dad's profession) and re-examined how much we could probably afford. The new range yields much more promising results.

I've found that I'm drawn to idiosyncratic old houses more than I am to practical things that might do anything positive for the resale value (or cost of heating) 1838 brick farmhouse with three chimneys that look like they could actually heat the place? original 1914 art-deco looking woodwork and a crazy sliding door with beveled glass that looks like it came off a barn? I'm so there. So what if it only has 1.5 baths?

knit knit knit

2007-04-17T14:32:00.001-05:00

So the spinning urge has passed, though I still think the rovings are oh-so-pretty. So have the starting urges. I did make good progress on FPS. More on that latter.

I also did make it to Michaels, but they sell no buttons. Now where-to? I might try Hobby-Lobby - I think they had a real fabric section, while Michaels does not, but it is the same sort of store, which lowers my expectations. Or perhaps Wal-mart? I heard they're closing their fabric section, but have they yet? They're close enough to make checking less painful.

I'm up to tier 4 on the FPS. While that is nominal in the course of how long it will need to be, and less than it sounds like since I'm making it narrow, I feel like it's solid progress. Total of 8.5 squares if I remember right. It's almost longer than it is wide.

I did my first standing up & knitting at the social security office today. Wasn't in line long enough to do much, and didn't get any comments, but I felt cool to have an intricate project there. (I'm such a nerd) and it was helpful for the standing part that it was lightweight. I did feel like I was hunching more than I do when I knit while seated.

I also worked on it a little at my parents', where we stopped over the weekend to do more potting (a.k.a. steal more pots), borrow their grill (a.k.a. make them dinner) and M fixed the computer. My mom asked if I was making it for her. While I'm pretty sure I want to keep this one, it makes me happy to have a willing recipient for lace, since I'm not sure how much of it I could wear myself. (who are we kidding here, I don't have *any* lace FO's yet - always planning ahead...) She says she likes shawls even though other people tell her they look like an old lady, and that maybe she is getting to be an old lady.

We also watched V for vendetta. (again, to show it to my family) and I'm still quite fond of that movie. While the current-politics slant is done with a bit of a heavy hand, the material does at least pre-date today's specific political clime by a good bit, and was allegedly even more political. I love how well the title character was done, quite a feat given you don't see his face. Makes you think about the technical aspects of movie-making involved in making that work. Also, I think the 1812 overture is a spectacular backdrop for blowing up buildings. Which, I guess is what it was designed to be, except for with ships. The emotion there is such an effective foil - far superior to fireworks. Family liked the movie too, which surprised me a bit, I was expecting it might be a little too dark for them.

itchy fingers

2007-04-13T12:28:00.001-05:00

I want to start something. I want to acquire more yarn, and start doing something new. Like learning to spin. With stuff like this

or this,

or even this.

and make a lumpy bumpy beginner yarn into a lumpy bumpy bulky hat. I think any of those would be enough to make a hat. Of course, I'd have to buy a spindle, but it sounds like fun.

I also want to buy every different kind of lace yarn I've ever seen.

Particularly sundara's pure silk (regardless of the fact that it is currently un-obtainable), and some petal-pink KSH and cast on a half-dozen different shawls & scarves in all the fancy patterns from my barbara walker books. This one is particularly silly, since I just found my FPS pattern, and am absolutely gleeful to be working on it. So gleeful, apparently, that I want to do other lace. Lace is largely lace to me now, starting a second pattern would bring nothing good, other than making me lose my memorization of the first pattern.

I even want to swatch and start the lurking monster of the long-planned cable&lace denim cardigan design project. This is theoretically a good thing, since I've been trying to drum-up motivation for that beast for some time now. Now that I'm in a startin' mood, I worry that I don't really have enough yarn for it, particularly if I swatch (which I must do - it's a cable-sample homegrown design for gosh sakes). So I'm stuck. Particularly since there ain't no more of the yarn available right now.

But the *real* reason I'm not starting anything, is because my inner granny (thank you mother of chaos) wants to finish things. She wants noticeable progress on the FPS, because it is fun. She really, really wants to work up the body of the handpaintedyarn sweater, since it would go so fast you know. And then it would be soft and cuddly and wonderful to wear until this coldsnap breaks. Or even better, karma might break the coldsnap to perfectly coincide with finishing the nice cuddly sweater, so that I couldn't wear it until next year. Which would be even better. Because then it wouldn't be cold.
Ahem. Back on target. The thing is, in this case, I really do agree with my inner granny, and I don't even resent her for it like I usually do. I will try *very very* hard to get myself to Michael's this weekend and pick up some buttons and ribbon for the sweater so I can finally cast on with an appropriately sized knit-on button band.

I should probably stop by old navy and attempt to buy more jeans while I'm there. (almost) all of mine have holes in the butt.

disclaimer: all images in this post are saved to my own account (no bandwidth theft) and were taken by their respective creators, who have been linked to. I take no credit for these tasty, tasty things. The images serve to advertise exactly what I have been dreaming over, which I consider fair use. However, if they are your images, and you disagree, comment and they will be removed.

hahahaha

2007-04-12T17:03:00.000-05:00

Found the FPS page. With the guitar music. I was so close to buying a new one.

Need to make...

2007-04-11T12:09:00.001-05:00

this

Snowflake Scarf

2007-04-09T16:50:00.000-05:00

Yarn: Blue Sky Alpacas, Alpaca Worsted, 4 skeins, natural and light blue
Gauge: 14 sts, 16 rows per 4"
Pattern: My own
Needles: size 8? bamboo.

This is one of my favorite projects. It's also My mother's, for what that's worth. This yarn is incredibly precious. You touch it and can't believe something so soft came from a living animal. That said, there are some guard hairs that I notice on my very sensitive neck. Not enough not to wear it. Also, one (not terribly long, though grandted double-thick) scarf like this will set you back $80. Phew.
It is beautifully warm though. Just long enough to really wrap across your face once. And quite good at hiding beginner's DK eveness issues. Also, it has a cable construction, and really hasn't pilled in two winter's worth of resonable wear. It does leave some fuzzies on my black wool coat, but the scarf itself is doing quite well.
Appoligies on the pictures - the coloration of this is incredibly hard to capture for some reason. It's subtle and pale, but not nearly as blurry and grey as these suggest. Most pictures that showed any kind of contrast either washed the whole thing to white so you could barely see the patten, or made the blue a strange brilliant cyan. I need to get better with the camera.

Progress on Many Fronts

2007-04-09T16:30:00.000-05:00

The temperature here has finally crested freezing, after nearly a week of nasty, terrible snow-spitting misery, made all the more keen by the gorgeous 80 degree days that followed it. It isn't exactly balmy at 40F, and we probably won't have any lilacs, or many other early spring flowers here, and it's forcasted to be rainy and grey for the next, well, ever. But at least it isn't nasty-cold any more.

We're trying to grow some lettuce on the patio this year, and even after going un-watered through the 80-degree honeymoon, and left outside through the first sub-freezing night (before we realized that it was going to *stay* like that) it's not dead. Most of the problems seem to relate to itty-bitty lettuce seeds floating away in lightweight peat soil, and redistributing themselves to non-ideal locations. And they probably need thinned, but I'd like to wait until the mix seeds differentiate themselves somewhat, so I don't end up with all one thing.
(The two big containers are spinach and romaine, the little ones are a mesculn mix)

M's been great this weekend getting presents under control and put away, which is fortunate, since I've been grouchy and tired, and generally hard to motivate to do anything but sit. It still isn't done, but it's making progress.

Also making progress are the sleeves on the handpaintedyarn sweater. (in case you can't tell, that's almost a full pair there) There's been some pooling even with the alternation, some of which I find fascinating and beautiful, some of which I find, well, tolerable enough to not be worth ripping things out and trying to break the yarn to fix it.

Which leaves me dangerously close to having to make a decision (read: figure out) how to do the button band. I sense a stall coming on here...

and I still can't find the rest of my FP shawl pattern

Got Married

2007-04-06T14:32:00.001-05:00

It's funny how my ability to think about this is hampered by the fact that I will never do it again, and therefore learning from it is irrelevant. I'd never realized how much my thought processes are centered around learning and improvement. it kept catching me unawares when I was thinking about it.

That's sort of an anti-climatic way to start that post isn't it?

To be fair, it really was a little anti-climatic, which was pretty much as I expected, seeing as we'd been as-good-as married for two whole years of engagement.

In any case, thoughts, whether I learned from them or not:

I was definitely right about not being able to handle an exciting strenuous trip to europe immediately afterwards - hocking hills was just about the right speed. Should have had the foresight to pack gatoraide and a massage for that night.

Ari very seriously critiquing Paige's performance as flower girl. Apparently 'her mom did most of it' well, she is two, so that was sort of the plan. Ari really is more the right age, but as an oldest sibling myself, I could not do that to her oldest sibling.

Should have invited more people to the rehearsal dinner, since even though I think I did a good job of mingling, I did not spend nearly as much time with my closer family as I wanted to.

Only had one contact. That plus veil equals very blurry vision. Didn't give me a headache, just kinda weird.

Flowers were good. Some of the corsages were magenta rather than pastel, which strangely aligned with my primary nagging fear in the days leading up, but the main bouquets were right.

Music was good, though I wish I'd had more time to relax and listen to it, as from all reports it was in fact, really good. This contradicts my other main nagging fear, suggesting that I should not in fact quit my job to become a psychic.

People were impressed by the cake (yay) but some seemed confused by the food format, expecting to be excused like a buffet. I think more tall tables, smaller stations, and some passed stuff would have helped this, but again, when am I ever going to use that knowledge?

One of my friends took pictures and posted them, which was nice to have right away like that. May post some, though I'm a little squeamish about posting face-pictures on the internet.

M realized when we got back that I hadn't brought my knitting and thanked me. I thought that was a little silly, since I didn't really think I'd have much opportunity to knit. He also gave me a hard time when I thanked him for making sure we could watch the basketball game (NCAA championship), since apparently, as a girl, I'm not supposed to allow sports on my honeymoon? Apparently his boss was also surprised that he'd been able to watch it, which I find particularly bizarre, since we watch most games with him. Does he really think that I would hang around with a bunch of M's work people, while the other wives were somewhere else if I did not actually like watching the games? M's boss is great, I really like him, but he's so fun to pick on, and he's definitely getting an earful for this one.

Germany

2007-03-28T10:07:00.001-05:00

So, there appears to be a possibility we will be moving to Germany for the next 2-4 years.
M's company has a position there (dependent on a contract that has yet to be signed, so this is no definite thing) and he came home joking one day that we might take it rather than hiring a new person to go. We laughed, and brushed it off. About a week later, we both came back to it. Y'know, maybe it's not such a crazy idea. We aren't likely to ever be less tied down than we are now. When I count the tangible 'big' things we've acquired, which are actually *ours* it's two cars, a couch, some computer equipment, a washer-dryer set. Not much. Not to much to move or leave as things require.
The company would pay for the move. They would hire me on additionally. They would pay for housing. There is apparently no income tax? While the cost of living in Europe is higher, they would essentially double our salary (still in dollars) and that's on top of the free housing and tax free status. This would put us in a much more favorable position to buy a house when we got back, as opposed to just scraping by as we were looking to do this summer. It seems like one of those absolutely perfect opportunities, and everything that is scary about it are things that I would be a better person for having faced.
That said, what's scary about it:

Being in another country. I make friends slowly. I lean on my family a lot. I was one of those kids who came home from college on weekends for things other than laundry. The social ramifications of this are staggering to me.
The language. I am not one of those good with languages people. Apparently, English is very accepted in that area, but that's a cop-out. I'd feel like an ugly american living somewhere and not knowing the language.
I would be working with M. While not as horrific of a failure as explaining math problems to M, coding with M has been, a bit dicey. Additionally, I would be working in an area that I'm not 100% comfortable/qualified. (despite the opinions of his boss, who has been making noises about hiring me since M mentioned my gpa) When I'm uncomfortable, and M is available for the purpose, I tend to lean on him. I'm not sure if this would be good in a long-term working environment. Add to that the previous issue of him being the only person I will know there, and I'm seeing a lot of him. It is definitely possible for me to o.d. on M.
Plus: we would be essentially the most technical (at least computers/code-wise) people there. Minimal oversight. We can phone back to the office he's at now for support, and there's a non-technical manager/overseer type on base, but largely we are on our own. I worry that this may result in us being lazy and not learning/producing much in that time. Of course, this last one could really swing the other direction too.

But there it is. If this does go through, I will probably start a separate blog about it to avoid cluttering this up, but as it isn't even a definite yet, it's here for now.

In knitting, I'm almost done with the first sleeve of the handpainted yarn ribbed jacket. I got pooling despite the alternating yarn, but it's not too bad, so I'm ok with it.

losing everything

2007-03-20T16:55:00.000-05:00

So, as a follow-up to my mysterious yarn shortage (I have finally bitten the bullet and ordered more - and needles 5 balls should be enough for sleeves, right? They were only 4$ each...) I have also lost 1/2 the pattern to the fps. Including the part that explains the part I'm on. So no work on that.

otoh, I have started on the sleeve for the handpainted yarn sweater. Started with sleeves, as I have yet to completely determine how I'm going to do the button band. Right now, thinking 1x1 rib on a smaller needle, with grosgrain sewn to the back. But still pondering.

It's working out nicely, very soft, the alternating colors seems to be working. Very snug too, which was to be expected, the original sweater was in an acrylic blend, so the rib didn't contract much. This is 100% merino, so it does. Good snugly feel to it, but it's going to be quite trim. While this is generally a plus, I'm a little nervous whether the body will end up too snug, and pull at the buttons, and I should revert to the turtleneck idea. I still prefer the idea of a cardigan, even if I only wear camisoles under it, so maybe I can block the lights out of the body when I wash it and have it work out. At worst, I suppose I could sew the button band shut, and have it be a 'pretend' cardigan.

Sleeve.

Working on the thicker dpns is hurting my left ring finger, since they neither bend like my sock pins, nor have yarn cushioning on that part like circulars. Saw on the KR forums today a post about flexi DPNs. at http://knittingonthego.samsbiz.com/page/150ww/Home.html. May have to try those out. Pretty cheap too.

In other news, the 'other' sock yarn is not turning out to be as heinous of a colorway as I had expected. Still not my fave, but it isn't paining me to work on. I did forget to factor in negative ease for the leg, so it's a bit loose, but I doubt these will really be favorite socks anyway, so I'm leaving it.

I am not seriously out of yarn ... am I?

2007-03-05T13:06:00.001-05:00

I cast on for the dreaded first sleeve of the fair-isle sweater, as it has proved itself to indeed fit & not be ugly beyond all wearability.

I did the color work at the cuff, I got started on increases and... I finished my ball of yarn. Went to look for the next one. I've been stalling on this project for sometime, so I don't have a clear recollection of where the yarn was, or how much there was left, or anything like that. Couldn't find it. Now, I have a small stash, so it's not all that plausible that something could successfully hide in it. There just aren't that many places. I tried to look up my order receipt to confirm that yes, I had ordered a reasonable number of balls of the stuff, and I should not be out after finishing *only* the body, regardless of how much longer than specified I made it. Couldn't find the receipt. Couldn't find the yarn.

I guess I need to face the music. At least there is more of it on webs, and it's on even better sale than before. How much yarn does one need for a sleeve and 7/8 anyway?

moved to the fair-isle

2007-02-27T17:35:00.000-05:00

After languishing for many moons finished half-way through the color work on the front, we have:

It's amazing the sins a good wash can hide in colorwork.

Granted, the point of this project was to be a learning experience (and I did learn - I learned on *the last* row of color, that I need to hold the yarn wrapped around my middle finger on the bottom side, and the yarn wrapped around my ring finger on the top, despite how unintuitive this sounds). The technique on the color is nasty. Lumpy. Mess. However, the yarn (skye tweeD) is very sticky. Annoyingly so. Thank goodness it washes up decently or I'd have wasted a purchase. And it's not too ugly for it's intended purpose as a good, warm, work sweater. I did have to send the finished colorwork through the wash to be sure of that though.

and the back, just to prove how terrible I really did with this. Note the little ends in the middle? That's where I teased out a giant loop of extra yarn in the middle, then gave up and cut it and wove the ends in. This is also, cooincidentally, has better color than the others.

So why the fair isle? Well, the socks are finished. and Here

Is my progress on FP as of my last post on the matter. Not shabby. But wait a minute - where are the needles? Is this some strange needle-less entrelac? No...I got mixed up on when to do which triangles, and it's a rip-out. Except I could never reuse the yarn, so I just yanked out the needle in disgust, cut the yarn and cast on again.

But I've been less motivated. At least taking the mulligan off the needles allowed me to stretch it sufficiently to ascertain that it will, in fact, be wide enough. Unfortunately, it's not made any progress.

Oh, and I've been on a needle breaking spree.

Two of the #0 rosewoods snapped in normal sock-knitting usage. I know, I could probably return them since I bought them a week ago, but really, I was taking a gamble that something like that would be structurally sound, and I lost. I figure it comes with the territory and I'll cut my losses and learn my lesson. I'll sand down the points on the longer pieces and use them for less strenuous jobs like stitch holding and the like.
Then...I stepped on the circular I'm using for the fair isle. You can see the (failed) attempts at a hot-glue fix in there. Think I've gotta bite the bullet and replace 'em. Which is doubly ironic, since one of the reasons I decided to finish the fair-isle was that it was on the same size needles as the handpaintedyarn I'd been winding for the past ever. (the other was that then I would have two sweaters with approximately the same complication level and intended purpose otn simultateously, which doesn't do me any good).

goals

2007-02-27T16:47:00.001-05:00

I've been reading http://denofchaos.blogspot.com/ and it's been making me think of goals. (it's also both fun to read, mildly educational, and very good birth control, a winning combination if you ask me)

I have never been a 'goals' type person. This was a problem in school days, when you were required to list them: three things to do this quarter, three things to do this year... I made stuff up that I figured I was going to end up doing anyway, so then I wouldn't have to worry about it.

I don't mean to say I was irresponsible about work (though I was probably an underachiever, I slacked very creatively, constantly aiming on that results/work sweet spot as opposed to 'my best').

It's sort of like that 'process knitter' vs. 'product knitter' I think I'm definetly a process achiever. I got good grades because you're supposed to - not to hit some mystical number which would get me into a particular major at a particular college. I always figured to do as good as was reasonable (see 'sweet spot' above) and make do with wherever that got me.

Which is strange, because I never did anything *else* because I was supposed to. I gamed the rules so I could follow the letter but not the spirit. Still do, though at least now I'm aware that my rampant passive-agressive tendencies are not, in fact, a virtue. Yet somehow, long-term, barely tangible 'supposed tos' are cake for me.

I think I need to say also, that I've been very lucky. I'm, modesty aside, smart. Grades weren't terribly tough for me. My parents also managed to put enough aside for my college that everything was covered, plus, due to my relatively bargan-basement choice, I had money left over. I currently have no debt. Completely. I rent, so no mortgage, and was able to pay cash for my pretty-decent used car. For all you parents out there trying to do right by their kids and thinking it's not appreciated, it is. It wasn't until after I graduated, but now, it definetly is.

Now, I have my first ever goals in life. I want a house, or, more specifically, a large dog and a garden, which translates into owning a house. I want to, eventually, have children and stay home with them, because that's another one of those unappreciated things my parents did that really mattered to me.
I think that those are really, truly, my tangible, controlable wants in life.

Those are really vague goals for a 3rd-grader. I think my teachers were much happier with whatever I made up about reading a book over 100 pages than they would have been with that.

They're also, maybe 10 years within reach. The first one, maybe even within a year. I've only realized them in a 'concrete action & decisions' sense within the past year. I've started thinking about the 'after that' side of things.

So then what? Start maxing the 401ks, and saving for college, 'cause you're 'supposed to' and after a brief fling in goals-land, return to my natural state as a process achiever.

Yes, we'll spend a little, but we're living way below our means now, in order to achieve 'house-asap', Getting things like a dog, garden, vacation, t.v., laptop, bed (currently the 'sub-goals' list) don't look like major issues, particularly since we're not going to get them *all at once*.

Maybe it'll change. Maybe there will always be something else on the end of the list, and I'll look back at this and laugh laugh laugh. But I guess that's what I'm writing it for. Everything other than the house is on more of a 'plans' list (as in, 'I plan to do my homework' not a valid 3rd grade goal) than a goals one. The only other big thing I can think of is that I'd rather own horses when I got old than live on a golf course. But that's about as concrete as a 3rd grader saying her goal is to own a house.

What I'm Reading Now

2007-02-20T10:49:00.001-05:00

no, this has nothing to do with knitting. Maybe I should rename my blog...

Currently in the midst of the Daughter of the Empire series by, darn, I don't remember who. Read two of his other main series', and thought they were good. Nice, solid, 'I want my cliches and I want them now' sorts of books. Lots of heroes acting heroic y'know. And he writes a darn good tactical siege. But anyway. M proclaims this particular one is one of his favorites. So far, I'm not seeing it. I'm getting a lot of thematic elements I like and could possibly reuse elsewhere, but the rest is kinda 'meh' They're intrigue style books, lots of plotting. I don't think plotting is his particular strength. It's not *bad* but it's not really enough to hand the whole book on. The individual bits are ok, if a little simplistic, but they're very discrete, which takes away from things. Some tangleage could do some good here.

In completely different genres, I finished AspectJ in Action by Ramnivas - ah, someone. (not good on the names today). and man, that thing was thorough.
Normally I read a code book, and it tends to ramble off into directions that I don't really understand at times, and I'll read a paragraph multiple times to get the point. Or they're overly simplistic, with huge sections on 'this is a variable' or some drivel like that. Most often a combination thereof - lots of useless basic information coupled with a few dense paragraphs of 'huh?'.
This, no, this beats it into you. In a good way. Very thorough, repeats the important bits often enough to reinforce them, not often enough to make your eyes glaze. I did end up skipping sections, but it was mostly implementation details I knew I could look up if/when I actually, you know, implemented it. Big fan of, the 'cookbook style' practical applications, an approach I hadn't seen in other books, again, very useful and thorough at the same time.
Only complaint is the book spends a lot of space convincing the reader that the subject matter is worth considering. When, I'd assume, If you've bothered to acquire and read a book on it, you're already past that threshold.

Jane Eyre

2007-02-16T10:22:00.001-05:00

Apparently there's a Jane Eyre miniseries coming out a la Pride & Prejudice? I've no idea when this might be airing, and it's quite likely we don't get the channel anyway, but it makes me think. Particularly, this entry made me think. I generally agree with her commentary, but not completely. In my eyes, Jane Eyre is largely a useless book, except for as a set up for Wuthering Heights. While I haven't read extensively in this era, it's my understanding from High School literature classes that Jane Eyre was the archetype of a genre I like to refer to as 'English Heroines Lost on the Moor' there are a couple others of that vein I've read, and even P&P shares some common ground. But I ramble. The gist of the genre is that all grouchy rich men exist solely to reform and marry poor English heroines and make them rich and happy beyond their dreams.
Heathcliff turns this all on its head. Wuthering Heights without the context of Jane Eyre is just sort of morbid and depressing. With it, it's delicious, because to the bitter end there will be some people who just expect him to be Rochester.

I've started my Forest-Pathing. I kinda dig the seed stitch. This may be because I cut the obscenely large border down to two stitches. I think the seed stitch looks very neat and textured in the triangles, but the whole big border was overwhelming. I'm also knitting the border along with the rest, since there was no way in heck I was going to go back and pick up a two stitch border back and forth along the entire edge. For now that seems like this will work fine. Is there something I'm not thinking of which will bite me in the butt later? I also made it narrower by about half. (I'm doing 2-3 squares across, as opposed to, if memory serves, 4-5) I'm a little concerned that this will be too narrow, and I should have done 3-4. I'll make a call at some point. There is also a plan to attach an as-yet-undetermined edging after I finish.

I really, really meant to take pictures of last night's progress, but when I actually got in the vicinity of the yarn, I couldn't bear to not just work on it. So, I'll try harder tonight.

This weekend.

2007-02-12T18:01:00.000-05:00

So, what did we do this weekend? Many things, my knitting corner is emptying out.
#1:
The big pile of yarn is completed:
7 skeins handpaintedyarn merino bulky "noches de otoño".
This color is actually pretty true. I love the interplay of green and purple into grey in this. I keep thinking of new names for it like "wood smoke" or "black pearl". I tend to do that when I like a color. The small skeins are from knots, I consider this turnout mostly reasonable. I'm definetly going with the alternating skeins on this, since there are subtle differences between them all, but only two that really stand out - and I think I can arrange even them discreetly.

#2:
This: (is a terrible picture. There is no light at all today, plus the only place I could set things up was far away, but you get the drift, yes?)

which is destined to become a forest path shawl.

I am in love with this pattern. I feel a little bad making it in alpaca from somewhere other than the 'alpaca yarn co' that I ordered the pattern from, but I think I'm forgivable since they didn't have a dark green color, which is what I had in mind. Truly, I was thinking a green merino, but my choices of green laceweight were this or zephyr, and this seemed closer to my vision, despite zephyr's glowing reviews. It works well in the swatch. The place I ordered the yarn from did send a sample card, and I ease my concience with the knowledge that I will probably order yarn from them in the future.

I definetly going to make a few changes to the pattern. I don't like the big plain border, so I think I'm going to nix it and knit a to-be-determined border on afterwards. I also *think* I'm going to make it narrower (probably 3 block wide instead of 5?), and possibly shorter too, since I have more of a need to a scarf than a full-blown shawl. I had a vision on my way home of it very skinny around my neck as an 'accessory' piece only a single block wide rather than a 'wamth' piece, and that tempts me. Logically, I have enough yarn to make both, but that will never happen, so I will probably nix the narrow idea, or make it in some other yarn (silk?) later.

Finally:

Wound up the next skein of sock yarn. The little one on the side is another knot orphan. This one annoye me more than the ones in the pile, since it is *so small* It is smaller than it appears in the picture, must be some sort of foreshortening going on.
I don't know if I like this colorway. It's from the same place as the FO socks, and again I think it could benefit from being more mixed-together, and shorter repeats. I'm considering zigzag socks for it, since the extra distance around would make the stripes narrower. I do feel obliged to use it up before buying more yarn. For now at least. That resolution may fade.

FO: 2nd Socks

2007-02-12T17:50:00.000-05:00

Really, like, this is a current one I finished them yesterday.

yes, they're purl-side out. I decided I like the way it blurred the stripes together this way.
stats:
yarn: All The Pretty Fibers Pure Merino Wool "Aurora Borealis" 500 yds.
pattern: Sockulator V 8.75 long, 7.5 around. 2x2 ribbed cuff with increaces every 12 rows.
needle: combination 0 & 1 bamboo dpns. (all at the same time, not like one for the ribbing, I'm a few dpns short of a set apparently - it seemed to work)
gauge: 9.25 sts, 13 rows per 1"
thoughts: I'm not crazy about this yarn. The color is a little bright, and it changes significantly from one end of the skein to the other. It's also very thin, with many itty bitty plys, and the texture just isn't as great as the STR I used for socks #1. OTH, it was a) a gift. and b) it the picture, it looked absolutely fabulous, I so would have bought it myself, it just wasn't quite what I was expecting (btw, I was expecting more blurred colors and 'in-between-tones' rather than essentially three discrete colors in a striping pattern.
The fit is wrong. This is completely my fault, I just need to learn what size I like my socks.
But, all told, they're surprisingly servicable. The fit is manegable, and they're nicely warm. and I am so glad to be done with them.

Felted Tweed Sweater

2007-02-09T18:11:00.000-05:00

Stats:
yarn: rowan felted tweed (color: melody). I don't remember how many balls.
pattern: copy of something I already had. While I tried to copy faithfully except for making it circular, it didn't quite work out.
needles: bamboo circular, size 1 (I think)
comments:
This was my first sweater. My first 'real' knitting project of any note. It's has flaws, but considering, I'm pretty proud of it. When I was unsure about how many balls of yarn to buy, the lady at the yarn store expressed disdain that it would be possible to copy something from an existing garment. That's crazy. I thought it would be easier than following a pattern, and it mostly was.
It's also exceptionally warm. Looking at the content (mostly wool, with equal parts alpaca and rayon) and gauge of felted tweed, I assumed it would be relatively cool, if not summer wear. I guess the alpaca goes a long way.
That said, the problems:
The gauge is a little off. I'm not sure where this came in, whether I measured the original wrong, or preferred the felted tweed at a smaller gauge that is specified on the label, it's really a mystery. For the most part, this works fine, it fits snuggly, but the ribbing expands, and it's 'fitted' rather than tight.
It's itchy. Not intolerably so, but I prefer an undershirt with it.
It shows bra-straps.
You may notice the sweater is a midriff, and while I am at that brief stage in my life where I can debatably pull that off, this matches poorly with the 'incredibly warm' point mentioned above. It also matches poorly with the idea of showing this off in front of conservative relatives & whatnot. I attribute this (the shortness) to a combination of the gauge problems, and being impatient to finish the darn thing. I've considered knitting more ribbing, then kitchenering the whole thing together to make it longer, but I think the ribbing would be disproportionate, so I'd have to go all the way up to the lacey bits. Also, that's a darn lot of kitchenering. Also, the needle I would need for it is currently occupied.

A closeup view of the colorwork:

(this was the last picture - by the time I got to it the light was completely shot. This is the best I could do. The color in the first is much more accurate)

Lots of pictures

2007-02-09T18:07:00.000-05:00

So we had a little down time today while there was still light, and I've taken pictures of most of my FOs.
Learned two things: 1)the delay button is your friend. While there was light, there was not much light, so most of this pictures are .3 second exposures. Way too long to hold steady manually. Plus, it means you don't have an arm sticking out holding the camera. 2)when taking pictures of self, take a larger image size, since you will be a smaller percentage of the total image than when manually lined up and zoomed. Therefore, most of the 'sweater on a person' images are quite small. By the time I realized this an could have retaken them, the light was gone. I probably won't have time to post all of them tonight, but the biggest work is done.

Lace

2007-02-08T15:57:00.001-05:00

After reading this today, I've been strangely inspired to work on lace. Well, perhaps not strangely, as I've been eyeing the forest path stole for long enough to have purchased the pattern, and did some swatching from the Barbara Walker treasuries I received for Christmas, but at least ill-advised, or ill-timed.
Because...For one, I do not like the laceweight yarn I currently have. (Not counting the alpaca which is promised to NotBeLace, I only have one skein) It is single ply, and I don't like the puffy-ness it gets. Very gauzy and unsubstantial in the actual thread, as opposed to distinct thread making a gauzy and unsubstantial object. Not to mention the color really isn't terribly good for lace either. Additionally, after hand-winding the unsuitable laceweight, I have resolved to NeverDoThatAgain. Which until I drop $100+ on a swift and ballwinder, limits my lace buying choices to a local store which will (hopefully) wind it for me. I have not been out to tell if this is a possibility, since all (2) of the local stores have hours which conveniently coincide with my work hours, and I haven't felt like making a special trip on the very cold weekend.

--the infamous laceweight--

--swatches of the infamous laceweight--

Even beyond that, All of my lace sized needles are stuck in things. I use size 0's or 1's for anything below a DK. I also tend to start lots of projects in this gauge and not finish them because they are tedious, so they still have needles in them. In fact, many of them have needles of larger sizes that I crammed in so that I could steal the correct size needles for something else. I do have concrete plans to buy more needles, but this requires planning and decisiveness that I haven't mustered yet (how many? what brand? what sizes & materials?). This is made more difficult by the fact that no store to date has managed to stock all the varieties of needles that I want.
So. No lace for me.
I will probably wind more yarn, or, depending, finish the darned socks.
winding yarn last night was not quite so smooth. Both hanks had knots in almost the dead center. For now I'm looking at this as a good thing, as I plan on alternating rows for even variegation, and smaller balls may help with that.

--M: "that's a lot of yarn" me: "it's a little under half"--

yarn cakes

2007-02-07T14:49:00.001-05:00

Sorry this picture has wonky lighting. One of the things I less than like about my new camera is that you can't plug it in a take pictures, you have to take the battery out and charge it. So in the 90 seconds after I got home that it took for the battery to suck the strength from the wall to turn the camera on, the light was gone. I improvised.

Yesterday was unexpected. Snow right at the close of business, so traffic was terrible going home. I stopped at my parents' to pick up a spare blanket I had there, and realized I would get home just as fast if I waited a few hours for the roads to clear. Yay for someone else cooking dinner.
It did give me an opportunity to measure the jacket-template in question, and I now have a reasonable pattern drafted up. I still have to figure out how to make a couple of fit adjustments, but I'm pretty sure I'm going with the jacket. I also forgot that it isn't actually ribbed all the way up, and since I prefer how the variegation in this yarn looks in ribs, that will be some modifications too. But given my balling progress that's ok.
Though ye-gods this stuff goes fast compared to the lace and fingering-weight I'd be doing before. I know, I know, no kidding, but the actually experiencing the difference is impressive.
I really, truly do love this color more and more as I see it. When it first arrived, I was convinced that the main color was dark purply-grey, but winding it tonight I definitely saw green in it too. It's making me think about color theory and lean closer & closer to dyeing my own yarn. But not yet.

conviction

2007-02-06T16:15:00.001-05:00

I'm going to start using the handpaintedyarn today.
I've been putting it off, as motivation to finish the socks, but I've decided I really don't want to finish the socks first anymore, and my only alternatives are colorwork which takes lots of thinking, and a lace top which has gone terribly awry from it's wonderful start and I just can't bear to look at now. This sudden conviction may also be influenced by the fact that it has gotten darn cold here (the 0's) and our office apparently doesn't have the heating capacity to quite keep up with that.
Of course, 'start' means winding yarn, not casting on. right now all I have is this:

Which is probably good, because I still haven't decided whether to make a turtleneck or a cardigan. Either way it will be based of of an existing garment/made up, and either way it will be 2x2 ribbed, but I have yet to decide which.
I will in all likelihood buy more of this yarn and make the other one in another color. Which has me leaning towards the jacket for this, since it's subtler, and would possibly go with more things.
I really do like the color of this. Like all my purchases from there to date, it was not quite what I was expecting, but this time it is in a very good way. Odd, since the best way I can describe the color is like the worst bruise you've ever seen - but in a good way.

smurf feet

2007-02-03T13:47:00.000-05:00

statistics:
pattern: fuzzy feet, from knitty, rather modified.
yarn: Imperial Stock Ranch lopi style. Two skeins.
gauge: felted, disatrously. Who knows.

thoughts: I made several modifications to the pattern. One, was to change it to a toe-up version with a short row heel I saw somewhere. This, despite being perhaps an agressive change for my new-to-knitting ways worked fine. The second was to substitute the yarn. This too, was probably not a bad thing, and I believe the choice I made was apropriate. The problem comes in with gauge. Since I was making all these changes, I couldn't just blindly follow the recomended gauge. Having heard only a little about sock knitting or felting at the time, the one piece of information I remembered was that socks should be knit tightly for durability. So I knit them very tightly. Do you see where this might be a problem for felted slippers? Well, as you can see, they did felt some, but not completely, and it darned near killed me to get them to do that. I also didn't know that felting things made them shorter more than it made them narrower, and I didn't have regular washing machine access in order to swatch appropriately and find this out myself.
So, they're too big, particularly too wide, but for slippers they work fine, they're pretty sturdy, and I can wear my mohair footies inside of them for extra warmth.
I have mixed thoughts on the yarn, it wasn't itchy or rough, but it gave the impression of being dry, or powdery, it's a hard-to-describe sensation, not necesarily bad, but odd. One of the skeins was full of knots, and this was before I knew to send something like that back, but they're felted slippers, so who really cares?

Fuzzy socks

2007-02-02T18:18:00.000-05:00

Statistics:
Yarn: ozeyarn kid mohair brushed, 100% mohair bulky weight.
Amount: ??? leftovers from one skein after making two scarves & a hat.
Gauge: 6sts, 9rows per inch
Pattern: madeup, basic toe-up sock recipe. Short row heels
Needles: #2 brittany birch dpns.

These turned out way better than they had any business whatsoever turning out. I was using leftovers from some x-mas scarves, I didn't really check gauge, or have any pattern theory other than keep knitting until they're big enough.
They are one of my favorite FOs
Never let anyone tell you that 100% brushed mohair socks are a bad idea.
They are soft (and not itchy like so many mohairs are for me), they are squishy, they do the best job of anything I've ever tried of keeping my feet actually warm. (this is an impossible task, really). I love the colors in the yarn and how it subtly stripes. They are kinda slippery on hard floors, and I imagine they will get gnarly with age, but that does not diminish my love for them. I wear them like slippers and while I'm sleeping.
They were a bit of a bear to knit up, due to both unfamiliarity with socks and just plain knitting brushed mohair at a tight gauge. They stained my needles.

By the way, I would recommend this yarn in this gauge for sweater knitting, it's nice and opaque, but not stiff. You could probably make a polar expedition it it though.

The stash

2007-01-31T19:07:00.000-05:00

The stash is in my dresser. The bottom two drawers. This works out well with the exception of the fact that the handles of this particular dresser come off when used, so the drawers have to be nudged out from the sides. Still, not complaining.
Here is:
the top drawer

(for some reason the light had changed by the time I took this one, and I had to use the flash. I don't like the flash on this camera. I should have let it blur.
The top drawer holds mostly oddballs and leftovers. I think we've got a fair amount of leftover Rowan felted tweed, and beaverslide dry goods in red & green. Smaller amounts of handpaintedyarn merino bulky, Fibreworks kid mohair brush, and elann Gjestal Naturgarn and esprit, Tahki, in cotton of somesort, and ritrato. Unopened balls of lambspride (I find it icky), some strange nylon blend boucle which is much fuglier on the needles than on the ball, some gold berocco stuff, which while I like it (it's very soft), I can't think of a use for in that small ammount. Red eyelash feather that I used as an accent once, and a hopelessly tangled wad of red acrylic boucle.
Which brings us to drawer no. 2.

Drawer no.2 is currently dominated by new handpaintedyarn.com bulky merino. There will be pretty pictures and more of that later. Meanwhile, underneath:

Well, it's not terribly more explicatory. the bottom drawer is mainly swatches of the above, dead UFO's, and big bags o'stuff. So we've got a bunch of elann den'm'knit (in a bag, which you can't really see, despite it being the biggest thing in there), some handpaintedyarn.com merino lace (the blue green), and a mess of tahki davos that I made into a shrug that doesn't fit and now don't know what to do with.
And really, honetly, that's it. I've got a couple bags of WIPs, but I firmly believe that well, at least most of those are truly in progress, even if there hasn't been much lately. In any case, they'd still probably fit back in the drawers if I pushed.

Obnoxiously Yellow Hat.

2007-01-26T17:46:00.000-05:00

Well, I'm going to try to post past FOs, though not necessarily in chronological order, more like, when I found it laying around order.
So here we are:

Vital statistics:
Yarn: handpaintedyarn.com novelty boucle in color 'curry light' 2 hanks, had a little left over
Gauge: used doubled in seed stitch, ~ 2sts, 4.5 rows/inch.
Needles: who the heck knows anymore, I think it was the 8's
Pattern: my own. Very simple knit in the round from the brim up. Picked up some stitches for the ear flaps.
Other thoughts:
I like the yarn, though it was a bear to work with. Very little stretch, as the core thread is tightly spun, despite the puffy bits sticking out of it.
This, by the way, is even more of a glowing brilliant acid blinding yellow than the picture makes out. Computer screens as we know them are simply not capable of displaying the true yellow-ness that this is. I find it somewhat amusing, and largely what I intended for the yarn. M, on the other hand, won't let me wear it out of the house. It's comfortably soft and warm - I've been wearing it to sleep in recently.

Here's a closeup of the stitchwork for those interested in the yarn. It really is that hard to see any coherent stitches, even in real life - I had a heck of a time measuring the gauge

And a shot of it 'on-head' to get a better impression of size & style - appologies for the fuzzy picture - there aren't any better-lit mirrors available.

Thievery

2007-01-24T16:30:00.001-05:00

When I see a pattern or FO I like my first impulse it generally not 'I should buy that pattern' but 'I should figure out how to make that'. My thought process often runs along the lines that, even if I bought the pattern, I'd have to modify the dickens out of it to get a fit, and starting from just the stitch pattern and general design would be just as easy, and much, well, free-er. Having reached the point in life where I have actual income, and am no longer a mooching student, I'm beginning to question that line of thought as rationalization, rather than solid logic.
There are a number of things I'd eyeballed as 'worthy causes' back in my no-money days. I want to give to the high school robotics team I mentored in college, since I know just how much it costs, how little support it gets, and how much I got out of being on even one side of it. I want to give to the web comic artists I read every morning, since they're relying on the kindness of strangers for a living, and they make me laugh - what's more valuable that that? I want to give to Child's Play, since it really is a good cause, and it's giving good press to a demographic that could use some.
I don't know where paying other people for patterns they inspired, but I did not strictly use falls in there. Plus, I firmly believe in taking care of yourself before you take care of others, and we are still firmly looking into buying a house, which is a sum of money behind which all others pale right now.
Really, this is all a bit rhetorical, because I have yet to actually make any of these lovely theoretical patterns, and I have no compulsion to stash things like that - I'm sure I'll be able to find something when the time comes.
Still, it's a topic I've been putting some serious thought into recently.

In other news, the fubar'd-gusset socks may be a failure after all. They are a little tight to get on, and I imagine this will not get better after felting. Still I cannot bring myself to re-work the heels - I'd rather get fresh yarn and start over altogether. I know continuing to work on them is not going to make matters better, but at least they'll be behind me, even it not quite, well, useful.

sleeves

2007-01-23T14:47:00.001-05:00

I hate sleeves.

Sleeves knit flat. Sleeves knit on DPNs, and don't even get me started on those crazy new-fangled circular needle tricks.
I think the issue is with the number of stitches. For instance, I have no problems knitting socks on DPNs, but you average, reasonably-gauged sleeve has oh, half the stitches of your average, reasonably-gauged sock. Turning work, or rearanging yarn & needles in my hands is one of my least favorite bits of knitting. Yes, worse than seaming (I really don't mind seaming all that much). My most satisfying knitting experience so far has been rounds and rounds of fingering-weight 1x1 rib, since it was all on a circular needle, and I never needed to readjust anything. Sleeves, it seems like half my time is readjusting, and I never make any progress whatsoever.
Oh yes, and you have to count. Always awkwardly long sequences, like, inc1 every 12 rows.
I realized this thinking about a my first-stab-at-fair-isle sweater, and that I was nearing the top of the front (yes it's back and forth, not steeked. Somehow, the purl rows aren't any worse than the knit ones - not that the knit ones are good. Maybe this has something to do with my first colorwork being DK?) I keep putting off knitting it, and my new theory is this is because somewhere, subconciously, I know the sleeves are coming.

So, I guess this means I won't be figuring out the template purties for this blog before I start posting. Don't worry. It will be purple soon. I figure I can change the default colors first, and wrangle with getting the image uploaded for the header as time allows. At least it's something.

The other active WIP is the second pair of socks. Last night I realized the first sock had a *really stupid* mistake, which explained why the heel was turning out kinda wonky the second time through the same pattern. Well, actually a recipie. Sockulator III from the knitting fiend. Silly me had blamed it on her math not being able to deal with the smaller gauge rather than the much simpler problem of me making only 1/2 of the called-for gusset increaces. It does fit close-enough though, so I think I'm stuck making the same mistake on purpose in the second sock. Which really smarts.

added later-image:the infamous socks, & yarn. I'd take a better picture, but they're so much more done now
aaaand I'm gonna have to felt them a little since I think I want a little more negative ease than I initially guessed - and I lost track of count so they're a little longer than they should be too or maybe I want negative length-ease as well.
otoh, they're definetly confirming my decision to make the first pair as a gift. Those will always be perfect in my mind (well, I didn't mess up the gusset for one) while these definetly have their faults, and are more of an exercise in 'good enough'. If I'd started with these, I think I'd swear off sock-knitting. It doesn't help that while the yarn for these looked great in the picture, in person, I think I prefer the STR I used for the other ones, even though I found it a little odd at first brush. They both ended up self-striping rather than randomly varegated. So while I guess that's better than pooling in vertical stripes, I'm still hunting for a sock-yarn staple. There are several etsy stores on my short list.

Working on pictures of FO's, WIPs and stash. Need to decide whether to keep the camera or get one with image stabilization. Would like this blog to be useful as a log of what I have (and, oh, silly things like what gauge it was) even if no one else bothers to find it.

ellipsisknits