The search continues

More hits on my blog yesterday relating to Eleanor of Toledo and her famous gown. Again, for folks making these searches, I've gathered some information that might be helpful. You can find it in my entry for March 26.

(If this keeps happening, I shall have to put this info in my sidebar!)

Vigdis tunic for moi

Firstly, I figured out where I went wrong when I first started. The instructions say to start with a wrong side and to do 9 rows of the ribbing, and then to start the main pattern. All very straightforward. However, in and among the ribbing, you are also working an 8-stitch/4-row repeat cable pattern where you are supposed to work the cables on odd-numbered rows. This means, first of all, that you have to do all the cabling on the wrong side, which, although possible, is wierd. It also means that by the time you get to the tenth row of the project, (the beginning of the main pattern), you would be starting row 2 of the cable pattern. However, the cable pattern is supposed to match up with the main pattern, which of course you are now starting at row 1. Therefore, even though you are following the instructions, the cable pattern and the main pattern are now out of sync.
 It was only after a few reads through that I realised what Lavold really wants you to do with the 9 rows of ribbing: one foundation row and 8 actual pattern rows. But she never actually says this. An inexperienced knitter might well be reduced to tears by this oversight! Moreover, I have hit two more errors/omissions like this while working through the pattern, as well as some extremely unclear instructions on what to do for the selvedge stitches. Lavold is an excruciatingly talented designer, but her ability to write instructions (at least for this pattern) kind of, well, blow.
 Nevertheless, I have now figured it all out (so far) and am moving rapidly up the front (although I had to rip a few rows out on the subway this morning after I discovered I'd screwed up a bit on the main pattern). I'm almost halfway to the neck shaping.

Snowdrop cloth for DH's aunt

Got a few more rows done last night, nothing huge.

Spanish Knight sweater for Mom

I'm now on the waist! It looks like this:

Preemie burial gown for St. Michael's Hospital

I was hoping to get this finished last night so I could cross it off my list. I did get the sleeve seams sewn together, and the sleeves sewn into the armholes. But when I went to find the pattern so I could be sure of how to finish the rest of it, I couldn't find it! And I hunted, lemme tell you. I went through many piles of paper around the house. I scoured the Internet (where I originally found the pattern), using every search term I could think of that was in this pattern. No luck. Finally this morning as DD was finishing her breakfast, I realised that in all my hunting, I hadn't found any of the other preemie patterns in my possession, either. Hmmm. Then I started to remember that a while back, I'd grouped all my preemie patterns together and put them in a new compartment in my binder of baby patterns (which, incidentally, I had already searched, in the 'dresses', 'ensembles' and 'miscellaneous' sections). Back I went to the binder, and voilà - there was a preemie section right at the front of the book, and in that section was the pattern. Triumph. I hope to finish sewing it tonight. I only hope I have some buttons that will suit.

Some skills never die

This past Sunday at my MIL's, I was working on my Mom's Christmas sweater, and the skein ran out. I had fortunately seen this coming and had packed another skein. However, starting the new skein up presented a bit of a challenge, because I was away from home and therefore swift-less. So I put on my sweetest 'I looove you' expression, leaned towards my husband and asked if he would mind understudying the role of my swift for the day. He got a bit disappointed because he thought I was leaning towards him as a prelude to offer him a knitting lesson! :) Sighing, he reluctantly agreed, on the condition that he be allowed to go to the bathroom first. But as he left the room, my MIL brightly offered to do the job instead. I asked her if she was sure, since it was pretty tedious work.

"Oh sure," she said. "I used to do this for my mother all the time."

Her mom was an avid knitter (and sewer, and cook, and baker, and...). My MIL did not inherit the enthusiasm for needlework, but that didn't change the fact that she had to spend a good deal of her childhood with her arms in a skein while her mother wound yarn. So I slung my skein over her outstretched hands and started up. My MIL started bending her wrists right at the correct moments as I went.

"I still got it!" she said.

Ain't she nice?

Snowdrop cloth for DH's aunt

I think I've done enough so far to merit another photograph:

Note that it is now too huge to fit across the whole of the needle. There are eleven snowdrops running horizontally (although you can't really see the eleventh in the picture because I only just started it). Once I get to fifteen snowdrops, I can start the centre panel. This pattern is really growing on me. You would think that it just gets more and more tedious as the number of snowdrops increase, but my enthusiasm is actually increasing with the number of snowdrops. Don't get me wrong, it's still fiddly and it is a bit frustrating that it takes longer and longer to do a row as I go on, but it's still a very enjoyable pattern. I'm into it.

Spanish Knight sweater for Mom

One pattern set is now complete. And I'm fewer than four rows away from the waistline. I haven't done quite enough yet to merit another photograph, but I'm getting close. However, I have begun to be paranoid that I may not have enough of the yarn for the project. Now, the pattern calls for 11 skeins of Alice Starmore Dunedin yarn, which apparently comes in 170-yard skeins. Therefore, I will need 1870 yards of yarn. I have 10 skeins of Elsebeth Lavold's Silky wool, which comes in a little over 191 yards per skein, so I have 1913 yards of yarn. Therefore, I should have more than enough yardage. However, skein #1 ran out about two-thirds of the way to the hips! It's nervous-making. I could be screwed.

(Sorry for the posting delay today...Blogger was down. Arg.)

Getting organized

I have never been a noticeably neat or tidy person. I have struggled with mess and clutter my whole life. It was bad enough when I was a kid and the only space I was messing up was my own bedroom, but now I have a whole house, and it's pretty frightening. Especially since DH is even worse than me. Don't get me wrong, it's not 'call-Child-Services-we-can't-find-the-baby-amidst-all-the-clutter' messy, but it's definitely 'too-embarrassing-to-have-people-over' messy. While many things are responsible for this problem (such as the reams and reams of paper we possess), I would be lying if I said my knitting was not a contributor.

So! A few weeks ago I resolved to completely tidy and organize the house, bit by bit, starting from the front door and working my way forward, being ruthless about getting rid of stuff we don't need, and storing things in logical, tidy places. Two weekends ago I finished the front hall. (It looks great.) This past weekend I began the living room. The living room is significant because it is the source of Knitting Mess Part I. Knitting, patterns, yarn and needles are all over the floor. It's very hard to get around, and this would be bad even if we didn't have a toddler running around...which we do...which makes it worse. It would be hopeless to ask me to simply not keep knitting stuff in the living room. The living room is where I knit when I'm at home. Therefore, there will always be knitting stuff in the living room. The key is to have somewhere large enough to store it, out-of-the-way enough that it doesn't look awful, yet close-to-hand enough that it will be convenient for me to put it away.

I began with the simple, quick, no-effort task of completely dismantling the entire wall unit running along the side of the room. Sigh. I never do things by halves. I began to put the unit back together at the front of the room, integrating it with the existing unit holding the television. (Damn, but I love the modularity of Ikea's stuff.) Very quickly, this all became too much for my husband, who could not stand back and watch me as I did it all completely differently from how he would have done it. Suddenly, it because his project. :) And last night, I came home to find it done. Finito. New wall unit completely put together just the way I wanted, just where I wanted. The man is a doll.

Thus, this morning I delayed our departure from the house so that I could toss some crap, free up shelf room, and start to store knitting stuff in a location other than the floor. It's not finished yet, but the new handy-dandy home of Knitting Mess Part I is in the end tables on each side of the living room sofa which I sit on when I knit in front of the television. Perfect!!!

Cape cod sweater for MIL

The tangle on one skein got so bad yesterday that I cut it. About a minute later, I figured out how I could have unravelled the tangle without cutting it. (Insert aggravated Marge Simpson soundbyte here.) As per my resolution of yesterday, I started pulling the yarn from the outside of the skein. So far, we are cruising tangle-free on that skein. Lookin' good.

Spanish Knight sweater for Mom

Took this to work with me today. I'm getting quite close to completing one whole pattern set. (That sounds pretty lame given how much time I've spent on this already, but since each pattern set is a whopping 60 rows tall, it takes a while to do one.) 15 more rows until the waist.

Knitting on the go

Snowdrop cloth for DH's aunt

I wanted very much to take this to my MIL's yesterday, but I was nervous that maybe the bride herself might drop in for a visit, so I resisted. Naturally, DH's aunt was not there. (Murphy's Law always wins.) However, I still had the picture I took of it sitting in my camcorder, so I showed that to my MIL and she thought it was beautiful. She also doesn't think DH and I will be alone in ignoring the no-gifts rule for this wedding. :) Anyway, to make it up to myself, I worked on this project yesterday evening instead, after we got home and I'd done most of my chores. It's really going well. I've now got nine snowdrops running horizontally.

Cape Cod sweater for MIL

These tangles are really killing me. They're a huge time-buster, and they're also pissing me off. As the skeins start running out and I have to wind new ones, I will pull the yarn from the outside of the new skeins. Pulling from the inside is what seems to be causing all these tangles. (In direct contravention of traditional knitting wisdom, thus upping the pissing-off factor.) I didn't even get one lousy row finished this morning thanks to all the untangling...and I still have quite the snarl to finish fixing!

Carnival Coat for DD

I didn't get any more work done on this, but I did take the buttons over to my MIL's. I explained the button problem (pattern error - the materials list calls for two buttons, so my MIL bought me two buttons, but the pattern actually requires three). She said she'd get me another two-pack of the buttons, or, if the shop didn't have any more of those buttons, a whole new button set that would match. Isn't she nice? :)

Spanish Knight sweater for Mom

This is what I took to my MIL's yesterday afternoon. And considering that I did a lot of running around with DD, I still managed to get a fair bit accomplished. I am liking this project more and more all the time. The yarn is producing such a beautiful-feeling fabric. Super-soft, very luxurious (that's the silk talking), but it is also obviously going to be very cozy and warm (that's the wool). Lovin' it.

I'm not stalking you, I swear

Having stats on my blog is quite nifty. I get to see whether anyone's actually reading my ramblings, for one thing. And if someone used a search engine to find me, I can see what search terms they used.

Yesterday, two people used search engines to find me, and I'd like to try and help them out, if I can. I realise the odds of them actually coming back and reading my attempts to help are slim, but just in case, here we go.

"Eleanor of Toledo Gown"

My blog came up for this search because I'm knitting Eleanor of Toledo stockings. Sorry about that. I know my blog wasn't what you were looking for. But I do have an interest in historical costuming (yes, I'm in the SCA) and I think I know exactly the gown you mean. It's pictured in a portrait by Agnolo Bronzino. It's quite spectacular. In fact, she was buried in it. If you're still looking for information about it, the following links may be helpful:

• Portrait of Eleanor of Toledo (you'll have to scroll down). This link has a bit of info about her and graphics of the portrait with her wearing the dress.
• Buy a 56x71cm poster of the portrait
• Gown inspired by the dress
• Another gown inspired by the dress
• Yet another gown inspired by the dress

I recommend checking out Janet Arnold's Patterns of Fashion: The cut and construction of clothes for men and women c1500-1620 book - I believe it's in there.

"if the pattern calls for worsted weight and i want to use astra is it possible"

Patons Astra is a sportweight yarn. In fact, I am looking at an Astra label as I write this, and it says very clearly that the gauge is 24sts = 10cm/4" on 3.75mm needles. Classic sportweight gauge. Sportweight is a lighter weight than a worsted, which means that it is very unlikely you will get the gauge which the pattern requires. On the other hand, if you knit loosely, who knows, it could work. Another possibility is to use larger needles than the pattern calls for. I highly recommend swatching. I know, swatching is a total pain in the heinie, but unless you know exactly what your gauge is with a particular yarn on a particular needle size, better safe than sorry, always.

Hope that helps!

And now for something completely different

If you've been here before, you have likely noticed something a bit different - namely, the entire look-and-feel of the blog. Yep, I changed the template. Wrote it all meself. The old one looked tidy and handsome enough, but also pretty darn boring. The colour scheme of the new look is based on the Fleece Artist yarn I'm using for my A Very Harlot Poncho project. The colourway is one of the most gorgeous things I've ever seen, so I stole it. :) There are still a few changes I want to make here and there, and I still have to apply the look to all my individual project pages, but I think it's a pretty good start. I hope you like it.

Vigdis tunic for moi

This has restored my faith in myself as a knitter:

That is one whole foot of 19"-wide knitting completed after about five hours of work. This relieves me. I was worried that all the depressing lack of progress I was making on my other projects was due to the fact that I sucked. Turns out that no, once I really get going with a non-miniscule yarn on non-miniscule needles, I am fine. Phew!

Cape Cod sweater for MIL

Took this with me to my mom's house for the family Easter luncheon, and got a little bit done. My relatives were suitably admiring of the project, especially my grandma (a knitter), who shuddered when she saw it in the manner of one who would never attempt such fiddly work. :) Naturally I will not be bringing it along to tomorrow's family Easter luncheon, since we're going to my MIL's house. But at the moment, it looks like this:

Last night

Last night I was working on the Vigdis tunic and my husband noticed I'd cast on something new.

"Whatcha working on?"

I told him.

Him, with attempt at stern look: "How many projects do you have that you're working on for yourself right now?"

Me: "Oh, about five."

Him: "And how many of them have you finished?"

Me: "Er...none..."

He looked at me significantly. I defended myself by pointing out all the purple yarn and how it was now not being used for anything now since I'd ripped out the afghan I'd bought it for. To my delight, he accepted this explanation as making a lot of sense. Muahahaha! I win. Then he said that he couldn't really talk anyway, since he had umpteen gazillion in-progress projects kicking around the house, too.

Ahhh. It's so nice to be married to someone who understands.

Also last night, I dreamed my co-worker's wife had twins. And they came early. And I didn't have enough knitting ready for them. That's a helluva feeling, I tell ya. This morning I confirmed with said co-worker that he was not having twins. His reaction (after, of course, 'Oh gawd no, not unless one's been hiding'):

"That's what you dream about?"

He has a point.

Vigdis tunic for moi

Worried about the small gauge I was getting with the purple yarn, I checked the pattern last night. The smallest size produces a tunic with a 45.5" chest. Forty-five and a half inches!!! I have about a 23" inch waist and an A-cup on a good day. What the heck do I need with a sweater 45.5" around?!? To hell with it, thought I, the fact that I'm getting small gauge with the yarn is good. I cast on. I revelled in the speed with which I was making progress. (Hey, it's tough when all your projects use fingerweight yarn on 3mm or smaller needles - moving up to worsted on 5.5mms is quite the heady rush, even if it does feel like I'm knitting with tree trunks.) Until this morning on the train, when I finished the ribbing and realised that the pattern was screwed up. Lavold clearly states that after you cast on, you are to start with a wrong side row. However, if you follow this direction (as I faithfully did), you will then be put in the position of having to do all your cable crosses, increases and decreases on the wrong side of the work. Which, although possible, isn't the way I like to do it, especially since Lavold calls for nifty-fancy increases, best done (IMO) with the right side of the work facing. So...riiiip. :(

Snowdrop cloth for DH's aunt

Work proceeds. No screwups last night. I now have seven snowdrops running horizontally across the work, and I'm starting to pick up some speed with the lace knitting, I think. I'm feeling pretty good about this now.

Cape Cod sweater for MIL

I'm settling nicely into the second pattern set. I wanted to post a picture, but DH and I kept falling back asleep after the alarms this morning, and I ran out of time. Stay tuned!

Lace knitting 1, lace knitting newbie 0

Snowdrop cloth for DH's aunt

Last night I sat down in front of the TV, enormously happy. All my evening chores had been done and I was looking forward to an early night. I was comfy on my futon, American Idol was coming up, and I was going to make some excellent headway on my lace knitting. I looked over the knitting to see where I was and started up with gusto. About three-quarters into the first row, I realised I'd done something wrong. I appeared to have one too many stitches. Hm. Must've messed up somewhere. I looked back, counting carefully, and thought I'd discovered the problem. Tink. Re-knit. At the same point as before, I notice the problem again...only this time I seem to have two too many stitches. Tink. What with being engrossed in the show, it took pretty much the whole evening before I realised the problem: where I thought I was in the pattern was two rows behind where I actually was in the pattern. All that enthusiasm and I got two measly rows done last night. Phooey. And just to rub it in, I discovered on my way to work today that I had forgotten a chore: making my lunch. Sob. Heaven only knows what I'm going to eat today. Maybe I have enough Subway tokens for a free sub when I buy a drink.

NEW - Vigdis for moi

It's a sickness. Well, what else was I going to do, really...I just frogged back my Persian Tiles afghan project, and now I have a whole bunch of heavy worsted weight purple acrylic yarn taking up space in my home. I have to do something with it, doncha know. Vigdis is a large tunic pattern by Elsebeth Lavold, and it seems to call for a chunky weight yarn. I'm hoping the purple yarn will cut it. I'm swatching, but to my dismay, the gauge is looking a bit too small. Perhaps I'll up the needle size.

Cape Cod sweater for MIL

I finished the first pattern set. The instructions call for doing four and a half pattern sets before starting on the underarm gussets, but since the finished sweater is long and I want it to be short, I can get away with doing fewer pattern sets before the gussets. I was thinking of axing just one of the sets, but I'm looking at the model in the book, and it really does look like cutting out two pattern sets off the bottom would give me the length I want. Hey, if I'm wrong, I can always do up another pattern set and graft it into the sweater. (Famous last words.)

Get 'em while they're young

This morning as I was carrying my daughter downstairs, she said something excitedly and pointed back up the stairs. I didn't really hear what it was that she said, so it took me a few seconds to figure out what she was pointing to. I eventually realised she was looking at a ball of yarn sitting at the top of the stairs, waiting to be put away in the craft room.

"Oh!" said I, "that's Mummy's ball of yarn."

"Knitting!" exclaimed my munchkin happily.

She knows. Yarn = knitting. Yesss! Phase I is complete. Muahahahaha.

Cape Cod sweater for MIL

It was Tangle: The Revenge for me last night, and much knitting time was wasted on de-snarling. Happily, the result was that this morning's commute saw the yarn flowing freely out of the skeins. I am very close to completing the first shell motif.

Normal? Me? Who?

NEW - Snowdrop cloth for DH's aunt

It's my guess that normal people use the weekend to catch up on things. For me, however, the weekend is apparently the ideal time to increase my workload. Yes, it's another new project. We recently received an invitation to DH's aunt's wedding (after years and years of living together, her guy finally popped the question this past Christmas). The invitation reads "No presents - just your presence!" Yeah, okay, whatever. :) You can't be my husband's coolest aunt, and put something like that on a wedding invitation and expect me not to knit something, can you? No way. I completely get why they don't want people to worry about getting them gifts - they're past middle age and apparently quite nicely off. They have everything they need. So actually buying them something is kind of pointless. But my reasoning is, surely they would enjoy something beautiful and handmade with love to celebrate this special occasion? Thus I started on Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's Snowdrop Shawl pattern. The wrinkle (you knew there had to be one) is that I am not making a triangular shawl. I want to make a square. I figure this could be put to lots of purposes, whatever floats their boat - piano seat cover, tablecloth for an end table or nightstand, really big centrepiece doily for a dining room table, whatever. So when I finish the triangle, I'm then going to do the whole pattern over again in reverse, decreasing back down to a point. I haven't worked out the best place to put the decreases yet, but I've got plenty of time to mull it over. The yarn is a fine 2-ply, 63% silk noil and 37% cotton, 6000ypp. Cream colour with some dark grey slubs here and there. Here's where I am so far:

This is my first time doing lace, but I don't think it looks too bad. Besides, I understand that lace knitting looks much better after blocking. I certainly hope very strongly that this is true!

NEW - Sweater with patterned arms

On Friday, one of my co-workers wore a fantastic sweater to work. At least, I thought it was great. Solid colour body, with maybe a little bit of subtle texture patterning (can't remember that part too well). But the sleeves had multi-colour patterning on them - many different patterns, too, going down the sleeve in stripes. There was also fringe at the cuffs and hem. It looked great! I don't have a pattern, I don't have colours in mind, I'm not even 100% sure whether such a sweater would even end up in my possession (although that would be excellent). I only know that at some point in the future, I would like to make one.

Cape Cod sweater for MIL

Took this to work with me today. Didn't get a whole lot done on the morning commute, but I haven't given up hope of meeting my 1-centimetre quota for the day.

Self-designed sweater for baby MacDonald

The hell continued. I ripped it back again, and cast on precisely 170 stitches. Then I joined it in the round, making ABSOTIVELY POSILUTELY TRIPLE SURE that I hadn't twisted it. As I worked through row 1, I kept checking and double-checking that there was no twist, and it kept coming up good every time. Excellent! Until...at the end of row 1 I realised I'd made a pattern mistake somewhere along the row. I looked back, and sure enough, it was near the beginning. "Screw it," thought I, "I'll just keep going on row 2, and fix the incorrect stitches of row 1 before knitting the row 2 stitches as I come to them." Yeah. About ten fixed-stitches into this dumbass idea, I said "Screw it" again and tinked the first row back to my original error. Sigh. This project is doomed, I tell you, doomed. The nice news is that after that, the project started to take off. I'm now on about row 6 of the ribbing. No more mistakes so far. Pray for me.

A Very Harlot Poncho for moi

More got done this weekend. But visually it doesn't look much different from the last time I took a photo, so I won't bore you with another one.

AAAAAUUUUUUGGGGHHHH!!!!!!

Self-designed sweater for baby MacDonald

Let's review, shall we? So far on this project, I have:

Done a few test swatches. These took some time.

Cast on for the project in green and worked on that for a while.

Decided I wanted to go with red and change the pattern a bit, so ripped out the green and cast on again in red and started the bottom ribbing.

Decided I wanted to change the ribbing a bit, so ripped out the red and started the bottom ribbing the new way.

Discovered at the end of row 1 that I'd cast on one too many stitches...no problem. Combined the last two stitches in a P2tog, problem solved.

Discovered I had, FOR THE SECOND TIME IN A WEEK, twisted the knitting when I joined in the round. Rip.

Discovered at the end of row 1 that I'd cast on about ten too many stitches. No P2tog fix for that one, baby. Rip.

VERY CAREFUL CASTING ON OF EXACTLY 170 STITCHES. Double-checked the number of stitches.

VERY CAREFUL JOINING OF THE ROUND TO AVOID TWISTING. Lots of double-checking.
And guess what. This morning on the subway, it became clear that I had twisted the knitting again. Words cannot describe my feelings at this moment. This sweater is taking on almost MSF mittens proportions. I swear, I'm not doing this deliberately. In fact, it's pretty damn depressing. I have been thinking of myself as a good knitter, not to mention an intelligent person. Clearly, I am neither. I am very close to saying 'f**k it' and doing surgery. This is insanity.

Cape Cod sweater for MIL

At least something I'm making looks good.

I got nuthin'

Sorry, the blog is a snoozer today.

Cape Cod sweater for MIL

Tangle is vanquished! Hooray! Work continues. And I made my 1-centimetre quota yesterday. However, I have yet to finish even one pattern set, although at least I can say that I'm over half done the first one. It's not photo-worthy yet, though, since it doesn't look enormously different from yesterday's shot. Hang in there. Things will pick up.

4 more months until Harry Potter!

I'm feeling better. Not perfect, but not treely ruly sick, either. I will continue to drink lots of OJ and go to bed at a reasonable time, and with any luck, this germ will not take me down completely.

There have been a few changes on the blog recently. Firstly, I've broken out my detailed master list of all my projects. Having it in one big file was excruciatingly long and I wanted to have each project in its own file. Plus, I've shortened up the blog title and increased the font size. All pretty minor changes, but in case you were wondering, "Wasn't this different last time I was here? Am I going mad?", I thought I'd post a reassurance that no, it's not just you. :) In fact, keep your hair on, I'll probably keep tweaking the look here and there a bit on an ongoing basis as the urge hits me.

Different strokes

I was reading Sandy Garcia's column in metro today for a review of last night's American Idol. She found last night's show a real yawner. So much so, that she compared its tediousness to that of sitting in a three-hour knitting class. Humph. My reaction would have been, "A three-hour knitting class? OoooOOOOOoooh!" Anyone wanna start taking bets that this lady is going to get inundated with indignant letters from irate knitters? Ah, well. You can't please everyone. I'm sure even if she'd said that the show was like a three-hour test pattern marathon on TV, she'd be inundated with indignant letters from die-hard TV test pattern fans. :) It does suck that she happened to choose knitting as the epitome of boring, though. Knitting isn't boring. Spending three hours not knitting is boring. Get it straight, Sandy.

Cape Cod sweater for MIL

One of the skeins has a tangle at the moment, so that's slowing me right down. Yes yes yes, I should have plied it all up beforehand. Whatever. I wanted to knit. So I'm plying as I go. Mostly it's going well, but every now and then a tangle pops up, and I do some growling. Before I left for work this morning, the project looked like this:

Alas, only one or two rows have been done since. Curse you, tangle. I'm trying to achieve at least a centimetre per day. But I'm not that worried. I'll soon sort the tangle out and then I can get back to meeting my 'quota'.

Self-designed sweater for baby MacDonald

I ripped it out again last night. (This poor yarn, I tell ya.) I had another idea for how I wanted to do the bottom ribbing, so of course I had not choice but to frog. Got it back on the needles pretty quickly, though. Re-ribbing proceeds.

Sick.

Bleagh. I caught DD's cold. (What a surprise, since I'm the person she coughs and sneezes all over.)

Don't really feel like blogging right now. Not much knitting has been done, anyway. Last night I did the smart thing and took a long, steamy bath instead of knitting.

Hopefully I'll be back up to snuff soon.

Horrors redux

This weekend I had what I'm pretty sure was my first ever knitting nightmare. It seemed very real at the time and it freaked me out. I dreamt that I went on the subway for work, with my knitting. All very much as usual, except that I had multiple projects with me. It wasn't until I reached my station that I realised I had gotten the yarn of all my projects caught between the train doors. Projects on the inside of the train, yarn on the outside...which had happily been unwinding and trailing behind us ever since I'd boarded. Shudder. It took me a few minutes after waking up to really realise that it was NOT REAL and my projects were just fine. Yeesh.

I discovered on Friday afternoon why the universe had been giving me feelings of horror. It was to restore the balance. Because at lunch, my supervisor (currently on mat leave) came to visit us with her 5-month-old daughter, who is just one of the cutest, sweetest, most charismatic babies I've ever met. I really enjoyed the baby fix. The only drawback was that she is currently going through a 'making strange' phase and cried tragically anytime I or anyone else other than her mummy tried to hold her. Real tears, too. Very pathetic. Particularly since she reverted to happy-as-a-clam-ness the nanosecond she was back in her mummy's arms. And now I shall attempt to make this story knitting-related by telling you that this was the baby who received this knitted gift.

NEW - Socks for DH

My husband's feet have a tendency to hurt (which, of course, is Bad). This is why he wears slippers instead of just stockinged feet around the house, and why he must have a rug on the floor around the work area of the kitchen so that he has some padding between him and the tiled floor as he cooks. This weekend I was informed that even the socks he wears can make a difference. I noticed on Saturday that he was wearing two different socks. "Yes, I know," he said, when I pointed this out. Apparently, he wanted to wear a specific pair of socks because they were nicely padded, but he could only find one of them, so, in a burst of 'screw it, something is better than nothing' philosophy, he put the padded sock on one foot and any-old-sock on the other foot. Hence the mismatched pair. However, hearing this story gave me food for thought. If I found some really nice, comfy, cushy yarn and did up socks for him, his feet would stand a much better chance of not-hurting (which, of course, would be Good). I've never knit socks before...but it can't be that hard. (Famous last words.) I have no idea what kind of yarn to use, though. Hopefully something in my stash will suffice. I will be happy to entertain any suggestions that anyone has for what sort of yarn would make cozy, cushy socks.

Cape Cod sweater for MIL

Surgery was performed, and disaster was averted. I un-Moebiused the sweater without ripping the whole thing out. Instead, I unravelled the first ten stitches of the round all the way down to the bottom, cut the unravelled strings, untwisted the project, and re-did the knitting all the way up those ten stitches, joining it at each side of the opening. I am a demi-god. I refrained from assigning myself full-on god status because I was impatient and didn't take the extra time to perfectly mimic knitting at the joins. Thus, you can tell where the fix is. However, I still think it looks fine and it saved me gobs of time. Knitting continued on this project over the weekend and I'm now on the main pattern. Before I left for work, it looked like this:

A few more rows were done on the ride to work. Now that there is an honest-to-goodness pattern going, the work is going much faster. Or maybe it just seems that way because it's less tedious. Either way, I win.

A Very Harlot Poncho for moi

Poncho looks the same as it did before, just longer. Several additional inches were accomplished over the weekend. It now looks like this:

Still looks like a lump of yarn, right? Well, what can I say. It'll look much better once it's done and off the needle.

Persian Tiles afghan for master bedroom

I worked up the gumption to talk to my husband about this project on the weekend. He surprised me by being really blasé about the idea. "Yeah, that makes sense," he said, when I said we didn't really need an afghan since we now had a comforter. I thought he'd get all upset at the idea of my frogging huge amounts of work. Nope. Just a little teeny bit of regret on the subject, and a brief, "As long as you're okay with it." Sigh. And I thought I knew him. The afghan is no longer. Instead, it looks like this:

Rest in peace.

Feelings of horror

It's only 10am and I've had several already.

Firstly, a non-knitting-related feeling of horror occurred last night as the small cough my daughter had on the way home developed into a persistent, nasty-sounding thing over the course of the evening. Her breathing actually sounded fairly scary at one point, but by the time we went to bed it sounded less freaky and I was able to sleep without worrying...too much. Despite the cough, the blessed lamb slept through the night. What a trouper.

The second feeling of horror occurred when DH and I woke up at 6:30 and discovered we had slept past both alarms. We dashed around madly trying to make up for a half-hour of lost getting-ready time, but one of the casualties of our sleeping-in was the downloading of photos for the blog. So, no photos today, sorry. However, this isn't really a big loss since things don't look enormously different from yesterday.

Cape Cod sweater for MIL

The third, and possibly worst, feeling of horror, happened on my bus trip down to the subway this morning. I know that at the beginning of a project, the knitting wraps around and around the needles quite a bit until you get a bit of length going on the project and it starts to hang down from the needles properly. Well, I've got about an inch done on the sweater so far, and it occurred to me that I was still untwisting just a little too much for my comfort. So I checked. Turns out that I managed to twist the work when I joined it up in the round. I now have a lovely little Moebius Strip going. In response to this discovery, many words formed themselves in my brain which were not fit to utter in public. What the hell was I going to do? Given that I was on a bus with a long commute still ahead of me, I did the only thing I could think of...I kept knitting. (I believe the words 'f**k it' summed up my philosophy at the time.) Now that I'm safely ensconced in my cubicle, I'm mentally weighing the pros and cons of ripping the whole thing out and restarting vs. trying to do some very clever surgery. I must admit that I'm leaning towards the surgery. It was just such a damn pain in the heinie to meticulously make sure I had exactly 352 stitches (it takes quite a while to count to 352, double- and triple-checking the whole while), and there's no guarantee I won't make the same boneheaded twisting mistake again. On the other hand, the surgery is likely to be complex and nasty. I'm still leaning towards the surgery, though. Stay tuned.

A Very Harlot Poncho for moi

Worked more on this last night, and it continues to grow. However, so does my frustration with the yarn. I must reiterate that the yarn feels wonderful. And it looks gorgeous. But manohman, what a b***h to work with. After this, I'm swearing off novelty yarns for a goodly amount of time, I tell ya.

Let us hope devoutly that there are no more horrible revelations left in my day.

Responsible? Me?

I was struck with a sudden realisation yesterday. Casting on for the Cape Cod sweater means that I have begun all three of my Christmas knitting projects. In March. Before March is even half over.

That's pretty stunning.

Does this mean I stand a chance of getting all my Christmas knitting gifts done in time? Well, sadly, probably not. I have, in what is probably one of the most dumbassed moves of all time, chosen three projects with really small gauge which are going to take a very, very long time to do, each. Combined with all the other smaller projects I do throughout the year, nine and a half months is probably not nearly enough time to get it all done. But of course I shall try.

Cape Cod sweater for MIL

Work proceeds, slowly. Quadrupling really fine yarn has been resulting in frequent tangling. Nothing serious so far, but it does slow the process down. Before I left the house, the sweater looked like this:

Sad, I know. But since then I've done a few more rows and it's looking better and better.

A Very Harlot Poncho for moi

Worked on this last night while watching American Idol. (Yes, I watch the Idol shows. What can I say, I like music and hearing people sing. All other 'unreality' shows are anathema to me, though - hopefully this will redeem me in your eyes.)

It's hard to tell from this picture, which just basically looks like a lump of wool (albeit gorgeous wool), but it's coming along. I have now used up more wool than I used in the first version of the poncho before I decided to frog it and start over. I'm feeling more confident about the new poncho pattern, too. But I'm thinking I'll be abandoning the fringe trim and getting some silver beads or coins to weigh down the edges instead. I think it will look quite swizz like that. I don't know when I'll be able to haul myself out to a bead shop, but the theory is good.

Conspiracy

Warning - the following story has nothing to do with knitting, beyond the fact that it resulted in slightly more time for me to knit.

My daughter is in league with the TTC. And possibly also Mother Nature. This must be true.

This morning, my lovely and talented child went on a completely uncharacteristic breakfast strike. Ultimately, we were able to get her interested in her cereal again, but not before she'd wasted 5-10 minutes being cranky and saying no to food. Unsurprisingly, we therefore left the house 5-10 minutes later than we should have.

Fast forward to the first leg of my subway journey. On the way to the second last stop, the train stops. There are signal problems up ahead. We finally make it to the second last stop - ONLY ONE STOP FROM WHEN I HAVE TO GET OFF - only to be told that we all have to get off the train, it's going back the other way. A few minutes later, the announcement comes on that the signal problems are so bad that they've set up a shuttle bus service across the entire subway line for the duration of the delay.

(Needless to say, none of this would have been a problem if we'd left the house 5-10 minutes earlier - I would have instead sailed right to the end of the line before the signal problems ever happened. Hence my belief in a conspiracy.)

Now, I don't know if you've ever had the joy (not) of trying to get on a shuttle bus designed to take up the slack while the subway isn't working. I will only say that there isn't so much a line of people to get on these buses as there is a throng of humanity. It was insane. Do I need to add that it is frickin' freezing out today? So I bypassed the whole thing and got on a bus going south (instead of west). It took me way longer than the southbound subway would, but since I had been thwarted ruthlessly in my attempts to get myself westbound to a station on the southbound subway line, I wasn't complaining. The traffic was light and the bus was warm. I knitted.

And that was my crappy morning.

Cape Cod sweater for MIL

Winding up four skeins last night took way longer than I thought. What I hadn't counted on was that it takes a while to wind a substantially-sized skein when the yarn is super-thin. So I barely had enough time left over last night to swatch. But swatch I did. I got pretty good row gauge, but my stitch gauge was off. Augh! What is it with Alice Starmore and her wacky tensions? I have decided to ignore the gauge problem and forge ahead. (Ominous chord sounds in the background.) This morning I cast on 352 stitches for the body and worked the majority of the first row. It ain't much, but it's a start.

Spanish Knight sweater for Mom

Behold the latest snapshot of the progress:

Canada Post is my friend

Lots of progress to report today, but oddly enough, none of it photo-worthy.

Cape Cod sweater for MIL

The yarn is here! The yarn is here! And oh...my...gawd. The lilac is exactly the colour I had in mind originally for this project. I mean exactly. Like, you couldn't have gotten any closer if you had plucked it directly from my brain. It may not have silk content, but it is very smooth and soft and quadrupled up it should work very well indeed, although of course I will be swatching first. I am very excited about this. Tonight, as my reward for doing laundry, I shall wind up some skeins and get swatchin'. The only question remaining is, what do I do with the other cone I bought? But I'm not worried. I am sure I'll be able to find some use for a pound of cotton-silk blend in a lovely cream colour. Mmm. (Incidentally, if anyone's interested, the vendor for all this yarn was knitfolio.)

Poncho for moi

Well, I took a good look at the gauge for the A Very Harlot Poncho pattern and the yarn I have for my poncho is exactly right. Woo! So I screwed up my courage and frogged everything I'd done so far. I then cast on for the Harlot Poncho and got several rows done before DH mercilessly pointed out that it was past my bedtime.

Spanish Knight sweater for Mom

I'm still slogging through this! It's a slow knit. The fact that it's damn cold outside today and my fingers are seizing up is also a factor. But the front continues to grow and look great. Hopefully by tomorrow I'll have done enough to merit another picture.

Nothing's perfect

Ahhhh, the weekend. A wonderful time. No work. Home all day with my husband and daughter. Few commitments. The opportunity to sleep in and nap, and time to catch up on things to do (particularly the mountain of laundry that awaits those who are cheap and tree-huggy and use cloth diapers which they wash themselves). Ideal, yes? Unfortunately, no. The tradeoff to all this wonderful weekendness is the complete lack of any postal service. So for those of us who are waiting for knitting-related packages in the mail, the rack gets screwed extra-triple tightly on Saturday and Sunday as all trips to the mailbox are rendered completely futile. (The rack is particularly painful if you were seriously expecting the package to arrive on the Friday.)

If the yarn has arrived today, my husband will not get the mail before picking me up. If the yarn has not arrived, he will. I know this to be true.

Itchy-and-Scratchy mittens for baby MacDonald

Done! I finished them on Friday. Don't they look great?

Self-designed sweater for baby MacDonald

Much "test" knitting was done over the weekend. I think I now have the pattern down the way I want it. But rather than confirming this with another piece of test knitting, I have foolishly forged ahead on the actual sweater. Twice. I changed my mind about the colour - it's now red. I was originally doing it in mint green, but then I realised that the mittens for the same baby were also mint green, so I switched. The baby will be half-Chinese, so it's a good bet that it will have the colouring to wear red. Plus I have the impression that red is a big good-luck colour in Chinese culture, so I think it will be appreciated all round. The only potential snag is that I'm using the red leftover from the United Way argyle cardigan I recently finished. I can tell you right now that there is no way I have enough left to do the entire sweater - I know I will have to go out and get more. This makes me very nervous, since when I bought the yarn originally, it was the last ball in the whole store. The likelihood of not being able to find any more of this yarn is high. I admit that I'm being very brazen in my tempting of Murphy. We shall see. At any rate, I'm now on the bottom ribbing, working in the round.

Carnival Coat for DD

This cardigan is one big freakin' comedy of errors, I tell you. First I should mention that I completed the skirt and successfully attached it to the yoke. I then wove in all the ends. But the thing is in no way almost finished. There's a problem that I've been ignoring for some time which I now need to face. The pattern for this cardigan comes in four sizes. My MIL, when she gave me the pattern and the yarn, asked me to do the second-smallest size. Now, in the "materials" section, the pattern specifies that the two smallest sizes require two buttons and the two largest sizes require three buttons. Straightforward? Of course! It's no surprise, therefore, that my MIL bought two buttons, which are bee-yew-tiful and work gorgeously with the yarn. Well, guess what. When you actually get into the instructions of the pattern, it states quite clearly that the second-smallest size actually requires three buttons. Which I don't have. Moreover, the instructions do not tell you where to make the third buttonhole, and I wasn't paying attention when I got to that row and didn't make one. This would on the surface appear to be fortuitous - I have two buttons, I have two buttonholes. What's the problem? The problem is that the cardigan really, really needs a third button, as you will see from this photo:

The orange thing on the buttonhole band is a row marker where the third buttonhole should be. (The first buttonhole is hidden by the little foldover of the buttonhole band at the top.) So...I am now going to have to ask my MIL what the odds are of her buying a third button to match the other two, and I'm going to have to do some cutting-and-grafting wizardry to create buttonhole #3. And hey, did I mention that the sleeves are way too long and I need to do more cutting-and-grafting wizardry to scale them back at least an inch? I think I'm just going to take a deep breath and walk away from this project for the moment. It's too big for DD to wear now, anyway, so there's no rush. Bleagh.

Poncho for moi

Progressed on this over the weekend - about 25 rows. But it doesn't look all that different from the last time I worked on it, so no photo. Plus, I'm wondering if I shouldn't use a different pattern. Basically, this 'poncho' pattern has you make a really big triangle and then sew the shoulders together. Enh. I'm not that thrilled about the shape this will create. I'm thinking of taking a close look at the A Very Harlot Poncho to see whether it would work with this yarn. Stay tuned. In the meantime, I continue to salivate at the colours as they flow through my fingers.

Spanish Knight sweater for Mom

Took this to work with me today, and I'm now halfway through the first pattern repeat.

They lied

A few days ago I was all riled because the Yarn Harlot's book was supposed to have come out and Indigo hadn't shipped my copy yet. Well, in desperation, I did some Google hunting, and it seems that although Amazon claims the launch date is March 1, other vendors of the book are saying the date is much later in March. In fact, according to Barnes & Noble, the date is March 28. Augh! 24 more days?!? I may explode before then. Damn you, Amazon...

Itchy-and-Scratchy mittens for baby MacDonald

Embroidery is almost finished on Itchy:

I expect to be finished by the time I go to sleep tonight.

Carnival Coat for DD

I have now reached the point on the skirt where I was when I ran out of yarn the first time around. And I still have yarn left. (It had better be enough. If not, I will start shooting people.) Five more rows until cast-off. I am so hoping to have finished all the knitting on this cardigan by the end of the day. (Sewing on the buttons will probably have to wait until tomorrow.)

Mr. Anchovy*-style knitting

I.e. dull, dull, desperately dull.

I am not unaware that the knitting content here at WIP Insanity has been somewhat lacking in "voom" recently. The projects I'm doing don't have much visual interest - in the case of the Carnival Coat, so much so that I can't even bring myself to take photographs. It's not that I don't have interesting projects on the go, it's just that some of the higher-priority projects are the less interesting ones. And I'm trying to get through them as quickly as possible. Don't worry, more interesting knitting will come along soon.

Plunder, part deux

My co-worker of the excess knitting supplies brought in the rest of her stuff today. More acrylic yarn, a few more needles, and a few more booklets. Sadly, no mate to the 6mm needle I got yesterday, sigh. But still - free knitting stuff is not to be sneezed at.

Itchy-and-Scratchy mittens for baby MacDonald

Knitting is complete on mitten #2, and embroidery has begun. You can very clearly see Itchy beginning to take shape:

Carnival Coat for DD

Skirt Mark II continues. I'm almost two-thirds done.

* Vocational Guidance Counsellor Sketch. Lion taming via banking and all that.

Plunder!

My co-worker of the excess knitting supplies brought half her stuff today. I am now the owner of a whole bunch of Patons Knit 'n Save Brushed Chunky yarn, one ball of cotton yarn, a few patterns, a knitting techniques book and one 6mm needle. The rest of the loot apparently will come tomorrow - I have been told to expect books and needles. I'm not sure whether I'll want to keep all of it, but just having more knitting stuff in my possession is making me quite happy for the moment. I am trying not to think of how I'm going to cart it all home on the subway.

My joy is dampened, though - the Yarn Harlot's first book was supposed to come out yesterday and I have yet to receive a notification from Indigo that my copy has been shipped. And no, I can't be patient about this. I want my copy and I want it NOW. Humph.

Cape Cod sweater for MIL

I won two yarn auctions a few days ago. I am counting on one of these auctions being the yarn I will use for this project. The first is a one-pound cone of 63% silk/37% cotton in a white/natural colour. The second is a 1.25-pound cone of 60% cotton/%40 linen in a lilac that I am really hoping is the colour I had in mind for this project originally. Unfortunately, with the vagaries of digital photography colour and differing monitor displays, it will be impossible to tell until the yarn is in my possession. As always happens when I am expecting a knitting package, I am now practically vibrating with suppressed anticipation.

Itchy-and-Scratchy mittens for baby MacDonald

Got a bit more done on this last night - I'm now ready to start the shaping on the second mitten.

Carnival Coat for DD

This is what the skirt looked like before the Great Frog:

However, don't mourn too much. Skirt Mark II is rapidly catching up to its predecessor - I'm over a third done.

Knitting and work...the line blurs

I think everyone in my department knows I knit. But lately it seems that more people are acknowledging it. When I left the argyle cardigan on Rob's desk, a lot of people apparently went in to take a peek, because I got several compliments from co-workers who'd seen it. Furthermore, a number of my co-workers are now coming out of the woodwork and revealing that they know how to knit. A few weeks ago, one of my co-workers asked if I had a legwarmers pattern she could make, so I directed her to a bunch of free patterns online which she thought were great. Around the same time, another co-worker asked to borrow some 6mm needles for a scarf project (which I blithely assured her was no problem, before discovering that I don't actually own any, thus making it difficult to lend some to her - I found this a bit embarrassing). The same co-worker then came by yesterday to ask how to bind off. One of my cubicle neighbours revealed last week that she also knits, although not much, and nothing complicated, and then we had a conversation about fibres and the cost of yarn. Finally, yesterday, another cubicle neighbour came by to offer me her entire knitting stash, free. She has a few WIPs that she doesn't intend to finish, a bunch of yarn, as well as needles and patterns.

!!!

(Hey, I'm always happy to take free knitting supplies off of someone's hands.)

So...the office seems to be turning into a source of knitting discussion. I ain't complaining! Hey, if I can't knit 24/7, at least I can work around people who like to talk about it. I'm seriously thinking of doing a knitting Lunch 'n Learn in the office for anyone who's interested. Try to convert more people to The Cause, ya know? It's worth a shot!

Anyway, alas, no photos today. I took them, but I ran out of time this morning to edit and upload them to the blog.

Carnival Coat for DD

Unwilling to let all the work I did on the skirt go quietly into the night, I took a picture before embarking upon The Great Frogging of 2005. (*Sob*) I'll try to post it tomorrow. I finished the frogging in the car this morning, then re-cast on (with 43 stitches instead of 50) and got 22 rows finished before getting off the subway. My goal is to do 60 rows every day - that way I can be finished the skirt after 5 days of work and then get this darn project off my plate.

Itchy-and-Scratchy mittens for baby MacDonald

Finished the ribbing - now working on the main body of the mitten. If, indeed, a mitten can be said to have a body. But I think you know what I mean.

Self-designed poncho for baby Ashthorn

Dropped this off with my mom last night - she's going to package it up with the blanket she crocheted for the baby and send both presents off together so I don't have to. (Thanks, Mom!) So, I now consider this project 'given'.