Ciao, Olympics

It has been a total blast being a spectator of this phenomenon. I knew Laura could do it. I can still hardly believe Stephanie made it. And have you seen Dani's Olympic project? Ho.Lee.Cow. It's gorgeous. Go see.

I am totally going to have to start thinking of what I will do for the 2008 Summer Olympics. :)

Garden Shawl for MIL

I went to an artsy-craftsy get-together on Saturday and got a bit more done on this. I must say that, despite all the anticipation, I am not yet feeling the love with this project. I am sure this has to do with the fiddliness of trying to do intricate lace on DPNs. Not. Fun. I am really looking forward to the point where I can switch to a circular. There are, however, two problems with this. One: There is a vicious circle at play - I don't really want to work on this until I can switch to a circular, but I cannot switch to a circular until I work more on this. And two: I don't actually have the circular I'll need. On the way home from my artsy-craftsy get-together I passed a Lewiscraft and stopped in to see if I could buy one there. No. And today I called up the one local to my work to ask if they had one. No. I then called up the one at the mall near where DH picks me up after work. No. I'm getting the distinct impression that they just don't carry them at all. I'm bummed.

On the other hand, I still haven't gone through my circular needle collection - technically it's possible that I actually possess what I need. But my experience with Murphy's Law tells me no way am I that lucky. Worst-case scenario I can always order one from Yarn Forward. What a total drag to have to do that, though. Especially since the shipping will probably cost more than the needle.

Self patterning socks #2 for DH

While I was in the Lewiscraft on Saturday hunting for a nonexistent 3.5mm circular needle, I also looked at yarn. I know, I know. How dumb was that - there really is no such thing as merely 'looking' at yarn. Once you are 'looking' you are pretty much guaranteed to soon be 'purchasing'. But this was not as dumb a move as you may think. Why? Since Lewiscraft looks like it'll go out of business, they were having a sale on everything. EVERYTHING. In some cases (off-season items), stuff was 70% off. Yarn was 30% off. And little ol' me actually managed to nab the last two balls in the shop of Patons Kroy Socks Jacquards yarn, 75% wool/25% nylon:

Need I point out the delicious fact that these last two balls were even in the same colourway? I can't remember exactly how much it cost, but even after the tax I paid less than $9. Whee!

(Oh, BTW...they also had quite a few balls of discontinued White Buffalo wool at 30% off. If anyone's interested, this specific Lewiscraft was the one in Etobicoke.)

Anyway, one of the balls now looks like this:


They will be socks for DH, knit continentally. I'm not exactly sure what occasion I'm going to use to give these socks to him, though. Since I scrapped his anniversary mittens, bumped his birthday socks up to anniversary socks and bumped his Father's Day socks up to birthday socks, logic would dictate that these should be Father's Day socks. However, I've had a pretty cool idea idea for another Father's Day gift for him (if we can ignore the stupidity of giving a man a pure wool scarf in the dead of summer and having the temerity to call it a 'cool' idea) so these new socks may have to be saved for another time.

Dress socks for DH

This weekend saw huge progress, largely because I was desperate to get the first sock in this pair done so I could use the needles to start knitting with my new self-striping Kroy yarn.

(You are seeing an almost-completed sock. Be assured that the sock is now completed, I just haven't taken a picture of it yet.)

Never would I have believed that I could knit the entire leg of a man's sock with 2mm needles after just one afternoon, one evening, and one television program's worth of work. This continental knitting thing rocks. Unfortunately (or fortunately, considering that I still have the second sock to knit and I'd like it to be the same size as the first one) my gauge with continental has still not tightened up to equal my gauge when I knit English.

Striped socks for moi

This saw a little bit of action this weekend, but not so much that I'm really anywhere close to the heel. However, what I did find interesting was that my efforts to knit another pair of socks using the continental method started leaking into this project. Twice I switched needles and automatically started knitting continental instead of English - once I even made it about halfway through the stitches on the needle before realising what I was doing!

Crawling towards my goals

There's some news on the workroom organization front. No, I haven't put together any shelves. No, I haven't sorted any more stuff. No, I haven't bought any boxes. Okay, no, really, there is progress, I swear. Ready? I think I've found the boxes I'm going to buy.

(Could my progress be any more lame?)

Despite the way it sounds, this is actually a major breakthrough. The biggest frustration I've had with this whole project so far has been my total inability to find boxes that:

• fit on the shelves
• are of a sufficient height to be able to put a decent amount of yarn in them
• have lids so they can be stacked
• look halfway decent
• are available in the quantity I need
• don't cost the earth

Doesn't sound too tough? Well, IT IS. Very tough. Some of our pitfalls so far:

• A local dollar store had some very nice plastic bins. They fit the shelves bee-yew-tifully, were decently tall, and were $5 apiece (pretty much the upper limit of my price range). Problem? There were only six of them in the store. I needed eighteen.
• Ikea has some really nice cardboard boxes ('KASSETT', in case you're wondering) that come in a nice red to match the future decor of the room. They fit the shelves very precisely, and are more or less tall enough. Problem? At $12.99 for a two-pack, buying enough will cost me about $135. Oh, and also, they were out of stock.
• Ikea also has some other cardboard boxes ('HÅBOL' and 'LINGO'). $2.99 and $3.99 respectively for a two-pack - my kind of price! They're a little short, but for less than $2 apiece, I can accept that. Problem? They are about a quarter inch too wide for the shelves if I want to have them side-by-side (which I do). Crap.

I could go on...but I won't. Suffice it to say that there is something majorly wrong with every solution we've found. Until now.

Staples has some economy cardboard boxes that come in the perfect dimensions. They are tall enough and they fit the shelves. They have lids. And they are $13.71 for a six-pack. Buying enough for my yarn will cost me less than $50. Now...they're not the prettiest, and they have the Staples logo on them, but you know what? Assuming we will one day have money to buy nicer containers, I can live with them. I have asked DH to buy three six-packs. Surely three is a sufficiently low number that our local Staples will have enough in stock?

Problem? At the exact moment I was leaving an excited message about these boxes on our answering machine for DH...he was on a shopping expedition at the BouClair right next to our local Staples.

It would seem that Fate does not entirely love me.

But on the upside, I went to the Lettuce Knit SnB last night - as always, a lovely time. Fewer ladies than usual but I suspect the Yarn Harlot's talk at The Flying Dragon Bookshop drew some of the folks that would ordinarily have been at the SnB. Or maybe it was just a slow Wednesday. Anyhoo, it was great to see some of the Olympic knitting projects coming along. I still have utter faith that Laura will finish her fair isle sweater. The triumph of the night was when Denny showed up in her completed double-breasted jacket (and very flattering it was, I might add). Unbelievable.

Garden Shawl for MIL

The big highlight of the night for me, of course, was picking up my Garden Shawl pattern that had come in about two weeks ago. Having brought the intended yarn for the project with me, I immediately cast on for a gauge swatch on 3.75mms and determined that this would be a bit too big. I instead went with the 3.5mms recommended by the pattern - which I bought while at the shop since I didn't already own any. I'm pretty sure I'll have to hit Lewiscraft or somewhere to get a 24" 3.5mm circular, but first I want to rummage through my circular collection to make sure I don't already have one. (Can you tell I seriously need to do an inventory of my circulars?)

So anyway, after buying the DPNs I cast on. The pattern is knitted in the round, starting from the middle and working out. This means that I had to start knitting in the round with just eight stitches (knitting with five DPNs, therefore two stitches per needle). I don't know how other knitters feel about that sort of thing but I think it SUCKS. It's so fiddly and hard. In fact, I screwed up on the first go-round and had to frog and re-start because one of the DPNs twisted round itself and among the stitches beyond my ability to redeem it.

However, so far my second try is more successful. I've completed the first chart:

(please remember that lace sucks before it's been blocked)

There are now over twenty stitches on each needle, which is definitely making things easier. The knitting isn't very exciting yet, but that will come.

The ladies at the SnB seem to think I'm nuts for doing this. Not only is the yarn ridiculously thin, but apparently the Garden Shawl is the hardest pattern in the Fiddlesticks line. My response? "Good!" :)

Yep, this is my idea of fun. I do it to myself. It would be sad if I weren't so happy.

Striped socks for moi

The toe is finished, and the foot has begun.

Dress socks for DH

I've finished turning the heel. I discovered during this process that I had somehow managed to add an extra stitch on the heel side somewhere. I haven't found out where yet, but after a few minutes of fruitless hunting for the error point I said 'screw it' and just did a decrease on the next row. The likelihood of anyone (but me) noticing is slim.

I was nervous about doing the heel since it means doing purl rows, which I'm still getting used to doing in the continental way. However, after a few rather painful rows I seem to have gotten the hang of it.



This sock is giving me one helluva feeling of accomplishment, I tell ya. It's a great learning piece.

Heraldic tabard for moi

DH called me up very shortly after I got into work this morning. The dear, wonderful, lovely man had gone through our recycling and had found my rough notes for the tabard, which include my original diagram, with MEASUREMENTS. He is so getting lucky.

Doing well again

Having comments on my blog is always great. But doubly great was getting a comment from Tanya! :) Thank you for the hugs, my dear. Right back atcha.

christine, your comment was exactly right. DH was absolutely thinking about me when he got mad about his anniversary socks. He was peeved because he wanted me to have knitted things for myself and instead I'd spent time making more socks for him. The sentiment is indeed very sweet. His expression of the sentiment, however, blew goat. :)

Also, rachel said that the organization of my workroom (I'm sorry, I just can't refer to it as the re-organization with a straight face since it honestly was never organized to begin with) seems to be coming together. She is RIGHT. Check it out:

That, dear reader, is our household computer, totally connected up, sitting in the closet on the desk that DH made. It's a beautiful thing. The only thing remaining is for DH to build a small shelf on the left side, about a foot and a half above the desk (this leaves enough room to completely lift the lid of the scanner), to hold the printer.

Having the household computer in the closet meant that I was able to move the games computer over to the corner desk where the household computer used to be. Then we put the extra desk in the basement, where it is spending its days reconciling itself to its future as a garage sale item. The result of all this is a bee-yew-tifully blank expanse of wall which will house two more storage shelves:

The shelves have already been purchased and I'm assembling the first of them. Unfortunately, since this requires a drill, I can only do it when DD is awake, so I only have about fifteen minutes of assembling time every weekday evening if I'm lucky. But they will be done soon. Once the shelves are up, I'll use them to store all the crap from the spare room, and then both rooms will be functional. Incredible.

After that of course comes the organization of the shelves themselves. DH has an ongoing shopping assignment to hunt for good (read: cheap) storage containers. When I am done with these shelves it is going to look so frighteningly tidy and organized that no one who knows me will believe I live here anymore. (Or that I will have been replaced by a Stepford robot.) Seriously.

But wait...there's more!

(The non-geeks among you can skip this next part.)

When we originally got the household computer (back when we had money), I also bought a firewire card so that I could download home movies from our camcorder onto our hard drive and burn DVDs of them. Unfortunately, I was never able to get it to work. The computer just wasn't acknowledging the existence of the firewire card, which meant that either the card wasn't fully plugged into the motherboard, or that the card was a dud. However, I never bothered opening up the tower and pushing the card more firmly into the motherboard because...well...come on, it is such a pain in the ass to unplug all the crap at the back of the tower, haul it out in the open, open it up, find a good place for the screws so you don't lose them later, etc. etc. But this past weekend, since I had the tower unplugged and out for its move into the closet anyway, I took the opportunity. I opened up the tower, pushed the card further into the slot - pausing to note that it was already in there securely, this would probably never work - and closed it up again.

When I finally had the computer all connected up again and turned it on...IT RECOGNIZED THAT THERE WAS A FIREWIRE CARD.

Oh joy of freakin' joys. I immediately grabbed the camcorder, connected it up and downloaded some footage onto the hard drive. (DD loved this part. "Look! Iss me!") I added titles and credits and fade-ins and fade-outs and made myself a real lil' ol' movie. :) Next step: to burn the movie onto a DVD and see if I can play it on my TV downstairs.

Did I mention that DH has also been assigned the task of buying DVD-Rs? (Did I also mention that DH has begun complaining about being used as an errand boy? He has an excellent point and I admit that I have guilt. But once I have boxes and DVD-Rs and a printer shelf, I will totally lay off for a while. Probably.)

Self-patterning socks for moi

Yesterday I finished them!



And despite the fact that they look really silly when worn with a suit, I put 'em on while I was still at work. :)



200Sox will be getting wind of these, baybee.

Striped socks for moi

Sock #2 got cast on last night:

Herald's tabard for moi

The intarsia on the front is done. It turned out great:


Although it recently occurred to me that the proportions are going to change a bit once it's fulled. It's going to get a little squatter, since the swatch shrank more vertically than horizontally. Hm. Hopefully it will still look great, though.

My next step, before going much further, is to recreate the neck shaping instructions. But I'm still pretty close to finishing the front.

Dress socks for DH

Well, I did it. I ripped it all back to the part of the toe where I would stop increasing for the women's size. Then I started back up again, just knitting without shaping for the foot. I'm now following the pattern instructions for the women's size, width-wise, and the instructions for the men's size, length-wise. The theory is that this will give me a sock which is long enough for my husband's foot but which won't be ridiculously wide around his feet and legs, given the looser gauge I'm getting by knitting continentally. It's a bit too early to tell for sure but I think it's working. Still loving how I'm zooming along using this technique.

Worst.morning.ever.

Yesterday was my fifth wedding anniversary. It did not start out well.

I went into DD's room to wake her up and get her ready for daycare. She was - as usual - resistent to the concept of wakefulness. (This is particularly frustrating for me because at night, she is always resistent to the concept of sleep.) I started getting her ready and she started screaming. She screamed when I tried to take her diaper off. She screamed when I tried to put a clean diaper on. She screamed when I put socks on her (which I did three times - not because she has more than the usual number of legs for a human, but because, in her fury, she ripped off the first sock that I'd managed to grapple onto her).

On a different day I probably would have put her back in her crib for a time-out and let her calm down. Today I wanted to get the heck downstairs so I could give DH his anniversary present. I wanted to hustle and I really wasn't up to the patience thing. So I wrestled her into her pants and shirt instead. Predictably, more screaming ensued. Later on she refused to have any fruit with her breakfast. Then she agreed to eat half a banana, so we got it all ready for her...and she never touched it. Although she did cry in protest when I put it in the fridge.

(Inconstancy, thy name is Toddler.)

So that was Horrible Aspect Of My Morning, part I.

Part II came when I gave DH his anniversary present. If you've been following story, you'll know that I've been working on this for some time, often right in front of DH, because he was under the impression that I was making the socks for me. I've been very excited about telling him The Truth about that and giving him the socks and seeing his reaction. I was almost cackling with glee as I slid his present across the table to him this morning. He opened it up, and...

...Got pissed off that the socks weren't for me after all.

Seriously. He started complaining. About how he's tired of always getting socks when I don't have a single pair, that he won't wear these new socks until I finish a pair of my own, blah blah blah.

(For this I wrangled with a screaming todder?)

So that made me feel like utter crap.

But the morning was not done with me yet. Part III occurred about thirty seconds after I got off the train to work. I realised I had left my tabard pattern behind. The pattern I designed myself. All the instructions, measurements and notes for the pattern, which were my ONLY COPY...gooone.

Dumb.
Ass.

Sadly, my director did not give me leave to spend my day on the TTC, transferring from train to train trying to find my pattern. So I am forced instead to wait until Monday, which, assuming that someone turns it in, is the earliest that the pattern will show up in the TTC's lost and found. However, the odds of anyone actually turning this thing in are slim. More likely, since it is just five or so pieces of paper that I left on the ground (more dumbassness), it will be stepped on and torn to shreds by the stampeding throngs of Toronto before being tossed into a recycling bin by whichever poor sod it is whose job is to clean up the detritus on the trains at the end of the day.

Sob.

Fortunately, once I got to work, the world stopped working against me. DD was delightful from the moment she and DH picked me up from work and we had a great evening. She even went down to sleep well.

And DH called me up at work shortly after I got in. On the ride downtown in the car we had had a discussion wherein I communicated about the following issues:

• My hobby. No one tells me what I should knit.
• I don't really decide what to knit - usually, the yarn tells me what it should become.
• I knit for two main reasons - the joy of the actual knitting and the joy of seeing the recipient enjoy their giftie.
• Anyone who has just received a handknitted gift, regardless of the emotions that may be running through them at the time, should have the decency and courtesy to express appreciation of said gift as their first and foremost reaction. Any concerns the recipient has about the gift should come later. Much later. Maybe never.

(If there are any of you who are worrying about all this 'discussion' happening in front of my kid, fear not, there was no yelling, it was genuine communication conducted rationally, honestly, and with tempers in check. We modelled good relationship management.)

Over the morning, what I told him had apparently been sinking in and he said the more he thought about how he reacted to the socks, the more he realised that he was a real - to use his word - 'moron'. (I concurred.) By the evening, he had showered and changed into the socks and was marvelling at how great they were:

Moreover, he spent the day making furniture in the workroom for me. When I came home and saw it all, my mood was instantly raised up to 'really damn elated'. :) There is a desk in the closet:

(ignore the mess at the bottom left corner of the shot - that will all be taken care of down the road)

It's almost ready to have the household computer moved into it. The package in the right bottom corner of the shot is the keyboard tray which DH will be installing this weekend, and the only thing left to do after that is drill a hole in one corner of the desk for cables to pass through. I am so happy.

But wait...there's more! DH also completed the shelf on the far wall to hold all our fabric:

It fits seven of those huge bags. Seven. Loads of storage. Two of those bags aren't even fabric, they're DD's old baby clothes. Moving those bags into the shelf made the 'staging area' (spare room) a lot neater, boy howdy. It's really coming together! I am thrilled.

As for the lost tabard pattern, I at least had done the intarsia motif charts on computer rather than by hand. So DH was able to email the spreadsheet file to me at work so I could have a printout for the commute home. We're also going to dig through the recycling for the pages I used to work out the math for the tabard pattern. If I find those, I might be able to figure out what I decided the dimensions of the tabard should be, and can recreate my instructions. If we can't find them, I might be able to remember most of the the dimensions anyway.

Cross your fingers for me?

Herald's tabard for moi

Despite the setback of losing all my pattern notes, I have been able to forge ahead because I could reprint the intarsia charts. I'm now done most of the motif on the front. No pictures yet, and all the entangling of the skeins is really getting to me, but it is looking good and I like it.

Fafner blanket for baby Whyte

I did a few rows on this Thursday night. No big whoop. The turquoise yarn continues to die a fast death.

Self-patterning socks for moi

Got back into these last night. The heel has begun:


DH is very pleased that I am getting closer to having my own socks.

Zooming along

rachel, regarding your comments from a few days ago, I cannot believe I've inspired anyone to organizational action. Me. Me? Are you sure? :) That is a total first. As far as my own organization goes, I am a bit stymied at the moment by the lack of affordable, sealable plastic boxes. DH bought six decently-dimensioned boxes up from the local dollar store and brought them home to me...whereupon I discovered that they did not actually snap closed. Bugger.

However, on the upside, DH has bought the wood and paint for the closet computer desk and the fabric shelf, and the keyboard tray for the desk. Woohoo!

Heraldic tabard for moi

Nervousness about running out of yarn continues. However, the first cone is holding out long enough to keep raging panic at bay. I've hit the intarsia section and it's still a decent way away from running out on me.


(And Aven, you are so totally right about felting being fun. I love it, and all I've done is one swatch. I do find that if I look closely, I can see the stitches, and the garter stitch at the top and bottom of the swatch made it obvious anyway, as you suspected.)

Inca Hat for baby Sperling

A few weeks ago, my mom told me the news that one of my cousins is expecting again. (Said cousin's first baby got this.) I've been musing about whether I would knit anything for this new baby, and if so, what it would be. Yesterday, on the spur of the moment, I decided to make the 'Inca Hat' pattern from Zoe Mellor's 'Double Knits book, which I picked up not too long ago. This hat is one of the nicest patterns in the book, I think. I used earth tones for the colourway - a brownish burgundy as the main colour, black to complement, and cream and forest green as accents.

Now, I know I promised to cut down a little on my tendency to knit for every baby which crosses my path, but I had two very good justifications reasons to make something for this baby. For one, I've just catapulted myself a week ahead of schedule by cancelling my mittens project, to say nothing of all the other projects which are ahead of schedule. And, probably more compellingly, baby hats are small.

Don't believe me? Ha! Doubting fool! It is absolutely a small project! How do I know? Because, well...it's finished:

completed hat


side view, showing my hand for scale

I like it.

Unfortunately, I had 'issues' with the pattern. Some were me being really dumb. Some were not. For example, the chart for the body of the hat claims that it has a six-stitch repeat. It does not. If you try to repeat the six stitches indicated throughout the entire chart, the main section of the pattern will look okay but the bottom will screw up totally. (Fortunately I clued into this before starting.) Another issue I had was with the instructions immediately following the completion of the earflaps. The pattern tells you to cast on some stitches, then purl across earflap #1, then cast on some more stitches, then purl across earflap #2, then cast on some more stitches, and - voilà - you have cast on the bottom edge of the hat.

See the problem?

Nowhere does it say which side of the earflaps is supposed to be facing you as you purl across them. Now, because this is a fair isle hat done in stocking stitch, and because the instructions said to purl across the flaps, I assumed that the wrong side of the earflaps should have been facing me as I purled. Another big clue (which I didn't notice until after the fact) is that the instructions for the next row after this say RS. But I'm betting that new knitters would not necessarily get that. And my own paranoia that I might be purling on the incorrect side fooled me into thinking that I'd done it wrong, ripping it out, cursing when I found I'd done it the right way in the first place, and then redoing it. (Okay, that was my bad...but still...if the instructions had been clear in the first place, my stupidity might have been kept at bay.)

Anyway, my point is...Not. Well. Detailed. Instructions.

Aside from that, the pattern is, as I'm sure you can see, extremely cute, and I really appreciated getting more practice carrying yarn in my left hand due to the fair isle nature of the design. I also discovered that this strand-in-each-hand thing makes doing a three-colour row waaaay easier.

Conclusion: I would totally make this hat again. But next time I will do it in the round. There's just no excuse not to.

Inventory

The workroom organization proceeds. All the huge cupboards have been carted down to the basement and replaced by shallow metal shelves. Is good.

This led to the next step, which was the organization of the stash.

I started by going all around the house and gathering up all the yarn not currently in use for projects, and placing said yarn into one of four piles: novelty, fingering/laceweight, sportweight/DK weight, worsted weight or thicker.

This process was kinda daunting. I kept thinking I was done, and then I'd remember another place I'd stored some stash, so I'd have to go and integrate that into the piles, too. Whew. Finally it was all done and I found myself looking at a lot of yarn. This was both depressing and empowering. It's a bit overwhelming when faced with the prospect of having to store (and ultimately knit) all this yarn, but it was also wonderful to know exactly what I had.

So then I started sorting each pile into subcategories, based on fibre content, and also based on how much yarn I had in each subcategory and whether it was enough to merit putting it into its own box. If there was just a little bit of yarn in a subcategory, I expanded the subcategory definition a bit.

The upshot? Here is how my stash is now organized:

• novelty
• fingering/laceweight
  • mostly synthetic
  • luxury fibres (i.e. yarn with a decent percentage of really yummy stuff, e.g silk, cashmere or alpaca)
  • mostly animal fibres (I'm talkin' wool)
  • mostly plant fibres (cotton/linen)
• sportweight/DK weight
  • mostly synthetic
  • mostly natural fibres
• worsted weight or thicker
  • mostly synthetic
  • luxury fibres
  • mostly animal fibres
  • mostly plant fibres

Once sorted, I put it all back on the shelves, either loosely or in baskets or cardboard boxes. Highly inadequate and sloppy storage for my precious stash, so of course my next step is to find sealable, critter-proof, easy-access boxes that will fit on the shelves. Each shelf is a foot deep, a little over a foot high, and a little over two feet wide. Ideally I'd like some clear plastic Rubbermaid totes, but those are a bit too rich for my budget considering that I need about fifteen boxes. So DH and I are now scouring dollar stores, Zellers and Canadian Tire for cheaper alternatives. Or sales. If you have any other ideas, fire away.

(And hey...did you know that Rubbermaid has recently introduced a Cedar Storage Tote line? I am totally drooling over this product. I have just added another item to my treats-I-would-buy-myself-if-I-won-the-lottery list.)

Fafner blanket for baby Whyte

Moved forward ever-so-slightly on the edging this weekend but still not enough to know for sure if I'm going to have enough turquoise yarn. I still suspect not.

Heraldic tabard for moi

Felting is so cool.


It took four trips through the washer to achieve this (and my tree-hugging little heart quailed each time I realised it needed another trip, lemme tell ya) but here it is - a bee-yew-tifully felted swatch. 80% of its original width and 70% of its original height. Thick and felty. Very, very nice. I could really get into this!

Saturday I sat down and designed the pattern and then cast on. I'm about 65 rows into it...

...and already I'm nervous about running out of wool. Sigh. Yesterday's stash roundup revealed more of the green wool than I thought I had, which was very heartening, but I'm still nervous because damn, this thing is big.

Minnesota Mitts for DH

Mitten #1 is finished:

(ends have yet to be woven in, but the knitting is done)

Here's the problem: I don't like it. I actually haven't felt very good about the project for a while now. Don't get me wrong, there are things I do really like, such as the fact that I knitted it two-stranded with a strand in each hand; and I especially like the textured motif on the back:


But there are too many things that I don't like. I don't like that my stitch gauge seems to be a little tense and the gloves seem a little too thin. Moreover, the fingers are tight on me, which means I'm really nervous about how they'll fit DH's fingers. I don't like the gaping at the base of the thumb:

(boy, that's embarrassing)

I don't like the fact that the yarn is feeling a mite too scratchy on the hands. I don't like the fact that DH already has new gloves that he bought for himself to replace the ones he lost. The 'boughten' gloves seem to suit him just fine and they're black...so really, what good will scratchy, ill-fitting, gaping-at-the-finger-bases new mittens do for him? The only thing these mittens have going for them that DH's gloves don't is the finger pocket. But that's another thing I don't like - it's too loose and doesn't 'snug up' to the hand when it's on:


I'm just not feeling that 'click' that's so important to me when giving a knitted gift. The fact that I only have one completed glove and four days left to go until our anniversary kind of puts the nail in the coffin for it for me. I've decided - I'm giving DH the self-patterning socks I was originally going to give him for his birthday. They're gorgeous, I love them, he'll love them, and - best of all - they're already done. Very low-stress, that. :) The dress socks I'm knitting for him will be bumped up as his birthday present, and I'll have to knit him something else for Father's Day. (This will likely be an excellent excuse to buy more sock yarn.)

It'll work. Adieu, Minnesota Mitts. May you be replaced in my heart and on my project list by a pair of mittens which are small and fiddly and gorgeous.

50% husband knitting

Dress socks for DH

There is a problem.

In my last entry, I mentioned that I was knitting more loosely with the continental style than I do when I 'throw'. There were definite advantages to this - lack of laddering and a clean line at the toe. Unfortunately, it turns out that there are definite disadvantages, too. Witness:

Don't see it? How about when I include my hand for scale:

Girthwise, this thing is huge. My husband is going to freakin' swim in these socks. Now, if these were supposed to be casual, slouch-around-the-house socks, I wouldn't care if they were roomy. But these are plain and grey. They're supposed to be dressy, can-wear-them-outside-the-house-in-pretty-nice-clothes socks. Slouchy does not cut it here.

I'm seriously considering ripping out the whole foot and some of the toe, and redoing it all using the instructions for the woman's size.

Stupid loose continental gauge. Stoo-pid. #*@*&$.

Heraldic tabard for moi

Last night I swatched! I have myself a more-or-less 22cm square swatch, and have knotted in four scraps of acrylic yarn, 10cm apart from each other, in a square (18 stitches and 24 rows apart):


It's all ready for felting. Once felted, I will measure how big the 'square' of knots is, and that will give me my shrinkage factor. (I picked this brilliant technique up from Aven's blog.) Once I have my shrinkage factor, I will know how much bigger I will need to knit the tabard in order to shrink it down to the size I want. Then I can design the motifs. And then, finally, I can start the actual knitting.

I've never felted before. Cross your fingers for me.

Minnesota mitts for DH

Fingers and thumb are complete. The pocket for the fingers has been started::

If you look really closely, you can see the texture pattern motif on the back of the hand.

And you know what? Knitting fingers kind of sucks. They're so small and fiddly, especially when you're doing two-stranded work. Gah.

Once I'm done the finger pocket, I'll be done the first mitten. Which would be very gratifying were I not a week behind schedule on this project...

Christmas gift for MIL

Got a call from Lettuce Knit - the Garden Shawl pattern is here and ready for me to pick up! Wheeee! It was all I could do not not rush out at lunch and nab it. But I must resist. Instead, I shall do the sane and logical thing, and wait until I can get to another SnB.

I am waiting to Really And Truly Officially say that I am making the Garden Shawl for my MIL for Christmas until I have the pattern in my hands, read it over, and make absolutely sure that doing it in seven weeks is not on the same level of crazy as doing the Persian Tiles shawl in three weeks. (That almost killed me. Never again. Or, at least, not again any time soon.)

DH, unfortunately, is grumbling. He thinks that seven weeks for this shawl is a ridiculous underestimate and that he will once again be a knitting widower single parent.

He has no faith.

Brrr

I don't think I was warm all friggin' day.

First - my bad - I left my gloves at home. I was too paranoid about missing the shuttle bus to the GO station that I didn't go back for them. A mistake - I had lots of time before the bus came. Time enough for my hands to get nice and cold.

Once I got to the station, the train was nowhere to be seen. This was odd - usually it's there waiting by the time the shuttle bus pulls in. Not today, of course, because my gloves were at home. So I froze my heinie off until it showed up. Once on board, it soon became clear that the train, unusually again, was unheated.

Once downtown, the room I spent my day in (I'm on training today and tomorrow) was also cold and I had my coat over my lap for most of the day. Finally, on the bus coming home I happened to sit in the only spot on the bus where my hands would get the cold blast from the open window (a fact I only learned after the bus started moving and it would have been really inconvenient to switch seats).

My poor little hands. When I started typing this entry, I'd been home for about half an hour and they were still stiff and freezing. Since my pregnancy I've been much more relaxed than I used to be about parts of me getting cold, except that I still hate it when it's my hands which suffer. It sucks trying to knit with cold hands, lemme tell you.

Minnesota Mitts for DH

These actually saw some knitting action today! The pinky finger on mitt #1 is finished and I've started on the ring finger.

Self-patterning socks for DH

Done! My first pair of socks of the year.


I will of course be sending word of this over to 200Sox!

Now, all I have to do is hide them from my husband for four more months. Wish me luck.

Self-patterning socks for moi

Knitting continues - I'm a few rows away from starting the heel of sock #2.

Dress socks for DH

These got started on the bus ride home today. I had decided that this would be my first all-continentally-knitted project...except for the cast-on. (I still felt I needed to do that with my right hand in charge.)

It has been going scads better than I thought it would. For some reason, I'm much more comfortable (and fast!) with continental using smaller needles and thinner yarn than when I was with all my practice pieces (which, as you have probably surmised, used big needles and thicker yarn). Moreover, the toe looks sooo much better than the toes I made knitting English-style, and I can't see any laddering:


I think this is because my gauge is looser with continental. Regardless, I'm ridiculously happy about how it's going. It is super-fast, I can barely believe how fast I do the stitches once I get going! My only complaint is that the yarn seems to be a tad splitty. :(

PS - Recently while sorting through old baby clothes, I came across this sweater which I'd made for some friends of ours who then were ridiculously generous and gave us all their old baby clothes after their daughter outgrew them. So now the project page has some pictures.

An explanation for scanty blogging

Last week, something snapped.

I posted some time ago about my chronic problems with untidiness and the subsequent solution I brought to my living/dining room (which has been working fairly well ever since). We've also been making some slow, tiny changes to the rest of the house which, while not solving all our problems, have certainly cut down on the time we have to spend cleaning before company shows up.

However, there was still one room that was a veritable horror. Really. I am not exaggerating out of some weird desire to self-flaggelate. This room was akin to the sort of thing one sees in the 'before' shots on Clean Sweep or Neat. The vast majority of the floorspace looked like this:

but WORSE. It made moving about a literal obstacle course. I am talking about...

OUR WORKROOM.

The irony of all this is that the workroom was supposed to be our haven room. The place where crafts were done, art was created, correspondence was conducted, games were played...all of it. And yet you could not find a more creativity-stunting room on the planet. How easy is it to get inspired to create something really beautiful when you can hardly even walk into the room to do it? Moreover, the beautiful large craft table which was supposed to be the hub of all this creation was always festooned with piles of junk.

An absolute nightmare.

Fast forward to last week. Many things had been boiling in my brain for some time. My husband's efforts to start up a business. My desire to make some extra money from home doing stuff like designing knitting patterns or selling things on eBay, or hiring out my calligraphy services. My desperate longing to have these things bring in enough cash that I could stop spending three hours a day commuting. My eagerness to do our taxes (no, seriously, I'm a total money geek, it's quite pathetic) but knowing that I had a painful search ahead of me before I would have all the paperwork I needed. My ankle, which has inexplicably been in a fair amount of pain recently, not being helped by all the dancing about I had to do to make it across the workroom to my computer. My envy of the Yarn Harlot's tranquil and beautiful knitting space. My total and utter jealousy of my friend Truly's sewing workroom, which has a fantastic, huge table right smack dab in the centre of the room that you can walk all around, surrounded by shelves containing, right at hand, EVERYTHING she needs. I have worked on this table myself and it is divine.

Combine all this with our financial struggles at the moment and you have one frustrated little person, desperate to DO something and make a goddamn CHANGE.

So I started sketching out a total redesign of the workroom. At first it was just fantasy, because we have very little money right now and these were pretty big plans. But then it hit me that really, what I was thinking about didn't have to take a lot of money. I could use a lot of my existing stuff and get the rest of what I needed on the cheap.

And so, I developed The Plan.

The Plan unfortunately involved sacrificing the spare room for the duration - it would have to become the Staging Area (read: a huge mess). However, I reasoned, better now, before we move DD into it when we decide she's ready for a big girl bed. Other key elements of the plan included:

• Convert the closet (currently housing fabric, a bureau, and a whackload of sewing crap) to a desk and move the household computer into it. DD gets the bureau moved into her closet for badly-needed clothing storage. The games computer moves to one corner of the room and we can get rid of an extra computer desk, thus freeing up space along the walls. DH wasn't a huge fan of this because he gets the task of making the new desk in the closet and hooking up lighting. But too bad. :)
• Get rid of the HUGE behemoth of a filing cabinet. Winnow our archives to fit into DH's two old small filing cabinets, which will go into the closet (one of the cabinets will hold up the right side of the closet desk). Big filing cabinet will be banished to the basement, to be used (for now) for old archives and DH's workshop-related stuff.
• Get rid of the three big, clunky storage cabinets - they've never been well-organized anyway. They will also be banished to the basement, and DH can use them as storage in his workroom. DH loves this idea - he needs more storage and was dreading having to make shelves himself to save us money.
• Clear off the worktable and move it to the centre of the room. Then move our two wheeled sets of drawers under the table, thus freeing up even more space along the walls.
• Move the existing white shelves in the room next to the closet. Use them for computer-related storage.
• Put all our fabric into handy organizer bags (which were on sale last week at Canadian Tire for $3.99 apiece). Make a tall, deep shelf to go between the windows in the room to store it all. (Again, DH not-so-thrilled about another construction project, but given the time I am saving him by giving him ready-made cabinets for his workshop, I managed to bend him to my will ;) pretty quickly.)
• Line the remaining available wallspace around the room with shallow metal shelves. These will store EVERYTHING ELSE - knitting stuff, sewing stuff, embroidery stuff, weaving stuff, spinning stuff, calligraphy and illumination stuff, photography stuff, miscellaneous craft and other project stuff. Purchase cheapie totes and boxes to organize it all.
• Put a comfy chair in the cosy corner next to the big window, with a footstool in front and a basket o' knitting stuff beside it. (Once finances start looking up, purchase a spinning wheel, too, heeheehee.)

Big plans. As you have no doubt surmised, this involved getting DH heavily onside, not just for the construction bits, but also because he would have to buy the shelves and boxes and stuff, and help me move furniture up and down the stairs. I told him about The Plan. He got nervous but agreed that it could work.

What he did not count on, however, was just how determined I was to pull this off NOW.

Last week DH did some purchasing and I worked on the workroom a bit in the evenings after DD went to bed. But this weekend I went ALL OUT. I hauled, I sorted, I found, I tossed, I moved, I filed, I assembled furniture, I did STUFF, man.

Now, don't get me wrong, it's not nearly done. But I got an AMAZING amount accomplished. So much so that it is really, really difficult for me to leave this room. I just keep looking around with this blissed-out smile. There are some shelves:

(very messy and poorly-organized, I'll admit, but we haven't bought the storage totes and boxes yet, so this is just temporary)

There is a stunningly tidy and well-organized shelf in the closet:

And best of all, there is a PERFECTLY CLEAN TABLE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROOM!

(ignore the still-there big storage cupboards, they will ultimately be replaced with the shelves that are still in boxes, leaning against the wall behind the table)

It is so good. It is just so good. And then...it got better.

I was chatting last night with DH about how great the room was looking (and - cough, cough - how rockin' I was for doing so much with the room so fast), and I mentioned that when our finances started looking up again we really needed to give the room a coat of paint. I started thinking about a nice, soft grey - it would match the grey filing cabinets in the closet and the darker grey shelves. It would also coordinate nicely with the white shelves and trim, and if we did accents with a big, punchy colour in places like curtains, we'd have a really nice-looking room with little effort.

And then...it hit me.

Some time ago - I think as a wedding gift - I received this lovely piece:

I really like it and it's been bumming me for years that I couldn't use it in the existing decor of my home. But...if we have a grey, white and black workroom with accents of red, suddenly - BAM! I can use it! And it would speak so well to the 'zen' peacefulness and creativity that the room is starting to have, and I could put shoji screens on the windows, and maybe even cover the arched part of the big window with a honkin' big Chinese fan (I saw some for sale in Chinatown last week en route to Lettuce Knit). It's perfect.

Yes, it's all coming together.

Except that I'm sick. Did I mention I was sick? Yeah. I feel pretty crummy. And I have a training course for two days this week so I can't really afford to be sick. Oh, and the weather is insanely snowy:

And the spare room looks like this:

But you can't have it all.

Minnesota Mitts for DH

I'm panicking a bit now about how behind-schedule I am on this one, but at least I have measured all the fingers on DH's current gloves, so now I can move forward and finish the pinky on mitten #1.

Self-patterning socks for DH

Almost finished!


Sock #1 is here pictured behind sock #2 so that you can see how bee-yew-tifully the two socks are matching up.

Self-patterning socks for moi

I don't think I've made any progress since my last entry, but I do have a picture:

Hanging around knitting in the round

First off, my apologies, there will be no pictures on the blog today, even though there's been good progress made on my current sock projects. Soon. Soon.

But in the meantime, I was hanging out at the Lettuce Knit SnB last night (such a fun time, what a terrific group to hang out with), and hearing about all the work Kelly's been doing for the whole 'Team Canada' thing for the 2006 Knitting Olympics, and listening to everyone tell Laura that her chosen Olympic challenge is insane (they're right, but I think it's insane in a good way - I am totally on her side and I think she should go for it). And someone said that those people who aren't participating but are still watching all their friends go nuts about this thing should have 'spectator' buttons on their blogs. :) What a good idea, I thought. So, here for you to download and use if you want, is a 2006 Knitting Olympics spectator button:

Self-patterning socks for moi

I finished sock #1 last night (I had to borrow a 3mm DPN from Megan at Lettuce to do the castoff, since I brilliantly left my bigger DPNs at home) and it looks great. It just so happens that the yarn started into a different colour right as I began the castoff row, so I've got this cool orange rim at the top of the sock. Love it. Pictures forthcoming.

I then proceeded to start sock #2, and am making good headway up the foot. I had to adjust the yarn a little bit a few times on the toe to make sure the patterning was identical to sock #1 - I think it looks great so far.

Self-patterning socks for DH

Foot of sock #2 is done - I've placed the insteps on a spare piece of yarn and am ready to begin the heel shaping. Woo. Again, pictures forthcoming.

Minnesota Mitts for DH

There were 5mm DPNs at Lettuce last night, and I snatched myself a set! So this morning I set to work on the pinky finger of mitten #1. Man, it's fiddly as all hell, especially with the two-stranding of the Tsvaandsstickning. But I'm getting there. My only concern is that I really don't know how tall to make the fingers. I'll have to surreptitiously measure DH's current gloves tonight when he's not looking.