I forgot again

A few months ago, I went to my first Wednesday-night SnB at Lettuce Knit. I enjoyed it a lot, really liked meeting everyone, and admired the shop (although, with our limited budget these days, I alas did not feel I could buy anything). I have been meaning to go back on a semi-regular basis ever since.

The problem is that going to one of these things takes a bit of planning. First of all, DH has to agree to put DD to bed by himself. I also want to warn DD in the morning that she won't see me that night, because I don't think it's fair to make changes in her routine without actually warning her of them first. I need to make sure I have enough money or tickets for the York Region Transit bus which will take me home. Also, I need to pack extra food if I don't want to starve. And finally, there is the need to pick a night where there are not eight million things to do. So it's definitely not a spur-of-the-moment kind of decision.

Last week would have been a perfect time to go. And Wednesday morning (too late!) I got to work and realised I had completely forgotten to plan for it.

This week, I told myself. I really wanna go, and besides, Aven is moving soon, and it would be great to actually see her before she ups and leaves the province. And, yep, you guessed it...yesterday morning I got to work and realised, once again, that I had completely forgotten to plan for the SnB.

Am I doomed to never go back to Lettuce? I think I might be, because my mom just called and asked us to dinner next Wednesday! Argh! Hopefully I can swing dinner another night next week instead.

I hereby resolve to try really, really, really hard to make it to next week's SnB. Step one in this resolution will be to actually tell my husband about it so that I have someone to remind me next Tuesday that I need to plan.

Mountain Laurel Counterpane blanket for baby Gelman

Yep, I'm definitely screwed. My math calls for 60 pattern repeats to go all the way around the blanket, and by this morning I'd finished almost 8.

I really like the way the way that border looks! However, the ball of yarn I was using was half gone (I weighed it to see), and I only have one more ball of yarn after that. So, even though I had 7/8 of the border left to do, I had already used up 1/4 of my remaining yarn supply. Not. Good. Therefore, this morning in the car I ripped the entire border back (sob), and started again with a narrower version. There are no pointy edges on this new border, just the braid. Also, there don't need to be so many [SSK, YO] repeats between the braid and the blanket edge. This new border stands a better chance of getting me all the way around the blanket with the yarn I have, but I'm still extremely skeptical. We'll see where I am once the first ball of yarn runs out. One thing is for sure - the schedule for this project is now shot to hell. There's no way I'm going to finish the border by the end of this weekend, especially if I end up having to rip it all back again. This could get ugly.

Hooded jacket for baby Sperling

I didn't work on this at all yesterday because I wanted to forge ahead on the Mountain Laurel Counterpane blanket project. However, the blanket project has reached a stage where I cannot work on it while standing up. This means that if I don't get a seat on the subway, no knitting gets done if I've got the blanket project in my bag. Yesterday was a case in point - I was unable to snag a seat for the majority of my subway commute back and forth. Wasted knitting time is an evil that I simply cannot allow to continue. Therefore, even though I'm behind on the blanket project, I had to bring the hooded jacket project on the subway with me today so that I would be able to knit even if I couldn't get a seat. I've started the right side of the hood.

I think I'm screwed

Mountain Laurel Counterpane blanket for baby Gelman

Sadly, another day without pictures. I woke up late and DD woke up early - a sure-fire recipe for morning chaos. Plus, DD wanted to spend her extra awake time this morning 'watching the baby in the television', aka 'Mummy plays old videos of DD from the camcorder'. You try downloading pictures from a camcorder which is being used to keep your toddler happy while you run around the house like a maniac getting ready for the day. Go on, I dare ya. Anyway, so no pictures, sorry, even though I have started the border and it looks pretty darn good. However, the reason I think I'm screwed is that I have two 50g balls of the yarn to do the border with and I really don't think that's gonna cut it. I originally thought I stood a good chance, but I'm looking at how wide this border is, and my optimism is gooooone. I'll keep going just in case, but I have no idea what I'm going to do if I run out. This is old yarn, boy howdy, from the days when The Bay used to sell craft supplies. (The label says "Baycrest, Sayelle Knitting Worsted", and just to rub it in, also contains the fateful words, "Please purchase sufficient yarn of the same dye lot number to complete your garment.") There ain't no way I can get more. (Although I did go on eBay just now to see if maybe anyone was selling some, and it turns out that there is indeed a person selling six balls of it...in completely the wrong colour.) And this blanket really must have a border. So I'm thinking I'll have to fall back on that white worsted I was thinking of using for the blanket in the first place. That wouldn't look too too bad, would it? Turquoise blanket with a white border? Someone reassure me here...

I am too stupid to live

Mountain Laurel Counterpane blanket for baby Gelman

Today is the day slotted for trying the math I worked out for the border. Therefore, this morning I packed my copious notes, the blanket, my longest circular needle, a 7mm DPN for my working needle, and a bunch of stitch and row markers to help me count all the stitches. I picked up stitches all through my commute and my lunch (hey, it takes a while to pick up 464 stitches at very precise intervals). I was greatly looking forward to actually doing some knitting on the commute home instead of all this dumb picking-up of stitches. Until it hit me like a ton of bricks. Have you spotted the problem yet? I did not remember to pack any yarn. Of all the dumb knitting mistakes I have ever made, this has got to take the cake (with the possible exception of the time a few weeks ago when I forgot to pack needles). How, praytell, is one supposed to knit if one does not bring the frickin' yarn?

Hooded jacket for baby Sperling

I finished the second sleeve last night, six days ahead of schedule. At least something is going right. Next up: the hood.

And now for something completely non-green

Behold - my husband's progress on his club cover:

Looks good, eh? He's just a few rows away from cast-off. (For this, he will be learning the three-needle bind-off.) I tried to compliment him last night on how well he was doing, and he refused to accept my kind words. Nonono, the project was no big deal, it was just stocking stitch and simple 2x2 ribbing with some no-brainer colour changes, nothing as fancy as any of my Starmore projects, etc. etc., blah blah blah.

Sigh.

Please feel free to leave comments here telling him that he is an idiot and that he should be very proud of what a great job he's done on his first knitting project.

Mountain Laurel Counterpane blanket for baby Gelman

The sewing is DONE.

I love it. I think it looks awesome. Next: the border. The instructions say to knit the border separately (in one long, thin strip), working as much border as you need to go around the blanket, and then to sew it in place after the fact. To hell with that, I say. I will instead be picking up stitches all around the blanket and knitting the border on as I go. Since the border needs to end at the same point in the pattern repeat where it began (so I can sew the cast-on edge to the cast-off edge and have the whole border look as seamless as possible), and since there are some corners to go around, and since I am (let's face it) pretty anal, I need to be quite precise about how many stitches to pick up, and where. I've already done some math that seems right, but since I don't really trust myself to figure it out correctly the first time, I expect to be able to regale you in the coming days with amusing stories of mathematical disasters.

Hooded jacket for baby Sperling

Here is the completed first sleeve, next to the in-progress second sleeve. (Thus proving that I really am on sleeve #2 and not just recycling a shot of sleeve #1). I am in excellent shape, about five/six days ahead of schedule. Rah.

It's pretty easy being green

It struck me recently that a heckuva lot of my projects lately have been green or green-ish. So I checked...

• Mountain Laurel Counterpane blanket for baby Gelman: greeny turquoise
• Hooded jacket for baby Sperling: mostly green (two different shades of it) with some white stripes
• Secret Garden cardigan for my niece: khaki
• Ljod cardigan for moi: teal green
• Elizabeth I sweater for moi: forest green
• Striped socks for DH: Striped green and black/brown
• Itchy and Scratchy mittens for baby MacDonald: mint green, plus multicoloured embroidery for Itchy and Scratchy
• Yoked sweater for Jack Rosatelli: white sweater, but with a big forest green yoke

This means that over a quarter of the projects I'm working on or have finished this year have a significant amount of green in them. And that doesn't include:

• MIL's Christmas present, finished at the end of last year, which was green with some black detail.
• The celtic knotwork sweater for baby MacDonald and the textured poncho for Quinn Ashthorn, which I started making in green, but then changed my mind and switched to other colours (possibly in subconscious protest of the preponderance of green in my other projects).
• The fisherman's sweater I plan to someday design and knit for DH, which I want to make in forest green.

I must like green more than I thought.

Plus, I am now remembering that my nickname in grade school among some of my friends was 'Greener' because of the extremely vividly-coloured coat I wore for a few winters. (Which, I must say in my defence, was bought for me by my mom.)

Coincidence?

You decide.

However, I refuse to greenify the colour scheme of the blog. Nuh-uh.

I know who to blame

It is with a major red face that I must announce I found my 'lost' 7mm needle and attached point protector. Turns out that even though I thought I remembered stuffing it further into my bag during the elevator trip down to the ground, it had actually leapt out of my bag while I was still in my office (never came close to the elevator) and has been happily sitting on the floor outside my cubicle for two days, puzzling the co-worker who sits across to me as to what the hell it was. I guess my brain fooled me.

Oh, also - the point protector in question...is green.

Aw, geez, and my Chibi is green, too! Aaaaaahhhh...I can't escape...

Mountain green Laurel green Counterpane green blanket for baby Gelman

All pieces are DONE. Now the hold-the-nose-and-sew part has begun. As of early this morning, the blanket had begun to come together:

And it's even bigger now. All thirteen hexagons have been sewn closed and pieced together, plus two of the half-hexagons. Just eighteen more seams to go and I have a blanket ready for a border. It's all good.

Hooded jacket for baby Sperling

As promised, here's what the fronts look like

I've also made a little bit of progress on the first sleeve:

It would be bigger than this, but I screwed up last night. I finished the moss stitch cuff and eagerly started zooming through the pattern without reading the very clearly stated instructions to start increasing on the fifth and every following fourth row. (Really, Kathleen? Increasing on a sleeve? What a novel freakin' concept. Moron.) So I had to frog back to the first increase row and start again. With any luck I will make better progress tonight. And I think I should make an effort to read the instructions for this pattern a little more carefully from now on, since this sleeve fiasco is the second time I ignored instructions and paid the consequences.

Passing the torch

This morning in the car, DD remarked on my knitting. Then we got into a fake argument. "My knitting!" she exclaimed with a big grin (the kind she uses when she is deliberately being silly and wants me to say no to her in a funny voice). "Nooo, it's my knitting," I countered. Things went back and forth predictably a few times (probably with escalating volume, much to the delight [not] of my husband, who was driving), and then, figuring 'what the hell,' I asked her if she wanted to learn to knit. She smiled and nodded.

Be still, my beating heart.

I told her I would be just dee-lighted to teach her how to knit, and that one day when we were sitting down and not riding in a car, I could teach her how. She seemed very keen on the idea.

How about that, eh? Only just turned two and interested in learning how to knit.

Now, I have no illusions that this will actually work. :) There is no way she has the patience (or the dexterity) yet to get it. But I plan to make her feel like she really can help to knit by sitting her in my lap and moving her hands through the process.

Should be interesting. I'll let you know how it goes.

Mountain Laurel Counterpane blanket for baby Gelman

All the half-hexagons are now done. Yippee! As well, the second edge triangle has been completed, and I'm working on the third. I'm hoping to finish all four edge triangles by the end of the day. Then I can start sewing everything together. I'm seriously considering the three-needle bind-off to piece everything together and thus avoid most of the sewing. It'll take longer, but at least it will be knitting (which I like) instead of sewing (which I find mind-numbingly dull).

Hooded jacket for baby Sperling

Last night I finished the right front and fixed the left front. Both fronts are now done, four days ahead of schedule. (Pictures of the fronts - with neck shaping in the right spots - will hopefully be forthcoming tomorrow.) I'm now working on sleeve #1. I'm really hoping to keep up this ahead-of-schedule trend with this project so that I can snag some extra time for all the Christmas projects I have to do.

I don't know who to blame

I lost one of my 7mm DPNs last night. I'm pretty sure it flew out of my bag while I was running to catch the subway train. I was running because I had been stuck behind this slow-as-molasses idiot whom I didn't want to yell at because I caught a glimpse of his face and I'm pretty sure he works on my floor. (And Murphy's Law states that if I screamed at him to move his @$$, then sometime next week he would be transferred to my department into a key position to be able to make-or-break my career, and the first impression he ever would've had of me would be that of a crazy beeyotch who snapped obscenities at him in public. No thanks. So I held my tongue.)

Finally I managed to get out around him and made a dash for the train doors, and I think that's when the needle made its break for freedom. I do know that I had the needle when I left my office, because I noticed on the elevator down that it was sitting pretty loosely in my bag, so I tried to stuff it in a bit better. And it was missing when I got on the train and wanted to knit.

So.

Is it my fault for not packing it into the bag more tightly when I noticed it wasn't secure? Is it the fault of the moron in front of me who decided that the subway platform during rush hour while a train was pulling into the station was a good place to take a slow amble? Is it the fault of my fellow subway patrons who didn't notice the needle falling and try to get my attention so I could pick it up? (Or maybe they tried but I was too intent on making the train to hear them - which would be my fault again, I guess.)

Who knows.

All I know is that the needle is gone and I really hope that calling the TTC Lost and Found will yield good results. I do have other 7mm DPNs (enough to make a full set, actually, which was a big relief to discover), but this DPN had a point protector attached to it, and I don't relish the idea of having lost a point protector.

(Best case scenario of course is that Slow Boy from my floor who made me run in the first place recognized me, picked up the needle, and is waiting to see me around the office today to hand it back. But that would be just too fortuitous. I ain't holding my breath.)

The good news is that I was able, to a limited extent, to keep knitting on the commute home. I used a double-ended stitch holder as my left-hand needle and knit with my remaining 7mm DPN as my right-hand needle. This did mean that at the end of every row I had to transfer all the stitches back on to to the stitch holder, but hey, some knitting is better than no knitting.

Mountain Laurel Counterpane for baby Gelman

All hexagons are now complete! Yay! Plus, I finished the third half-hexagon at lunch today and started the fourth (and last) one. When that's done, I'll have just three edge triangles left to do. Completion is within my grasp, I can almost smell it. I laid out all the pieces last night and it looked like this:

Hooded jacket for baby Sperling

Picture time. The back of the jacket looks like this:

The right front (currently in progress) looks like this:

And the screwed-up left front looks like this:

Man, that's embarrassing. However, as you can see, the right front is very close to being done - I'm two rows away from being able to start the neck shaping, which I will make absolutely sure is done on the correct side.

Chugging along

Mountain Laurel Counterpane blanket for baby Gelman

Finished hexagon #12, and am casting off on hexagon #13. There's a chance I could be finished all pieces by the end of tomorrow. Then the sewing will begin. I cannot tell you how much I am not looking forward to that part.

Hooded jacket for baby Sperling

I didn't get a lot of time to work on this last night, but I did manage to reach my goal of having one-third of the right front done. For now, I am ignoring the fact that the left front has the neck shaping on the wrong side. I would like to successfully finish the right front before I start to fix that - then I would at least have some sense of accomplishment before facing my own stupidity. Stay tuned - I'm hoping to have pictures for tomorrow's blog entry.

Something's missing

There's a definite absence of something around here. Oh wait, I know what's gone - panic.

Hm...

Ahhhhhhh.

This feeling of euphoric relaxation...I like it. I could get used to this.

Striped socks for DH

In desperation, I gambled that DH would not be able to see what I was knitting while he was driving and I was sitting right behind him. It worked. (And I shall file that useful bit of information away for future reference.) I knitted the sock en route to and from an SCA event on Saturday. I also worked on it at the event while DH was fighting and DD was in her playpen making a mockery of naptime. Unfortunately, DH came back briefly for some strange reason and I was hard-pressed to get the knitting out of sight fast enough. I sort of succeeded - he didn't see what it was, but he did see that I was knitting something and that I'd tried to hide it from him. #^@$*&#%. So the socks were not the complete surprise that I had hoped they would be. However, he did love them - he says he thinks they're even nicer than his birthday socks.

Mountain Laurel Counterpane blanket for baby Gelman

Now that my co-worker's baby present and DH's Father's Day socks are done, this is the next project that has to be finished. I'm aiming for the end of June. So far, all I've done is to get a little bit further on hexagon #12, but I expect to finish that and start hexagon #13 (the last full hexagon!) before the day is through.

Hooded jacket for baby Sperling

DD really made up for Saturday's lack of sleep yesterday by indulging in a four hour nap. Yes, you read that right. Four. Freakin'. Hours. In fact, it was closer to four and a half hours. Unbelievable. DH and I were greatly relieved, because what with no nap and going to bed really late on Saturday, she was so tired Saturday night that she kept waking herself up and getting really upset. Like, completely-hysterical-sobbing-for-no-good-reason kind of upset. Heartbreaking stuff. I finally had to take her into the spare bedroom and sleep with her so that she would stay asleep without freaking out. Anyway, the point of all this rambling is that her massive nap gave me loads of time (after I took my own nap of recovery, of course) to work on this project. And I gotta say - this is one freakishly quick knit. I completed the left front and got a good start on the right front. All was going so well until I took some time to admire the completed left front and noticed that the button band and the neck shaping were on opposite sides. How genius am I. In horror, I re-checked the instructions and realised that I had started the neck shaping with the right side facing instead of (as the instructions clearly stated) the wrong side. Moron. Fortunately, it will be an extremely simple and non-time-consuming matter to frog it back to the beginning of the neck shaping and re-knit, but it's the principle of the thing, y'know? If it weren't for the fact that I am way ahead of schedule on this project, I'd be totally disgusted with myself. But since it's otherwise going really well, there's just a little bit of disgust.

One a.m.

Celtic cable sweater for baby MacDonald

I stayed up quite late last night to finish it, but IT GOT DONE. It looks freakin' awesome, if I do say so myself. I'm really super-pleased. I still have great bitterness towards the sweater for putting me through everything it did, but I cannot deny that it is a beautiful piece of work and that I am proud as punch about it. Then this morning, DH and I slept in, were late leaving the house, hit really bad traffic, and I barely got to work in time for the party to actually give the sweater to my co-worker. However, I made it with about three minutes to spare. He loved it. Very appreciative. It also provoked a spontaneous 'awwww' from the rest of the department. :) I am flushed with triumph...and pretty tired, too.

Itchy-and-Scratchy mittens for baby MacDonald

Also given at this morning's party. Everyone thinks they're great, and very funny, which is exactly what I was going for. Yay!

Striped socks for DH

Started in on these again on this morning's commute. I'm not quite sure how I'm going to finish the sock by Sunday. I'm beginning to find that I've exchanged one panic project for another. However, I might be able to whip out the knitting at my department picnic this afternoon. I very stupidly put on my regular heeled shoes this morning instead of the sneakers I had intended to wear, so playing baseball with everyone is right out (although admittedly, I'm probably too tired today to play sports, even if I was wearing the right shoes). Maybe I can knit while socializing with my non-baseball-playing co-workers. Let's hope.

Pan. Freaking. Ic.

Celtic cable sweater for baby MacDonald

No further serious mistakes have been made since my last blog entry (although I realise I have invited Murphy to throw one at me just by typing that). However, time grows exceedingly short, and I have no idea how I'm going to finish this before tomorrow morning (and get something which remotely resembles a good night's sleep). The second sleeve is still not finished (although there are only six more rows to go) and there is a huge cowl neck still to do, to say nothing of the various ends which have to be woven in, nor of the bobbles which somehow have to be faked in the spots where I forgot to knit them in. (We will not discuss the spots where I put bobbles where I was not supposed to. I don't see how I can possibly fix those after the fact. Everyone who sees this sweater is just going to have to suck it up and ignore the extraneous bobbles.) And I'm sooo tired already because I stayed up late last night trying to get ahead on the project. Woe is me. Snivel, snivel, whine. (And yaaaawn.)

Meeting my Waterloo

Celtic cable sweater for baby MacDonald

61 hours left: Finish picking up stitches for sleeve #2. Start knitting.
47.5 hours left: Discover that I should have done my first sleeve decrease in the previous row. Screw it. I'll decrease in the next row instead. No one will notice.
47 hours left: Discover that I started the sleeve at the wrong point in the main cable pattern. I cannot possibly fudge this one because the main sleeve pattern transitions into the rib pattern, which means that the ribbing must start at a specific point in the main sleeve pattern. In order for the two sleeves to be the same length, the main pattern must therefore begin at the same point on both sleeves. I am forced to rip out two precious inches of sleeve. To top it off, putting the work back on the needles post-ripping takes a long time because of dropped stitches. Vicious cursing occurs throughout.
43.5 hours left: Discover a dropped stitch three rows previously that messes up one of the cable patterns - unless, of course, I want to rip that section of the sleeve back three rows and redo the cables manually. The cable pattern in question is small, right at the bottom of the sleeve at the armpit and is getting decreased out of existence further along the sleeve anyway. Screw it. I work the dropped stitch up for the three dropped rows but don't recreate the cable pattern. Very little guilt is felt.
40.5 hours left: Blog about the Project From Hell. Feel even more panicked. Doom approaches.

Striped socks for DH

Last night's knitting on the commute brought me three-quarters of the way to my goal for today, which is to have 1.5" done on the leg. Since I am in complete panic mode for my co-worker's baby sweater, I am going to be satisfied with those three-quarters and stop work on the sock until the sweater is complete. Hopefully I will still be able to finish it in time for Father's Day, but I'm not sure. We'll see.

Knitting studmuffin

This weekend my husband began the increasing and did several rows on the 'head' of his knitted club cover project. And so, last night I emerged from my nightly hygeine routine in the bathroom to find him lying on his side on the bed, in typical GQ-man pose, looking sexy as all heck, with his knitting spread out before him, and a smile which clearly said, "Hey, baby...I can knit." It was great. :)

So this is weird

According to my stats tracker for this blog, five separate people found my site today between late morning and early afternoon as a result of searching on Google for 'knitting pattern "elizabeth i"'. This is kind of sudden and strange, far too much so to be coincidental. Is it 'Search for Alice Starmore's Elizabeth I Pattern Day'? :) If anyone can give me any insight about this, please do...I'm curious.

Celtic cable sweater for baby MacDonald

Last week's goal was achieved late last night: I finished sleeve #1. Now I have to do sleeve #2, design and make the cowl neck, and weave in ends. Before Thursday morning. LOTS to do in a short amount of time. So what happens? I put the project in my bag this morning...and forgot to pack the needles. A fact I only discovered as we were about to get on the highway this morning, when I took the project out to work on it. DH, bless him, was all for turning around and going back for the needles, but since we were already late and still had to make a detour to get desperately-needed gas for the car, I said no. (And a good thing too, because the fill-up alone made me 20 minutes late for work.) Fortunately, I do have some stitch holders in my accessories kit, which I'm using to pick up stitches around the armscye for sleeve #2. So some progress is being made today, despite my idiocy.

Striped socks for DH

Heel is turned and leg has begun. Sadly, the rejoining of the yarn to the instep on sock #2 was not as seamless with the striping pattern as with sock #1. These are definitely going to be fraternal socks rather than identical. But it's still looking good, and I'm hopeful that I can get it all done by Sunday.

A response at last

I want to (finally) address the comments that Susan has been kindly leaving on my blog recently.

Firstly, regarding my ambition to get a book published straight out of the gate without making a name for myself first. Yes, I know, this is a very silly way to go about it. (Remember what I posted about earlier, about liking to do things the hard way? ;) I have actually been mulling over the idea of submitting patterns to Knitty, which looks like a great starting point. Actually, I figured the most logical starting point even before a Knitty submission would be to make one of my patterns available here for free. And as mentioned, I also kinda like the idea of the Knitting Vault.

However, I have what I think is a really good idea for a pattern book - the theme seems (as far as I can tell) to be original, even with the crowded market at the moment - and I have the excitement and creativity in me at the moment to write patterns which match that theme. So, who am I to deny where my creative energies are taking me. :) It may be that I design all the themed patterns for my book, and then hold off finding a publisher until I have published with a few independent designs first. We shall see. I'm also considering trying to write some knitting-related articles as opposed to just patterns. (I was thinking of starting with publications such as Take Back the Knit). However, I'm finding that it's much easier to find time to design patterns than to sit down and write an article. Especially when the first phase of that involves thinking of an actual topic for an article. :)

Anyway - as you can see, lots of ambition, not much planning. It's all a work in progress.

As far as 'grotty sleeves' go, my daughter prefers wiping her nose with a receiving blanket, which is pretty good, because they are designed to catch all kinds of baby messes. (I don't know if the term 'receiving blanket' is a purely North American thing - if you don't know what the heck I'm talking about, you can check this link for a bit of an idea). Unfortunately, the drawbacks are that she is a) very do-it-yourself and b) extremely vigorous with the nosewiping. The combination of these helped bring about the nasty chapped upper lip I blogged about last week. Fortunately, it is now almost completely healed.

Practice, practice, practice

Here is the latest picture of DH's golf club cover:

Nice, eh? In reality, it's a bit farther along now than when this photo was taken - he has completed the ribbed body and is now ready to start the increasing for the 'head'. It looks great. Efforts are being made to get my daughter to correctly identify it as Daddy's knitting, not Mummy's.

Celtic cable sweater for baby MacDonald

Front and back are done. This means I have now done everything that was supposed to be completed by the end of last week. But wait - it gets better! Shoulder straps are also done, and I'm well into the first sleeve - I only have about 45 rows to go. Hopefully I can do that by the end of the weekend so that I'm still on schedule. Then, with any luck, I can finish sleeve #2, design and knit the cowl neck, and weave in all the loose ends by Thursday morning when we have our mini-party for my co-worker. Or not. Now that I've written all that out it seems like a heckuva lot to do. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Striped socks for DH

Here is a photo from a few days ago, of sock #1 next to sock #1:

I'm quite pleased at how similar they look so far. Since this shot was taken, sock #2 has grown by over an inch and I'm about 20 rows away from starting the heel. Not bad. However, I do have a gripe with the Bernat people. I bought two balls of yarn for this project because I knew that's how much I'd need. I was a good little knitter and pulled the yarn from the centre of the ball to start with. All went well, and the colours flowed through my hands in the order of: brown, light green, black, green. With me so far? (I bet you can already tell what's coming up next.) When it came time to start ball #2, I centre-pulled again, only to find that the order of colours was now reversed, thus forcing me to pull the yarn from the outside. And is it ever annoying. The last thing I need when knitting on the subway is a yarn ball which bounces around every time I pull more yarn for myself. Surely, surely the yarn companies should know by now not to pull this kind of crap?

So I've been busy

My apologies for the lack of posts this week. I've been on a training course all-day-every-day since Tuesday, and this makes it very difficult to blog. I customarily do my blog entry for the day after finishing my workday but before turning off my computer and going home, since blogging from home is nigh on impossible what with all the other stuff I usually need to do in the evenings.

However, the training is now complete, my personal productivity will therefore now know no bounds, and I expect to be back to blogging as usual tomorrow. Stay tuned for updates on DH's club cover, DH's stripy socks and my co-worker's baby sweater (the news is all fairly good).

I leave you with this: on the way home in the car this afternoon, my daughter mentioned that I was knitting, and then started fiddling randomly with the blanket in front of her, saying "I knitting!" I'm surprised my heart didn't burst on the spot with all the overwhelming pride. Two years old, boys and girls, and pretending to knit. Muahahahaha.

Fury and delight

Fury: We had a garage sale this weekend. Hubby has been busting his hump for a few weeks to get things ready for this, but he was stymied at the last moment by DD getting sick and having to stay home from daycare on Friday. DH couldn't do any prep with her around, so we ended up going to bed really late on Friday night getting ready. And then we woke up on Saturday morning, went outside to start the sale going...and it was raining. We were late getting everything ready. We had to erect a tent for shelter (I know, tradition says that if it rains you pull the sale into the garage, hence the term 'garage sale' - great plan in theory, but in reality our garage is way too messy for that). This took extra time and energy, and after that my husband was too pooped to go around the neighbourhood and put up signs.

The only saving grace was that our neighbours across the street were also (by coincidence) having a yard sale, and they put up signs of their own, which attracted people to our sale, too. (And we helped them because we had put an ad in the local paper, which I don't think they did...so combined, our two families did an okay job with the publicity.)

So...we got wet, we exhausted ourselves, we lost sleep...and for what? Minus our advertising costs?

Fourteen bucks. Woo.

We'll try not to spend it all in one place.

Delight: Post-garage sale, poor DH was totally flaked out in the living room chair, looking completely exhausted. I decided right there to give him his birthday present from me a day early, since his feet seemed to be killing him and he could probably really use some nice cushy socks right around then.

I was right. He LOVED the socks. Really, really, really, really loved them. He said they were super-comfortable and made his feet extremely happy. He made delighted little comments about them here and there throughout the rest of the weekend, and on Sunday night he turned them inside-out to see how they were made. :) He couldn't believe it when I told him they were knitted in the round - he didn't see how that could be possible. "How did you do the heel?!?" he asked with amazement. :)

Fury: DD's cold really got her down this weekend. She was unbelievably whiny, obstinant and was constantly asking for stuff and then changing her mind. To make matters worse, her nose was so drippy all Friday that her upper lip is now very badly chapped. I'm talking red, raw, and in some spots, scabbed. It looks so painful, and she even gets a bit scared by it when she looks in the mirror. Although I did finally get her to start calling it a 'boo boo' instead of a 'beard'. :)

She's home from daycare again today, but she got a lot of sleep last night and DH says she's much perkier. However, she threw up this morning - apparently because of too many coughing spasms. Poor kid.

Oh, and did I mention that DH is now coming down with her cold? It's only a matter of time before I'm next.

Delight: DH is coming along really well on his first golf club cover:

You can't see it really well in this picture, but the ribbing looks great. You should be able to see that he's just made a colour change for his first horizontal stripe. He has made a few errors here and there but I think the whole thing is going really well. He complains about how slow he is, but I've been watching him, and he's actually picked up a noticeable amount of speed.

Fury: And finally...this morning, as I got out the camcorder to take pictures for the blog, I smugly congratulated myself on remembering that I'd been using the tape function over the weekend, and that I should therefore flip the switch from 'tape' to 'card' to take pictures.

However, it turns out that the switch was already on the 'card' function, and my brilliant flipping only turned it back to the 'tape' function. This meant that when I hit the button to take a picture of DH's stripy socks, the camcorder instead recorded a small amount of video onto the tape that was in there. And what did I record over? Why, DD interacting with my mom at Christmas, of course.

So there we go, lovely holiday footage of beautiful baby and her grandma, and then, suddenly, six inexplicable seconds of sock. And then the baby-and-grandma footage comes back in.

Can you believe it? I am sooo mad at myself. I can't even rant about my stupidity to my husband, because I have to keep the existence of the socks a secret from him until Father's Day! Argh! I guess my only consolation is that it could have been worse - I could have taped over DD's birth. I shall be thankful for small mercies.

Preemie burial gown for St. Mike's Hospital

I completely forgot to mention last week that I was able to hand this over to my friend who works at St. Mike's. (She came to DD's birthday party.) It was greatly appreciated and I am sure it will be distributed appropriately.

Celtic cable sweater for baby MacDonald

I have a bad feeling that I am going to be late finishing this sweater. Here's the thing...I asked co-worker's boss if our department would be throwing any kind of party to celebrate the upcoming blessed event. She said she's planning to 'pass the hat' around and give him a gift certificate at our department picnic on the 16th. This means that, if I want to piggy-back on that little celebration, I have to have this sweater done in ten days. TEN DAYS?!? But no...it gets better. Co-worker's wife works for the same employer, although in a different department. So it's possible that any moment now, our department will get invited to a joint party for both of them, which of course would be the ideal time to give my gifts. The problem is that this (as yet theoretical) party might be even earlier than the 16th, since co-worker's wife is planning to go on mat leave at the end of June, and co-worker has been heard to express doubts that she will even last that long. To make matters even worse, the knitting project schedule I wrote up for myself last week had me finishing the body by this point, and I'm not even close. I've finished knitting the body in the round and have divided for the sleeves, but I'm only working on the first side of the front neckline - the back of the sweater above the armscyes is still completely untouched. Clearly, I have messed up badly on the planning and timing of this project. I may have to forge full steam ahead on this, and ignore DH's stripy socks for a little while.

Striped socks for DH

Sock #1 was completed on Friday, and I cast on for sock #2:

This morning I completed the toe and got about an inch and a half done on the foot. I'm pleased.

P.S. One of these days I will reply to the comments I've been receiving, honest. :)

Evening of hell

Not much energy in me for blogging today, I'm afraid. Major mess-up on the subway last night, so I had to tell DH to take DD home without me while I took an alternate route...which took a long time. Then DD refused to go to bed. Absolutely refused. Two hours into the battle it became clear that she was coming down with a cold. Finally got her to sleep and her stuffy nose kept waking her up. Finally I took her into the spare bedroom and slept with her. (And when I say I slept, I use the term loosely - the snuffling of DD's poor nose was not too conducive to my getting a good night's sleep.) DD woke up an hour early, completely clogged up, and couldn't get back to sleep. Her nose is running like a drippy faucet. She's exhausted. I'm exhausted. DH is exhausted. DD is at home with DH because she's far too sick and cranky for daycare, and now DH has to accomplish eighty gazillion things today to get us ready for tomorrow's garage sale with a sick toddler to take care of.

AUUUUGGGHHH!!!

Blogging will resume when life stops being so crazed.

The couple that knits together...

My husband's first knitting project has begun.

Last night I demonstrated knitting in the round with DPNs so he could get an idea of what was involved. I hadn't even finished the first row of my demonstration when he announced that he would not be trying his hand at knitting in the round at this time. :) Personally, I don't really blame him. I find DPNs awkward enough at the best of times - why inflict the frustration on someone for their first project.

So I rewrote the pattern for flat knitting, adding selvedge stitches for the sewing-up. Then it was time to start. Sadly, I could only find one of my aluminum 4.5mm needles (the other one must be in a project somewhere), so that left us with some imperfect choices of what needles to work with. There were my very long Brittany 4.5mm straights. There were a few 4.5mm circular needles. And there were some 4.5mm DPNs that I could convert to straights by putting point protectors on the ends.

The problem with the Brittany straights was that, well, they're my really good Brittany needles! I found myself feeling pretty overprotective of them. I didn't think DH working flat on a circular would be a great idea, because he's still having issues with stitch tension, and the last thing we want is for him to not be able to slide the stitches back from the wire to the needle when it's time to work with them. And lastly, the DPN-to-straights conversion would work okay for the body of the club covers, but when it comes time to expand the work out to 82 stitches, there's no way they're all going to fit on the needles.

We ran through the options, and DH expressed great trepidation about using my Brittanys. "But they're your really good needles!" he protested. (What a sweetie.) He was really nervous he would break them. But I pointed out that Brittany has a replacement guarantee if their needles break, and anyway - here I took a very deep breath - I was happy to lend them to him. Really. I was okay with it. (More deep breaths as my resolve to be a generous and easy-going person was sorely tried.)

So he went with the Brittanys.

I showed him how to cast on, then handed the work over to him and watched him struggle to cast on several stitches. The Brittanys just weren't doing it for him. There was too much friction.

So we went with Plan B - DPNs converted to straights through the magic of point protectors. (Heaven only knows what will happen when he gets to the increased rows - I'll have to suck it up and find my other 4.5mm aluminum straight, I guess.) This worked much better for DH. He found the knitting to be far smoother and easier with the needle change.

So away he went. I returned to my role as instructor when he finished casting on and started the first row. It had been a lot of weeks since his last go at knitting, so he needed a tiny bit of a refresher on how to knit and purl. But pretty soon he was off and running (albeit slowly) in 2x2 ribbing. When he finished his first row, I showed him how to use my row counter to keep track of how many rows he'd worked. He liked this idea.

By bedtime, he'd finished two rows:

Yep, it's black.

Not long after he started the project, I realised my mistake. What kind of an idiot gives a newbie knitter dark coloured yarn for their first project? Me, apparently. I apologized to DH and warned him that the colour would make it really hard for him to see his stitches and figure out what he was doing. He seemed okay with this, but that's because he hasn't experienced the frustration yet of wanting to know what his work looks like but not being able to tell. You won't be able to tell, either. I feel pretty darn dumb.

We shall see. He's very keen on the project so far, and started in on it again this morning first chance he got. I may have created a monster. :) Stay tuned.

Striped socks for DH

Behold! Here is what the sock looked like this morning before my commute:

The leg is noticeably bigger now, and I have begun the top ribbing. There is a chance that sock #1 might actually be complete by the time I arrive home tomorrow evening! Of course, I realise that by putting that down in writing, I have tempted the knitting gods, and sock #1 will probably meet with a horrendous accident (e.g. fire, wild dogs with sharp teeth, badly aimed scissors, my own knitting incompetence, etc.) tomorrow evening when it is within five stitches of being completed. But hey, I like to live dangerously.

Celtic cable sweater for baby MacDonald

Work continues, very slowly. I'm about two inches away from the bottom of the armscyes. This sounds great, except that I realised I don't remember what kind of neck shaping I wanted to do for the sweater. Sorta important information to know, eh? Especially since I think I wanted to do a cowl-neck, which means starting the neck shaping very low down. I'd better figure this out pronto.

Convert to the cause

My husband has been talking for a while about knitting himself some golf club covers. He wants to do it himself. I have been expressly forbidden from making some for him. But I am allowed, nay, even expected, to assist by finding patterns, guiding him through the pattern, instructing him on what yarn to get, etc.

No, I don't really mind. :) Heck, I love the idea.

So last night he went hunting for a golf club cover pattern I'd downloaded and printed from the Lewiscraft website. He found it (atop one of the many, many, many piles of paper in our workroom) and looked it over. There wasn't a lot about the pattern that seemed incomprehensible to him, and the covers looked good (except for the pom-poms), so he asked me what I thought. I looked it over and concluded that yes, he could totally do it, no problem.

The only techniques in the pattern that he doesn't know how to do are casting on (easily taught), casting off (ditto), and knitting in the round (more tricky). Oh, there are also some yarn changes because the pattern calls for horizontal stripes, but that's not really a big deal. I described knitting in the round, and DH seemed a little iffy. He's still not sure, but he said he'll let me know.

Guess who's expected to convert the pattern to flat knitting if he decides not to go with knitting in the round?

(I know, it sounds like I'm complaining...I'm totally not. I'm highly amused by all of this, but I'm definitely not annoyed. Far from it. I'm damn proud of him, actually.)

Then it was time to figure out what yarn to use. So I explained about gauge, and how to tell, when you're shopping for yarn, whether it will suit the pattern you want. We also discussed yarn content - he will be using acrylic because he doesn't need anything fancier and - get this - because he would never dream of using up my good yarn. (Hands off, straight ladies and gay men, he's all mine.)

DH wants the covers to be green and yellow, but in the interests of a) saving money and b) using up my excess stash, he's decided to go with black and white instead. Sadly, I was not able to convince him to use up some of the gobs of purple Red Heart acrylic I've got. He didn't actually say that purple golf club covers wouldn't be manly, but it was strongly implied in the tone in which he said, "Ummmm...no."

Then, despite the fact that it was at this point 10pm, he had to go all around the house to round up the supplies he would need. He made a lot of noise (which I ordinarily wouldn't have minded, but DD was sleeping) and a bit of a mess.

Honestly, I have to admit that I loved watching him run around gathering up all the stuff he'd need because he couldn't wait to get going.

Just. Like. Me.

He wants to start tonight.

Striped socks for DH

2.5" have now been done on the leg. I'm aiming to finish sock #1 by the end of the week.

Celtic cable sweater for baby MacDonald

I have almost reached the same point I was at pre-frogging. I'm hoping to get a fair bit done tonight, even though I will probably have to start and stop a lot as I help DH with his golf club covers.