We have the technology

This week I decided to discover Cast-On, the knitting podcast. I think I'd become aware of it through Franklin's blog, since he's done a few guest spots, and I was getting curious as to what it was all about. Plus, the idea of listening to knitting-related chatter while knitting really appealed to me - far less brain-melting than my usual habit of watching/listening to TV and knitting. This in turn led to the purchase of several rechargeable AAA batteries so that my MP3 player could come back to life.

Upshot: I like it. Brenda Dayne has a lovely voice, very conversational and soothing to listen to. She's a very positive, enthusiastic person and even when she rambles, it's eminently listenable. She also, as I discovered while listening, has the distinction of being the designer of the Mrs. Beeton gauntlets that I so covet and shall one day make. So I continue to make my way through the backlog of episodes (next up: episode #6) and, consequently, recharge those AAAs.

Self-designed teen girl top

Thursday evening on the bus ride home I sat near an overly-made up teenage girl (attached, as you might expect, to her cellphone). Usually, when on a bus with this kind of fellow passenger, I spend most of the ride being rather annoyed as well as feeling sorry for the friend on the other end of the phone whom she is using as entertainment because she cannot stand the notion of being alone with her thoughts (or, dare I think it, a book? some knitting, even?) for one lousy half-hour bus ride.

However, during this particular ride, I spent most of my time trying to figure out how her sweater worked.

She was wearing quite the interesting construction, I must say. It was all ribbed (2x2 from the looks of it, except for the sleeve cuffs which were probably 1x1) and the ribs ran horizontally across the body. Then, slightly below the waist it all somehow fed into some vertical ribs which were tight against her hips. The sleeves were excruciatingly large - this thing is meant to be worn with a tank or shirt under it, which thankfully, she was doing. The whole thing was very intriguing, and although it certainly wasn't something I would really care to have in my wardrobe, I'm sure there are loads of girls these days who would think it was hip and to-die-for, and would love to own it. The yarn had a bit of sparkle in it to boot.

So Friday morning I dipped back into my memory and figured out how it must have been constructed. I'm thinking of whipping up a prototype to see how it works out - if I like it, I might figure out different sizes and submit it to Knitty or something.

I'm thinking of calling it the "Like, totally" top. :)

Striped socks for moi

I detest that every entry about this project lately has been a crappy one- or two-liner just to bring you the scintillating knowledge that a few more rows have been worked on this. Sadly, today's entry is no exception. I can't even justify taking a picture to jazz things up because a) it wouldn't look too different from the last picture, and b) it wouldn't look too different from the forthcoming photo of the completed socks, either. Hopefully I will move along on this in short order and have the damn socks done before your brain shuts down from lack of stimulation.

Herald's tunic for moi

The lovely Aven reassured me with the wealth of her own felting experience that the currently-madly-curling edges of my tabard will cease to curl once felted. She then added, "you could always reassure yourself with a test swatch." How very true. And how well she apparently knows me. Because the more I thought about those words, the more I realised that I would not rest easy until I had convinced myself with real swatch experimentation that a plain stocking stitch edge wouldn't curl. So, sigh, I guess I will be knitting and fulling a swatch.

In the meantime, however, work proceeds very well indeed on the tabard itself. Today I stayed home sick from work and spent a huge chunk of the day sleeping off whatever nastiness kept me up most of last night with weird sinus happenings and a bad tickle in my throat. However, when not resting (or catching up on laundry), I managed to finish off the second sleeve, do most of the duplicate stitch on the trillium flower motifs, and weave in a lot of ends:

(tabard here pictured with our absurdly long living room sheers and one of DD's toy cars)

I am pleased.

Here is a close-up of the sleeve which has all the duplicate stitch completed:


Next up: more weaving in of ends, more duplicate stitch, and a test swatch to see if I need to do a garter stitch edge.