Just yer average knitting blog entry

Last night I had a nightmare that I was out somewhere, and had a horrendously long wait for something, and I HAD NOT PACKED ENOUGH KNITTING.

Shudder.

Fortunately, that was not the case today. I made sure to pack lots of it. A good thing, because today, to everyone's surprise, the workers of Toronto's public transit system went on strike and I was worried it would take me a while to get home tonight. (I expected the volume of people trying to get a train ride north into the boonies would be way larger than normal. But it turned out to be about the same as always.)

This morning, DH found out about the strike after I left the house, and panicked. (Fortunately there was no need. By a completely happy fluke, I had to make my way into the city this morning by commuter train, run by a completely different service, and experienced no significant problems getting in. But he wasn't to know that for sure.) In his state of panic, he called my mom, who managed to talk him down by saying, "Look, don't worry. Wherever she is...I'm sure she's knitting."

How well she knows me.

Anyway, onto the comments...

Carrie K complimented me on the black socks for my dad - thanks very much. I agree, it's tough to find more to say about such socks than "serviceable". I mean, really, that's all I'm going for. They're not exactly wild and exciting, either to look at or knit. But I bet my dad will love 'em, and that's the key thing. (I'm also with you on the sheep porn thing.)

sillyewe complimented me on my Persian Tiles shawl project - thank you! I'm very proud of it. I think it's a gorgeous design (thank you, Jade Starmore) and every now and then, I must admit, I go back to the pictures of it and pat myself on the back once more.

Tanya, please be assured that your daughter is totally not alone with the getting-short-tempered-with-projects thing. I'm pretty sure my husband lives in fear of hearing my sudden, sharp eruptions of swearing as I'm working on something. :) That whole perfectionist thing can suck sometimes.

Aven, you are more than welcome for the sheep porn pictures and I am really delighted that they were helpful! Can't wait to see your finished product. But I do hope it will be a while until I have to go in for any more "intimate scrutiny of sheep parts". ;)

Thanks for all the comments, folks. I love hearing from readers.

Saturday night, DD began to cough. She then proceeded to get real sick real fast, and woke up constantly throughout the night crying pitifully because she felt so bad. Needless to say, there was no birthday party the next day. We have postponed it. To when, we're not sure. My poor kidlet.

The only bright side of this is that I put her down for an early nap on Sunday at 10am, in the hopes that she could do some extended napping and start giving those nasty germs some what-for. The child then proceeded to have an EIGHT AND A HALF HOUR nap. I can't tell you how much knitting I got done! Oh wait, yes I can...

Black socks for Dad

Done!


My first completed Christmas present. In May. Please don't kill me. :)

Self-patterning socks #2 for DH

Done!


I faced a little bit of a challenge on this. Because I wanted the striping on the two socks to match each other, I had to start the second ball quite a ways in from the beginning. That meant I finished the second skein before the second sock was complete (compared to the first sock). However, I was able to trickily use the extra from the beginning of the skein to mimic the rest of the patterning and thus, as you see, I have two identical socks. It meant undoing the cast-off of the first sock and redoing it so that the colours would all match, but that wasn't a big deal. Annoying, but not a big deal.

The most incredible part is that there is no yarn left over. NONE. Just the bits I snipped off after weaving in the ends. Unbelievable.

DH will receive them this Sunday!

Self-patterning socks for DD

Sunday evening I announced to my daughter that I'd finished her grandpa's socks. She informed me that this meant I would be starting another sock. How well she knows me. :) However, it soon became clear that she was talking about the second sock of the Grandpa pair. "Oh no, sweetie," I told her, "I already finished the second socks. Both socks are finished! Now I get to start a whole new pair of socks!"

She considered this information, and then informed me that, this being the case, I should be working next on finishing up her socks.

Excellent point.

So I got out the first sock and all the remaining little balls of yarn, and started figuring out how I could splice and dice everything to make the two socks match. I think I can do it, but it will all depend on how much of one part of the patterning sequence I actually have. Right now I'm working my way up the toe and will probably have the answer to this crucial question before I get halfway through the foot.


It doesn't look promising at this point, but there's still hope. As always, stay tuned. (I know, I know, how can your nerves stand all this drama.)

Self-designed baby hat/mitts

This week I decided to suck it up and keep going on the hat. So I did...only to discover that, ONCE AGAIN, I had put all the intarsia in the wrong place - it was all shifted over by one stitch. Again, riiip, restart, sigh.

And then, after that, it actually went smoothly. [Insert soundbyte of a chord sung by a heavenly choir of angels.] I cast off yesterday. Sadly, the most intense work was yet to come. The weaving in of eighty gazillion ends, for one thing. I still can't believe I finished it, but then, that is one of the advantages of having your daughter nap for eight and a half hours straight.

Now I'm in the process of duplicate stitching the brighter colours of the motifs all over the hat. Boy am I glad this is a small piece. But it is looking really, really good. I'm probably a little over half done all the embroidery. After that, it will just need to be sewn up at the sides and given a wee pom-pom. And then it will be done, beautiful, out of my hair, and off The Schedule.

Stornaway sweater for DH

Got a wee bit done on the shuttle ride to the GO station this morning and on the train home this evening.

Taupe socks for Dad

With yet another pair of socks off the needles, I cast on tonight for this pair.


The yarn is still looking more pink than I would expect from a yarn colour calling itself taupe. However, I wouldn't say that the colours in this photo are tremendously accurate. I'll try to get future shots done in natural light.

Heraldic tabard for moi

This got broken in over the weekend - we went to an event on Saturday, I brought it, and got a chance to wear it while doing some field heralding. It got many, many compliments, which was fantastic. However, the neckline really is way too huge. The thing just does not stay on my shoulders. I was joking with people that I was going for 'the eighties Flashdance look'. (1380s, maybe.) I'm nervous about doing Yet Another Felting Runthrough because a) I'm not convinced it would make a difference, and b) lengthwise, I think it's about as short as I want it to be - I would hate to pull the thing out of the machine and find that the neckline was perfect but the whole tabard became a crop-top! So I think what I'm going to do instead is knit a wide garter stitch neckband, which I will then felt by itself and then sew to the neckline of the tabard to keep the whole thing from slipping off.

Holiday

I've taken this week off work. I had no plans to go anywhere, I simply wanted some time off. Time to nap, time to knit, and, yesterday, time to spend with my girl. On May 25 my dear kidlet turned 3.

Three.

I can't believe it, either. However, three she is and she even admits this herself, although when I greeted her the morning of the Big Day, she kept insisting she was two and started to get a bit distressed. But by the end of the day she was gleefully answering "Three!" to the question of how old she was. We had a fantastic day. She got to sleep in, and then in the morning we went to a little get-together of some mums and little kids which was tremendous fun. Alia spent most of her time playing in the sandbox and got super-dirty, which was okay, since the cardigan she was wearing wasn't a handknit. :) Then we came back home, gave her a bath (she loves baths) and a nap, then got up and, by request, took her on a wagon ride to the local playground. There she blew bubbles, swung on the swings, slid on slides, climbed, rocked, ran and generally had a fabulous time. Then we went back home, played cars for awhile (again by request) and had dinner. Dessert was special - DH had bought some peaches earlier in the week. Mexican peaches, to be sure, but peaches all the same. They were by no means the most healthy or luscious peaches I've ever seen, but DD was past caring - she's been asking for peaches for months and was dee-lighted to finally have some. Then it was off to bed. What a day. And what a great kid I have.

So, enough about the bragging, back to my holiday. One of the things I've been doing is watching my new DVD (Mother's Day present) of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I have been staring intently at the Charlie character's sweater. Okay, it's your standard Fair Isle sweater, nothing new to the knitting world, but you so rarely see that sort of thing in movies - and I did a real double-taking upon catching a glimpse of it when the trailers and posters started coming out for the movie - so I think it's pretty special. (You can see a gorgeous shot of the thing at this blog entry.) I've done a Google search for 'sweater pattern "charlie and the chocolate factory"' but there doesn't seem to be anything out there already created. If anyone does know of a pattern for it, please do let me know.

And now...for Aven...pictures of a sheep. (Some of these made me feel kinda icky to take, but whatever helps, ya know? :)

Onto the knitting. Despite my holiday, I haven't been doing too much more knitting than ususal because I've been trying to catch up on my sleep and get the house in order for DD's birthday party on Sunday. However, I am definitely making progress on some stuff.

Self-patterning socks #2 for DH

As DD's birthday approached I had a little wake-up call and panic attack. Since DH's birthday is eleven days after DD's, not even having the first sock for his birthday present completed was not good. Since then, I've been concentrating mostly on this (except when DH is around, of course) and have made very good progress:


I love making self-patterning socks match. Love. It. I'm sure this reveals all kind of interesting things about my character and psychological makeup, but who cares as long as the socks look good.

Garden Shawl for MIL

Flower stems chart is complete! I should have the project to a point soon where I have enough visual progress for another photograph. As it is, I have only one more chart to go after I finish the current one, and the current one is pretty short. I'm really looking forward to being able to finish off the body and open the whole thing up. It's tough to get a sense of it when it's all scrunched up on the circular - my brother teased me that it looked like a shower cap. :) However I absolutely do not have the patience to put it on a really long spare piece of yarn just for the purposes of a looksee. So, I gotta wait until it's done.

Black socks for Dad

Home stretch! Ribbing on the top of sock #2 has begun:

Stornaway sweater for DH

Work has kind of stalled on this as the panic to get DH's birthday socks done rose. But I've still managed to move forward a teeny bit.

Success! (Mostly)

Firstly, thank you very much rachel, Tanya and Carrie K for your compliments on DD's new garb. I ended up getting everything but the cap done in time. (I blew that off because I guessed she would spend the day outside wearing her big wide-brimmed straw hat, thus rendering any efforts on the cap pointless since it would be totally obscured.) She wore the whole outfit to the event we went to on the weekend and it was a HUGE hit. It will likely take a long while for my head to de-swell.

(Carrie, please be assured that the Laurel Handshake Test is really just a joke - the only person who ever did it to me was a Laurel in bardic arts whose own costuming skills are questionable, and he did it in fun. [Although I was still embarrassed enough about the seams on that dress - done at 5am that morning - that I snatched my hand back before he could get a good look.] Trust me, for a first foray into the SCA, nobody expects it done right. :) You and your brother will do great and I'm sure he'll have a blast.)

However, I was sorry to hear that Tanya's daughter's foray into the world of Stich-and-Bitches did not go very well. I can't help but wonder if my presence would have helped, but unfortunately I couldn't make it last week. :( I certainly hope she hasn't been put off of knitting.

Self-designed baby hat/mitts

Monday night I started up on mitten #2 and had it mostly knitted by the time I went to bed (at a decent hour, too, I might add). Tuesday night I finished the knitting and started in on the weaving in of the ends and the duplicate stitch (again, not going to bed too late). Wednesday morning in the car I finished the duplicate stitching on one side, and by the time I got off the train at my work, all the duplicate stitching was done, the ends were all woven in, the tops were grafted together and the side seam was all sewn. I now have a pair of mittens. (The Schedule was pleased - I didn't have to finish them until tomorrow.)

I like 'em a lot. I really want to post pictures of them, but once again, because I'm hoping to ultimately publish the pattern in a book, I don't think I should. (Rats.)

Later in the week I started the matching hat. And this is where the stuff started to hit the fan. First, I cast on too many stitches and did all the ribbing before I realised my mistake. Rip. Then, I did too few rows of all-black prior to the start of the first intarsia pattern motif and didn't realise it until I was half done the motif. Rip. Then after I'd fixed the problem and was working on the first intarsia row, I messed up my counting and put almost all the intarsia in the wrong place. Rip.

Needless to say, I am sensing a theme on this $@*#$&!!!-ing hat.

Hopefully I will do better from hereon in.

Black socks for Dad

First sock is done, second sock is in the process of having its heel turned:

Self-patterning socks #2 for DH

I can hardly believe it, but I'm now on the top ribbing of the first sock:


I would love to say that nothing else has gone wrong so far, but since it looks like I'm going to run out of the first skein before I finish the full three inches of the top ribbing, I can't be truthful about that.

Stornaway sweater for DH

This is going so smoothly and I am loving it the more I knit on it. The lovely feel of the lambswool on the cone is nothing compared to how nice the actual knitted-up fabric feels. And the texture and cable patterns are popping gorgeously with this yarn.

Garden Shawl for MIL

My knitting life is such a web of complexity and intrigue that this is the only thing I can knit in front of my entire family when I go to visit my parents. DH's socks, or his Stornaway sweater? Nope, since he's right there. My dad's socks, which normally I can work on in front of my husband? Nope, since he's right there. The matching baby hat/mitts set? Well...possible, but it's a real PITA to have umpteen intarsia ends trailing all over the place that I have to pack and unpack to take anywhere, so I'd rather knit that at my own house. My MIL's Christmas present is pretty much all that's left. So, Sunday night when we went over to my parents' place, it saw some action. I'm really close to moving on to the next chart!

Really pretty excuses

Yesterday was my first blog entry in over a week. Yowch. However, there is a reason. I've been spending my evenings making some new SCA garb for my daughter. The new outfit is meant to be Italian Renaissance in style, based more or less on the dresses in this portrait. The outfit consists of a white cotton chemise underneath, with a verrry fancy dress on top. I made the top dress out of two matching Indian wool shawls. They've got metallic embroidery on them and they're reversible.

(No, this isn't knitting related. But it is a textile-related project, and it's my blog, so keep your hair on.)

Having been in the SCA for almost ten years (ten years?!? When did that happen? Aieee...) I've made a fair bit of garb, and I can say with absolute assurance that I have never taken such pains at sewing anything as I have been doing with this project. No corners are being cut. I finished seams, I was precise, I handsewed the pleats...and it looks INCREDIBLE. It will easily pass the 'Laurel handshake' test*. I didn't know I could be this good at costuming! Check it out:

good shot of DD


good shot of the garb

The glorious thing about this dress is that it has been carefully (and cleverly, if I may toot my own horn once again) designed to grow with my daughter. In typical Italian Ren style, there are laces everywhere. The front and back lace together at the sides and shoulders. The sleeves lace closed, and then lace to the dress. The skirt has about seven or eight extra inches of length on it, and can be let out as my daughter gets taller - the trim at the bottom can be easily cut off and reattached further down.

All this means that as DD gets bigger, the dress can simply be re-laced and let out so that it will continue to fit her. (She'll need new under-chemises every few years, but that's a simple sew, no big deal.)

When I explained this all to DH, he was really impressed. "So, it's going to fit her until she's like, what, ten?"

With any luck, yes.

I so rock. The question is, do I rock hard enough to get the chemise hemmed at cuffs and bottom for the big event tomorrow? And maybe the matching cap, too? And get all the packing done? And preparation for maybe going to a birthday party after? All taking into account the fact that I am dangerously underslept at this point?

No idea. Wish me luck.

Black socks for Dad

I think I've done a row or so on this since my last entry, just as 'cover' when DH sounded like he was coming downstairs and I had to hide his birthday knitting. Woo.

Self-patterning socks #2 for DH

Hell Heel has been turned! The journey up the leg is going well.

Stornaway sweater for DH

Ball #1 is now toast. I'll have to wind myself up another one before I can keep going, because there's no freakin' way I'm carrying a two-pound cone of yarn around with me.

* This is an SCA cultural reference. The Order of the Laurel is an honour bestowed to those who have achieved mastery in an art or science. The joke goes that a Laurel will offer to shake your hand, then turn your wrist over, flip up the cuff of your sleeve and meticulously examine your seams.

Learnings

Things I learned at the Lettuce Knit SnB last Wednesday:

• I've been exposed to Trekking XXL yarn, and I want some. Specifically, I want colour #71. It's sort of a navy/dark turquoise base with some other related colours throughout. I really like it. Socks would be great, but right now I'm actually thinking that an intricate lace shawl would rock even harder. However, at $20 for 100g I think this is going to have to be very seriously on sale or a gift from someone else before I can get enough of it to make a whole shawl.
  
  
• Fleece Artist makes some INCREDIBLY SOFT angora yarn which absolutely screams 'make baby stuff out of me'. Again, too rich for my blood, but DAMN, if I win the lottery, I am running right out and getting myself some. (At least, I think it's Fleece Artist. I'm pretty sure that's what my memory told me, but I can't find any mention of it on their website, unless it's the Peter Rabbit stuff. Hm. If it is the Peter Rabbit, be advised that it comes in way more colours than are pictured on their website.)
  
  
• Socks That Rock yarn is unbelievably popular. Apparently when Lettuce got their first batch in stock, there was a feeding frenzy. It was completely sold out within a week. And here I was naïvely thinking I could check some out when I went to the SnB on Wednesday. Ha ha.
  
  
• Beyond the per-transaction fees, it costs nothing to accept credit card payments via PayPal (thank you, Laura). This is great to know, both for DH who will want to sell golf clubs online once we get his website up and running, and for me, if I ever want to sell my patterns independently.
  
  
• I may get sucked into spinning sooner than I thought (again, Laura's fault). I'm not going to be able to get a wheel sooner than I thought, but I'm starting to get the itch to get back to my drop spindle.

Other cool things that I discovered last week:

• Mel is going to bring the daughter of a friend of mine to Lettuce for an SnB. Whee! I'm not sure whether this will be a one-time thing or a regular deal, but either way I hope I can be there when the kid shows up so that she knows at least one other person there.
  
  
• I got scavenged! The folks at Knitting Beyond the Hebrides threw an online Lace Symposium, and one of the activities was a lace scavenger hunt - very cool idea. JennyRaye put my my Snowdrop shawl project down on her list as an example of 'a lace project that boggles the mind' (which sure as heck boggled my mind)! Thanks, JennyRaye. :)
  
  
• Aven commented to say that she doesn't get row gauge, either. This is reassuring. We can't be the only ones who fudge stuff. If you do too, speak up. Off-row-gaugers unite! :)
  
  
• Carrie K is a woman after my own heart. She justifies buying everything (yarn-ly speaking) in large quantities to avoid heartbreak later. This sounds completely wise. I'm on board with that.

Anyway, on to the projects...

(Brace yourself for mucho rambling.)

Self-designed baby hat/mitts

I decided last weekend that I needed to kick-start my ass into gear on this one. Thus, I made a decision: I would purchase the colours I was missing at a certain evil corporate empire that only gets my money when I can't reasonably find a product anywhere else. I don't like doing this, but Zellers didn't have what I wanted, Lewiscraft is out of business, Michaels' online catalogue revealed that they had every kind of acrylic but sock yarn, and a phone call to the biggest yarn store in the city determined that they did not carry any acrylic yarns (duh, I know, but it was worth a try), and from this I surmised that the other yarn shops in the city were unlikely to do so, either.

This left me staring at the only option: The evil corporate empire. So on Saturday evening, off I went.

Total.
bust.

Usually they have lots of different colours of Bernat Sox, but naturally on the day I decided to go and was desperate for specific colours...they had almost nothing that I needed.

So I'm standing there, looking despairingly at the shelves, trying to will the yarn I want into making a sudden appearance in front of me, when suddenly the obvious hit. Why am I so keen on doing this project with sock/fingering weight yarn? Why can't I use sportweight? If I switch to sportweight, I already have all the colours I want, with the fibre content I want, SITTING RIGHT AT HOME IN MY STASH. Plus, my swatch of the motif in sock/fingering weight yarn (with the wrong colours) was smaller than I wanted it to turn out to be.

That was a classic 'Urania Moment'. Logic slapped me upside the head, pushed me out of the damn store and sent me home to my stash. I pulled out the colours I needed and got to work. Sunday I finished the swatch. I was quite pleased with the outcome, and I got lots of compliments on the design from my parents and husband, so I started on the mittens.

The first mitten sort of worked the way I wanted to, but I still wasn't happy with it. As I've mentioned before, there are a lot of colours in this pattern, and the best way to do it without driving myself (or anyone who tries the pattern, since I eventually hope to sell it) nuts is to do intarsia with just two colours and then duplicate stitch the other colours on. The problem with the first mitten is that I duplicate-stitched the black colour on. This, since duplicate stitching is more raised and prominent, caused the black to overpower the other colours, which was the opposite of the effect I was going for.

So, I did a second first mitten (if that makes any sense), this time using black as one of the intarsia colours, and then duplicate stitching the brighter colours on after it was all knitted up. This worked really, really well and I now have myself one small, cute, multicoloured mitten that more or less looks like I'd envisioned it. Yay me. Next up: mitten number two.

Garden Shawl for MIL

This has seen a little bit of action in the past week, and the end of the current chart is in my sights.

Carrie K reminded me, after I complained about having 800 stitches per row on this thing, that I knew going into it exactly what I was setting myself up for. I would like to point out that this absolutely does not mean I don't have the right to complain about it. So nyah. ;)

Stornaway sweater for DH

A few more inches have been done on the main pattern. It's starting to shape up into something pretty substantial-looking, and I'm also going to have to wind myself up a new ball soon.

Black socks for Dad

The sock is looking much less phallic. I'm now on the top ribbing:

Self-patterning socks #2 for DH

I'm starting to think that the first sock of this pair is The Sock That Does Not Want To Be. As if ripping out my first attempt at the sock was not bad enough, I then messed up the math (note to self: 7.5 plus 2.5 does NOT equal 10.5...sigh...) and turned the heel a half-inch too soon.

Rip.

Finally this afternoon I got to what was definitely, absolutely the right point to start turning the heel, so, naturally, I started turning it. As I was nearing the halfway point I noticed that the numbers were kind of weird. The pattern sez that as you're going through the first set of short rows, you're supposed to purl an even number of stitches before turning on the wrong sides, and knit an odd number of stitches before turning on the right sides. Well, I started counting, and it turned out that I was doing the opposite. I counted, and found that I had somehow managed to place 37 stitches on a spare length of yarn for the instep and begin work on 35 stitches for the heel, instead of an even division of 36 and 36.

Riiiiip.

I'm now pretty close to finishing the heel, and (knock on wood) things seem to be okay now.



I'm hoping that once the heel is done, the trip up the leg proceeds without incident so that I can get this #$*@#&$!!!-ing sock done and start on its mate. DH's birthday is less than a month away.

Lace baby shawl

Going through JennyRaye's scavenger hunt list and seeing some really incredible examples of lace motifs there gave me some new design ideas for what I could do with this shawl. So now I'm re-energized and way more positive about being able to come up it. I'm still probably not going to have time this year to work it all out, but at least I'm not in the doldrums about it and thinking that I can't do it.

Cardigan for baby Harding

Being re-inspired with new design ideas for the lace baby shawl I'm planning made me realise that, if I had to, I could take the motif I wanted to use for this cardigan and translate it into lace for the shawl instead, leaving me free to come up with another texture pattern for this cardigan that would work better than what I'm trying to make work right now.

So what I'm going to do is keep on with the latest test of the texture motif, and if it doesn't work out, then I will be perfectly okay with letting it go and coming up with something else. Yay me.

P.S. to Carrie K: No, I'm quite sure my hand hasn't shrunk. :) I just had a whopping reduction in gauge. I know, it stunned the heck out of me, too.

There's a turn up ahead

Houston, we are approaching heels.

Black socks for Dad

(my goodness, that's phallic)

Self-patterning socks #2 for DH

And speaking of socks, I promised a visual comparison of just how much my continental gauge has tightened up, so here we go. Same hand is pictured both times. Same number of stitches on the needles.

My first continental sock:

My second continental sock: Whoops. Sorry. A current continental sock:

Stunning.

Moving on...

Stornaway sweater for DH

This is what it looked like last night:


However, I worked on it on the subway today and all through my lunch, and now I have about two and a half inches done on the main pattern. It's looking lovely, and the lambswool feels fantastic all knitted up. (I may have mentioned that already in a previous blog entry, but I don't care. It bears repeating because it really does feel nice. I'm so excited about the prospect of giving DH this sweater!)

Garden Shawl for MIL

I've now completed 166 rows on the body of this thing. Each row really feels like a big slog now. Even the last one, which was all knit stitches, went on and on longer than I thought it should. Then I figured out that I'm at about 800 stitches per row and the slog factor started to make sense. 800 stitches!!! (Even more frightening is the prospect of ending up with about 950 stitches by the end of it all. Aiee.)

Scarf for DH

At last, at LAST, I got DD to help me knit a stitch on this last night. She put the needle through the stitch and wound the yarn around the needle (all with a decent amount of help from me, of course, but still, she did a fair bit on her own, too). I completed the stitch, and - voilà! - I can say to DH that DD truly did help to make this thing.