Just yer average knitblog entry

Sock class yesterday! The students bought their yarn and started up their socks (we're doing top-down). It didn't go as smoothly as the first class because a couple of the students had difficulties with the joining in the round (which is to be expected, it's definitely tricky at first). But everybody persevered, so I think we'll be able to continue on next week with heels.

In other news, there's a new yarn store in town:


It has a roof and everything:

Competitors beware!

Dress socks for DH

I needed my own sock project to demonstrate sock knitting techniques to my class with as we go, so I started this up. They'll be for DH...which I didn't take into account when I first started, and so cast on 64 stitches instead of 72. But I realised my mistake pretty quickly, ripped it back and started over. I shouldn't have any trouble getting to the heel starting point by next Wednesday.

The Girlfriend Shrug for DD1

The centre back panel is now finished!



Unfortunately, as I suspected, the shrug is too small across the back. It's 12.5" wide instead of the required 14". So, I have to heave a deep, fortifying breath and put in two more panels. They'll be single braids, one on each side of the wide panel.

Rainbow lace blanket

The slog continues.

Tubey for moi

The body is really coming along:

Like, totally top

I bought some St-Tropez câblé from Schaffhauser to swatch with so I could start the designing process. It seemed to be sportweight-ish, with a nice sparkly strand running through it to give it a little jazziness, which was what I was looking for. The fibre combination also seemed very good - 37% cotton, 32% virgin wool, 31% viscose. I took it home, swatched it up (finalising the main pattern in the process), and concluded that it was exactly perfect for this top.

Then I discovered that the yarn was discontinued.

A thousand curses! The yarn in the shop that seems to be the next best substitute is "romanze" from Scholler, which also seems to be discontinued (at least, I can't find any mention of it on the Scholler website).

This SUCKS.

But, according to the Knitty pattern submissions FAQ, you can submit a pattern for a garment that you used a discontinued yarn for, but you need to give an alternate that will produce similar results. So I think that's what I'll do - go with the câblé anyway, and then list a decent substitute when I submit the pattern.

Ravelry position

You signed up on July 6, 2007
You are #14465 on the list.
7577 people are ahead of you in line.
6239 people are behind you in line.
32% of the list has been invited so far

Sympathy

It hit me yesterday that there are some people on this earth who will get their copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows AND their invite to Ravelry on the same day.

I'll do a little paragraph break pause to let the horror of that sink in for you.

I feel truly sorry for these people. I mean, really - if that were you, which thing would you immerse yourself in first? How could you possibly choose? If it were me, I might well be paralyzed by the dilemma.

Well, there's my thought for the day. There hasn't been enough knitting progress to post about in the past day, but my health is improving, thank you guys very much for your well wishes.

Blocked

I had to bail out of yesterday's sock knitting class because of a blocked duct. Actually, I'm never sure whether what I get (I got it with DD1 a few times, so I'm unfortunately quite familiar with the drill by now) is a blocked duct or mastitis. It always comes with fever and lethargy, which you're not supposed to have with a blocked duct, but it always resolves within a day or two without antibiotics, and my symptoms are never as totally horrible as I understand they're supposed to be when you have mastitis. So who knows. Either way, it means pain, fever, body aches and enervation, and it ain't much fun. However, apparently some of the needles that the students would have needed for the second class weren't in yet anyway, and the shop was very understanding of my human frailties, so it seems to be okay that I couldn't make it. We'll take up next week where we left off last week.

(But I'm still POed. I was really looking forward to more teaching!)

My debilitation and DH's current busy schedule have kind of left DD1 at loose ends, so she's had to play by herself a lot. Recently she discovered the joy of building with blocks, and she insisted on constantly building and re-building a 'horse store' (you know, where you buy supplies for horseriding...although sometimes she pretends to buy horses there, too). Well, this morning I came down for breakfast and was exhorted to see the latest horse store that had been built. Then DD1 said, "Now, I'm going to make a yarn store!"

Be still my beating heart. I'm so proud. DH immediately wanted to go find a whole bunch of yarn ends to wind up as mini-skeins so she could have 'real yarn' to sell in her yarn store.

I'm corrupting my entire family! This is GREAT!

Being under the weather has meant a considerable drop in knitting productivity, but a few things have been getting done.

Cotton lace doily

Done! Blocked it out on Tuesday morning (132 pins - 4 in the middle and 128 around the edge - DD1 was extremely impressed with such a high number):



It was dry before DH came home in the afternoon. I wove in the ends, and I think it looks awesome:


completed


close-up of centre


close-up of petal


closeup of background

DH says that people who see this at the shop will either swarm the laceweight cotton because they'll want to make it, or will shun the laceweight cotton because they're intimidated at hell. I'm obviously hoping for the former!

Baby jacket

I made a teeny bit of progress on this - the right front is done and I'm working on the back.

Tubey for moi

Another victim of my health-related downtime, I don't think I even have an inch of the body ribbing done yet. But things should pick up soon now that I seem to be on the mend.

The beat goes on

So, like any good obsessive Ravelry stalker, I've been checking my place on the waiting list over and over again since Sunday morning. By my calculations, they invited 145 people on Sunday and another 227 on Monday - not bad. However, in the same amount of time they received over 1,200 new invitation requests. At this rate they will have hit the 20,000 population mark (existing members and wannabe members) by Friday. I fully predict that Jess and Casey are going to make a mint on this thing...and there's no question they deserve it, it sounds like they've been working incredibly hard and with an unbelievable amount of dedication. Good on them. I only wish I'd thought of it first. :)

In other knitting-related items of interest, we were over at my parents' place last night, and also visiting was one of my father's first cousins from Australia and her husband. We had an absolutely lovely evening and I broke out the old photo album from my dad's mother's side of the family. In there was a picture of my grandmother's parents. My great-grandfather was watching my great-grandmother fondly, and my great-grandmother was...knitting! It's a small shot, but when I take my glasses off and peer really closely (I'm highly myopic and have excellent near vision until about two inches away from my eyes, when things start to get fuzzy) I can see that she is carrying the yarn in her left hand, but from there it strands back and loops around the pinky finger of her right hand. My dad assures me that she did knit continentally (which makes sense, as she was from Eastern Europe), but obviously, part of her tension came from her right hand. It was bizarre, I've never seen that before. I'll try to get a scan of the shot and post it here (my mom's scanner is unfortunately on the fritz right now).

As for my sock course, I've been doing run-throughs of class #2 in preparation for this coming Wednesday. I also seem to be scheduled to do the course again starting August 8 - I even have a student lined up for it already (she wanted to take it the first time around but was out of town for the first class). I was over at the shop on Sunday afternoon and also tried to convince another woman to take it. So we'll see what happens. While there, June very generously gave me a little giftie:



I've thumbed through it and there are several things in there that look interesting - my favourites are the Stripe Turtleneck and the Seashell Shawl. Thank you, June!

Another reason to thank June is that she recently gave my oldest daughter a crocheted sunhat. She was just making it for the sake of making it, apparently, and when I came along, she suddenly had someone she could give it to. So very sweet of her! DD1 looks lovely in it:

Cotton lace doily

DH came downstairs Sunday evening to see if I was ready to go up to bed. "How's it going?" he asked me. In response, I cut the yarn of this project, having just finished the crochet cast-off. Triumph! At the moment it is your usual noodly mess of unblocked lace:



But I will be blocking it, hopefully today. I did some preliminary stretching of the piece, which gives an idea of what it will look like after blocking:



I like it.

Baby jacket

I sat down with the CYC sizing standards and a whole bunch of baby patterns for reference, and worked out sleeve and neckline measurements for this thing. With that under my belt, I was able to work the body up to the division for the armholes, divide for the right front, and am now finishing off the first bit of neckline shaping.

Rainbow lace blanket

I thought an update photo might be nice. Usually variegated yarns aren't my bag, but I really like how this is flowing:

Tubey for moi

I brought this out at my parents' place last night, finished the sleeve and started the body cast-on. In the car on the way home, I finished the cast-on and am now working the ribbing of the body:



I'm very excited about how this is shaping up (pun intended). My cousin and her husband were interested in the construction of the sweater last night, and were very impressed with its ingeniousness when I showed them. I cannot deny that it impresses the crap out of me, too. That Cassie Rovitti sure is clever.

Becoming unravelled

Firstly, there are only six more sleeps until Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows comes out (and is delivered to my doorstep), and I'm not sure I can stand the wait. Seriously.

Secondly, I have signed up for Ravelry. If you are a regular visitor to knitting blogland, you probably don't need to be told what this is, but if you haven't heard of it...it sounds AMAZING. It's an online community for knitters and crocheters which allows you to organize your project, stash, needles, books, all that kind of stuff, and you can see what other people are doing, too...so if you wanted to find all the people who have made or are working on a certain project, you're there. It integrates with your blog, your Flickr account...the list of goodies seems endless. It literally does appear to be the perfect online tool for knitters. Oh, and it's FREE.

At the moment, Ravelry is in beta (the testing stage), and they are inviting people in as fast as they can. Yesterday, they added a tool where you can look up where you are on the waiting list. I am 14,465th. Yes, that's right. Not only that, there are over 2,000 people behind me in line (periodic refreshes of the form results show that several new invite requests are submitted every hour...on a Sunday morning). This means that there are about 16,500 people who want in on this thing, with lots more being added to that number every day, and it's only been about a month and a half since they started telling people about it. It doesn't take a genius to predict that Ravelry is going to be HUGE. Advertisers, start lining up now! Alas, there are 8,802 people ahead of me in line and the optimistic guess is 4-5 weeks to get out of beta, so I may not get an invite until they're fully functional. I am so totally chomping at the bit to get in, it sounds absolutely amazing.

And now, let us address the fact that I haven't responded to any comments in weeks. (Bad blogger. Bad.)

Aven, I'm sorry too that I didn't get a chance to see you when I went downtown, but I'm hoping to get out again pretty soon before July is out. I'll try to put up some advance notice here.

Carrie K was extremely sympathetic to my mistaking-hamburger-buns-for-yarn trauma. I told DH you were in agreement with me on that and he just gave me a look...you know, the one that says, "I'm not convinced...this just means that your friends are crazy, too." :) Sadly, I had a similar moment a few weeks ago when I was at the LYS' yarn sale. I went into the back room to see the rest of the stock, and my eye was caught by bags of really bright white yarn. "Oooh," I thought to myself, "What's that stuff? I gotta get a closer look at that..."

It was the store's supply of paper towels.

Sigh.

Fortunately, all the pictures of my stash enhancement that Carrie's avoiding looking at are of real yarn.

Finally, thanks to Elaine and Carrie for their confidence-boosting comments about the sock knitting class. It was very reassuring to hear that my concept of what constitued being 'prepared' matched other people's definition of the word.

And now, onto the knitting. No pictures today, sorry, I'm trying to get this blog entry out the door chop-chop so I can make some headway on laundry.

Cotton lace doily

I am really getting somewhere on this. Yesterday I made a concerted effort to forge ahead, and it paid off. I'm now working on row #80 of 85. (After row 85, I bind off using a lacy crochet edging.) I will not have this completed, blocked and dried in time for this afternoon's SnB, but I am hoping to be able to hand it over to the shop on Wednesday when I go in to teach my class.

Rainbow lace blanket

This is what I've been working on when I have DD2 feeding or dozing (or both) in my arms, or more specifically, in the crook of my left elbow. I have to knit English style to do it, but hey, multitasking is still multitasking, even when the knitting is slower than usual. I've got almost 9 pattern repeats done out of 63 and am already worried about running out of yarn. Sigh.

Tubey for moi

This hasn't seen a whole lot of action in the past two days, but I have at least gotten started on ball #4 and have increased for the bell sleeve.

I've got class

Well, I taught part 1 of the sock knitting course on Wednesday, and I think it went really, really well. Everyone seemed to have fun, and they definitely learned what they needed to learn. Honestly, a lot of the credit for such a successful first class has to go to the students, who caught on to the concepts quickly and did extremely well their first time out with all the new techniques. Huge kudos also go to my baby daughter, who was an absolute ANGEL throughout the whole thing. (Okay, she lost her freakin' mind after the class was finished, but she was perfect during it.) The store and I are trying to arrange a 'make-up' session of the first class with a customer who wants to take the course but who was out of town on Wednesday. Hopefully we'll be able to get that in for her on Monday or Tuesday so she can do the rest of the course with everybody else.

It was the most fun I've ever had 'working' (with the possible exception of being a counsellor at summer camp, which was probably as much fun as this, but not more). Doing something that rocks your world - what a concept! I could totally get used to this! So now I'm trying to find the time to do practice runs of class #2, and I'm starting to put together a schedule for a lace class. The students were also interested in learning how to knit continentally, so apparently I should be planning a class for that, too. :) At the moment, I'm on the maternity portion of my leave, which means I can't earn money without getting my benefits clawed back (I'm getting compensated with yarn instead, which of course is awesome, I have my eye on some Zephyr for starters). But around mid-August, the parental portion of the leave will start, and then I'm allowed to earn some income. Once that happens, this teaching thing will be such a fantastic supplement to our household income. I am so, so grateful to be able to do this.

Cotton lace doily

I've now reached the stage where each row is a slog. If you've ever knit something which increases in size as it goes on, you know whereof I speak. It is definitely coming along, though - I've just finished off the 'petals' and am now working exclusively on the 'background':

Rainbow lace blanket

I've been working on this in little bits here and there. It's growing, but not significantly enough to be photo-worthy.

Wild socks for DD1, foot-pampering socks for moi, and sleep socks for moi

These saw a little bit of action at the sock class as I demonstrated the techniques for knitting socks in the round, but we're not talking a whole lot of project progress.

Tubey for moi

Well, I ripped out everything I'd done and started over with a cast on of 40 stitches instead of 50. Three days later, we are back to having three balls knitted up. I have a completed first sleeve and a second sleeve that's probably about a third of the way down my arm. The fit is much, much better.

Bayerische socks for moi

I came across these yesterday while in our workroom and came to the conclusion that even though technically they do fit my legs, the stretch is truly too much and I should be making them bigger. So I'm going to rip out everything I've done so far and cast on again with 2.75mms instead of 2mms. It's a lot of work to destroy, but since the point is to have usable socks at the end of the process, it's gotta be done.

Where's my apple?

So I think I'm all ready to teach the sock class on Wednesday. I've done practice runs. I've reworked the schedule of what we're doing in each class so that everything will fit. I've prepped some knitting so that the students can practice the techniques:

double-pointed needles

two circulars

magic loop

I've also got all my example knitting ready to go:

Foot-pampering socks for moi

I need to be able to demonstrate knitting in the round on double-pointed needles for the class. Since I didn't have a sock-in-progress on double-pointed needles, I had to start one. I am using the Austermann Step yarn that I got for Mother's Day and I think it looks really good so far:

Wild socks for DD1

This project is going to be the example of knitting with two circulars for the sock knitting class. So I knitted a little bit on it this weekend just to make it a bit bigger:

Sleep socks for moi

Last week sometime I decided to finally, finally teach myself the long-tail cast-on. I've been avoiding it for years - partly because I've been quite happy thus far with the knitted cast-on, and partly because my mom has demonstrated the long-tail cast-on to me a gajillion times and I was never able to get it so I figured it would take some serious concentration on my part to beat it into my brain. (She does some weird thing where she loops the yarn around her neck, it looks quite complicated.) But it's supposed to be a stretchy cast-on, and I figured I needed to have it under my belt since the socks we'll be doing in the class will be top-down.

I headed on over to Knitting Help for a video, practiced it for a while, and then I had it. I estimate that the watching, learning and practicing took somewhere between five and ten minutes. Why on earth did I wait so long to decide to buckle down and learn this?

Having acquired this new technique, I decided to rip out the inch or so I'd done on my sleep socks and re-cast-on using the long-tail method (and larger needles). This has now been done, and this project will be my example to the class of the magic loop technique.

So the feelings of panic and the concerns about being totally unprepared for the class have now been alleviated, and I'm excited about it! I went over to the shop yesterday to make sure June was cool with the final details, and everything's good. I also brought her a whack of the yarn that I inherited from my friend's grandmother's stash, for her to give it away to customers doing charity knitting. So that makes me feel like I did some good. To my surprise, she then turned around and very generously gave me some yarn from her older stash:



It's a mohair/cotton/acrylic blend - lovely stuff. Four-and-a-bit skeins. She's hoping I'll be able to use it for a sweater for DD1, so I will try to oblige. And if there isn't enough yarn, I'll make a sweater for DD2 instead. (It's very handy having kids of different sizes about the house.)

In other news, Startitis has returned. (It may actually be more accurate to say that it never left...but why split hairs.)

Tubey for moi

It didn't take me long to decide what I was going to do with the bottle green alpaca I bought last week. And once the decision was made, well...



I am weak. 'Delayed gratification' is not a phrase in my vocabulary, evidently.

This project has also made me realise how fast I can knit when I don't use thin yarn, small needles, and intricate motifs. I burned through three of the skeins in three days of work. (There are ten in all.) This sweater is moving along ridiculously fast.

Unfortunately, I think I'm going to rip it all back and start over, because the sleeves are looser than I want them to be. On the model, the sleeves are shown fairly snug against the arms, and even though I'm following the XS instructions, my arms are kind of swimming in the sleeve I've done (i.e. I need to reduce the circumference by about 10 stitches). Since the number of stitches in the sleeve is directly related to the number of stitches in the upper back of the sweater, I also have to rip out what I've done for the back. However, this doesn't distress me too much, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, this is a very fun knit, so ripping it back just means I get to spend more time on it. Secondly, it's not like I'm ripping out a hundred hours of knitting time or anything - I don't think it took me more than ten to fifteen hours to get this far. And lastly, it's summer. It's not like I need a sweater rightthisveryminute.

Plans to frog aside, DH supports this new project wholeheartedly because the sweater is form-hugging and he is therefore looking forward to drooling when I put it on. (He's so sweet - we'll have been together for ten years this coming New Year's, and he is absolutely unswerving from the opinion that I am ridiculously hot.) I expect that he will be considerably more distressed when I frog back to the beginning than I am.

For my part, I support this new project because, well, it's for me. Also, I agree with DH that it will flatter my shape, plus, I suspect it will be easy to nurse in. (Obviously a serious consideration for clothes these days.)

Rainbow lace blanket

One of the yarns I wanted to keep from the stash I inherited from my friend's grandmother was an acrylic, probably worsted weight, in a very nice variegation of baby colours: white, soft pink, baby blue, mint and light yellow. There's quite a bit of it, probably enough for a blanket. I thought it would be nice to use it for the re-creation of the white fuzzy blanket that my daughter loves so much. So again, delayed gratification was not something I was willing to endure:



I had a lot of pooling there for a while, but I started to knit a touch more loosely and it seems to have eased up.

I'm not sure whom this will be for. DD2 is the logical person, but I also have a baby shower coming up later this summer and, depending on how much knitting I can get done between now and then, I might need to use this project as my gift.

Score!

So I went to the Knitters Attic Canada Day sale.

That thar is as follows:

• ten 50g balls of Patons Astra (100% acrylic sportweight) in royal purple: $15
• seven 50g balls of Emu Superwash DK (100% superwash wool DK weight) in royal purple: $2.48 per ball
• ten 50g skeins of Alpaca Indiecita (100% alpaca worsted weight) in a gorgeous bottle green: $25 (yes, that's right, $25 for 500g of alpaca - don't hate me, there's lots left, in numerous colours)

Sale ends Friday.

Larry's Cabled Cashmere Pullover for DH

What you don't see in the stash enhancement photo is the yarn I'm going back to the store for tomorrow. They have the alpaca yarn in blues which seem to be excellent matches for the blues that my MIL gave me for this project. However, I obviously need a side-by-side comparison before I can know whether they're truly the same. If the steel blue at the shop is a match to what I've got, I'll buy more of that. Otherwise, I'll get a few balls of the dark blue from the shop and use it as an accent colour on the cuffs, neck and bottom of the sweater - this strategy will free up more of the steel blue, thus ensuring I have enough yarn to redo the whole thing in the large size. (Basically, no matter what, I win...except for the part where I rip out everything I've done so far and start again with the instructions for the next size up. A thousand curses.)

Cotton lace doily

The other reason I'm going back to the shop tomorrow is that I left my pattern for the doily there. (Brilliant.) I could just print off another copy from the Internet, but this is one of those patterns where I've had to check off each row as I finish it, so I'd like to have my copy back if possible.

New stuff

Well, first of all, I finally got off my duff and created a separate blog for all my individual projects. (This is something I've been wanting to do for a while.) After inputting every. single. one. of them into the new blog, I relinked everything in the sidebar. I'm now working on relinking everything in individual blog entries, but that's slow going, so don't hold your breath on that one. I'm expecting this will make the process of adding new blog entries a little easier for me. Plus, the individual project pages now have a very similar template to my main blog, and I can change the template any time without having to edit eighty gazillion files. Joy.

The Girlfriend Shrug for DD1

There is progress!



I estimate that I'm about three-quarters done this #*$&@!!!-ing strip of cabling. (Can you tell that it's started to wear on me?) I am particularly dreading the moment when it's done and I proudly lay it out and measure the back, only to confirm that it is indeed way short of being 14" wide and that I will have to cut into the thing and do two additional (but smaller) cable strips.

Repeat to self: It will look lovely when it's done. It will look lovely when it's done...

The Poncho for DD1

Done!


completed


'in action'

I think it looks spectacular on her. Her colouring suits the yarn perfectly, and all the variegated yarn is now gone. Hooray for stash reduction!

We tossed it over DD1 last night when we were leaving my parents, to keep her warm as we brought her out into the car. Alas, the teeny sewing I'd done on one side to make a closed-up hole for her hands to go through burst open on the first wearing...but this is no big deal. Easy and quick fix.

Cotton lace shawl

Work proceeds apace!



I'm on row 60 of 86. Now, this is a circular piece, which means it's ever-widening, so being 70% finished the number of rows isn't really as impressive as it sounds. But I'm definitely getting there and the pattern taking shape is truly lovely. I think the shop (which is having a sale this week, I can't wait to go) will enjoy displaying it.

But I was at an SCA event on Saturday with the girls, and working on the shawl, and someone asked me if I was making a snood. And suddenly, I realised, hey, yeah, I could be! Now, this is truly a doily - I think it's going to come out far too big to be a snood. But I can always make another one in another lace pattern that is the right size - maybe even a lace pattern of my own devising. And in different colours. And maybe DD1 would like a small one for herself. And...and suddenly now I'm a bit obsessed with knitting snoods.

Larry's Cabled Cashmere Sweater for DH

I haven't actually done any work on this recently, but it has been on my mind. I've been mulling and mulling, and it is with great reluctance that I think I have to admit that the size I'm making right now is going to be too small for DH. I don't think blocking is going to solve this problem. I think I'm going to have to rip the whole thing out and knit it in the large size. The next question, of course, is whether I'll have enough of the yarn to knit it in the large size. I suspect not. So I really have no idea what I'm going to do, other than complain about it ceaselessly here. Sigh. I suppose the first step will have to be taking out the pieces and evaluating their width with an honest and critical eye.

I'm so not looking forward to this.

Baby jacket

At last! Something from The Schedule!

More babies are on their way in my life, and so I am knitting things. I've got a joint baby shower coming up later this summer, so I needed to get going pretty fast. This is a pattern I've been planning to design for some time - it's destined for the book of patterns that I'm hoping to finish someday. Right now I'm working on getting the bottom edge of the jacket just right. I've had a few false starts, but I like the motif I've come up with very much and am determined to make it work!