Knirvana

Okay, I'm back.

Oh.
My.
GAWD.

As I'm already in, I can't use the waiting list checker anymore to see how quickly they're inviting people, so I don't know if I'm rubbing salt into the wounds of any readers who are still waiting for their invite with little hope of getting in anytime soon...but...WOW. It is awesome, awesome awesome in there. Firstly, for a site that has a ridiculous amount of stuff in it, the navigation is really simple:

You can go in and work on/look at your own stuff - 'notebook', where you can keep track of your projects, your stash, your wishlist (designs and yarns), your bookmarks (projects, stash, designers, yarn brands, news/updates), your friends (you can see who they are, what they're doing and what they've posted on their blogs lately), your groups, your needles & hooks, your books (what you own, what you've used, and what you'll need to make the stuff on your wishlist), your messages, your blog posts (which you can link to specific projects), your contributions to Ravelry (if you've volunteered to be an editor of patterns and/or yarns), and your within-Ravelry transactions (right now only donations show up, but ultimately it looks like there will be a within-Ravelry pattern sales feature).

Then there are the sections where you can see what everyone has contributed: patterns, yarns, people, forums, groups and help. Patterns and yarns have browsers that are AMAZING. For instance, with the pattern browser, you can choose what weights of yarn you want, the categories you're looking for, the ratings of the patterns, and other filters, like only seeing free patterns. These choices are all available clearly and easily down the left side of the screen, and as soon as you click on or off something - SHAZAM! - the list of patterns updates to reflect your selections. It's stunningly usable.

Everything is user-driven, so if, for example, the pattern you want to use for a project you're adding isn't in the database, you can add it. The volunteer editors go through everything and clean it up later. If you're a designer, you can email Jess to get your account linked to your designer page, and then you have access to edit the information Ravelry has about you as a designer.

:::pause to take deep, calming breaths after all that:::

Anyway, it's totally righteous and it's everything I've ever wanted in an online knitting site. Seriously. And with the addition of more and more people and their own projects/patterns/yarn/etc., it just gets better and better.

Initially, though, it's a big slog. I've input 113 of my projects, added 11 books to my library, added 84 items to my stash, added a whole whack of needles to my inventory, and I'm not even remotely done. However, the adding is pretty damn fun for an anal kind of person like myself. :)

Okay, enough of the gushing...back to the knitting...

So the person who was interested in the learn-to-knit class showed up at the shop last Wednesday hoping for something totally impromptu, and, fortuitously, there I was! So we had a little shopping expedition for yarn, I sat down with her, taught her how to knit, made a little pocket money, and everyone went away happy. (She's really good. Her tension is even and her speed is ridiculously fast for someone who just started. I was highly impressed.) It was fun! Next on my list: send the lace class outline to June.

As for the projects...well, let us say that the startitis continues its stranglehold on me...

Branching Out for DD1's teacher

It's almost October, and Christmas is coming. (I know, those of you in denial don't want to hear me say it, but unfortunately, it's true.) I've started to make The List of all the people whom we gift, and all the gifts we want to give (there are a lot of blanks - making The List is the first step towards getting gift idea inspiration because we can see what we need to come up with). New on the list this year is DD1's kindergarten teacher. She is a very lovely woman in her 30s or 40s who pretty much looks exactly like a slightly rounder Meredith Baxter Birney. She would look stunning in blue-toned pastels, and I want to make her Branching Out in Zephyr Laceweight Wool-Silk. I'll give DD1 a choice of about three or four choice colours (violet, ice blue and teal are currently jumping out at me) and away we'll go. Can DD1 keep the secret between now and Christmas? Hopefully, yes. She's been doing well on other Christmas knitting secrets so far, so I think we'll be okay.

Herdis for niece

One of the things we always have to put together at the same time as the Christmas gifts is my niece's birthday gift. Her birthday is right at the beginning of January and she lives in Nova Scotia, which means the easiest thing is to pack the birthday gift in with the Christmas gifts and mail them over all at the same time. This means that the birthday gift needs to be ready for mid-December, so if I'm going to knit her something, I should start now.

And I have indeed decided to knit her something this year. (It's all DH's fault. If he weren't so keen on my finishing up my Ljod project, I wouldn't have been flipping through my copy of The Viking Knits Collection, and I wouldn't have seen the Herdis pattern, and I wouldn't have been inspired to make it.) I'm using a sportweight, kinky softball cotton that I got a cone of from Knit Knack on eBay a few years back. I think it's coming along nicely:

Market bags for my household

For a while I've wanted to make mesh market bags so that we could 'go green' with our groceries and stop bringing home plastic bags. Ravelry's pattern browser allowed me to narrow it down and decide upon Jodie Danenberg's Saturday Market Bag pattern from MagKnits. I'm using some worsted weight cotton I bought from Zellers who-knows-how-many years ago that was originally going to be turned into diaper covers (I gave up on that). Right now, bag #1 looks like this:

Like, totally top

I tried starting this top with the Nobile yarn, and did some calculations once I came to the end of the ball. I figured out that the XS size would take probably about 10 balls, which works out to $129.50 before tax and I really can't justify that. I know people are free to make yarn substitutions, but I still think I should make it vaguely reasonable to use the original yarn (for myself, too!), so I'm going to look for something else at the store today.

Fair isle tank top for DD2

Old Navy is currently advertising a "Fair Isle Sweater Collection", and while some of the stuff really isn't fair isle, one of the tops got my inspiration in gear for a baby tank top. I'm going to hunt for the yarn at the shop this afternoon - I'm thinking a cotton/acrylic blend would work really well.

Gone fishin'

Glee!

My Ravelry invite came during the night. I'm in. It might be a little while before I do another blog post!

How many knitting days until Christmas?

Thank you, everybody, for the compliments on the shawl...and my sympathies to those who want to make it themselves, but have other projects in the way. :) The knitting itself was a hard slog a lot of the time, because there were only three motifs, and of course with the triangle shape of the shawl, it just kept taking longer and longer to get through each row, so you'd work on a motif for a loooong time before you got to the end of it. (The middle motif was particularly sloggerific.) But of course the payoff (or, as I like to crudely refer to it in private, the 'lace blocking orgasm') was spectacular.

Speaking of lace, I'm really starting to nail down the outline for the lace class that Knitters Attic has asked me to teach. I really miss teaching, so hopefully we can get enough students interested so I can do this. They've also asked me if I can do a daytime learn-to-knit class. So, very exciting stuff! Unfortunately, we don't have enough interested people to do another sock class yet, but I'm sure it will happen.

As for the socks I just finished (which have been a verrry welcome addition to my wardrobe in the past week or so as it's gotten a bit chilly lately), Em congratuled me on actually finishing a project for myself. It is indeed a rarity that I do that, and somehow it happened twice in one week this month...and one of the projects was a sweater! That never happens. And yet, the 'selfish knitting' continues...

Ljod cardigan for moi

We went to visit my MIL on Sunday, so I had to bring out something different to knit. It obviously couldn't be my MIL's Christmas cardigan or my DH's Christmas sweater, so I had to think of something else, and this project won. As a result, I have a completed back:



and a started left front:

Like, totally top

I started swatching up the Nobile in the main pattern, and it looks pretty good...although I'm thinking of going up a needle size or two and trying it again to see what I get. Carrie K asked about this yarn - it's from On Line Yarns, and is a synthetic worsted weight with sparkly copper bits. Very flashy and cool. But now that I've knit it up, I'm pondering whether it might be a bit too flashy for what I want. (Augh! The frustration!)

Mercedes at the shop pointed out another yarn for consideration: Lang Emotion. It doesn't have a sparkly ply, but it does have a sort of shiny ply that might accomplish what I'm going for. It's also scented, with a lovely, clean-smelling aroma that would probably make the whole project more cool, especially for teens, who are sort of the target audience for this pattern. It's a ribbon yarn, though, and I don't know how that's going to look. But I'm seriously considering picking up a skein to try it out.

Elizabethan Jacket for MIL

Having finished the Peacock Feathers Shawl, and being focused these days on DH's Christmas sweater (when he's not around, that is), I was inspired to keep going on another Christmas project: this one. When last we saw this project, I had finished knitting the body and sleeves and was psyching myself up to do the steeking. So this past week, I crocheted up all the steeks to anchor them prior to cutting: front opening, armscyes, front neckline, back neckline, and each sleeve. It wasn't particularly fun, but it had to be done, so I did it. Now I'm trying to work up the cojones to go ahead with the cutting.

Larry's Cabled Cashmere Pullover for DH

I have finished the front!



Exciting stuff. You would think that I would be happily starting on the first sleeve now, wouldn't you?

Alas, no.

Because I've been doing some stitch counting, and I'm pretty sure that I actually do have enough of the steel blue to do the entire rest of the sweater with - I don't actually need to use the extra balls of navy that I bought some time ago. Argh! So I don't know whether to try to return those navy balls to the shop and do a completely steel blue sweater, or to do navy stripes up the sleeves anyway because I like the look of the stripes, or do just the rim of the neckline in navy, or...what. Naturally, being so undecided has prevented me from being able to cast on for the first sleeve. I'm completely stuck.

So I throw it out to you guys again...what do you think of these new options?


OPTION #6: steel blue except for the rim of the neckline


OPTION #7: completely steel blue

(The other five options can be seen in this post.)

I'm also going to ask the shop whether they would be totally POed if I returned the navy blue balls. (They allowed me to break up a sealed package of 10 in order to buy them in the first place - does returning them make me scum?) I'm thinking that if they don't let me return them, I'll probably use them on the sweater so as not to waste them. (No idea what I'll do with the leftover steel blue yarn, but I'm willing to fall off that bridge once I come to it.)

Ravelry update

Can you tell they've installed their grownup servers?

You signed up on July 6, 2007
You are #14465 on the list.
787 people are ahead of you in line.
18923 people are behind you in line.
40% of the list has been invited so far

Only seven hundred and eighty-seven people ahead of me!!! At this rate, I'll be ravelring by Friday! I'm so excited I could burst. I'm sure that Abby, my waiting list twin (#14496), is also bouncing at the propsect. Yay!

Finally, a heartfelt (if bittersweet) congratulations to Aven, on the new job, great home (with lake) and growing baby. I don't doubt it's been frantic! But I'm delighted you're having fun. (Carrie K, no using other people's blog comment sections to chew Aven out for not updating hers. ;) Hopefully you will come back now and then to visit so I can catch you at an SnB.

Speaking of the SnB, DH's job is drying up at the end of the month (his store is closing). This is bad for us money-wise, but it does mean that I can start coming out to the downtown Knit Night again! (Of course we are hoping he gets a replacement job really quickly, but with any luck, it won't take up his Wednesday nights like this one does.)

I am a goddess

Peacock Feathers Shawl for Mom

If you've ever done a big, intricate lace project and then blocked it, you know exactly how high I am on myself right now. :) I finally got off my rump and cleaned out the bin I soak knitted items in, thus leaving the way clear to give this shawl a soak prior to pinning. After the soak, the water looked like this:



After stretching the life out of the shawl and making it stay with 258 pins, I waited for it to dry, sewed in the ends, took out the pins, and was rewarded with...magic:


completed


closer shot of half the shawl


detail of of the first motif


detail of the second motif


detail of the third motif and edging


detail of the tip

Glorious, heady stuff. Especially when it means I have one Christmas project completed.

Larry's Cashmere Cabled Pullover for DH

DH has had a break from work for the last four days, so it's been somewhat challenging getting anything done on his sweater with him around. However, I'm still moving at a decent clip up the front:

Sleep socks for moi

Done!


completed


'in action'

Bazoom

Tubey for moi

I finished it!



This is a great design. It's clever, fast to make and makes my weeny little mammaries (small even when milk-filled as they are these days) look like big honking gazongas:



And here it is from the back:


And the side:

(this one actually displays the most accurate rendition of the colour of the yarn)

As previously mentioned, I did have to alter the instructions a bit to make it fit me. I cast on ten fewer stitches than the XS size said to so that my arms wouldn't swim in the sleeves. And in order to avoid flashing the world, I sewed the body further up the front about two additional inches on each side. Finally, I shortened up the sleeves by about two inches so the cuffs didn't cover up my hands. It is a lovely sweater and I expect to enjoy wearing it.

Like, totally top

After numerous visits to the yarn shop hunting for a good replacement for the yarn I originally swatched with, I abandoned my attempts at finding something with some natural fibre content, and instead decided to try Nobile, from On Line Yarn.



The top is going to be very teenager-y anyway, and let's face it, teens probably just want to dump their garments in the machine rather than carefully handwashing them, so practically speaking, this is probably the better choice. The gauge looks a bit bigger than what I was using before, but it looks like it's got the kind of drape and sparkle that I'm looking for, so I'm hoping it will work - I just need to swatch it up. Mercedes, who works at the shop, let me take the ball with me without deducting it from my store credit. She said if I can't use it for the top, the shop will just take my swatch to use as a display to show clients how the yarn knits up. Hooray!

The only problem is that the Nobile is $12.95 a ball (50g, 90m), which is a pretty painful price, considering that I'd be asking people to make an entire top out of it. But I just haven't been able to find anything else that looks like what I want. Although...Mercedes did have the brilliant idea of getting a plain, solid yarn that I like and joining it with metallic thread. Unfortunately, although this idea would give me scads more scope for the yarn I can use, it doesn't solve the problem of high cost. I've checked out the cost of metallic thread, and it'd be about $4 for every 100m of yarn I need. Still...now that I think about it...I could get a plain yarn for as much as $7 for a 50g ball and still be $2 per ball ahead of the Nobile price. Hmmm. Well, I'll swatch the Nobile up anyway and see what I get.

Larry's Cabled Cashmere Pullover for DH

I am motoring along on this pretty fast, whenever DH goes to work or golf. So much so that the second iteration of the back of the sweater is now complete:


I think it's a much better width than my last try. Here's a comparison shot:


Notice that the new back is more-or-less the same height as the old one (actually, it's a bit shorter), even though it's wider. I've decided to follow the large-size instructions for width and the medium-size instructions for height, because that looks like it will give me the best-fitting results for my husband.

I'm now a few inches into the front, and have started on (I think) the sixth skein. It's all going well and I'm pretty confident of having enough yarn, especially with the plan to do navy stripes on the sleeves and a navy rim around the neck.

In the meantime, I've been getting dribs and drabs done on other projects that I'm using for "cover" as I knit on DH's Christmas sweater:

A Very Harlot Poncho for moi

I actually should have mentioned working on this in my last entry, but forgot. It's moved ahead by a few rows in the past two weeks or so.

Foot-pamering socks for moi

Absolutely no major progress has occurred, just a row or two done in front of my husband as a ruse, since I can't knit his sweater in front of him.

Sleep socks for moi

Last night I switched to this about five minutes before I expected my husband to get home, and got a decent amount done. I've now finished the leg and am working on the heel flap.

Ravelry update

You signed up on July 6, 2007
You are #14465 on the list.
3072 people are ahead of you in line.
16941 people are behind you in line.
36% of the list has been invited so far