Photographic evidence

margieinmaryland asked if I could post pictures of the finished 'Muppet roadkill' blanket. Sure can! Shortly after my last blog post, I sat down to weave in all the ends, and it is done like dinnah:

But wait, there's more!

We have my husband's Christmas socks: (now a little more advanced than pictured here, I'm just casting off the top at this point)

We have my dad's Christmas hat, which I bought the yarn for on Wednesday, started on Thursday, and finished the knitting of today:

top




bottom




side

I know it looks weird. Trust me, I've made it before, it all comes together at the end. Yarn is Cascade 220, and I was terrified that I was going to run out of the one skein that I bought. The pattern is Morgan by Anne Kuo Lukito, and I made it in the large size because my mom told me my dad has a large head. The pattern suggests two different yarns, one of which comes in 160-yard skeins, and the other of which comes in 240-yard skeins. Two skeins of the first yarn will do for either the medium or large size, but for the second yarn, the medium size needs one skein and the large size needs two skeins. Which means that somewhere between 160 and 240 yards are needed for the medium size, and somewhere between 240 and 320 yards are needed for the large size. Now, as I said, I'd made this before, and that time, it used up about 205 yards in the medium size. Reading through the instructions, the large doesn't take that many more stitches than the medium, so I was hoping against hope that the Cascade's 220 yards would be enough. But I was nervous. And I was especially nervous when I wound this particular skein through my yarn meter and it came out to only about 205 yards.

But, as you can see, I made it. With just 2.5g leftover! WHEW.

I did make one modification to the pattern this time: I did a three-needle bind-off to join the two halves of the peak together instead of the recommended grafting. I didn't want to cut the yarn anywhere in case I didn't have enough and had to rip back to do some yarn-saving techniques; and also, I figured the peak insert would be less likely to slice through a three-needle bind-off over time than through a graft.

I also shot the current progress of my mom's stretchy cotton Christmas socks:

In fact, the only things I've been working on that I don't have shots of for you are the design I'm working on (magazines don't want to publish already-seen designs), which you'll have to trust me about when I say it's coming along really nicely; and the Elizabeth of York vest (because I am actively refusing to have anything to do with it until I work up the fortitude to rip back half of the front border to correct my error - which, you're absolutely right Carrie K, is better than ripping back the whole thing).

The agony and the ecstasy

First, the agony. (Why not get it out of the way first.)

Sunday evening I found myself with the unnerving problem of not having any current knitting I could take with me on our visit to my parents' place. My mom's Christmas socks? Well, obviously she'd be there; can't work on those in front of her. My daughter's birthday blanket? Ditto. My husband's birthday socks? See above. So I pulled out my Elizabeth of York vest, stuffed it into my bag, and went on my merry way.

Flash forward to right after all the kids had gone to bed (they sleep a little at my parents' so my husband and I can have a little bit of adult conversation time, and then we all go home), and I pulled out my knitting. I chatted and knitted, and, just as the time rolled around that we needed to start packing up, I triumphantly finished off the last row of the chart I was working on. I knew what I needed to do next, but just for giggles I peeked at the pattern...and got a very nasty shock.

Turns out that, for those five chart rows, I'd been doing the wrong thing.

Did I mention that each row has about 500 stitches in it?

Yeah.

To explain: this is a border that goes up one side of the vest's front, around the back of the neck, and then down the other side of the vest's front. And when I started doing the chart, I didn't bother reading past the "work row 1 of Chart D x number of times" part, because of course I knew what I needed to do. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, work Chart D across the entire border, it's so obvious, let's just get going," was my thought process.

Which of course is dead wrong. Because when you have the same texture pattern going all the way along the fronts of a vest and you wear the vest, the motif will be going in the same direction on both fronts, when what you want is for the motif one one side to be the mirror image of the motif on the other side. So although I had blithely done Chart D all across the damn row, what I was supposed to do was work Chart D to the middle stitch, knit the middle stitch, and then do Chart E (mirror image of Chart D) all the way across the second half.

(I'd wondered why I had an extra stitch at the end of the first row of Chart D.)

The next question was, of course, can I live with this imperfection? Me being me, the answer is no, not very well. But the thought of ripping out five rows of about 500 stitches is really, really daunting. I'd like to avoid it if at all possible. So...what to do?

I'm going to try unravelling just the wrong half of the stitches, and re-knitting them correctly, hoping like heck the whole time that my gauge is extremely similar to the first time I worked it so I don't either run out of yarn or end up with too much yarn at the end of it.

Wish me luck. (Although admittedly the prospect of doing this is so unpleasant that it's really likely I'll procrastinate for a long time on starting the fix.)

And now, the ecstasy. More than one, actually, which is nice.

I finished the edging on the Muppet Roadkill blanket! Just gotta weave in the ends.

I finally finished these socks!

To give you an idea of why I emphasized the word "finally" in the above sentence...I started these socks when DD2 was small, and finished them completely except for the weaving-in of the ends. I procrastinated on that so badly that they now fit DD3, who is four years DD2's junior.

Sad.

Also, I got to work on a new design idea. This took a very unexpected twist when I saw how the fabric of it was knitting up and decided to make a completely different kind of garment out of it from what I'd originally intended. I really like what I've come up with, already have a pattern writeup pretty much ready to go, and I know where I'm going to submit it. I just have to wait for the issue I have in mind to open up for submissions. So that's a fourth design either submitted or more-or-less ready to be submitted. Now onto #5...

And in surprising news, I have actually managed to resist the call of New Purple Socks For Me (margieinmaryland, your complimentary remarks about the yarn so did not help ;) and the ball is still virgin in the stash. But I may treat myself to it after making good headway on whatever design #5 turns out to be.

I canna change the laws of physics

Sometimes, when designing (at least, this is true for me), I think something is going to work a certain way (and that it will be devastatingly cool), but it's hard to completely visualise it, so I have to test it out.

Well, my latest test just failed. I got burned by the complexity of double knitting. Turns out that a great idea I had doesn't work the way I wanted, is never going to work the way I want it (because of the nature of what happens when you reverse your fabric), and I'm either going to have to abandon the design idea altogether or come up with a way to do it that isn't so complex that I will send any knitters who try to make the pattern screaming into the streets.

Sigh.

On the "matter can't be created" front, I had absolutely no luck (as expected) going stashdiving to try and find 8 more grams of something I could use to finish off the edging on DD1's Muppet Roadkill blanket. I also searched people's stashes on Ravelry to see if there was anyone local with any to spare - also, no luck.

So...riiiiiiip. Yep. All that edging, all 37+ repeats that I'd already done - hit the frog pond. With one month to go before the birthday, I restarted, this time using an edging that would take up less yarn. (It's the same edging as before, but with fewer lines of stitches in between yarnovers.) So far, so good - after just three days of work, I've done the first side and turned the first corner.

No celebrating yet, though - I've been battling Startitis lately. It wants me to make socks for myself, out of this:

So far I am resisting its tractor beam-like pull, but there is no telling how long I can hold out.

Oh, right

Y'know, this week when I started back in on the "Muppet Roadkill" blanket project I talked about in my last post, I thought it was awfully odd that, even though I had decided five years ago that the edging across the top was puckering so badly that I would have to go back and redo it with more rows added in, I had still done the entire top edge, gone round the corner, and started down the third side. Why on earth would I have kept going on an edging if two thirds of it was going to have to be ripped out, I wondered.

Well, now I have my answer.

See how the edging goes aaallll the way around three sides of the blanket (the pattern dictates that the fourth side doesn't need an edging, as it is already nicely scalloped from the ripples in the main blanket pattern), stopping short just four lousy repeats from the end?

Yeah. That would be where MY YARN RAN OUT.

(And yes, I am fully aware that you can see the final yarn ball change at the top of the blanket as clear as day. Apparently, one of the yarn balls we had bought for the blanket was either a radically different dyelot or a completely different colourway to the others, and I didn't notice until it was too late because balled up, all the yarn looked completely identical. At the time, DD1 maintained she didn't care. I am fervently hoping she still doesn't.)

So it turns out that, five years ago, I realised my top edge was too tight, but also realised that the amount of yarn I had might not be enough to insert too many additional edging repeats into the top edge. And apparently what I decided to do was to knit until the yarn gave out; see from there exactly how many more repeats I could insert into the top without running out of yarn at the end; and then rip back to the beginning of the top and redo the top and the third side.

As it happens, though, even this wouldn't have worked - I added three more repeats to the top and ended up four repeats short of my goal, which means that I would have run out of yarn even if I never fixed the puckering at the top.

So, what to do, what to do.

Possible strategies:

Go back to the store and get more yarn.

I can't tell you how much I hate this plan, even assuming the store actually still carries the stuff. I don't like the yarn. I therefore don't want to buy more when all I need is about eight more grams of it. Although...maybe I could gift the extra 42 grams to DD1 as an additional birthday present. She would love it. Hmm...

Stash dive to try and find eight grams of something else vaguely substitutable

Fabulous plan...but I'm pretty aware of what's in my stash, and I don't think I'm going to get any joy there. Worth a shot, though. I'll take a look.

Rip the entire edging back and redo it using a slightly different edging which eats slightly less yarn

Sadly, this is looking (at least to my brain) like the best option. I could do the math and come up with something which would give me almost no yarn left over, which means I could say good-bye to it FOREVER. The downside, of course, is that I would have to do almost 900 rows of edging all. over. again.

If you have any additional ideas I haven't thought of yet, feel free to weigh in!

(In better news, my third pattern submission of the year is practically all ready to go...I just need the issue I have in mind for it to start being open to submissions.)

Well, that's new

At the last Knit Night at my LYS, I could no longer resist this Nova Sock Print colourway, and I bought it.

I must admit that I had in mind the idea of using it for a hat for DD1, as her favourite colour is blue. However, when I brought it back home and floated my idea past her, she was not keen. I believe this is because it is the wrong shade of blue. (Her taste runs to a blue that is more cheerful, and with a bit of aqua-ness to it.) This decision stunned her father, who exclaimed, "Why not? It's gorgeous!!!"

Aaand that reaction from him was all I needed to decide that the yarn should instead become socks for his birthday.

This is my basic vanilla hat heel pattern, using a variation I came up with (after it was originally published) which makes the sides of the gussets stretchy. DH has already almost caught me making it twice. I'm going to have to be more sneaky.

The second sample piece I've been knitting for design submission #3 (of, hopefully, at least twelve) is now off the needles. I still have to block it and weave in ends, but I'm really, really pleased with it, even in its lumpy, pre-blocked state.

I also started in on a new design idea I've been thinking about for a while. I didn't bother to swatch my ideas, just charted 'em and started right in on the whole thing. In hindsight, this was a mistake (although it started out well), and the secondary motif is admittedly looking great. But the main motif didn't work at all like I thought it was going to, and I'm worried I'll have to scrap the whole idea. But dang it, it's a cool idea and I want to make it work. So we'll see how that goes. If I can work it out, that'll be a fourth submission, which brings me up to date (on the assumption that twelve submissions in a year means one per month).

In other news, I picked this up at Knit Night yesterday from Lettuce Knit:

Yes, that would be...fibre. There hasn't been any spinning talk on this blog up to this point, because I don't really spin. I have spun before, and do own spinning-related items: two drop spindles, a little bit of fibre (of questionable quality), and a pair of handcarders. But I haven't done anything with it for about twelve years. Then, a few weeks ago, I forget exactly how the conversation went, but DD1 somehow ended up about spinning, and I found myself demonstrating how it was done on one of the spindles. It felt nice. Add to that the fact that for the past several weeks, I've been catching up on the last two years or so of the Round the Twist video podcast, in which Carin talks a lot about all the fabulous spinning she does, and I started to get a little inspired to spin again. I figured I should start with nice fibre, instead of the tourist-souvenir, lanolin-soaked, no-idea-what-breed-it's-from stuff I bought in Australia twenty-four years ago (yeah, sadly, that plus a few complimentary sample staples from an eBay vendor constituted my "fibre stash"). So I bought some nice fibre in a colourway that I really like, and we'll see how it goes. Laura told me that it doesn't need any preparation beyond separating it out into pencil-thin strips, so that's nice. Don't know when I'll get around to doing all that, but hey, just getting the fibre is a start. Oh, and also, I've started saving up for a wheel. (Warning: it will be a while. So far, the grand total of the Wheel Fund is fifty bucks. Yeehaw.) I don't know exactly what I want, but I've been doing a modicum of research and consideration, and at least know at this point that I want to spin thinly and then ply it, which means something with a high drive ratio.

And then there's this:

This, which I affectionately call "the Muppet Roadkill project", is a WIP that I believe last saw action about five years ago. It's a blanket for my oldest daughter that she's yearned after for years, I've been threatening to finish it for her as a present for years, and I think my having failed to come through on it really bothers her. The annoying part is that it's almost done - the body of the blanket is complete and I'm now just making my way around the sides with a perpendicularly-worked edging. I was actually going great guns on it back in the day, but I realised that I'd miscalculated badly for the edging across the top of the blanket: there were too few edging repeats for the width of the blanket, and the entire thing was puckering far too much at the top to be acceptable. So I stuffed it in a basket and told myself I'd rip it all back and recalculate how many edging repeats I should be doing (and therefore how many extra stitches I'd need to pick up across the top)...one day. Soon. You know, when I had the time. Shouldn't take long...

Well, the UFO guilt ends here. DD1's birthday is coming up next month, and by gum, I am going to give this blanket to her as my present. So yesterday when the older girls were at school (and DD3 was sleeping), I spread it out and did some measuring and some math. I figured that the edging across the top used 9 repeats of 20 rows each (10 of which incorporate stitches from the outer edges of the blanket), and was 25 inches long. However, the top should have been spread out to a total of 34 inches. Which means I should have had more like 12 repeats of the edging across the top. Which means the 90 or so stitches I had picked up across the top should have been more like 120. So I ripped out the edging back to the beginning of the top (sigh), picked up the additional 30 or so stitches across the top that I would need, and started back in. I've done about five edging repeats across the top so far, and it's not puckering any more, hooray!

It's a start.