Churning stuff out

Thanks very much for the congratulations in the comments! Our two daughters are extremely excited. The oldest was completely surprised at the news and squee'ed like crazy. The little one was also very happy when we told her, but not actually surprised. You see, for some time now, she has had it in her head that becoming a "big girl" is not truly possible until she becomes a big sister. (Much as her own big sister did when she was almost four.) So our little one has been convinced for some months now that she would be presented with a baby brother or sister at any moment, simply because her fourth birthday is coming up. :)

(I should add that if this new baby gets the same idea into its head as it approaches age four, it will be sorely disappointed. :)

Anyway, back to the knitting...I've been quite productive lately, despite choosing to sleep instead of knit on many of my morning commutes.

Firstly, I finished my Quadrat sweater last weekend:

Yeah, I moved my arms just as DH took the shot. At which point the camera battery died, and I haven't gotten him to take another since. So please excuse the sleeve blurriness. The sweater itself is terrific, I love it. And it's loose enough around the middle that it should fit me for a few months yet.

Also last weekend, I started a hat that DH had requested. It's my own fundraising pattern for Doctors without Borders, and he chose two colours of Cascade 220. The pattern calls for DK weight, but I ended up getting very close to gauge with the worsted, so off I went. By Wednesday, it was done.

He loves it. Every time he puts it on to go out, he gets this blissed-out look on his face. :) Of course, he's probably got about four more days to wear it before the weather gets too warm for it, but he's happy, so it's all good.

And finally, this evening, I finished the knitting on my friend's Undergrowth hat. I still have to weave in the ends, but from the outside it looks pretty good:

If it does not cover the liner properly, I will be crushed. However, this makes an excellent excuse to have my friend over for dinner soon. :)

Stress

I don't talk about my day job very much here, partly because it has nothing to do with my knitting (aside from when co-workers are expecting and need knitted baby things), and partly because it's just good sense not to give tons of details about what's going on in the office. However, recently my job did start affecting this blog because my workload - thanks to the poor planning of others - became abso-friggin'-lutely HYUUUGE. Generally I am very good about being sanguine about office stress and leaving it at the office, but around late January/early February, things became truly ridiculous and the stress started to follow me home. Consequently, there wasn't a whole lot of blogging going on.

However, this is not to say that there wasn't any knitting going on. In fact, there was rather a lot of that, which was great, since it brought balance and sanity to a brain that kind of needed those things. :) I just didn't feel up to talking about it all.

But now that the crises (yeah, plural) have passed, things are exponentially better and I've finally gotten around to taking pictures. I can't show you everything, because some of what I've been working on needs to stay secret for the moment, but here's how the knitting is coming along.

Undergrowth for Jenn

When last we looked at this, I had emailed my friend to ask her if she liked the way the colours looked, and I was waiting for the verdict. Well, she emailed me directly and commented on the blog, and the result was a resounding "hell, yes", :) so I got started. I've since gotten a little sidetracked by other stuff (see below), so I'm not quite finished yet, but I have started the decreases and I'm pretty pleased with how it's going:



Although, in typical 'me' fashion, after having spent so much time upsizing it, I'm now worried that it's too big. But I'm going to try to have faith in the measurements I took of the hat liner that's supposed to go underneath this thing and ignore my nagging doubts.

Balaclava for moi

I don't think I made any more progress on this since my last blog entry, but at least I now have a picture:

Gryffindor Tie for DD1

In further preparation for the Harry Potter-themed birthday party coming up in late March for one of DD1's classmates, I found the perfect self-striping yarn, and a really good-looking tie pattern: Men's Bias-Knit Tie, from KnitPicks. I'm making it smaller than the pattern calls for because DD1 is of course not a full-size adult male. :) I don't know how well that'll work out, but I guess we'll see! I haven't gotten too far yet, though:

Secret thing

And then, in the middle of all this, I got an idea for a design that I just had to chart...and try out...and buy yarn to make the prototype for...and start the prototype...and...and...my goodness, I'm terrible at delayed knitting gratification! I want to submit this to a publication, so I'm not going to say much more, but I'm very optimistic about how it's going to turn out.

Semi-secret thing

So last weekend I headed out to my LYS to buy the yarn for the secret thing, and I took DD2 with me. June, the owner, hadn't seen her for a while and was delighted with how much she'd grown and, I think, her generally charming ways. :) She asked my kid what her favourite colour was (purple), and next thing I know, the child is carrying around three balls of purple "gift yarn" and June is suggesting that Mummy could make something for her out of it.

Okay, then!

I figured, since June was nice enough to give me yarn, that the least I could do was design a pattern she could sell (if she wanted to) in her shop. So I made something up. When I'm done, I'll print out some copies for the LYS, and will also make it available for online purchase here. I'm not going to give too much of it away just yet, but I can tell you that...



...parts of it look like a Muppet made the ultimate sacrifice so my child could have a new garment. ;)

Shoulds

As pathetic as it is that I'm getting distracted by new and pretty patterns, I've been doing pretty darn well getting through my list of "should"s lately. For one thing, I am making some progress on my balaclava. Not a lot, but I am fairly close to dividing for the face hole.

For another thing, I took only two days to check another item off my list. Last year, I made my Mom a Snapdragon Tam for Mother's Day. Unfortunately, despite the fact that I made the medium size (because she has a medium head-size), it was ridiculously large on her. After a while, she realised it was so bad that she really couldn't wear it, and asked me if it was possible to re-do it in the smaller size. Of course, I could. :)

So Sunday morning I cast on, and by Monday evening when we were over at my parents' place, I was able to finish, weave in the ends, and block it on one of her dinner plates. I told her it would be ready to wear once it was dry, and could she please take a picture of it and send it to me. The picture will have to wait, because she hasn't had a chance to do that yet, but she tells me that the revised version fits bee-yew-tifully and she loves it a lot. Yay! :)

So really, when you think about it, I've been quite responsible. Throw in that Gryffindor vest I did for DD1, and my grandmother's 95th birthday present, and I actually start looking kind of like a machine. :)

Therefore, I'm not feeling that much guilt about the prospect of indulging in something new. Especially since the something new can actually be manipulated into becoming something from my "should"s list.

I mentioned last time that one of my most wonderfullest friends had asked me to make her a hat. She has a really neat "liner" type thing to wear for the winter that is deliciously warm, but since it is a liner, it's meant to be on the inside of headwear, and it looks tremendously dorky worn just by itself. Since it already provides enough warmth on its own, all she needs is something fairly thin over top that looks purty, so she asked if I could make something like that for her.

Well yes, yes I could. :) I found the PERFECT yarn for her. And I mean perfect - I saw it and it just screamed her. And as a total plus, it was on sale. :) I couldn't decide which of two colours to get for her, so I bought two balls of each and let her decide, figuring I'd make her socks out of the unused yarn, or something:

(She chose the purple one.)

But then I got to thinking...how would this work up if I used both colours to make Undergrowth? I'd have to make the hat bigger than the biggest size given, to fit the liner underneath, but I figured I'd just expand the number of stitches so I can do six repeats of the chart each round instead of five. That'd make the overall shape of the hat less smooth all the way up, but I think that's going to be a good thing - I don't want the shape of the liner underneath showing very much, as it certainly would under a snug-fitting, sleek-lined hat. I was concerned that there won't be a huge contrast between the two colours in some spots, but I figured I'd just have to cast on and give it a whirl in order to see. (Shucky darn!)

I kind of love it a whole lot. There are, however, a few issues:

• It's about a quarter-inch too short. (The liner is 8 1/8" high, the resulting hat is barely 8" high.)
• The circumference is far too small. (The liner is 24" around, the resulting hat is 19" around.)
• The contrast between the two colours isn't pronounced enough to make the pattern really "pop".

The sizing problems can be fixed pretty easily - I can use 3.25mm needles, do 7 repeats of the pattern per round, and add a braid or two at the bottom. The contrast problem, however, may take some doing. I think if I'm strategic about which sections of the variegation of the turquoise I match up with which sections of the variegation of the purple, the pattern will pop a lot more, but I think there are still going to be a few spots where the contrast is pretty bland. However, it's still just so pretty, I can't get over it.

All these modifications, however, are pointless to start experimenting with unless my friend actually likes the basic look of the hat. I have emailed her with pictures and am awaiting her verdict. If she likes it, I will rip out what I've got and re-do it with the modifications I think will work. If she doesn't like it, I will rip it out anyway because I still need the yarn. :) Either way, I don't consider knitting this first experiment as a waste of my time because it was amazingly fun, and it only took about two days. I highly recommend this pattern, it's terrific.