spud says hi

Really, honestly, done

This baby sweater is finally done, after I sewed in a zipper today.  Again, I'm at my parents' in anticipation of my sister's wedding this weekend.  The cousin who will soon be having the baby should be at the wedding.  So I wanted this to be done, if possible, by then.  I bought the zipper (and the deeply cute bear pull thingy I put on it) this morning (I finally, today, realized that there are two kinds of zippers available at fabric stores--ones that separate, and ones that don't;  I'd bought a zipper for another sweater months ago, and kept wondering to myself [stupidly], why doesn't it come apart?!  now I know the answer--it doesn't), sewed it in, and there you go.

Not exciting, but cute. 

And done.

Two down

Yesterday was a knitting-intensive day.  At the knitting circle, I sat and knitted and chatted and got advice on the width of my shawl (I had feared that I'd bound it off an inch or two short, and others agreed).  And helped a newer knitter finish binding off a scarf, and then putting on fringe. 

During that part, the obnoxious aphorism spouting know it all teacher side of me came out a bit, I'm afraid.  I was trying to impart my belief that there's no wrong in knitting... or at least no permanent wrong.  You can always fix things (unless, I suppose, you've felted something; then unknitting's not gonna happen).  Which then made me think of "there's no crying in baseball!"  Heh.  But I do think that knitting's only a problem for perfectionists if they're unwilling to admit mistakes.  I'm kind of a perfectionist in knitting; I want everything to come out right.  But I'm also totally willing to junk things if I mess them up, or if they're just not quite right.

Practically, I did manage to finish (virtually) two projects yesterday.  Of course, that involved staying up rather too late, but, well, there you go.  The first is the baby sweater.  I'd finished off the sleeves the night before, and did the collar (I had the perfect amount of mohair to add in; seriously, I ended up with about six inches left over... amazing!) while at the circle.  And last night I sewed in all remaining ends, and washed and blocked it.  All that's left is a zipper (that's what I ended up deciding to do).

And then I undid the bind off row (I hadn't cut off the yarn, as I was unsure if I'd bound off at the right time) and added another two repetitions of the pattern to to the shawl.  And bound off again.  And sewed in the ends.  I think this time it's right.  I do still need to wash and block it, at which time I'll probably ease it to be a bit wider.

So.  On to the next unfinished project, a blue and black sweater that's getting close to done.  And then a decision on the Orenburg shawl.  And then starting a new project for which I bought yarn yesterday, that will involve a new technique for me:  intarsia (color block knitting, more or less).

I can't wait!

Sweater and shawl

OK, progress report.  The baby sweater's coming along just fine.  One sleeve's done, the other started.  It shouldn't take too much longer (though it will if I keep writing about knitting instead of, well, knitting).  Then a collar, and, I think, a bit of crochet around the edges to finish it off.  I've actually been thinking of doing that and putting button holes on the edge in crochet, rather than a zipper.  But, as always with stuff I make up, we'll see.

I've also been working on a shawl.  It's basically intended to be something to use at my sister's wedding, should something warm become necessary.  Which, since it'll be Labor Day weekend in Chicago, may not happen.  But, still.

It's really a very simple pattern--feather and fan, I think it's called.  The yarn is a mohair silk wool blend from Brooks Farm, which I bought at the Estes Park Wool Market in June.  It makes a nice scallopy open pattern, very pretty, very old fashioned.  I cast on the long edge, so the waves will be horizontal.  Actually, this is another frogging story.  I worked on this a bunch earlier in the summer, and had actually knitted it all up, as wide as I wanted it.  But when I cast off and wrapped it around me, I realized it was easily a foot and a half too long... just sillily too long.  Sigh.  So, I pulled the whole thing out, recalculated, and cast on again.  I think it should be just fine this time around.  And I'm actually getting fairly close to the end this time.  I'm hoping it all works out the second time, because the third time would just be too much.

Unproductive progress

Yesterday was a deeply unproductive day, at least as far as all activities that might eventually get me tenure.  Every time I sat down to write something I ought to be writing (instead of, say, this), my mind went away.  This had much to do with a frustrating guy.  That may be a story for a later day, or may be a story that disappears into my sad dating past, better left in oblivion.  Actually, that's probably the best bet.

Anyway.  I did get my hair cut, certainly a good thing.  And I shopped, since I've got a car for the moment.  Definitely better to buy the 12 roll pack of paper towels when you're not stuck using a bike for all your shopping.  Ooh, and I bought another piece of luggage at T.J. Maxx.  I own far more luggage than I ought to, considering that, though I do travel, I don't travel THAT much.  And I got new gym shoes and an arm band holder thingy for my iPod, in the hopes that it might inspire me to exercise more (some).  And I took recycling to the recycling center.  So not unproductive, exactly, just not really the productiveness that I need right now.

I did, however, make progress on the baby sweater.  The body's now totally done, and I've sewn up the shoulder seams.  The fuzzy bit is the mohair my lovely yarn-dyer gave me, which will go with the main yarn in the collar, I think.  I'm going to do the sleeves shoulder down, so picking up stitches around the armhole is the next task.  And I'm going to knit them in the round, using two circular needles.  I actually like the one really long circular needle approach, but don't have one in this size (5).  So, really, I'm getting close to done on this one.  Conveniently, I've got three other projects on needles, and yarn for a bunch more just waiting for me to start.

Well, yeehaw

So tonight I went to the knitting circle I attend irregularly.  For patches I'll go every week, then drop out when things get busy.  It's not at my local yarn store, but rather at the studio of my local yarn dyer.  My knitting has really taken off since discovering this place, even if I don't always use her yarns.  Still, the mauvey yarn for my first cardigan, the remainders of which I'm using for the baby sweater, came from her (you can see her stuff at her site, Textiles a Mano).

I've been going very irregularly this summer, because I don't have a car at the moment, and thus have to rely on a friend (E) for rides.  But tonight I went because I had a car (thanks to E, who's letting me use her while she's out of town, which is darned cool) and had a specific task.  The baby sweater's coming nicely; I'd finished the front and was getting close to done with the back.  But my leftover yarn was coming to an end.  Since the stuff is hand dyed, I figured I'd be able to find something complementary to use, and that'd be fine.

But, instead, lo and behold, as soon as I pull out the sweater, and mention that this was the first yarn I'd bought from her, my lovely LYD says "oh!" and pulls out a small skein of EXACTLY THE YARN.  And a bit of mohair that complements it.  And gives it to me to finish the sweater, and to add a fuzzy collar, if I so choose.

How cool is that?

Baby sweater progress... and the story of frogging

The baby sweater continues.  I'm less than an inch (more or less) from splitting for the armholes, at which point I'll have to decide if I want to allow for a bit of overlap in the front or to keep it even.  Hmm.  In any event, the pattern I wrote out, with current progress on the knitting (and the color's a bit better are here.  It's not all perfect; I haven't figured out exactly what I need to do for the sleeves, for example.  But it is, for the most part, a really easy basic pattern, and shouldn't be much trouble, no matter what I decide.

I did take a bit of a break from it to look at another sweater I'm making up, this one for me.  It's something based on a sweater I already have, a thin cream cashmere tie-front cardigan.  I'm doing it in a gorgeous mohair silk mix, which makes it one of the softest things I've ever played around with.  But I kind of stopped working on it a month ago, while messing with the armholes, and I've kind of forgotten where I was.  When this is done, I'll return to it.  It's also a basically easy thing.  The only bit of complication comes from the fact that I decided to play around with the sleeve caps, and I don't quite remember what I decided to do.  And of course failed to write it down.

Now, this sweater, on the other hand, was SO MUCH TROUBLE.  It's very cool yarn, a brown boucle.  I like it.  I bought it in Japan.  I went to the super-cool Tokyo Hands store (one of them; I also have no idea what that website says, but, hey, I found it, so what the hell), which is like the most amazing crafty place you've ever seen.  Anyway.  They had yarn.  I was a new knitter.  I bought a bunch of this stuff.  Unlabeled (well the bin was labeled, but I have no idea what it said), so I still have no idea what fiber it is.  (Oh, and, I also bought some variegated yarn [Puppy brand] from which I made the cutest mittens EVER, because the variegation worked into perfect one row stripes, mostly while going through a very stressful job application/interview period, which I then proceeded to leave on an airport shuttle, never to be found again [by me, at least].)  I decided I was mathily inclined enough to make something up with it, and took a pattern from Simply Beautiful Sweaters.  So I started, and figured out the math, and all was well.  I had two major problems.  First, I realized I'd dropped a stitch many rows down (and, man, I've got a problem with that right now on yet another project, but that's REALLY a story for another day, because it's likely to make me cry), and frogged a bunch and all was well.  And I'd started it using two strands together, but realized I didn't have enough, and, anyway, it made it thicker than I wanted it to be.  So, again, frogging and reknitting with one ply.  That time all seemed well.  But then it came time to sew the pieces together... practically a first for me, as up to then I'd done a bunch of scarves, a couple of hats, and a baby sweater that was a bunch of rectangles... super easy to sew up.  This sucked.  Royally.  The boucle was lovely, but it meant that I could not see where the stitches were AT ALL.  I managed the shoulders, with great cussing.  And the sides were the end of me.  I started.  I stopped.  I pulled stitches out and started again.  I got frustrated, and let the pieces sit for months, literally.  Then, after doing the cardigan referenced above (below?), I decided to frog the whole thing and start over.  So I did.  Winding it all was an enormous pain, because as it was already at the second iteration, and was done in four pieces, there were many sub balls of yarn.

The finished version started with a different pattern, this one from Hip to Knit (though there it has a different neckline; I didn't have quite enough yarn).  And I figured out how to do it in the round.  This, finally, worked, as all I had to sew were the shoulder and underarm seams... not too much.  I did have some trauma with the sleeve caps, due to deciding I didn't want raglan sleeves, but even that wasn't as bad as the sewing debacle.

So was solidified my desire to knit as much as possible in the round and avoiding sewing.

Testing html. And more knitting.

OK, then.  Here's me trying to figure our html code.  This is frickin' hilarious.  Well, to me.  I deeply enjoy the fact that Lavrov can poke fun at the whole paranoid Russia image.  Take that, Kennan telegram!  And the evil empire image.  Take that, Reagan!  Not, of course, that there's not truth to those images, but still.  The fact that Russians did and do have a sense of humor so often gets forgotten.  Yakov Smirnov (was that his name?) notwithstanding.

And this is an example of something else I've knit with the yarn that's now being used for the Oz-tainted baby sweater.  It's a pattern from Judith L. Swartz's Hip to Knit, altered for gauge.  Actually, this sweater sparked a trend in the knitting circle I sometimes attend.  Others made theirs thicker, using two strands of yarn, but I like the thinner weight.  I made a second one in a blue variegated yarn for my sister, although I think this first one was better (you'd expect otherwise, but oh well).  This may have been the first adult sized sweater I finished; another one started earlier, but took FOREVER to finish, largely due to the fact that I pulled it all apart TWICE.  More on that one, later.  As I remember, the only issue with this was the sleeve cap shaping; as I almost always do when altering a pattern, I ended up with too much at the top of the sleeve.  It required a little bit of pulling out and reknitting, but all in all, a very nice, easy first sweater.

Knitting on the couch

Is it OK to knit a baby sweater while watching Oz?  I mean, the innocence, the, well, not... there's something a bit odd feeling about making something for a perfect new life while watching a portrayal of seriously wacked out stuff that's anything but perfect.

The sweater's just starting.  It's for my cousin's soon to be baby, and I'm making it up as I go.  I became a convert to the circular needles, all in one, no sewing ideology a ways back, so that's what I'm doing.

This is what I've got so far.  The yarn's a nice merino with a bit of variation in it, though nothing too much.  I'm using moss stitch, just for some interest.  It'll be a very basic little cardigan, with a polo collar.  I'd thought about having just a zipper up the front, but I'm now sort of thinking about maybe doing a toggle closure.  Or something.  I'll make up my mind once I get to the armhole shaping.

And tonight I knit while watching the last DVD of the fifth season of Oz.  Crazy!  Well, not as crazy as in some other places, but, still, the base level of crazy is pretty high on that show.  I'm actually a bit obsessed with it right now.  It's a totally bizarre thing.  I don't admire the show as much as I admire, say, The Wire, which I think is not only fantastically acted, but also just a great whole.  The writing, the production, the ways the show fits together and doesn't repeat itself, that's amazing TV.  But you can kind of tell that Oz was HBO's first drama.  I mean, it still does a lot of repeat exposition each episode, trying to catch up the viewer to what they may have missed.  And, a bit, I get the feeling they don't always know where they're going, which I think a lot of the others do know.  Hence aging drugs and Chinese refugees.  Which, come on.

But this season I mostly liked, because it got back to a lot of the interplay between prisoners and their groups.  I wouldn't have minded a bit more focus on some characters and a bit less on others, but for the most part, that's the stuff I like.  Since I just love a bunch of the characters a bunch, even while finding them, often, reprehensible.  And yet, oddly appealing.

And... that's it.