I realized just now, as I took pictures of what I've been knitting, that one of the reasons that I may not recently have been all that enthused about knitting or photographing knitting or writing about knitting is the simple fact that I've been doing all my knitting in somewhat related cool, even perhaps dull colors. I'm thinking I need to make a move to incorporate more color in my knitting world in order to jump start some excitement.
Even Ziti's been a bit on the sleepy side, so maybe it's not that. But I think it perhaps is.
But in the meantime, I've been knitting three things, all of which got to a really annoying point earlier this week where I couldn't knit on any of them without thinking or frogging.
First, socks.
These are generic toe-up socks with footed toe shaping, and with a dropped stitch wavy rib/open pattern from one of the Barbara Walker books (I believe 2, since virtually every stitch I end up using comes from 2). These had been going fine, but then I turned the heel while at a conference last weekend (during the last panel I decided to whip out the knitting, since I knew I had questions, and thus would be both participating and knitting, and thus showing all that that was possible) and I wasn't entirely sure I'd put it in the right place. So I had to do a little comparison to be sure, and then also figure out what exactly I'd done at the back of the heel--basically, whether I'd started right in on the pattern or left some rows in plain stockinette. I have figured all this out now, so I can get this going more rapidly now.
Then there's the shawl. Now, at some point a few weeks back I decided I wanted to get to work on another shawl. I didn't want to do another one pattern stole, because those get boring and I wasn't in the mood for that. So I initially decided to do a sampler lace shawl, either the one from A Gathering of Lace (ravelry) or the one from Victorian Lace Today (ravelry and... what the heck, desiknitter). And actually went out and bought some laceweight alpaca to do this. But then I got home and didn't feel like starting either one. Instead, I started this.
Hard to tell, right, like it always is with lace. It's the Springtime design from Marianne Kinzel's First Book of Modern Lace Knitting. The book was a great Christmas gift (thanks, Mom!), and one of the things I immediately fell for was this pattern, which was for a tablecloth in the original. However, instead of cotton thread, I went for some grey alpaca I've had sitting around since I left Colorado--it's a thick laceweight or a fine fingering weight, I think, the same weight as the black alpaca I tried several things with before settling on the cabled shawl.
It went super quickly, until about a week ago when I tried to get one more round of pattern out of the yarn I had... but then realized that I wasn't going to have enough yarn to finish that round. So I had to frog back to the beginning of the previous pattern repeat. I had, for once, put in a lifeline at that place because I did know going in that I might not have enough yarn. So this wasn't the worst thing in the world. It just meant doing it, and although I'm sometimes too quick to frog things, when I know I have to do it I sometimes don't want to do it.
But, a few nights ago I did, and then I went on a rush to finish off the last set of pattern rows. This involved in the end a complicated crocheted bind-off, which I finished this afternoon. So now...
... it's blocking. Again I got to use my cool blocking wires for the straight edge, although since the sides of this shawl are sort of scalloped a little bit I didn't use the wires for that.
Looking at what people have done with this on ravelry, I decided to imitate one alteration; the original pattern (aside from being square, which just means that I only did half of it) had a wider band of that open lattice pattern between the last leaves and those scalloped bits on the outer edge (not sure if this link works... it's pictured on page 87). I decided I prefered this look, at least for a shawl.
The third thing is the green cardigan. Again, this went quite quickly at first, but once I got to the armhole part, things slowed down. First, I started the armholes too soon, and then frogged most of one front in order to make the body a little longer. Second, I finished a whole front side and the back, but at that point I decided to see if I liked the armhole as shaped. And I didn't. It was far, far too big and gapey, given the way the fabric is likely to block out.
And so, here's where I am, and I'm about to be even less than this because I made a mistake on the armhole shaping again and want to redo it.
After all that, kind of boring. I will say this: I love the combination of yarn and stitch pattern, I really do. I think the simple lattice is just enough interest without competing with the slight variegation of the yarn. I think I'm really going to like the sweater once it's finished. My plan is to do garter stitch button bands along the fronts, and actually possibly a garter stitch band around the bottom, too--I thought about doing that as I started, but ended up being uncertain whether it's what I wanted. I now think it is.
I'm still a little uncertain about what kind of neckline to do. I think a round one will work best, with again perhaps a garter stitch band. But that might change as I again tackle the fronts.
Other updates? Well, I have sabbatical next year, which means that I'm heading back to Moscow, and to charming landlady E, in almost exactly a month, assuming my visa comes through. Before that I need to pack up all my belongings and move them into storage (I'm hiring people for the moving part, but not all of the packing part). This is making me eat strangely, because I'm trying to use up whatever's in my freezer and pantry, and not to buy too much replacement stuff. I won't be in Russia the whole year, but when I'm not there (which will be a while this summer, and then next winter and spring) I'll be in Chicago, or at least so goes the current plan. So, a whole slate of new things to blog about. Perhaps I'll get my blogging mojo back. We'll see.
And one more thing, just because it's annoying me. My DVD player just stopped working. It's standby light is on, but pressing buttons either on the remote or on the player itself does nothing. It was a super cheap DVD player, but I'm annoyed because there's still a DVD in it. Humpf. Disassembly, ho, I guess.
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