spud says hi

Uninspired

So, I was going to put up a picture of the finished roundabout leaf tank, on.  But I don't really like any of the pictures I've tried to take of it.

Or I could show where I am on the cabled socks.  But I'm almost done, so that seems pointless.

Or I could show the green tank.  I'm done with the back, I think.  But, again, it's close to done and it's what I've been working on, so that seems pointless, too.

Hmpf.

Or I could show the yarn I'm planning to use next.  Except I'm not sure what I'm going to be doing next.

Sigh.

I need to get me to a knitting group for inspiration, I think.

Meanwhile, here's the image that's been my desktop wallpaper recently.

It's me crowding my camera up next to the glass case displaying a green glass bowl in the British Museum.

It glowed.

My fingertips hurt

Because I've been pushing in a lot of pins. 

Yes, it's finally blocking time.  Two things are currently pinned out, and will hopefully dry by the end of the day.  So I can, you know, sleep on my bed.

Actually, the Orenburg is currently sitting under a damp towel, because the process of blocking it took SO MUCH FREAKING TIME that it started to get too dry even as I was finishing up blocking it, and I worried that it wouldn't hold its shape quite right.  Not that I want it to exactly hold this shape, because it's a little uneven, but, still.

Why so long?  It's very big, and I tried a few ways of blocking it that didn't quite work out, for various reasons.  Mostly because I only have two hands, and arms that aren't all that long, and it's very big.

Now, first I thought I'd try the Russian method, which involves stringing all the points on a long thread and pulling and arranging and blocking using that.

Cool, I thought.

So, last night, I strung the whole thing on some fishing wire.

My first problem somehow came in then; I managed to twist the line at some point, and get a knot in it.  This proved problematic when I attempted to manipulate the lines and the shawl and the...

Short story?  It didn't work.  I think I needed at least another set of hands, and possibly a few stiff drinks.  I was also trying to do it out on my deck, on a sheet, because it was the only big flat surface unencumbered by all sorts of things, and the wood's not really very good, and I figured I could actually poke pins in it (which turned out to be disturbingly accurate, though not entirely).  Today's gloriously sunny, so it seemed like the perfect chance.  But it was also still damp from rain yesterday, so since the whole lines thing just didn't work, it seemed like I might as well just try something inside.

So, next, the bed and pins.  Off with the sheets and pillows and all that.  On with the shawl.

And, as you can see, it's big, and my bed's only a double.

The problem is more obvious when you look at this view.  When I pinned the center of one side at the center of the bed, I ended up with not just a little overhang, but a lot of overhang.  If I'd had to go over the edge of the mattress and stayed on that, that would have worked.  Perhaps even staying on the box spring.  But this?  No, this wasn't going to work.  Particularly since the lack of extra hands was hurting here, too, because pulling tightly in one direction proved problematic for pulling in another direction, and the whole thing was getting frustrating.

Argh, I thought, and unpinned and started to fold the thing, thinking I'd wait until some unspecified future day when I had more patience to deal with it.

And then I realized that when folded in half, with a line threaded through the fold to keep it more or less straight, I could actually manage the pinning.

And so, starting in the middle, working out to the corners, then up the sides, then pinning out the line, not the shawl itself, along the center, I hope I've managed to block it reasonably well.

Keep your fingers crossed, and hope for a reveal of the final thing in a day or so.  (The cats, incidentally, are currently freaking out over the fact that I've shut them out of the bedroom; Ziti in particular keeps rolling around in front of the door and rattling it, trying to get it open.)

In the meantime, I'm also in the middle of blocking the roundabout leaf tank.

Much to my surprise, I'm blocking it wide, not long.  I assumed I'd want to add extra length, but it's actually just fine, length-wise.  But a bit more, er, snug, than I'd ideally like.

Actually, it's an interesting lesson in ease.  As I realized earlier in the summer, negative ease can be definitely a good thing on some projects.  Not so on this one.  While the other summer tank I'm working on (in principle; I haven't touched it since June... but finishing it is next on the list so I can feel justified in starting something else) needs to be a bit fitted, this one really doesn't need to be.

Why?

Bandages.  It looks like mummy wrappings if it's too tight.

So, here, too, keep your fingers crossed that it works out OK.  I will say, I like the bamboo, and it did soften after washing.  I'm still flummoxed at how much it tightened in the joining; I honestly did think about the ease question, and started the join I thought with plenty of ease.  But, well, live and learn.

And finally, a Toronto image.

This is parked outside my office building every day.

The particularly Toronto thing (or perhaps particularly Canadian thing)?

On the menu, it notes that with fries, "gravy is always free."

Firsts

There've been some new apartment firsts.  This morning, my first laundry.  For all that it's awfully nice to have your own washing machine and dryer, it's also awfully nice to be able to go downstairs and put in three different loads at once, and thus to finish everything quickly.  Especially when it's free.

Last night, I cooked my first meal.  (Well, I suppose you could call the baked potato I did in the new toaster oven last weekend the first meal, but, really, no.)

Whole wheat rigatoni with rapini, garlic, toasted almonds and a bit of cheese.  Cheddar, as I have not yet managed to remember to buy pecorino romano (which I prefer to parmesan.)  Yum. 

And I'm close to having a first finished object.  (I suppose you could call the Orenburg a first finished object, because I did end up picking out that last corner and reknitting it, and I'll be blocking it at some point in the relatively near future, though not today or tomorrow because of overcastness and humidity.)

The Roundabout Leaf Tank, nearing completion.

The main body's done but for a few more rows, I think.  I haven't managed to decrease the top round quite as much as it's supposed to be decreased, but I kind of like the increased length, so I'm not going to worry about it too much. 

I don't quite get why it seems wider at the bottom.  Well, that's not entirely accurate.  I think it's that the upper rounds are held in by the joining stitches at both top and bottom, not just at top.  So the bottom's flaring just because there's nothing to keep it in shape.  Hopefully blocking will help.

It also means it's not the size I quite expected it to be.  Despite my earlier ease epiphany, I decided to make the size that involved joining when the first round had gotten to 40 inches.  40 inches circumference seemed very big to me, but I know that the way this hangs it'll tend to narrow and lengthen, if that makes sense.  And, anyway, the only smaller size listed was the "extra small," and there's no way in hell that I'm an extra small in anything.

And, really, I'm now glad I went for this size, because the binding together really does pull in the width quite a bit, too.  That was unexpected.

But, basically, a few more rows twisting the end around the back, and then straps.  Crazy!

Vacation knitting

So, I actually did a heck of a lot less knitting on this trip than I'd've necessarily expected.  There was a lot to see, after all, and relatively little major transportation that brought me through places I wasn't interested in looking at.  A book's easier to deal with when you're amusing yourself over dinner.  And in various hotels, I lacked TV, and much as I love the knitting, I do need something else going on, and there's only so much time I can spend with my iPod's earbuds in my ears (and, interestingly, my iPod radio transmitter was only sporadically useful, due to a surprising clustering of Australian channels right around the frequency at which it transmits).

I initially started out spending time on the Roundabout Leaf Tank, and made some significant progress (I'd done through the first leaf, I think, before I left).  I worked a bit on the plane from Denver to LAX, then abided by Qantas' no knitting rule (though it was in my bag, since it got checked through US security [and, hey, seriously, I asked when checking in for my flight in Melbourne if it was OK to bring knitting, figuring rules might have changed and it couldn't hurt... I swear, the check in agent said "no" in a tone that would've been appropriate if I'd asked to bring, I don't know, a shiv]).

But I kept knitting around Melbourne and Apollo Bay, not so much on trams or anything, again because everything was interesting, but in the evenings a bit, and here and there.  As you can see, I got to the joining part, and thought everything was going swimmingly... except I realized that I've gotten to the spot where I'm supposed to place another leaf, but I didn't think it was supposed to be right on top of the leaf in the previous round.  And indeed it's not.  So now I have to decide how important absolutely precise leaf placement is to me, and if I want to frog, or... well, really, I don't.  So instead, I'll just have a longer space between two leaves.

Since I wasn't sure where I was with that, I then shifted my attention to project number 2:  a cable sock in Brown Sheep Cotton Fine.  I'm doing it on 1s, although I think the next socks I make from this yarn will be on 0s.

The pattern's from Barbara Walker, and is pretty intuitive after the first time.  It's a cabled rib, which is kind of perfect for socks with a bit of interest, nice and stretchy but with something else going on, too.

It's also a good thing for me to work on, because I keep thinking I want to do something big with cables, because I really do like how they look.  But I've never been terribly comfortable with cabling, the few small things I've done that require it.  Dealing with the extra cable needle always feels awkward, particularly with some of the twist possibilities.

And, indeed, as I got going, I had the same feeling here.  But, really, I've decided that I'm getting much more used to dealing with the extra needle, and much more adept at finessing it in front or behind, and knitting or purling off it as need be.

I also started carrying this around with me a lot more, working on it on trams or trains.  This is of course in part because it's a sock, and therefore perfect for such knitting.  And because I bought a new bag in Sydney after realizing that I'd not brought along a really good tourist-being bag, instead one that was just a bit too small to be truly useful.

So this got worked on in Apollo Bay, on the train from Melbourne to Sydney, in Sydney (including on a train to the Blue Mountains), in various points of call along the coast (including Narooma and Lakes Entrance and Healesville), in Melbourne, in LAX, and on the plane from LAX to Denver (which I almost missed due to falling fast asleep in the most uncomfortable slumped over position, and almost missing boarding... eep!).  It's one issue is the toe; I tried the figure 8 cast on thing, but don't think I did it quite right.  So I'm thinking I may have to unravel it and kitchener the edge together, which wouldn't be such a bad thing.

Argh.

Wandering around the knitting blogosphere I cam across a sweater made by Grumperina (yes, you non-knitting people, that's the name of a fairly prominent knitting blogger) with pentagons all around the neckline.

Oooh, interesting, I thought.

So I got the book in which the pattern was found, Norah Gaughan's Knitting Nature, from the library. 

It's just lovely.  Many interesting patterns, many things I'd actually wear.  A couple things I probably wouldn't, but far more that I would.  That's pretty impressive.

On various lists and such, I also read that some of the patterns had problems.  Well, I decided, that's OK.  I'm an experienced enough knitter that I can figure out what's wrong.  No worries.  And I bought it.

Now, that's all still true.  It's still lovely.  I can indeed figure out mistakes.  But, seriously, what a pain!

Here's the beginning of the first thing I'm going to make from the book, on a page with the tank on it (the top of the tank's cut off in the picture, yes, but I think you can get an idea of it from this much).

Called the Roundabout Leaf Tank, it's a strip with leaves knitted at intervals along one edge, wrapped around and knit together at the edge, and then narrowed at the top to make an even top edge.  Then you knit straps, basically, over the shoulders.

Really cool, no?  And the beginnings of my sweater don't look bad.  I'm using SWTC Bamboo.  That is, yarn made out of bamboo.  Cool, huh?  It's a bit scratchy, I must admit, but I think it'll be neat nonetheless.

But here's the thing.  This is the fourth iteration of the beginning of the tank.  In part that's because I decided to add a few stitches because my yarn's slightly thinner than the called for yarn and I don't want the thing to end up too short.

But also because the pattern's wrong.  Argh!

I think you can see in this detail that there's a bit of a lace patterning at the two edges of the knitting.  In this picture, both sides of a given strip have the same edging, a sort of crisscross of yarn all the way along.

It's pretty, it's cute.

According to the pattern as written, it doesn't work.  You get the nice, cute crisscrosses along one edge, and big, fat, round eyelets along the other.  They're not awful, certainly, but they're also not nearly as interesting as the crisscrosses.  And they don't match.

And the thing is, it's an easy fix.  Instead of starting the knit rows

K2, yo, ssk, k16,

do K3, yo, ssk, k15.

Problem solved.  Xs along both edges, as in the picture.  (Though, admittedly, that's not exactly what I'm doing, because I'm also slipping stitches at the start of rows in order to make a nice edge for picking up and knitting together stitches once the joining starts... and, really, shouldn't making a nice selvage be part of a pattern that has something like that?)