slipstitch

2005-10-19T18:25:00.000-07:00

I finished the mitts last night and I am really pleased with them:

My friends like them too, I have requests to make three pairs already!

I was really happy with the way the thumb gussets turned out. I'm excited to make some more and perfect the pattern... it's easy, but I like the thumb opening way better than the traditional easy armwarmer that just leaves a hole in the seam for your thumb.

2005-10-18T16:20:00.000-07:00

Poor dear blog. You have been so long neglected that I've shyed away from posting lately out of a sense of guilt and shame. But I'm back now. I should be posting with more frequency.

Why the neglect? I have been super busy with work. A new part of my job at the library since I started getting paid, rather than interning, is managing people! This is not my strong suit and it's taken a lot of energy and time to get accustomed to. The stress, along with camera issues and being in-between projects when this happened, led to a break in knitting. Yes, my sweet knitblog, I know you are thinking... "But knitting soothes you! Why not knit to help with the stress?" I was thinking that too. But everytime I tried to knit, I just got stressed out trying to figure out a new project or design or where I was with an old complicated project.

But this weekend, I actually picked up the needles again and made something new. Well, half of something... I designed a set of simple cabled wristers with a shaped thumb gussest. And my DH fixed the digital camera, so I'll post a picture when I finish up the other one.

Sorry to Tabbytuxedo and Erica and my secret pal for not posting in forever!

2005-09-14T14:50:00.000-07:00

This is a very good website for learning new things. I spent some time on the web last night trying to learn how to do paired increases and I couldn't figure out from any of the instructions where I should put my needles... the back bar two down from the last knit stitch on you left needle... yarg!

But knittinghelp.com has streaming videos! Just SHOW me where to stick my needles (yeah, that sounds like a bad pun, I know!) and I can learn it in a second. Deciphering written instructions, though, I might nevre get it right. So this place totally won me over with their videos. It's laid out very well too & they have videos of both continental and English style knitting of each technique!

I started the top-down raglan yesterday and I wanted to incorporate cables into the raglan shaping to match a cable/rib pattern that I wanted to do for the bottom band & cuffs. This is easy as pie if you are knitting each piece individually, but a little tough to conceptualize in the round... I had to rip out and start over, so I decided just to try paired increases. I have used double yarnover increases with two stitches between them before because I really like the way this looks, but for this particular sweater, I'm not going for the lacy look... but heaven's sake! It was difficult to figure out. I don't like k1 f&b or m1 for paired increasing, they look uneven, but I couldn't wrap my mind around the lifting up of the other stitch... it's different than a m1 because it's actually the stitch below and not the ladder in between the stitches... "bar" "ladder" &tc. it gets really confusing without adequate pictures. So yay for knittinghelp.com!

ps: This is the particular video that taught me what I needed to know.

2005-09-13T16:11:00.000-07:00

YAY! I got a present from my knitty secret pal today! She is awesome! Super-extra awesome too because she was so patient with me when we discovered that I had given her my old address in the survey instead of the new one (I can be a real ding-a-ling sometimes!) She had to resend my package... and she was still nice!

So anyhow, I got some great things that I love & I am, AGAIN!, so sad not to have a camera because I want to show them. Cool cd's, beautiful beaded necklace & stitchmarkers in the shape of STARS! These are so so so cool! I have never seen stitch markers like these & I love stars too. Very cool :) And also a ton of yarn recycled from a sweater. It's a lovely marled color combination of purples, lavender, indigo that is actually 8 small strands of different solid threads together. It's not really plyed, but it knits up suprisingly easily and looks very pretty. (Yes, I already knit a swatch at my lunchbreak! In fact, I knit a swatch and then cast on to make a top-down raglan cardigan!)

Thank you so much, Amberly!

On a side note about top-down raglans... they are so fun & easy! I just made the variation of uber-natural that I mentioned in my last post and this new sweater will be my 4th top-down raglan... all inspired by glampyre. I first made the 'boob-holder' and then a stripy short-sleeved cardigan inspired by the mini-sweater, then the last project & now this one. I love how there are no seams and it's a nice project to have for spacy times when you're on the go or you just want to watch tv or talk to people and still knit something. It's also so flexible... you just have to get a gauge you're pleased with, figure out how big you want the neck band (easy if you measure an exisiting sweater) and then go! Everything else is adjusted as you knit and you're free to add any pattern/texture/colors that you want. You can even use garter stitch edges and not have to make a button band or collar, if you want... or you can pick up stitches and rib for a traditional button band.
She has a guide to it here, but it involves a steek and grafting the sleeves, which is more trouble than necessary. Once you make any of her top-down patterns like uber-natural, the mini-sweater, or even the OSW, you can also see how to design your own with any yarn/gauge you like... and you can use the magic loop method so you don't even have to seam the sleeves, if you are clever. (This is my next great experiment) They are great! And that is the end of my ode to top-down sweaters.

2005-09-13T11:53:00.000-07:00

I'm almost done with the handspun demi-cardi. I have finished all the knitting and seaming... I just have to sew the button holes together and locate some silk ribbon to finish it off. I sorely wish my camera was in order because the sweater is lovely & I'm dying to show someone!

I used the ubernatural pattern from Magknits. It's designed by the amazing Stepahie Japel of Glampyre Knits. I was really doubtful that I could make this pattern work because it called for 800 yd for the medium and I only had about 250 in matching gauge yarns (the two handspuns), but I just cast on and started hashing things out. I wanted to make a cropped sweater but lengthen the sleeve... miraculously it worked!

I made the size small and only knit 12 rows of ribbing at the bottom instead of 20, staying on the size 15 needles rather than switching to 11. I also knit 12 rows of stockinette before doing 12 rows of ribbing for the sleeves, decreasing 2 on the 7th and 11th rows. The body is in sublty variagated blues/purlples/pinks & the ribbing is all in a periwinkle blue.

I was planning to use some buttons that I already had... but none seemed quite right. The only ones I liked were to small or too heavy. So for an alternate closure, I want to weave a fat satin silk ribbon right under the bust where it switches colors/stitch patterns and also around the switch on the sleeves & ties into a bow for decoration. I have to do some ribbon hunting, as you can't just buy 2" silk ribbon at Joann's... but I have some leads. There are few places online that sell what I want by the yard... but the shipping would be more than the cost of the ribbon, so I want to see if I can't find some around here. There is a needlepoint store that sells lots of ribbons & a high-end fabric store that may have some. Plus they do sell Hannah silk ribbon at my LYS. I was a solid satiny ribbon, if I can find it though.

Oh! I just remembered that I have two bone clasps... I may have to experiment with those too.

2005-09-06T12:48:00.000-07:00

Arg! I am a project whore!
I was just getting going with the cable sweater from VK and then when I went over to my parents' for Labor Day, they gave be this skein of yarn that my aunt and uncle had bought for me while visiting Vancouver BC. It's super thick handspun, handdyed wool in subtle shades of lavender and periwinkle. It's gorgeous and just calling out to be knit into something... anything! So I was putting away some craft things yesterday, while cleaning my apartment & I keep my stash in these cupboards above my closet. I open the cupboard and guess what falls on my head... a ball of super thick handdspun pale tuquoise/periwinkle/lavender yarn that I traded this spring with Midnight Sky Fibers and it matches perfectly! Now I have about 250 yd of these two combined and some Rowan variagated Big Wool and some heathery sky blue bulky wool/mohair that all desparately want to be made into a little cropped sweater or shrug or something. What to do?

I'm going to try to get a bit further along with the cables before I cheat on them with the super chunky handspuns... but they are awfully tempting. Maybe just a gauge swatch or two?!

Oh and I mentioned that I wanted to donate my baby hats to craftstersunited... but I got really confused with how to do it & then discovered that you have to have manage the selling yourself and just donate the $. They are also really swamped with donations right now. Since my camera is broken right now and I don't already have an etsy.com store, this was looking very complicated. So, as a solution I decided to try to do something more complicated! I e-mailed the student fiber guild here to see if they would like to help me to organize a booth at the street fair that kicks off the beginning of school to sell art and hand-made crafts locally and then donate the $ to the Red Cross or some other organization. (People are a little down on the Red Cross at times, but it seems like the bigger organizations like RC are better able to respond to disasters of this magnitude.)

I'm still waiting to hear from them, but I think it would be awesome. I just got the idea while waling to work this morning and I'm still thinking up ideas on how to make it work.

Another idea would be to contact some of the downtown arts org. folks to see if I could 'rent' (for free) an empty storefront downtown. Often when a store is empty, the owners let the arts folks set up galleries or installation pieces in the windows... so maybe they would let me put up a display of crafts & art for auction somewhere downtown. If I can get this organized, then I could go to the papers in town for publicity. They love arts stuff & philanthropy stuff... so art philathropy is sure to be popular. Hopefully I can actually make a difference!

2005-09-05T11:56:00.000-07:00

I've got pictures!

I went over to my parents' house yesterday and used the washer to felt my fairisle bag.

Here's a close up:

This is my first (intentional) felting project ever and I am very pleased. This is the second version of this pattern that I have made. I forgot to take the first one over to snap a picture of, but it's not felted. I made it with vairous shades of green/blue (some noro kureyon) and the burgundy tweed that I used on the second one. It was so fun to watch the bag take shape and I love how it shrunk more on the fairisle band in the middle to create a sort of kicky organic shape. Now I have to figure out how I want to do the handles, felt them if I decide to make knitted handles and add a zipper to keep all my stuff in place. I also kind of want to add some pom-poms like this bag that posted on knitty as inspiration for fall. I love the leather trim & was trying to figure out how I could make a leather strap for it. I had a brown suede purse from target that crapped out a while ago and I held onto it for abouta year before sending it off to goodwill last month when we moved. I wish I had it now to salvage some suede for a strap... but you can't keep everything. So I'll have to come up with another solution.

Also photographed my progress on #14 form fall VK.

Here's an up-close of the cable pattern. You can see how mine all twist in the same direction, rather than opposites. Oh well. :(

And finally... some unfinished business with that shrug that I made last month. It's a Debbie Bliss pattern from summer interweave that I converted from size 5 needles to size 8, so I could knit it with 2 skeins of Noro Silk Garden that my mom gave me for my birthday. It's trimmed with black baby alpaca.

I used up all but about 18" of the silk garden & the shrug fits smaller than the pattern calls for, but it's cute. I've gotten compliments on it each time I've worn it. It goes with everything too!

I'd like to make another version following the pattern for the correct bust size, so I could have a roomier one too. A girl I know that works at my LYS knit it with the really Debbie Bliss yarn in a larger size and I see her wearing it all the time; it looks so comfy and cute. I'll tack in onto my infinitely long to-do list!

2005-09-04T11:47:00.000-07:00

I'm going to do this:

Craft Revolution

I have about 30 baby hats that I made last fall to try to sell, but never found a good place to sell them. I had been thinking of posting them on etsy already, but now I can donate them. My heart is breaking because I want to send money but I don't have any until the 30th. This is a good thing to do until then, though.

2005-09-03T19:51:00.000-07:00

Okay! Jennifer of Craft Lilly's Garden sold me on the Fall Cable Knit-Along. (It wasn't a very hard sell. I love Fall, I love cables, and I love KALs, so how could I go wrong?!)

I think I'll finish my current cable project before the 9/22 start date, so I'll have to dream up something else to knit for this one. A couple ideas are to finish the 13-stitch claw pattern sweater I am started designing for Travis or to make the textured/cabled vest I like from VK:

But after the disaster I've had with this other VK pattern, I am a little gunshy. One consolation, there are no corrections for it listed on the website... yet.

We'll see. I know I'll have fun choosing a project, now back to knitting!

2005-09-03T16:56:00.000-07:00

Just discovered this quiz again while poking around in the myspace knitting groups and here it is:

You are Mohair.
You are a warm and fuzzy type who works well with
others, doing your share without being too
weighty. You can be stubborn and absolutely
refuse to change your position once it is set,
but that's okay since you are good at covering
up your mistakes.

What kind of yarn are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Last time I took this quiz (over a year ago...) I came out as dish cloth cotton! My life is definitely improving if I am now mohair. I like the description of mohair's personality better than that of aforementioned dishcoth cotton.

2005-09-03T16:09:00.000-07:00

Whew! I finally made a rough approximation of a correct cable pattern out of the mush that was #14 in the fall issue of Vogue Knitting. My twists all go in the same direction, but the big and little twists in the picture go in opposite directions and I think the big ones are bigger in the photo than mine are (due to the *&%%%$! chart being so messed up!) The cable chart is shite and the corrections to it only go so far in giving you the information you need to replicate the picture... but who cares if my all twists go in the same direction and are not exactly the same size as the picture. They are consistent throughout & they look fine, just not quite like the photo. That's okay, though... who needs to be a cookie cutter, anyway?! After struggling with the foundation of the cable pattern for the last three days, I completed the entire back piece in a matter of hours, sitting around at my favorite coffee shop this afternoon. The sweater will probably be done by the end of the week at this rate. Too bad I can't take a picture right now, but tomorrow I am having a labor day weekend get-together with my parents and I think I'll use their digital camera to take some pictures while I'm over. They have the same one that I just broke, only a more recent model (the Kodak Easyshare) so I ought to be able to bring my laptop over and download the pics direectly into my 'puter.

I think I might actually wear this sweater... all the other versions I knit with this yarn (Misti Alpaca Chunky) were horrible looking on me. I love the feel of the yarn while working with it, but not so much how it wears... for one thing it sheds like a monster. Another it's hotter than hades (Alpaca is super super warm for it's weight, so chunky weight alpaca is really intense!) and so, since it's mostly an outdoor sweater, but it sheds all over you, you either end up inside covered in fuzz or inside with your sweater on so no one sees you are covered in fuzz, sweating miserably because you are so gosh-durn hot!

Not a good combination, as you might imagine. I am noticing much less fuzziness the third time of knitting with this same batch of yarn... I think the multiple froggings and the minimal amount of wear the sweater got in it's past-life did reduce the shedding a bit. So, I am crossing my fingers that I'll be able to wear this one and LIKE it.

2005-09-02T15:00:00.000-07:00

Just checking out Knit Chick's blog after she replied to my post on knitty about the mistakes in VK and found this quiz. As a coffee addict, I had to know... what kind of coffee am I?

You Are a Soy Latte

Yeah, you've got a bit of that healthy hippie thing going on

But you're more Kate Hudson urban bohemian than Phish groupie

You're worldly and well traveled... and you know where to get the best coffee in town.

All your experience makes you a compassionate person - and a caring girlfriend.

What Kind Of Coffee Are You? Take This Quiz :-)

Find the Love of Your Life
(and More Love Quizzes) at Your New Romance.

I am so NOT a soy latte!!!!!!
I am actually a plain coffee with milk and occassionally a bit of sugar girl, thank you very much. I don't like lattes because it's too much milk not enough coffee and I actually kind of hate soy milk. (I'm totally down with non-dairy, just not soy... I like rice, oat, almond, or hazelnut milks much better... almond is my fave.) But oh well. Other than the fact that I would never drink a soy latte, the comments are very nice!

2005-09-02T13:35:00.000-07:00

So I was totally in love with the cropped cable sweater that I started a couple days ago (#14 from this fall's VK) until I got to the cable section. From the beginning, I intuitively wanted to bring the knits in front of the purls... but the pattern reads:

4-st LPC: Sl 2 sts to cn and hold to back, p2 k2 from cn.

After three tries and three times of knitting something that looked more like a train wreck than a cable pattern, I've learned my lesson. And that lesson, girls (and any boys who happen to be reading) is to trust your intuition. The only way to make this sweater look right is to bring the purl stitches behing the knits, thusly:

4-st LPC: Sl 2 sts to cn and hold to FRONT, p2, k2 from cn.

So, then I checked out the VK website and sure enough these corrections were listed:

Pattern #14, page 121

4-st LPC should read: Sl 2 sts to cn and hold in front, p2, k2 from cn.

This will create the correct crossover in the larger cable.

The smaller cable should have 4-st LC on rows 1, 5, 9, 13, 17, 21, 25 as follows: Sl 2 sts to cn and hold to front, k2, k2 from cn.

The smaller cable was also twisted in the wrong direction... so basically all of their instructions were F*ed up!

The caption with the picture actually says "an ideal project for knitters new to cables". If I were new to cables this would be the ideal pattern to make me burst in to tears, run away screaming, and never try cables again.

I'm no Meg Swansen, but I'm not new to cables either... so I was glad to figure out the mistake and tonight I will try with corrected instructions to make a pretty sweater.

2005-08-30T23:56:00.000-07:00

I started the VK sweater I mentioned and I am in alpaca heaven. You know the Taco Bell commercial where the dorky people are sitting around in a park eating tacos and making up strange hybid words for the texture? (If not, more power to you... it means you've been doing something better with yourself that watching CSI, unlike me!) Well, anyhow... I have been mulling over delcious combinations of words to describe this yarn ever since I cast on. Lummilushious is what I have settled on... Luxurious + yummy + lush + delicious.

What ever you call it, it feel SO good to knit.

And the pattern is knitting up fast. I had already knit this yarn in to 1.5 ill-fated sweaters and it's been frogged within an inch of its life, so this one has to work. It's on a smaller needle than previously. I started with 15's and made half a sweater that stretched to the size of a small island country, then remade it with 13's and it was okay, but sort of flacid,lifeless and baggy in all the wrong places, so I never wore it.

Finally. I realized I was just using to big a size of needles. It's all springy and the stitch definition is great at a smaller size. Plus I think the cables will look so nice. I'm going to start them in 3 more rows.

Oh. I wish I could show you a picture, but since I broke my camera... all I have to offer in the way of eye candy is this:

Which Trainspotting Character Are You?

I'm not sure if I got her because she like the only girl in the movie or if I really am a sassy school girl, but I'd like to think I was. ;)

2005-08-29T21:30:00.000-07:00

A couple days ago I finally had some time and was ready to take pictures and post a big post about all my recent projects... I was headed out the door wwith projects in hand to photograph and then I dropped my digital camera. DROPPED MY CAMERA!!!! And it's now broken. :(
So, I still have nothing to show. I'm so sad. It's not the greates camera (Kodak Easy Share from four years ago) but it worked pretty well and it's expensive enough that I can't afford to replace it for a while. It may be able to be fixed. Th problem is with the button that takes the pictures. It's sort of wonky and seems permanetly held down and out of place. The camera still turns on and does view finder and all, but the button to take the pictures isn't working. I'll have to wait until next month to be able to afford to take it somewhere to get looked at. I made a cursory attempt to snap it back into place, but thought better of it because I was worried I could damage it even more.

So I am sad about that.

As far as knitting goes, I haven't been doing too much lately. I made two fairisle bags. One I was planning to felt & attempted to felt it stovetop-style, but it wouldn't have it. It's lamb's pride, so I know it will felt in a washer. I just have to go over to my parents' house or something to find a washer I can play around with. I've never tried felting at a laundromat and our new apartment doesn't have hookups.

Other than that, I have been playing around, trying to figure out good presents for my secret pal and get inspired again. Our house is still not arranged from moving. We moved, I started my new job, and them we went out of town for a wedding, so this is my first chance to breathe in a long time.

I plan to do a ton of knitting in the next two weeks... my Travis is out of town visiting family, so I'll have lots of down time. I just bought the new VK today. I already hav ethe perfect yarn to make this:

It's burgundy Misti Alpaca Bulky weight. A very yummy (and very warm) affordable alpaca. It's a great substitute for Debbie Bliss chunky alpaca if you want a less pricy version that's still lusciously soft.

I found the most gorgeous colorway of Naturewolle. It's all pink. red, white candy colors... handspun and hand-dyed yarn from Germany. At 22.95 per 110 yd skein, however, I don't thing I'll be doing much with it soon. Maybe after I get paid (finally! but I have to wait until the end of September.) I might splurge and try one.

It was cold and rainy today, with spots of mugginess. It feels like fall is on its way and I think I need a nice new scarf. I have one that I need to finish up. A skinny scarf with different bits of yarn and this novelty railroad yarn that my husband's aunt gave me for X-mas last year. It doesn't strike me as being particularly warm.

I think that pink/red/white yarn would make a yummy scarf. I just wouldn't want to spend almost 50 bucks and get tired of it after a season. But maybe I'll love it forever, who knows...

More later, gonna stop typin' and start knittin'.

2005-08-25T20:41:00.000-07:00

This is my 100th post!
Unfortunatly it's just to let you know that my pirate name is:

My pirate name is:

Calico Anne Rackham

Often indecisive, you can't even choose a favorite color. You're apt to follow wherever the wind blows you, just like Calico Jack Rackham, your namesake. You have the good fortune of having a good name, since Rackham (pronounced RACKem, not rack-ham) is one of the coolest sounding surnames for a pirate. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from fidius.org.

There's a thread on knitty about porn star names, opera names, and then someone posted the pirate name link... I couldn't resist.
My husband is Black Davey Bonney in pirate world. Quite a pair!

2005-08-19T14:11:00.000-07:00

I'm so ashamed to show my face. Still no pictures. I did unpack the camera last night to take pictures for a swap that I was trying to work out on knitty... but didn't snap any of my actual finished objects or works in progress.

I did get my secret pal today, though. Woo hoo!

In honor of all the secret pal stuff, I've been working on 100 things about me. I only have 50 so far. I'm not very good at those kinds of lists... but it's up at my finished object gallery on blogspirit & I'll make a link on the side bar to it too.

I'm excited about being part of the secret pal exchange. It's always fun to lavish kindness on someone and it will be a fun excuse to visit yarn shops and other fun stores for little goodies. I had all these ideas about themed packages and such... but now that I got assigned a pal, I think I'll have to rethink some of the ideas and try to figure out what's best for her tastes. That's all the fun!

2005-08-16T16:03:00.000-07:00

Been moving, which has made it even harder to keep up. The camera has not found it's way out of a box to post pictures yet, either... but I do have internet at home now, so as soon as I get settled in, I'll be posting like a fiend.

It's okay that I can't post pictures right now, anyway because I am working on a top secret project for my knitty secret pal. We still haven't been assigned our pals, but I found a cute project that I wanted to try and I think barring allergies or very specific color preferences... it will be a general enough gift that it can work for who ever I get assigned to. I'm so excited. This is my first SP ever and I have so many ideas.

And I just started working for $ at the library where I have been interning/volunteering for the last 7 months... so I can actually afford to pamper my SP!

In preparation for SP5, I'm also going to do a 100 things about me list. Look for it to appear on my sidebar links pretty soon if you wanted to know all about me (....and my hobbies, my favorite foods and my birthday.... I <3 Weezer)

2005-08-03T14:33:00.000-07:00

I am such a bad blogirl!

I did have a wonderful trade with Caroline of Westwind Woman. I met her randomly right after Country Fair and she was wearing the most lovely crocheted mitts from some beautiful variagated blue-green mohair. She had traded for the yarn at the fair and offered to trade with me a finished pair of mitts for some of my yarn. She's a really amazing and inspiring person and does great work, too. The mitts fit perfectly and are even specially shaped around the thumb and palm to be a rightie and leftie, so they're perfect. I tried to pick some of the best yarns that I could bring myself to part with because I wanted to give her something really nice in trade & then she thought I had given her too much, so she made me a crocheted bikini top too! It's made from a skein of tobacco brown Cotton Twist that I put in the trade and trimmed with some beautiful variagated ribbon yarn in brown, gold, and rosy colors. I promised to e-mail her pictures & I'll post them here too, when I get to it.

I finished the silk garden bolero, trimmed with black baby alpaca and it's very yummy. Again, no pictures yet, as my camera is fritzy these days & now my photographer (erm... husband)is out of town until Sunday, so no action shots for a little while. I'll try to post at least a flat one soon.

But after the bolero, I was sort of worn out with knitting because it is so gawd-awful hot right now & I couldn't figure out a new project. Oh and the only thing current on the needles is my size 3 needles cotton gardigan that is in a miles of endless stockinette stitch right now & mind-numbingly boring.

I've been feeling like I barely have the muster for sitting up straight in this heat, much less pouring my energy into a knitting project.

Thus, I've been on a mini-hiatus. It's been a little over a week and I think I am now starting to get an urge to get back into it. Especially with my sweetie gone for a few days, it will be nice to cozy up to a new project. Still trying to figure out what, though. We'll see what happens. I have a few ideas, so I'll make a list for myself:

Yarn on the top of my list to make into things:
4 skeins worsted natural color hemp/cotton.
146 yd bulky pale blue/lavender handspun from Midnight Sky Fibers
2 skeins worsted weight Lamb's Pride, black (for some sort of cable-y sweater vest)
5 skeins bulky weight Misti Baby Alpaca, burgundy. I want to see if I can't make this yarn into this when the magazine comes out on the newsstands... so I guess it's spoken for.

I want to make a nice cardigan with the hemp/cotton. Something not too busy, but with lace or cable details to make it interesting. I usually don't wear neutral colors, as they tend to look bad with my skin tone, but I think the warmth of the hemp fiber gives this neutral a nice golden overtone that will be pretty. It's a very soft combination that will just get softer with time. I am excited about seeing how it will wear.

I am in a void about what to do withthe handspun and it is so pretty that I want to do something really special with it. I have a few yarns that might combine with it, but I don't want to detract from the beauty of this yarn.

Hmm. Tonight I'll have to daydream about what to do next and maybe tomorrow, I'll have something figured out.

2005-07-23T17:42:00.000-07:00

Ah, the siren call of silk garden.

I was planning to get to work on designing my cable sweater vest, but I couldn't get this Debbie Bliss bolero pattern from the summer issue of Interweave out of my mind, for the new silk garden that I got for my birthday. When we were at the yarn store, we saw her whole line of new pattern books for all her new fall yarns and there were patterns for the same style of bolero out of every yarn she has... so I had boleros on the breain and I realized how beautiful the stripes of silk garden would be in a sidesways knit bolero, with the black lamb's pride for the ribbed edging. And thus a project was begun! Since I refuse to buy her expensive pattern pamphlets (Debbie Bliss actually makes me a little hot under the collar, but I'll talk about this later.) I had to convert the gauge on the pattern from Interweave to get approximately the same style pattern. It's fun, though... it uses a very math-y part of my brain that doesn't often get used much past calculating tips at restaurants.

I am having some technical difficulties taking and posting pictures at the moment, so all I can offer you is this link to an impressionistic photo of the yarn on my long-neglected gallery blog I really have to update this with some more finished objects some time soon! Yikes!

So, on to my beef with Debbie Bliss. I think that she designs lovely, tasteful things with nice details... especially for children. But I think she is sort of a fascist when it comes to individual creativity and also she is secretive about the yardage of her yarn and other information in her patterns, that makes it hard to adapt her sizing and her yarn choices. I read an interview of her in Interweavea while back where she was asked about this and she commented that she designs exact garments that are not supposed to me modified or adapted. Well, if I was going to knit something with 'off-the-rack' styling, I'd save myself the trouble and expense and buy an off the rack garment in the mall. I knit so I can express myself & me moved and inspired by different yarns, patterns, and ideas. I also knit because I have a unique body shape & I like to wear clothes that actually fit me. So, I think it's frustrating when a designer is so anal about their designs that they don't factor in the creativitiy of the knitters who will be making their designs. That's one thing I love about knitty and online designers like glampyre. I love her site because she makes great, creative designs with lots of flexibility & then revels in her readers' creative interpretations of these designs. The message boards of knitty & all the variations of Lelah are wonderful examples of individual creativity and I find them inspiring. Why should the designers have all the fun? It's not fair and it's not right. And that is my beef with Debbie Bliss.

2005-07-22T16:49:00.000-07:00

I got my first tag from Jennifer & I'm excited to play along, but I'm not sure who to tag. Hmm... I think I'll tag that knitting blog, soap fiber gal, and a new blogger, whose blog I recently found on knitty, Kokoknit.
There's two, one is a blast from the past & the other is about munchies, music, and money, among other things. Okay, here goes!

What was I doing 10 years ago?

I was 17 years old and enjoying the summer before my senior year in high school. I worked at a dancewear & theatrical supplies store, blowing all my paychecks on clothes and CD's. I hung out a lot with my high school boyfriend & was sure we would get married and be together forever. I was worried about what colleges to apply to and about moving away from him & my hometown... but I was pretty much carefree.

5 years ago?

At 21, I had just graduated with an art history degree from Whitman College in Walla Walla, WA. I was hanging out in Walla Walla, working full time as a cataloging assistant at the library and taking long drives and hikes in the Blue Mountains and the high desert around Walla Walla. Also hanging out with my then boyfriend (who turned out to be a real jerk!) and my good friends Andrea, Doug, and Carrie, playing pool, singing karoke at the bar of this Chinese restaurant called Golden Horse & barbequing all the time... about all you can do in the summer in a small town. When I wasn't working or hanging out with my friends, I was busy packing up my stuff to move to Massachusetts for graduate school at Williams College.

1 year ago?

I was finishing up my last class at Indiana University for my masters of library science... a divergence from the career path I thought I was heading into 5 years ago. I was spending time with my husband & our friends Dave & August, watching lots of anime & documetaries from the public library, trying to arrange an internship, and again packing to move back home to Oregon.

Yesterday?

It was my BIRTHDAY! I had sushi for lunch with my husband, we went shopping for some much-needed new clothes, had a fantastic dinner with my parents & grandma, and then went out for drinks with a few friends.

Today?

I had coffee & knit with my mom and then we stopped by the LYS, where she bought me two skeins of noro silk garden and I bought two skeins of lambs pride black worsted weight. The black is going to be a cropped cable-y sweater vest, the silk garden is just going to be beautiful until I figure out what to do with it!

Tomorrow?

We're moving AGAIN! (Hmm, I notice a trend of moving in the summers.) Not tomorrow, but we do have to show our apartment tomorrow, so I'll probably be running around trying to tidy everything up & then just relaxing and ???

Now on to the second one:

5 snacks I enjoy:
Gummi candy, fruit, corn chips with salsa and guacamole, veggies and ranch, candied ginger.

5 bands and singers for which I know most of their stuff: These are mostly from high school! Tori Amos (though I have been falling behind with her latest stuff), They Might Be Giants, Bjork, Bob Dylan (through my husband), Greg Brown.

What would I do with 100,000,000?
Run away to the five locations in the next question with my husband, buy all the yarn I want & have all the time to knit with it, take weaving, print-making, and book arts classes & set up my own art studio, give everyone I love extravagant presents all time, give an endowment to the Blue Mountain humane society, and to some other charities that are important to me.

5 locations I'd run away to: Nice, France. Thailand (my husband has lived there for 2 years & fromm his descriptions I am dying to go.) Prague. A sleeper car on the train going between Moscow & Beijing. Turkey.

5 bad habits: I'm easily distracted by new things... so I neglect older projects and things like house work. I take too long telling stories by adding too many details, until people get bored. I love sugar too much. I worry about things that I can't change. I'm shy of telephones, so I sometimes don't call my friends enough.

Whew! That's a lot of stuff about me. I'll post more about my latest yarn purchases and plans later. I am sort of in limbo with the candy tank being done, but I am excited to make myself a sweater vest. (I never thought that I would say that but I have this idea for a vest that I can't get out of my mind.) So, I think it would be a fun project with cables instead of lace, for a change. I tried casting on for another lace tank, but was totally burnt out on lace charts and yarnovers... so cables and wool seem appealing.

Oh & big thank-yous for all the sweet comments about the candy tank!

2005-07-20T11:09:00.000-07:00

I want Candy!

My new candy-colored tank, that is! I'm really happy with it & it's finished just in time to wear to my birthday party tomorrow! My favorite part about it is that I designed the top part myself & it was a really fun and challenging project. I made the bottom part using the lace chart from the Acorn Tank in Summer '05 Interweave & then switched to the ribbing, adding the double yarn-overs at the points of each lace repeat. Then, I used the cup shaping technique I had learned from the last tank I made but left the stitches for each cup live...

I cast on strap stitches on either side & continued knitting across the front, doing a paired set of decreases every row where the cup met. Then, I cast off & crocheted a picot edging. I've been having some photographic issues these days, so the pictures that Travis took of me wearing the tank didn't turn out. I did manage to take a couple wonky self-potraits this morning that give you an idea of what it's like, though.

And just to get caught up on photographs... here's the hemp/cotton yarn that I traded my copy of Vintage Knits for on knitty.

My trading partner was so sweet that she added an extra ball from what we had decided on... now I have 1000 yards of worsted weight, which is enough to do many things. I'm not sure yet what it will become. I was thinking of making Travis a sweater; but, as I mentioned before, I'd have to add about 500 yd of some other yarn to make his size... so that is still on the back burner.

I did make him a summer hat last weekend, though.

The hem is made from some leftover Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece and the body is from a single skein that was part of a big trade I did with the lovely Thea of knitty. The light pink and brick red yarns in the candy tank are also from the trade, as well as many more wonderful cotton yarns for summer knitting, including 10 skeins of minty green Jaeger cotton, which is slowly but surely turning into a cardigan.

I'm thinking of using the rest of the cotton fleece pictured above in comination with another single from the trade, an icy lavender pink cotton, to make another tank. I am totally addicted to summer knitting now & I'm having fun designing variations on exisiting patterns to suit my yarns & tastes. The candy tank was really fun because I just chose details from other patterns that I liked and melded them to gether with a little creative tinking to make something just my own. This seems to be my general 'design' strategy... I guess I'm sort of a Frankenstein knitter.

So, the burgundy/lavender tank is on my list, but also thismorning I discovered a delightful design on knitty for the Prosperous Plum Tank and I'm thinking this will be high on my 'to knit' list. Only two skeins of cotton fleece makes it pretty affordable, too & my mom does want to take me yarn shopping for my birthday...

2005-07-13T15:47:00.000-07:00

A pattern from a neat knit blog that I discovered today & want to add to my endless to-do list:
Fanny Price

Also, I like this one, too:
Tammy Shrug

So many shrugs, so little time.

2005-07-13T13:52:00.000-07:00

I finished the cups on my Candy tank this morning while having a knitting date with my mom & I am so excited. They fit the bodice beautifully and I had an epiphany about how to do the straps that I am really excited about. I'll get photos together and post a bunch about it tomorrow.

Also, started the armhole shaping on the green Jaeger cotton sweater. It's coming along really quickly, for something on size 3 needles. I am actually really digging knitting with smaller size needles lately. The movements are light and small & the yarn & projects don't get too bulky, so it's a lot easier on my hands. I am really scared that I'll have problems with my hands and wrists as I get older & I don't ever want to have to stop knitting, so it's good to know what tricks can help preserve my ability to knit.

I had such fun with my mom... she's a teacher and it's summer vacation for her, plus these last couple weeks I've just been volunteering at the library in the afternoons, so we've gotten together to knit & chat 3 times recently. So great! Today we also stopped at this little store I love. It's called Hiron's & it's a stationary/gift/pharmacy/post office/general store right in our neighborhood that always seems to have what you're looking for & more. Today I found something awesome there!

A little background: My primary mode of transportation is walking, so my feet get really beat up, especially in the summer. I just got a beautiful new pair of Dansko sandals that were on sale! (I've never seen Dansko's on sale till this) They were a great deal, so my mom gave them to me for an early b-day present. I felt like now that I have such nice shoes, I really want to keep my footsies in better shape, so I was looking at foot care stuff yesterday at a store near the university & tested out this wonderful foot creme but it was $18, which is too expensive for me right now.
I'd gotten this Poor Soles foot stick in Hiron's bargain bin for $6 about a month ago, though, so today I looked again & they had not one but TWO containers of the Rescue Me foot creme on sale for only $5 each! I told my mom that we both had to get them and I am so happy! I love nice body stuff, but it's so pricey that I can't afford it very often. This was so awesome to find exactly what I'd been dreaming of buying for less than a 1/3 of the normal price. I think the cosmos has been giving me some good sales for my birthday this year! I feel so lucky!

2005-07-11T13:55:00.000-07:00

No new pictures, though I have finished the section of the Canty tank that I was working on. It doesn't look too much different than the photo, except that it comes to a point in the center, where the cups will be attached. I cast on for them last night.

I traded Vintage Knits by Sarah Dallas for three balls of cotton/hemp yarn today and I am looking forward to seeing what this yarn is like. I think I will try to use in in combination with some of this Pakucho Cotton that's on sale at elann.com. I'm not sure what color would look best, but I want to make a simple summer sweater for Travis with these. I thought it would be nice to make the body and the top of the sleeves from one and the sleeves from around the biceps down, the other. I would like to make the contrast color on the sleeves out of the softer cotton so the hemp doesn't scratch at the wrists, but I don't know if 750 yds of worsted weight would make a body and the top of the sleeves for someone as tall as Travis. I still haven't figured out how to knit for him as intuitively as I can for myself...

Well, you wouldn't know unless I told you; but I just checked out this handy yardage estimator and discovered that 750 yd is just over half of what I would need to make a men's large sweater. Now Travis is not large around, but he has a long torso and very long arms, so I figured that it would be best to err on the large side. That would be 9 balls of Pakucho... hmm, how to combine these yarns?

Maybe a saddle-type sleeve all in pakucho, with the neckband also in pakucho & the body all in hemp/cotton. I suppose if worse came to worst, I could also buy more hemp/cotton yarn too. That would actually be cheaper and maybe it would be nice to make something simple for Travis. I always want to make him crazy sweaters to show that I put a lot of time and care into them. I love his so much that plain ol' stockinette just doesn't seem enough to express my feelings, but I think sometimes I get carried away. I really have to finish up the crazy-stripe sweater soon and then I think I would like to make him something plain, but very well crafted. I guess I love him enough to make him something plain, if that is what he would get the most use and pleasure from.

2005-07-09T16:13:00.000-07:00

I've got the long-awaited photographs today!

Here's the Luminous Lace tank that I finished forever-ago, but never got a chance to post before i got bogged down with my temp job.

I tried to take a picture of myself wearing it, but self-portraiture is not my strong-point & I didn't want to wait for someone else to take it, since I've been so remiss for so long. This is the best I could do, which shows a little bit of how it looks on.

My latest tank project is the candy-colored one & I am really pleased with how the transition from acorn pattern to ribbing turned out.

I am copying another trick from the Luminous Lace tank and doing the shaping my changing needle size, rather than number of stitches. This is different because I am not knitting in the round and am knitting from hem up... but the idea is the same and so far, I like it. I went from size 7 to size 6 at the second pale pink acorn pattern & am just about to switch to 4's for the rest of the ribbing, so it really stays in place around the ribcage. On my first tank, I added in the ribbon (which I got the idea for from the Lelah tube top) and that really makes it stay in place better around the ribcage, but the cotton seems to stretch with each wearing, so I am hoping if I wash it and dry it gently that it will sort of tighten up again, the way jeans do every time you wash them. I don't want to take any chances on this pinky one being too saggy, though, because I don't want to have to put a ribbon through every lace tank I make, or they'll all look the same.

Finally, I am also working on the vintage-style cardigan from this spring's Interweave. It's not much to look at yet, but it's coming along.

Some of the stockinette stitches are a little wonky... I find I have this trouble with fine-gauge cotton... but not near as bad as with some of the cheapy cotton yarn I've knit with in the past. This is the Jaeger that I traded for and it knits up very well. I think that as soon as I block this, it will all even out. I am so excited to have a nice, simple cotton summer cardigan that I made! It will be a real first for me. I feel that I am learning so much about cotton & summer knitting this year. It's fun!

2005-07-06T15:14:00.000-07:00

Found a good hat pattern while catching up on everything at the knitty coffee shop. I don't want to forget...

And the Tivoli tee that looks very cute... and it's a summer knit that I might actually be able to wear to work!

Also, I just saw some more versions of Lelah and I think that I may have to make this one after I finish my current tank project. I love the look, but was afraid of the tube-top style. I have, however, recently picked up a little tube top at a thrift store that is one of my favorite summer weekend tops now. I like it because it is such a clear difference from 'work clothes' without being dreadfully immodest. (Is that a word?) Ah... so many many projects to make.

2005-07-06T13:27:00.000-07:00

My poor dear blog. I have missed you so much.
I have been stuck temping intensely for the last month and have had no time to spend either knitting or blogging. Finally this temp assignment is over and I am back to volunteering at the library and knitting a lot. I still have to take photos and all... but I do plan to devote more time to my knitting and blogging again.

I am currently working on two projects... both from yarn that I got from a swap with Thea from knitty in an AWESOME trade. First: the 'vintage' pink cardigan from Spring Interweave '05 (only in pale green Jaeger cotton) and a modification of the Acorn tank from Summer Interweave '05. I'm making this in pale pink, fuschia, and brick red, which looks really cool with the wavy lace pattern. I finally realized that you have to choose a yarn that is much, much thinner than you would normally choose for size 7 needles in order to match gauge. The result is a light & floaty lace. It's nice, but I don't like the reverse stockinette ridges, because I think they make the fabric too thick. If I were to do it over, I would probably skip them & just knit that whole section in stockinette.

My plan though, is to just make the wavy lace for about 8" on the hem & then to switch to solid color ribbing for the rib cage (hmm... I guess that's fitting that I would do ribbing on the ribs!) Then, I will make two cups, like for the luscious lace tank I recently finished, with contrasting crochet trim. This is cool because it fits together three ideas that I have been playing with lately.

First, I wanted to make the tank on the cover of Sarah Dallas's Vintage Knits because I love the contrasting lace trim. But I wasn't really crazy about the rest of the pattern & was worried that I would end up with a row of yarn overs right where I could potentially reveal something pretty embarrassing if I didn't wear a bra with the tank. Second, I got these lovely pale pink and brick red cotton yarns from the swap & this rekindled a long time obsession I have had with pink/red color combination. I wanted to finally make something that explores this slightly irreverent candy-colored combination. And finally, I have swatched and swatched for the Acorn tank, only to realize when I finally found the right yarn for it, that I don't want a WHOLE tank made out of this scallopy pattern. So now I am just putting a few wavy scallop rows around the bottom. Photos will be posted sometime. Hopefully soon.

And finally, I also met a girl this weekend who is inheriting her mom's antique shop & turning it into an art/craft collective & coffeeshop. I'm really excited that I might be able to consign the oodles of baby hats that I made and also, she really liked the funky wristers that I was wearing, so I am working on a few different things to take in for her to check out. Wristers are really fun and so fast to make... good fun for playing with colors & interesting yarn combinations or stitch patterns. Hopefully someone might buy them!

2005-06-09T23:24:00.000-07:00

***warning, this is a little bit of a meme post***
Whew! I feel like I almost forgot how to type it has been so long! I just haven't had much of a chance to get online since I started this job & things have been very hectic, but they are starting to even out. I have been sort of 'under the table' offered a permanent postion at the place where I've been temping that involves more than just filing. The boss can't really talk to me about it until next week when I'm not working through the temp agency; but one of my co-workers explained the situation to me & I think it will work out. It's in a medical records department, so it's almost even in my field! It would have benfits and a semi-living wage, which would be like winning the lottery compared to living off Travis' student loans for the last 9 months. Also we are preparing to move [hopefully closer to campus and maybe to my new work], so things are getting crazy. But in a good & exciting way!

Amidst all the chaos, I have also been knitting, though I don't have the photos to prove it. (Check back this weekend.) I finished the lacey tank from Interweave, with a few small modifications to make it fit me right. I LOVE it. It is my first true summer knitting success. Also made a mini version of Teva Durham's Leaf Cravat in fingering white cotton for my friend who is graduating this weekend. I also found a really neat black & white rhinestone pin to match it. She has a really quirky & original style that I had a little trouble figuring out a last minute present for... but I think she liked it okay. Whatever, it's the thought that counts & I do think that she liked getting a present. Also making the rounds on the Big Bag. That is what I am going to turn my full attention to now that I've got the two little things out of the way. I also think I found a bag that I can transport the giant project in and it can become my new commuting project which will make me able to finish in no time at all, as I spend a ton of time on the bus these days.

I was super-excited to get another wonderful trade through knitty today. Lots of gorgeous cotton yarns that will be wonderful for summer knitting. I can't wait to guage swatch for the Acorn tank. I'm crossing my fingers that this might work! Or, I may also try swatching for a few other things I've been daydreaming of... we'll see.

I'll show lots of pictures and details soon. Thanks everyone who has been reading and checking in on my blog even though I have been such a bad poster lately! I promise that it will get more interesting soon!

2005-06-01T18:26:00.000-07:00

I started a temp job this week working the medical records department of a big occupational therapy office & I have been so busy that I haven't had much time to knit or blog... but I have been making the rounds on the 'Big Bag' and I have a new knitting opportunity now... commuter knitting. My job is way across town in this sort of white collar industrial park of different doctors offices and bank buildings. It takes a long time to get there on the bus and the traffic makes it worse, so there's lots of time to knit. The only thing is that I get really carsick-y if I look at my knitting (and if I tried to read a pattern, I would probably lose my lunch) so I have to knit something really simple that I don't have to look at. I started a skinny scarf in a 2x2 rib today. It was, in it's former life, a poncho... but I never wore it. I liked the concept of a little ponch-ette wrap, but this pretty yarn was just languishing and begging to be re-invented. I saw a blogger who had taken apart a thrift store stripped shell and re-knit it into a skinny scarf & it looked so cool that I thought maybe it would work for me. (I am sorry that I do not remember who or where, but I did leave you a comment at the time I discovered it on how much I liked your scarf!) I figured it was a good remake of a one trendy thing I absolutely cannot pull off (the poncho) into another trendy thing I might actually be able to manage (the skinny scarf) Whew. So I have to make a lot of progress on the big bag tonight and I would like to get some pictures up one of these days. Also... I'm doing my biggest Knitty trade ever for 10 balls of Jaeger cotton and a suprise in trade for some yarns and a Debbie Bliss book of mine. I am super excited because I think this maybe the yarn for the Acorn tank. (Crossing my fingers) If not, then I am going to make a summer cardigan with it, but if it does work for the tank, I want to make a tank/shrug twinset. I saw a girl in a commercial for migraine medicine wearing a sweater set that was a shell and tie-front shrug and it was really a cute interpretation of the traditional 'twin-set'.
So that's all for now. I'm going to go collapse in a heap for a while and then collect myself and spend a cozy evening relaxing and knitting.

2005-05-27T14:29:00.000-07:00

Feeling better and I had to check-in on my test-knitting project, so I thought I'd make a quick entry. I have been focusing on the test-knitting bag whenever I'm home & saving the tank for an 'on-the-go' project, to make sure I finish the bag in a timely manner. It's quite large as it will be a big bag when felted, so it has to be REALLY big prior to the felting. But here is the progress so far.

The colorway is turning out so nicely... it's really fun to knit & I think that once it is felted, the subtle stripes will look even cooler. I have been dreaming of what I will make with the yarn I get in trade for this bag. I'm also curious to find out what other colorways the yarn comes in. I was thinking how bright pink & butter yellow or tangerine orange would be a neat, with a similar feel to this combination of turquoise and lavender. I've searched the Southwest Trading site, but since Karaoke is new, I don't think they show all the colors yet. I guess my curiousity will just have to build till I find out. Until then, I'l be knitting this giant bag!

***edited because I found something!***
Hey, I found a picture of the colorways of Karaoke. I like the looks of Wild Cherry. Copper looks like it might be cool, too... but it is hard to see what the colors are like in this photograph. I guess my colorway is called 'intensity'. Wow.

2005-05-26T15:43:00.000-07:00

I've been a bit under the weather -- nothing serious, but I haven't had much of a chance to blog. I'm still working on the bag and the tank & I'll probably post some new pictures this weekend.

Have to rest up because I have a temp job next week! Yay! I'm going to earn some money! Two weeks as an office assistant in a medical office. It should be fun and I am really thankful to have a bit of work come my way.

2005-05-23T15:12:00.000-07:00

Here's my progress, thus far, of the Luminous Lace tank...

I just switched to the largest (size 8) needles, so I have just under 3" left to finish. A nice thing about increasing needle size is that you get your length faster and faster as you're progressing. It's very gratifying. Then I just have crochet the straps and edging for the cups & seam the cups to the bodice.

Things are slowed a little by the fact that I started the felted bag for test-knitting. I am allowed to post about it on my blog, so long as I don't give away any secrets about the pattern. So, I think I'll just show you this:

It's knit from the yummy yummy Karaoke. This yarn is half soy silk & half wool... it's soo soft and it drapes beautifully. I sort of hate to felt the bag because it feels so nice right now; but I am really excited to see how it looks after felting too. It should be awesome. And then I get a whole bunch of it to knit someting for me! Yay!

Not much else is new, except a funny internet thing happened to me today. I have a laptop & wireless card. Since I just have a cell phone, I don't have dial-up or any other connection at home & I have to go out to use the internet. (This is good or I would be on the web WAY too much!) I went to the coffeeshop that I usually go to this afternoon & their connection was broken. (The guy was really mean to me too when I told him I didn't want to buy lunch if I couldn't use the internet. Bah on him!) So, I ended up at the next closest place with wifi... a bar! Instead of coffee, I just got a glass of pear cider. It's actually quite fun for something different; but I hope the coffee shop fixes their connection soon because it could turn into a bad habit to have to buy a drink everytime I need to check my e-mail!

2005-05-21T17:18:00.000-07:00

I got the first part of the pattern for my test-knitting project today! I am really excited. It's for a felted bag & after the delightful felted bag that I got from my RAK, I am really excited to try this out... I have never done any felting before. (At least not on purpose!) I am really enjoying that little bag as a wristlet sort of purse. It fits my id, debit card, cell phone, $, keys, and even a lipstick just perfectly. I took it to a little cocktail birthday party last night & it was the perfect size. I also wore Cleaves because it was quite cold out & it was just right. Not too heavy but definitely cozy. I even got a compliment on it. Yay!

Today I've been working on the Luminous Lace tank. The body is gently flared by switching needle sizes from 6 to 7 to 8. I switched to the sevens today. I am changing the length/shaping a little, as I am pretty short & have wide hips. I decided that instead of 6", 2", 3" for each needle size, respectively, I will do 3" in each size so that I have room where my hips begin and so the pattern doesn't come down too long on me. There is nothing more unflattering to my body that a snug garment that comes down over my hips. I was reminded of that recently with the whole Asana mishap.

I also knit one of the cups for the tank today. It was really easy, but it looks quite fancy. The shaping is so cool. I don't have pictures now, but I wll post some soon. It's going to be really cute & for how lacy it is, the pattern is knitting up pretty quickly. I really like it so far.

I have been enjoying working with texture and pattern in single colors a lot lately. It is a big change from my crazy color combination projects, but it's more fun from a knitting perspective. You are bound a little more closely to simple stitch patterns when you use a bunck of different colors and types of yarn, so as much as I adore crazy colors, I have been enjoying taking a break from them to make some richly textured things now and then. The lace is so much fun & I alos love cabling. I discovered this awesome cable chart from reading Absinthe Knits today. I just wanted to add in the link, so I don't forget where to find it. It's really lovely. Someday I will defintely use it.

Not too much else going on, I just happened to find myself in front of a computer at the library... but now I just want to get back to my knitting. Happy Saturday to all!

2005-05-20T14:15:00.000-07:00

Can I just say that knitty coffeeshop ROCKS!?!
I was so touched to be blessed with two packages from folks on knitty coffeeshop yesterday. I had a very rough day at work. I am basically teaching myself how to use this software for building digital collections & working out the cataloging procedures for this new digital collection. I got about an hour of scattered advice on it, but I've been learning most of it on the fly through trial and error... and I had a big error yesterday. I finally got 4 records all the way complete and then I found out that I didn't understand a detail of the save/upload process & hadn't actually captured any of the work that I had spent all week on. I started crying & they sent me home early to try to make up for it... I was bummed out.
Then I got home to find my swap package from Soap Fiber Gal

This Kool Kidz yarn by Sirdar is a really good quality acrylic that I am going to make my baby cousin a sweater and hat out of... also she included a lovely little ball of handspun red yarn that she made! It is almost the same weight and feel at the rainbow yarns from that stripy Fair Isle sweater that I made Travis. I have just a small amount of all these left-over and I think that in combination with this nice handspun, I could make a little fair isle project for myself... not sure what yet.

She also sent me two soaps that she made! They are luscious. Once Citrus Woods scent & the other Cucumber Melon... these are some of my favortite scents and when I tried the soap this morning It was really yummy to use. Very creamy and gentle on the skin. It was a really lovely trade!

This swap that I knew was on it's way would have been more than enough to turn my day around... I loved it. Yet I also got a suprise 'RAK' (aka a Random Act of Kindness) out of the blue from Lynnknits.

Two partial balls of fancy yarn to play with and some beaded stitch markers in beautiful colors, plus this exquisite little felted bag. It was very cool!!!!
And also really aesthetically packed, so it was a joy to open up!

I am a lucky girl. I love Knitty so much!

Today, I also got some more yarn for test knitting, but still no patterns. The yarns are lovely, though. I can't wait to see what they are destined to become!
That's about all the news that's fit to print for now. I'm looking forward to lots of knitting and relaxing this weekend. It's been a long week.

2005-05-19T10:54:00.000-07:00

Still plugging away at the Luminous Lace tank & I am quite happy with the results, thus far. You still can't see much of the pattern, but it's growing. Here's a bit of my progress & the photo from Interweave. Sorry, I took it at night so the lighting is not very good.

Also, the sorry state of affairs with this Inca Cotton.

Once I finish with the Lumi Tank, I will probably swatch for Lelah with this yarn. I was also daydreaming about the Acorn tank and I realized that the soy silk yarn that I will be test-knitting with would be perfect for this tank. If I get 4 balls in trade, it would be just right & I bet that variagated neutral colorway that Amy sent me would really make the lace pattern sparkle!

I am really excited about a trade that I am trying to work out with Midnight Sky Fibers. I have lots of sock yarn from a few ill-fated attempts to knit socks on tiny needles. I always make one sock and then don't finish up with the second. Unless I make thick worsted-weight wooly socks for Travis. Those are my favorites & he loves them. I just really like sweaters better than socks. It takes all kinds & I am always impressed with knitters who love intricate projects like fine-gauge socks or lace shawls on teeny-tiny needles.

So, hopefully I can turn some of these gorgeous handspun yarns into a lovely sweater and Midnight Sky can use my sock yarns. It would be a great trade. I do so love knitty!

2005-05-18T16:15:00.000-07:00

What kind of sheep are you?
I'm neutral. That's kinda boring, isn't it?

Which flock do you follow?

this quiz was made by alanna
Oh well... just a little something to spice things up. I have been swatching like a bandit to try to find a pattern for my lovely Inca Cotton to no avail. I posted a thread asking for suggestions on the knitty coffeeshop. With 650 yards of worsted-ish weight cotton, I am at my wits end. I tried 3 times to get it to conform to the Luminous Lace Tank designed by Joan McGowan-Michael of White Lies Designs from Interweave Knits, summer 2003. Though the guage matched, it just didn't work with the texture of the yarn. All the struggling with this pattern gave me the idea to try it with the ink blue cotton that failed as Asana and it is a match made in heaven. I started it last night and worked on a it a little bit this morning. The gauge, texture, color... everything is just right for me. I finally have something to knit! Whew!

I was starting to feel like a huge faliure when everything I tried didn't work out for the last couple weeks. I kept wanting to turn to my knitting and nothing was going right. Knitting and non-knitting wise, things seem to be better and that makes me happy. I know that the right pattern is out there for the Inca Cotton too. I just have to have a little faith and be patient. I'm a little bummed because I was really looking forward to making the Acorn Tank right away. Now I will have to find a yarn for it. I've been very attracted to lacy tanks lately. I was looking at the craftster thread on the Lelah tube top. Though it is adorable on the designer/model... I've never worn a tube top before and I wasn't really sure how it would suit me. But lots of people on this thread modified it to add variations of straps. I think perhaps the Inca Cotton would work for this. It's knit on size 10.5 and 9 needles. Maybe at this size, the yarnovers would show up better in the lace pattern. Who knows. I am a little sick of gauge swatching for now. I'll try it out later...

Wow. With Luminous Lace, Acorn, and Lelah I would have quite an arsenal of cute, lacy tops by the end of the summer. I'm already getting a dreamy feeling just thinking about it.

2005-05-15T13:19:00.000-07:00

I figured out that I wouldn't have enough yarn from frogging Asana to make the cabled shell from VK & that even if I had the yardage, that I couldn't get the gauge I would need... but there is a silver lining to every cloud. I am going to make the Sleek Ribs Tank from the summer issue of Interweave with it. I'm excited because I also have that beautiful Inca Cotton to make the Acorn Tank from the same issue. Now that this is all decided upon, I just need to get myself down to the LYS and get some size 7 circular 24" needles. Size 7 is a size that I have never really used. For fine gauge patterns I usually use a 6 or smaller and for worsted or chunky I usually use size 8 and up. Yet, I have noticed that many summer knits are make with size 6 or 7 needles. So it's time to invest. Plus, I have been trying to build a little collection of addi turbo needles, as they are my new favorites. I have 5 sets now. Size 3 40" and 16", Size 4,6, and 8 all in 24". It's a slow collection process, but it makes knitting so much more enjoyable when you have good tools.

I have been having a little block lately. Asana was kind of a bid letdown and I've been waiting to be able to afford to buy new needles for the Acorn Tank. In between, I just couldn't figure out what to work on. I wanted to knit, but I didn't want to start something new. It's odd how many times I've been in the middle of about siz different projects and just wanted to start more things for the creative rush of figuring everything out. But now that I finished up a bunch of projects all at the same time, I have the opposite problem. I have been having a rough week and have been rather blue, so I just wanted to knit something simple and easy for comfort. Nothing new and creative, just something established and safe to anchor me and give me a little comfort.

Maybe while I am waiting to get the size 7 needles I will start Teva Durham's leaf pullover, also in the summer IK. It's actually from her book Loop-d-Loop. When I have a little extra money, I also really want to get this book. I love Teva Durham. She is so creative and interesting. I've only made her leaf cravat from an older IK, but I have admired her other patterns too.
The leaf sweater is beautiful and I have some bulky alpaca that would be perfect for it. It's burgudy, so it won't be as organic as the lovely bright green that it is featured in, but I still think it will be nice, and oh so soft. Except for a kind of tricky graft in the middle, it looks pretty easy and the yarn is definitely a 'comfort yarn' -- very soft and consoling to knit with.

2005-05-14T17:29:00.000-07:00

Still, I have no photos. But I also don't have much of a cold any more, which is really good. I haven't been knitting much, just resting and coughing and blowing my nose. Yuck!
I think I will have to frog that version of Asana that I tried to make. That pattern and my body just don't match up. I love the yarn, though, and I think it might make a good cabled shell from VK, if there is enough (have to check yardage, but I think it is close.) It was just a long weekend's worth of work, so I guess it doesn't matter...I realized that it just isn't something I would feel too comfortable wearing in its current state, so better to rip it!
I may not have as much time for my own knitting in the future because I will be working on a new project that is not for me & I am super excited about it. I am going to be a test knitter for knitwear designer, Amy, of Haute Knits who works for Southwest Trading Company. This is the company that makes soy silk, bamboo yarn & lots of other awesome stuff & for every project that I knit, I will get as much yarn as the project takes in trade! While it doesn't really constitute a job or anything, it's wonderful for me because I get to try out lots of cool yarns and build up a stash that I could not afford otherwise. I will also get a chance to learn about the design process and help out a new designer, which I think is pretty neat! I already got 4 skeins of soy silk in a beautiful variagated neutral colorway for a project in the mail. The pattern in on its way soon, hot off the presses!

2005-05-11T18:37:00.000-07:00

Just a little hello to my dear blog.
I acquired a nasty headcold from travelling on the airplane & not getting enough sleep on the trip to graduate; but I had a great time. It was really exciting to actually attend the ceremony and all. I am very happy.

Also, I had my pre-interview on Tuesday. I was slightly hopped up on Advil Cold & Sinus medicine, but I think I did pretty well. I didn't botch any of the questions outright, at least!

I am almost done with what I am referring to as the bastard cousin of Asana. Two big problems with the project were my choice of yarn & how my body shape does not correspond very well to the pattern... but in my usual fashion, I changed everything around and I think I will like it when it is done. I will offer more details when my head clears up.

My mom bought me some absolutely scrumptious Inca Cotton from the LYS in Bloomington, Yarns Unlimited. I really love this store and highly reccommend it to anyone passing through Bloomington. And if you make your way up to Morgantown, IN... check out Sheep Street Fibers, too. Both are lovely stores. Though I do like one of my local yarn stores, I am bored of their colors and yarns. It was really nice to see some new stuff. Very fresh and inspiring.

I am going to make a tank with it from the summer Interweave when I finish Asana's cousin. But now, I am going to sleep because I don't feel very well.

2005-05-05T14:23:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was having what could have been a really puke-y day, but I was blessed with an RAK from tabbytuxedo that made me so happy!

There was also a really nice card and a beautiful tin, which I promptly found a use for and forgot to include in the photo. It is the perfect size to hold cards of buttons!

I love the pink yarn, especially. I am already day-dreaming about a project for it. I have a black sweater that I made a couple years ago with a bulky merino boucle and a thiner wool/tencel yarn. I wore it constantly for a long time & machine washed it, but the wool/tencel blend didn't wear very well and now it looks ratty, though the boucle is still in fine shape. I think that I might frog the sweater to salvage the merino and figure out something to make combining these two. Black and pink is such a great combination!

I also finally found that little tin with my presser feet and the two stray buttons that I needed for my cotton cardi, so I sewed the buttons on this morning. No one was home to take my picture, though... so I did it myself, resulting in a rather artsy-looking angle.

Now, I am feeling like I got a lot of loose ends taken care of this week, both metaphorically and literally. I still have to pack for my trip to graduate (I'm leaving at 4am tonight) but I did a bunch of business-y things that I had to do, finished up two projects this week and also got a preliminary job interview lined up for next Tuesday. It's a telephone interview, unfortunately, but if I do well on it, I will advance to an in-person interview.

Also, I started Asana and it is all ready to be my airplane project for the trip. I am really liking the plain ribs over the garter rib pattern. I guess because this yarn is a dark color or ??? the garter rib just looked crappy. I think that plain rib will work out fine with the pattern. (Cross my fingers... I am not really one to plan ahead too carefully. Gotta work on that.)
Here's what I've done so far:

I probably won't be posting till next Wednesday or so, as I will be busy graduating, travelling, and interviewing.

2005-05-04T11:32:00.000-07:00

Got Cleaves?
Yeah, I got it!

I really like it. One bit of advice for those making the ribbed sleeves, instead of the slouchy ones... you have to shorten the sleeves considerably because they have a lot of extra length for the slouch. I took 3.5" off because I am short, but the sleeves were still really long... so I did this:

I actually ended up being quite pleased with the little mitt-sy detail, but at first I was sad that the sleeves were so long.
Overall, I am very happy with this garment, though. Here is another view.

I started Asana last night at a mini Stitch and Bitch. This girl that I have just been getting to know was really into starting up a little craft group and so we tried to organize something for last night, but we did it sort of last minute and a lot of people couldn't come... I do think they were really interested, though. So I have high hopes of setting up a good group for the summer.
The garter rib stitch looks terrible with my yarn (the dark navy blue cotton) so I decided to switch and do regular ribs. I have to say that overall I am not a fan of the garter rib stitch, although it looks great in the photos of Asana. I think that plain ribs will be better suited to this yarn and to my tastes, though. The cotton is really soft and buttery to knit with. I think it will be great to wear.
And just for a little more photo action, since I have been neglecting the visual aspect of my blog lately... Here is the new round of crochet flowers that I made for my knitty friend:

I also tried knitting another Nicky Epstein pattern for flowers, but this one has so many loose ends that I didn't want to make a whole batch of them. I did make a barrette out of this one, though.

For any loyal reader who has happened to notice my hair style (Yeah, I know there aren't any... oh well!) You would be suprised and amused to see my hair right now. I just got a haircut from my mom's stylist and she flat ironed my hair. I feel so dysphoric right now with this bouffant little helmet of hair. I will try to get a photo to post if I make it home without destroying the pouf (it is raining and I am on my bike today, so this may be tough.) My hair is so curly that it is a bit disconcerting to see myself with straight hair. She spent so long on it and was trying to give me a special treatment, so I wanted to like it. But it actually just makes me feel really bizarre. I am sure after washing it that I will like the haircut, though. Whew. Enough about my hair. Better get on to knitting.

2005-05-03T10:50:00.000-07:00

I have been neglecting my poor blog in the last week. I finished up my last paper of my career as a graduate student in Library Science. I just (like ten minutes ago) finished another presentation on my internship -this one to the Library Administrative Council- and this Thursday I fly back to Indiana to graduate!!!!
Then I will be a real librarian/archivist. Wow!
After turning in my paper and all the stuff for my internship on Friday, we went to see National Treasure, which certainly makes one feel excited about the career possibilities for an archivist. Although I don't think I will be duking it out with Nicholas Cage over the fate of the Declaration of Independence any time soon, I am hopeful about the possibilities of becoming gainfully employed.

And then I could afford pretty pretty yarns (in addition to food and rent, which is a bit of strech in and of itself, these days) to make wonderful projects.

Yes, that was my clever way to get away from the meme stuff and back to knitting. One reason that I have been neglecting my blog, in addition to all the work I have had lately, is that I keep thinking that I will have pictures to post, but I haven't had the time with T. to do a photo shoot. (He is so patient with me about this!) I did finish Cleaves, though, and lots of crocheted flowers. I did an RAK (Random Acts of Kindness) on the knitty board to a knitter who makes baby hats for preemies & she put on her wishlist that she would love crocheted decorations for the hats, as she doesn't crochet. I gave it a try and had a great time. I must say that I am getting really excited about the RAK's. It is really fun to find that you have something some one needs and are able to share it with them. I wish that I had signed up in time to do the secret pal exchange on knitty, but it is just as well since I am broke. Next time (in the fall, I think) they do another round, I will enjoy being someone's secret pal very much.

So, today I am going to start Asana & I am still hunting for the tin with all my presser feet and the green buttons. Maybe next time I post, I will have some pictures.

2005-04-28T18:25:00.000-07:00

This has been a whirlwind week... not much time for blogging or knitting.
But I did manage to finish up the picot edging on my Cotton Kureyon summer cardi.

Here is a close-up view of the edging:

I still have to knit a couple more rows on the sleeves and then crochet a picot edge on them. And find the tin with my buttons in it! [Pouting and feeling sorry for myself about this missing tin.]

After I finish this and Cleaves I can start Asana. I have to start it by May 9th because I signed up for the knit-along on it. So, here's my yarn for that project:

For now, I have to run. I have a big paper and other stuff due tomorrow for my internship, plus I am due at a book club in less than an hour & I haven't read the section yet... so it's nose to the grindstone for me!

2005-04-25T21:54:00.000-07:00

A long weekend away from blogging, but I got a lot of knitting done. And some crochet too!
I finished up the button bands for the little Cotton Kureyon sweater and I am now in the process of crocheting a picot edging all the way around the fronts & neck. It takes a long long time, but I like it.

I am currently a little bit panicky about this project, though, because I cannot find the buttons that I wanted to use & they were in a tin that I keep all my presser feet for my sewing machine in. The buttons I could live without, but I would be really mad/sad at myself if I lost all my presser feet! I totally rearranged the bedroom & my craft shelf, thinking that the tin would turn up in the process, but I didn't find it, even then. I am trying to remain optimistic that it will turn up. I haven't taken it out of the house, so logically it should still be around. It is just a little wierd.

Also making progress on Cleaves. It is nearly done & getting really bulky to work on. I have expreienced a new phenomenon with this project. I joined the knit-along for it, but I haven't posted about my progress and so I find myself not wanting to finish it until I post a middle picture. I guess I could post the one I did here, but the background of the Mexican banket we have on our couch looks so busy, it makes for sort of a crappy picture. Oh well.

Finally... I found some yarn for the Asan-a-long! I am really relieved that it was on sale too. It is Tahki Cotton Classic II in an inky blue color. I hope that making it with 100% cotton won't be a problem in terms of stretch. (or lack thereof to be more specific.) Also just got the addresses for some RAK's for some Knitty folks. Looking forward to sharing the love.
That's about all for now. I'll try for some photos tomorrow.

2005-04-21T13:40:00.000-07:00

Well, Cleaves is now on circulars...

It looks all wonky because of the thick and thin yarn, but once the sleeves are stitched together and I'm wearing it, I think the texture will be a boon.
This project is very fast & I am getting more and more excited about trying it on.

If this one is flattering, I may even try one with the slouchy sleeves. I really like the way the pouffy slouch looks on the models & as I am seeing other sleeves progress on the Cleaves-along I am starting to think that maybe I could pull off the pouf. Hmm....

2005-04-20T15:50:00.000-07:00

Not much new on the knitting front because I was busy dancing last night at a Toots and the Maytals concert. It was so much fun! More on knitting later.

2005-04-19T13:44:00.000-07:00

DYE-O-RAMA!

Here is the saga...
I started with the raw materials:

I have written about this yarn before. It has been frogged to within an inch of its life. First it was a cardigan vest with clasps (my interpretation of shearling.) Then it became a jumper from a Rowan Big Wool pattern book, then it made some attempts to become a poncho or a sweater in combination with some Rowan Biggy Print wool, but the match was ill-fated. I finally decided that --as much as I love the texture of this yarn-- I will just never look good in creme. So, I consulted knitty's article on kool-aid dying. I wound the balls back into skeins. To make things easier on myself, I tied all the small balls together to make one skein, so I ended up with five decent sized skeins (from 2 giant ones to begin with). Here they are soaking.

And as they are drying.

I used mostly grape & black cherry, with smaller amounts of pink lemonade, tropical punch, and watermelon cherry. I originally painted the skeins, but I didn't have the right equipment to steam each one at the same time and I didn't want to do them one at a time because I thought they would turn out too varied to look right in the same project, so I dumped them all together and boiled them. The result is mottled, but sort of uniform. I really like the way they turned out.
I'm using them for Cleaves... here is the progress that I have made on this pattern, so far.

I am making a few modifications to the pattern. First, I am knitting the sleeves flat, since I don't have any size 11 dpn's. Also, I am continuing the ribbing all the way up the sleeve. I really like the look of the droopy puff on the models on knitty, but I have short arms 'cause I am just barely 5'2" and I am not super skinny either, so I think the puff would just make me look a little stupid.
I don't know if the picture really shows this, but I knit the sleeve with three big sections of yarn from three different skeins, since each turned out a little differently. I like how it sort of bleeds from one tone to another.

I also have a picture of my minisweater.

There is a close-up of the sweater on the Minisweater KAL too.
I love this top-down raglan method so much... my take-along project right now is the Cotton Kuryeon cardi & it is progressing well:

That's all the news that's fit to print, for now. More to come soon, I am sure.

2005-04-18T17:19:00.000-07:00

Just discovered a really neat cuffs pattern that a knitty coffeeshopper is making... so cute, I don't want to forget about it!
Executive Funk

2005-04-18T16:07:00.000-07:00

So I was a lazy girl today & did not lug my computer to a wireless connection to post pictures... but I did have a great adventure with Kool-aid this weekend and I will have the photos to prove it tomorrow.

Also figured out the sleeves on my angora mini-sweater. Knitting the garter stitch bands with 10.5 needles and then binding off with size 13 gave me the extra stretch that I needed without compromising the shape of the sleeve.

With the yarn that I just dyed, I am hoping to start Cleaves from Knitty. There are a few challenges, though.
First: I don't have the right size dpn's and circulars and I am on too tight of a budget to buy two new sets of needles that I am not too likely to use often for this project.

Second: This yarn is thick and thin... and the gauge is sort of organic because of this; but so far it seems to be a little bigger than the gauge called for in the Cleaves pattern.

Third: Not all my skeins of dyed yarn are exactly the same colors.

My thoughts on these challenges are as follows:
1.) I think I am going to knit the sleeves flat, seam them & leave the top stitches live, then cast on for the cowl, but knit it flat and seam it up the back.

2.) I don't really want all the blousy-ness that the sleeve has anyway, so I am thinking of just knitting the whole sleeve in ribbing without the increases. This will change the look a little bit, but may make it easier to make the garment fit with the larger gauge. Or I may achieve the same look by knitting the stockinette part on size 13 needles rather than 11 and not doing any increases...

3.) I thought about alternating two rows with one skein and two rows with another, but I decided to split two up so that the cuffs and lower sleeves are one skein, the tops of the sleeves are another and the cowl can be made from the rest. This can show off and accentuate the subtle color differences in a good way, rather than trying to hide them & loosing what makes the yar unique and special in the first place.

The dyed skeins are finally dry, so I can start playing with them tonight. Tomorrow I will show the whole Koolaid saga & the beginnings of Cleaves.

After all this, I wonder if I even have any business taking part in a knit-along, since I change everything so much. Oh well, I like meeting other knit-bloggers through the knit-alongs and I learn a lot from other knitters' notes on the projects. I hope that it isn't bad netiquette to join a knit-along and then change the pattern all around.

2005-04-15T12:19:00.000-07:00

I've got pictures today!
First of all, here is a look at the angora mini-sweater:

This picture is deceptive because I am actually virtually finished with the sweater. I just haven't taken a new picture of it. I have a little problem with the sleeves. I was trying to remove the puff, but when I bound off, they were just a tad too snug. They are wearable, but not super super comfy & the rest of the sweater is so cuddly that I want the sleeves to be perfect. I first bound off with a larger needle, then I tried frogging them and working a few increases, but that made the shaping all spazzy. So, my next thought is that I will knit the garter stitch band in 10.5 needles.
I think the main problem is just that angora doesn't stretch very much, so the bind-off edge is the key. The rest of the sleeve fits fine & all in all I like the sweater a lot.

I love the top-down method of knitting a sweater. I had never tried it, but I have already started another one.

The pink yarn on the left is a Brown Sheep cotton mill end that I bought yesterday to match the stripy yarn. This is an amazing yarn -- Noro Cotton Kureyon. I found a single ball in the sale bin at a yarn store in Morganstown, Indiana, that I visited on a road trip. The colors are not my favorite, but they are an interesting combination and the yarn itself is really yummy. It's mostly cotton with a touch of wool and its a little slubby. I originally made this tank with it and two other orphan skeins from the sale bin at this store...

The two colors of yarn at the bottom are a scrumptious combination of wool and silk. Not the most inspired colors, though. I frogged the top of the tank, but the bottom is still live & I was thinking of picking up the stitches and turning it into a sweater. The wool blend is a little itchy to be right next to my tummy skin, but it would make a lovely sweater over a tee. I jsut don't know what color & yarn would be good for the top.

Yesterday I had a disasterous visit to the LYS. I had a coupon for 25% off one yarn purchase and I wanted to get something for the asana knit-along. They don't sell Rowan yarns, so I was trying to substitute. I couldn't find any cotton-y yarns that seemed like they would match the gauge listed on that pattern and I kept roaming around searching for something. I ended up buying some ridiculously priced synthetic yarn in a crazy chartreuse/aqua/peach/cream colorway & taking it back three hours later. I think this is the first time I have gone to a yarn store with the serious intention of buying something and really not wanted any of the yarns.

Mostly, I hated the colors that were available. They were, for the most part, totally unispired. I think because of this big sale that everything good had been bought up already. If I had a job, I would have spent a ton stocking up on my favorite wool yarns, but I don't have the luxury of stocking up on yarn right now. I am glad I did when I was working, though. It makes me appreciate my stash so much now.

I did buy some wonderful addi needles and a mill-end for the stripy mini-cardigan, so it wasn't all bust. I am really enjoying using up some things from my stash these days & re-making things that I'm bored with or that never quite worked out. I guess I am just getting all caught up with this stash & then once I get a job, I can start collecting yarn again.

2005-04-13T17:30:00.000-07:00

I am pleased to announce that I started a gallery of my finished projects! I discoved an awesome new blog today: My amphetamines and my purls. [I love the nod to Dylan.] I love to discover knitblogs that are out of the ordinary. This one was really inspiring & it linked to a gallery at blogspirit.com that actually hosts pictures in tidy little gallery formats for FREE!!!! How awesome is that?!?
I really prefer blogger.com for posting, but this is a wonderful site for displaying pictures. I just added a few things that I'd already photographed for my blog. I cannot wait to do a big photoshoot and post some of my older finished objects. Yay!

Progess contines with the angora mini-sweater too. Photos forthcoming.

2005-04-12T14:44:00.000-07:00

Okay. I decided to unravel the m1 increases, so I could do yarn-over increases instead. It wasn't too bad at all. I loved being able to consult the knit-along to find out what other knitters were doing.

Also found a great quiz on Step into my Thimble

Are you a Records Manager, a Librarian or an Archivist ?
brought to you by Quizilla

(Don't tell my perspective employer that I tested as a librarian, rather than a records manager!)

2005-04-12T14:06:00.000-07:00

Grr. I can't log into my e-mail and it is driving me crazy. They are migrating all the e-mail accounts at IU and I guess it crashed the server. I feel so disconnected. Oh well, guess that just means more time to knit.

I am really enjoying the Minisweater so far, but I have to decide if I want to frog back a few rows and do the raglan increases as yarn-overs rather than m1. I was thinking that the yo's might be pretty with the angora. My goodness. That yarn is pure heaven to knit. It is very delicate, though. I have to be really careful with it to gently unwind the ball as I knit... it doesn't feed very well. But wearing it will be like getting snuggled by a giant bunny! Mmmm. So soft.

I'm going to check in with the Minisweater blog to read about how they're doing the increases. Then I will decide what to do with mine. I am not sure about frogging the angora, but it is just 4 rows, so it shouldn't be too bad.

2005-04-11T18:24:00.000-07:00

Yay!
I found some inspiration and a new project. I am going to knit this minisweater from a Glampyre Knits. And, I put in to join my first knit-along. Seems that I have a strong attraction to these demi-sweaters lately... I am going to make this out of the angora that I showed on Flash Your Stash Day.

I am hoping that it will turn out like the picture on Glampyre Knits blog of the black alpaca one with ties.

I will have to experiment with gauge and all tonight. I am happy to have a project to be excited about... and especially one that I already have a good yarn for.

2005-04-11T14:13:00.000-07:00

So I promised a picture of the recycled silk sweater.

There was a moment of crisis after I seamed everything together, when I thought I would have to frog the whole thing; but I took a deep breath and started to see what I could do to problem solve. I actually like the surpice wrap better than the button closure I was planning originally.
The same sort of thing seems to happen to me everytime I make a sweater of my own design. There is a moment when all my planning seems to fall apart... but then there is usually some kind of creative energy that arises from the chaos and I get some idea that solved everything. As hokey as it may sound, I think this is a glimpse at divine inspiration. I have put all my own energy, effort, and faith into planning a project... but I have to be open to what happens & then I get a spark of inspiration at a time beyond my control, that finished off the whole project. I feel that extra push of creative energy when I am least expecting it and most in need is something greater than me & something really special. It is one of the very best parts of the knitting process for me.

On a slightly different note -- in addition to finishing this sweater last week, I also finished my job application and the official hours of my internship, which culminated with a big presentation on the project I have been working on. (And my perspective employer was at said presentation.)

It was a bit of a whirlwind. Not much time for knitting.
This weekend was also a whirlwind of a different sort. It was my mom's birthday and big party weekend. I went to 4 potlucks, plus my mom's birthday party. I am really tired now and starting to fight off a cold... but I am very happy, so that it all evens out.

On the knitting front, I have been sort of confused. I have been working on frogging my alpaca cardigan to be ready to work on Gemma with my mom & I have been purusing my stash for a new project, but I don't really know what to start next.

I would really like to work on Cleaves or Asana but I don't have anything in my stash of yarn that would be suited to these patterns and I am on a bit of a yarn diet these days, for financial reasons.

I worked a bit on the sleeves of Travis' crazy stripe pullover, but I wasn't really excited about it. I would like to finish it up before it gets to be summer, so he has a few chances to wear it this season.
Also, I visited an LYS that I usually don't care for (but it is just a couple blocks from my house) just to see if any inspiration came to me... I was still sort of confused.

I do think I will try to make it to my favorite LYS this afternoon to poke around and see if anything strikes my fancy.

So, I am waffling between falling off the wagon and coming up with a different project. I am feeling indecisive.

2005-04-07T10:30:00.000-07:00

Yay! The spring edition of Knitty is up! It is wonderful... lots of fun summer tops. My favorite is Asana and I also love the shrugs: Cleaves and I Do.
It took me about five minutes of heavy concentration to figure out where the velcro went in the Asana top, but then I realized that the tabs overlap to cinch in at the waist. I definitely want to add this to my list of summer knitting experiments.

I finished up the crochet band at the bottom of the silk sweater and I went ahead and added a little picot trim around the sleeves and a stabilizing crochet edge around the neckline. I have a picture, that I will post later. Right now, it's time to finish up my job application.

2005-04-05T14:33:00.000-07:00

To some degree, the silk sweater is finished. All I have to offer is a crappy indoor picture of the back, but you can get the idea.

This yarn is very tricksy to figure out gauge on... it looks like one thing laid flat, but once it starts draping as a garment on a body, it gets more stretched out. I think the weight of the back of the sweater sort of pulls the front up & makes it do something wierd.
But all it all, it is close.
To remedy the problem, I think I am going to crochet an extra band around the bottom with the remainders of the two lavender yarns. The end result may look vaguely like
Kyoto.
Off to work on my presentation for Friday and the blasted cover letter that I can't seem to write.
More knitting later.

2005-04-04T16:38:00.000-07:00

Hey!
I just joined two knitting webrings! I still have to upload the images to my server, so I can have clever little buttons on my sidebar. For the time-being, I just substituted text links until I can get on my home computer and straighten the images out.

I am really excited about being more involved in the online knitting community. For anyone just visiting my blog:
Thanks so much for stopping by!

2005-04-04T14:08:00.000-07:00

Just sitting here shivering at work. I got caught in a hail and rain storm walking here and am still cold and wet three hours later.

Due to the inclement weather, I have not been able to photograph my cap sleeve top outside in the daylight yet. I have also been wondering if I jumped the gun on summer knitting. Well, Oregon weather is sort of schizophrenic all the time. If I went back to something warm and wooly, it would probably turn warm again.

On the needles this weekend was the recycled silk demi-cardi. I made the first sleeve with two different colors of Tartlette, some Cotton Glace, some Rowan Summer Tweed, and some Brown Sheep cotton/wool blended together with the silk. It sounds more chaotic that it is... Now I just have to finish replicating this pattern on the second sleeve & stitch the whole thing together. I may even finish tonight.

On the horizon... I am going to frog my ill-fated alpaca cardie & start Gemma from Debbie Bliss' new pattern book. My mom is also going to knit this sweater with Noro's Iro I think both of our sweaters will be VERY warm (but they will also be very SOFT, which is a lovely combination in the middle of winter.) I was looking for a knit-along to this pattern and discovered that Rowan 37 also has a pattern named Gemma. This causes some confusion, but I am pretty sure that no knit-along exists for the Debbie Bliss Gemma. I think, rather than create a knit-along for the VK shell that I want to make but cannot afford yarn for, I will look into creating a knit-along blog for this pattern. If nothing else, I can post comparisons of how my mom and I fare with our yarn substitutions on this pattern. It should be interesting.

2005-04-01T13:05:00.000-08:00

Happy Flash Your Stash Day!!!

No foolin' around. Here it is BEFORE organization.

In addition to these bins & the basket, there were also numerous plastic bags in a trunk that was too horrid to actually photograph.
After organization, though, the whole stash consists of this:

Inside the bins, things are much tidier & The wicker basket that held all my odds and ends (the equivalent in my mind to quilting scraps in the fabric world) has been replaced with a nice wooden box. The basket was hard to see into without dumping everything out & the wicker sides always caught on the little balls of yarn & snarled them up something terrible.

The bin on the bottom contains three ancient unfinished projects & the rest of the yarn to finish them, plus a bunch of burgundy boucle wool that I bought on e-bay & still don't know what to do with 3 years later. The other large bin has specialty yarns & yarns that I have several skeins of.

In the plastic bags, which I am using until I can get more plastic tubs, I have single skeins of wool (top), sock yarns (lower right) and cotton/summer yarns (lower left).

Another exciting pile (not visually, but definitely emotionally) -- what I am finally getting rid of:

Whew!
I HATE all these yarns, but I just kept lugging them around with me (they have lived in 5 different houses!) because I thought that someday I would need them for something. The thick stuff is this totally unspun stuff (definitely not yarn!) that I ordered from elann.com without comprehending exactly what it was. I thought it would be like BurlySpun, but it is like six wafty peices of roving falling apart in your hands as you knit. Very sucky.

The brown yarn my first e-bay yarn purchase &, again, I didn't really understand what I was buying. This happens to me too often with online yarn purchases -- though my mistakes have made me a little more saavy. This stuff is super super thin... I think for a machine to knit or weave? Plus, it was moth-eaten, so even holding three strands together, I couldn't knit anything worthwhile with it. Finally, the purple & rainbow yarns are terrible acrylic nightmares. The whole pile is lying on the unfinished baby blanket that prompted me to buy these yarns in the first place, despite my dislike of acrylic (even expensive novelty acrylics for sale at your chi-chi LYS). A co-worker that I didn't even know in a workplace of 100+ employees asked me to make her a baby blanket without offering to pay for the yarn or for my time. I really wanted to do it just to be nice, but this is as far as I got. And now I am giving the whole lot to Goodwill. Maybe someone will rescue all these wayward yarns and use them to make awesome stuff. At any rate, I am rid of the lot & it makes me happy.

And finally... the really good stuff!!!! My most lucious fiber in the stash.
[This is the yarn porn that your LYS would have to keep behind the counter in a brown paper cover]

Nice balls, eh? [Sorry, I couldn't resist the pun!]
This is 20 balls of 100% angora in a gorgeous silver grey that I love. They are only 10 gram balls, so it amounts to just 550 yards; but it is still 20 balls!!!
And, the best part of this story is yet to come. This yarn was thrifted for $5.00! Yes, five bucks. It was the thrift of a life-time.

And one last goodie. Here is my #1 long-term unfinished project that I now want to finish:

These yarns were also thrifted vintage wools. Don't remember the price, but it wasn't more that a few dollars.
The pattern is Spencer from Rowan's A Season's Tale by Kim Hargreaves. It was the first knitting book that I ever bought & I thought, when I bought it, that I would make just about every pattern in the book.
4 years later, I have only made 2 finished sweaters from this book, but I do have 3 unfinished ones on my needles... my 3 oldest unfinished projects, in fact!
Argyles are so cool, though, I had completely forgotten & I really like this sweater.

Well, there you go... hope you have enjoyed being a yarn voyeuse today!

And moving on from stash to finish projects... here are some silly pictures of my Manos del Uraguay set. They were meant to be normal, but they didn't turn out well... yet they do make me laugh & the knitting looks good, even if I don't.

"Oh no, Officer! What have I done!?! Please don't arrest me!"

Rats. Playing innocent didn't work... now it's "Hands Up!"

Speaking on Manos del Uraguay... I was excited to find out from the Knitty Coffeeshop that there is a website of another Uraguan yarn collective that sells kettle-dyed yarn similar to Manos for only $5.40 a skein. (I added the link to my sidebar so it is always close to me!)
Now I really don't want to short-change the women making these beautiful yarns... but I have to wonder if the mark-up to $14+ doesn't just go to all the suppliers and yarn stores along the way, while the website goes directly to the women. I am going to try ordering from them sometime when I have money. They have a gorgeous aqua colorway that would be perfect for that VK Life Aquatic hoodie. The yarn it calls for is a Trendsetter acrylic yarn called 'Spiral' I haven't been able to find much info on it online because it is apparently brand-new, but I hate to put the time into knitting something with acrylic because I know it will just wear out. Trendsetter Zucca, which feels absolutely divine when first knit ends up looking like a wet dog after a couple years of wear & that's fine for a scarf, but not for a sweater. Every time I have knit with acrylic, I have been disappointed.

As for the summer shell... I couldn't get a good picture of it in the house, so we'll have to take some in the daylight, but it is wet-blocking right now. The bottom edge curls, even though I crocheted the edge. So I just steamed the dickens
out of it. My fingers are crossed that it will lay flat after this.

And on the needles now is a little recycled silk demi-cardi that is shaping up well. After spending about 5 hours frogging the silk scarf, I knit the whole back of sweater in little more than an hour. It looks great, so far; but I will have to do some creative yarn blending to have enough yarn to make the sleeves. I did the math wrong on that VK Twinkle pattern. I thought that it would be impossible to make a sweater out of 205 yards of yarn & that was true... but I love blending yarns anyway, so this will be right up my alley.

2005-03-31T13:33:00.000-08:00

So I know that excuses never acomplish anything.. but I do have an excuse besides laziness for not having pictures today. They are actually trapped inside my camera, which ran out of batteries before I could transfer them to my computer.

That's the bad new... but the good news is that I finished my little cotton shell & if I had a webcam at my desk, you could see that I even have it on right as I type. Thank goodness I don't have a webcam, though.

I ran down the waning battery power on my camera while working on organizing for Flash Your Stasth Day. I realized that this day is not just a chance to share yarn porn with other knitters... It is like a Buddhist koan that tricks you into having a satori experience.

Would you have asked me of my own accord to organize my stash for fun, I would have said "You must be kidding!?!" Yet, as I went through and took stock of everything that I have, including some long unfinished projects, I had a wonderful time. I was feeling so sorry for myself, because I want to start a bunch of new projects that I can't afford to buy the yarn for right now, but when I realized all the cool stuff that I do have I felt quite happy. One particularly fun aspect was organizing my tiny bits of yarn that I use to make baby hats with. There are tiny remnants of nearly every project that I've ever worked on. It is sort of the equivalent to a crazy quilt of different yarns & it gives me a sense of accomplishment and contentment to realize all the projects I have had the pleasure of working on in the last few years. I also realized how I have grown as a knitter.

Another part of organizing the stash was frogging some long dead ufo's that had been plaguing me for some time. I am currently tangled up in one particularly challenging frog... I had made a scarf 3 years ago out of 2 skeins of recycled silk & some Trendsetter Zucca. Here's an old photo of it (I made the sweater I'm wearing in the picture too, btw):

I remembered struggling to make this scarf work when I knit it the first time... I don't think I really had the design sense to know exactly what to do with this fiber.
I ended up liking the scarf and wearing it a lot, but I got rather tired of it. It is not quite warm enough for a good winter scarf & too heavy for a purely decorative scarf. So, I was looking through the new VK last night & realized that the Twinkle sweater calls for only about 400 yards of yarn that is double stranded on size 15 needles. I think if I made the sweater a little bit cropped & with 3/4 sleeves (which I would probably want to do anyhow because I am way short for Vogue patterns) I could make it from the silk!

I am excited about this because as I was frogging it, I was realizing just how scrumptious that yarn is. It is very challenging to take apart, though because it is really fluffy & tends to want to stick to itself. Fortunatley it is also so irregular & slubbed that it is very forgiving of the brutal treatment necessary to pull it apart from itself. After an hour of frogging, I am only half way done... But I think that it will be worth it in the end.

2005-03-30T15:10:00.000-08:00

I searched a bit for a knit-along for the #14 Cabled Vest in Vogue Knitting (I wish that VK gave their patterns nice names instead of just numbers... they would be easier to talk about!)
I have never searched for a knit-along or been part of one. I didn't have any luck finding one... I think I might just knit this all by my lonesome, as I do with most things I knit. Oh well.

I looked at the yarn -- Butterfly 10 ply by S.R Kertzer -- online to see how it compared to Brown Sheep's cotton/wool yarn. I think the gauge would match just fine & I really do like the extra softness and bounce that the wool provides & it is cheap and available at my LYS. I am going to do a gauge swatch to see how they match up.

My only concern is that the Brown Sheep yarn does have a tendency to split when transfered to different needles. (I have noticed this when I slip slip k2tog for the raglan shaping.) This could present a problem for all the cables. So, I think tonight I will try a gauge swatch with some cables & figure out if that yarn would work.

Of course, we are going broke, AGAIN, so I will have to wait a little while to pursue this sweater beyond swatching with the left-over yarn I have. In an attempt to remedy this problem, I will also be working on my job application some more tonight. I feel good about this job because it is a real librarian job & I have been turned down for so many library assistant jobs for being "over-qualified" since going to library school. But am I really qualified to complete for a librarian job with just my degree & no job history as a librarian? What the *!#~ is the deal with not hiring someone because they're overqualified? I need to work and I would be good at these jobs. Why not hire me? I cross-my-heart-swear that if I had gotten any of these assistant or technician jobs, I would have worked really hard, stuck with it, and been a great employee. Well it's their loss, I guess. It just sucks living off my husband's financial aid and the grace of my parents for over 6 months. I wanna have a job! I want a little spending power and independence. Not a lot, just a little. That would make me very happy.
My quandry is that I think it is really important to think positive, but even when I have felt really positive and confident about jobs recently, I haven't gotten them & it makes it harder to get rejected. This one is different, though. A whole different game. Think positive!

Okay, enough job talk.

I promise that I will post some pictures soon -- it is getting a little too wordy around here. My cap-sleeve shell is coming along, but it is not very exciting to look at -- just stockinette. I have gotten up to the neck shaping for the front. I should be able to finish the raw knitting this evening, then I just have to block, seam, and crochet the edges.

Since it is currently just a shapeless stockinette rectangle, I don't really want to just post a boring picture to prove that I am progressing with it; but it will be done and picture-worthy soon. I also have the Manos wrister set to photograph & if I make a gauge swatch I will show that too... I am so curious about cotton cables. Plus the preparations are in work for Flash Your Stash Day.

I was talking about this 'yarn porn' with my husband last night & our roommate gave me a funny look. Really, it sounds much dirtier than it is to an innocent bystander/eavesdropper!

2005-03-29T16:09:00.001-08:00

First of all, I am so excited! I got a comment on my blog! I never knew that anyone besides the people I know in real life actually looked at it. I was looking forward to joining the knitting webring to become part of the online knitting community, but lucky me, someone found me first! Thank you! I feel really honored.

The comment has inspired me to start work on design #14 from Vogue Knitting Spring/Summer 2005. I put a picture of it up yesterday, it is a pretty cabled shell that I think would be flattering to a lot of shapes of people. I am going to research if anyone is doing a knit-along on this one already. If so, I would like to join & if not maybe I will set up a mini-knit-along. It only takes 4-5 skeins of cotton yarn, so it wouldn't be too expensive. Unfortunately, this is a concern for me now... I would love to start that gorgeous hoodie, but I don't want to cut corners by using a cheap-o yarn.

Speaking of that hoodie, I was reading over the pattern more closely this morning & it is even cooler than I thought from the picture. The hood & both sides of the front are all one piece that is twisted in the center to appear like a sort of wrap front. How cool is that?!? I think that crazy design techniques like this are so fun. I adored the process of making my sidesways cardigans because it was so new and unexpected. I can make a plain sweater without a pattern, no problem... but I really like using patterns sometimes for more complicated things because that is how I learn new things... and get neat-o sweaters to wear at the same time.

So, away from dreaming about future projects & on to the current one, which took a crazy turn last night: I experienced an odd setback to my knitting when I lost a needle!
I take a project with me everywhere and sometimes it grows beyond easily totable size. I had been knitting the cotton shell I'm working on with straight needles, but they poked out of the corner of my messenger-style bag & somewhere between eating sushi, knitting at a bar, & moving a friend's couch last night I lost one of the needles & the needle that was holding the stitches got pulled out of the stitches (fortunately, the whole thing didn't unravel -- but I did have to do some minor surgery to get everything back in shape.)
Lucky for me, I had some Addi turbos in the same size (4) but they were short ones that I got for a small project. I thought that they would be too short when I started the project, so I cast on with the straight ones instead, but it turns out that they are actually just the right length. Whew!

I realized that I much prefer to knit with circular needles... provied they are Addi needles. I used to buy Clover bamboo ones because I love to knit with straight bamboo needles. As for circular bamboo needles, though, I really don't like how the plastic always stays stiff and wants to twist around and also how the project always catches at the joint between the bamboo and the plastic. This is sort of an Ah ha! moment for me. I used to think that I just preferred to knit with straight needles, but it was actually the type of circular needles I was using that made me think this. When I get a real librarian job, I will focus on building up my collection of Addi's.

And while we are on the subjects of needle collections and librarianship... I think that it is about time that I catalogued my needle collection & came up with a better storage system. They are forever getting disorganized & I have little stashes of needles all over the house. I actually found some size threes in my dresser drawer the other day. Why are there knitting needles in my dresser? I do not know.

It is odd that I have made a career of organizing things, yet cannot keep my own life in order half the time. (Or maybe 75% of the time?) But I am working on it. The main key for me is to simplify things. I really have simplified & organized many aspects of my living space in the last few weeks. I think that the knitting & sewing stuff might be next on my list. Maybe I will be inspired to get organized by Flash Your Stash Day. Okay. That's it. Tonight I will prepare my stash to be flash-worthy.

2005-03-28T16:13:00.000-08:00

Ooh! I was poking around on absinthe knits and was delighted to see that she had found a site with all the pictures from the Spring issue of Vogue Knitting. I looked at their website while making my last post, but was sad to see that they didn't have their latest issue up. Anyhow, now I can talk about all the things that I love in this issue. Like Absinthe, I adored the Life Aquatic section. My favorites being:

I also love the romantic group of patterns that seem to be inspired by Anthropologie. I am especially fond of this wrap sweater & would love to make this camisole:

I also really like this top:

...and this cute little cardi-shrug sweater...

though the colors would have to be very different for me on both of these. I am not really suited to yellows of any variety.

Okay. Those are my very favorites. It would take a long time to make them all, but I especially want to make the hoodie. I don't know why, but I fell in love with it at first sight. I like the style, the color, and it looks like it would be really fun to make too.

2005-03-28T14:18:00.000-08:00

For my non-existent readership...
You may have been wondering why I did not blog at all last week. Well, I was on vacation! Camping at a natural hot springs, hanging out with friends, haunting around bookstores & coffee shops for hours on end, and -of course- knitting occupied my lazy days and I did not find my way to the web to update you all on my progress. But now that things are getting back to normal, I have returned.

Unfortunately, I was too lazy to get any pictures together, but I have been progressing on my cotton shell and I made another set of wristers out of some pretty red Manos del Uraguay in my stash. It matches with a little coif-y thing from Knitty. I actually don't tie it under my chin like they do in the picture, but rather at the nape of my neck. With the wristers, it makes a nice set for the sort of inbetween spring and winter weather that we have been having lately.

Yes, that's right. We are back to winter. After the crazy 80 degrees days that we had during finals week, it was rainy rainy rainy all of the break. And cold too! Now the weather has sort of worked itself into a good balance of rain & mild temperatures that is just fine with me. Good for sweaters & cozying up with all my new books.

I have a goal for the spring and summer, though.
One thing that I have noticed reading other knitblogs is that people are always setting goals for themselves & once you write something down, I think you are much more apt to follow through. So my goal is to conquer summer knitting. I have never made anything really wearable for summer since I learned to knit. Last summer was the first time I even tried. This summer, however, I am really going to do it! I bought the spring issue of Vogue Knitting last week & I have a couple things picked out from it, plus the tank from Vintage Knits that I have mentioned before.

I plan to finish up the shell this week and jump right into the cotton-y midst of summer knitting. (Oh, and ribbon yarns too... some of them are so yummy!)

2005-03-19T16:24:00.000-08:00

So I made something yesterday, and the question is...
Is it (a.) A corset for an otter?

Or (b.) One of my new wristies?

Ottie doesn't like this lacy one at all, but he didn't mind the stripy one.

I experimented a lot with wristers and I did make two mismatched wristies that I really like (they are so cozy! who would've thought that 3" of knitting could make such a difference?!) and I think I sort of exhausted myself on the whole concept for a little while.

I did say that I would make the perfect wristers for me, though; and I believe that I did make some that are just right for my tastes... mismatched and quirky. I don't think that I will wear any for my special night next week, but we'll see. I may get my energy for the project back.

Before I embarked on the experimental project, I wanted to finish the back of the cap sleeve top, which I did. Didn't take any picture of it... it looks pretty much like the other piece of knitting I showed ealier, just longer. I do think that it will be really nice when it's all put together and the edges are crocheted and finished. I am looking forward to wearing it and exploring other summer knitting projects.

2005-03-18T12:21:00.000-08:00

I don't have any pictures to prove it, but I started the raglan decreasing for the back of the Cap-Sleeve Carmel Top. It is coming along well... I've now fully recovered from the frogging and am making actual progress again.

I wasted a bunch of time (well, waste is really a relative term) trying to make a set of lace wristers, but I didn't like the way the that the lace just sort of pooched out, rather than hugging my wrist. I evperimented with adding a little edge of ribbing on each end, but that seemed to magnify the problem. I would have taken pictures of the mistake-y wristers, but it was all too painful to document. It has set my resolve, though. I can make some pretty complicated things, I ought to be able to knit a darn rectangle!

So, I think that there were a few things wrong with my first attempts:

1.) Wrong yarn. I was using a wool/tencel yarn from my stash that is not very elastic, so it didn't 'hug' my wrist very well.

2.) Wrong stitch. I just opened up Vogue Knitting to find a nice lace pattern. (I really need the Harmony Stitch Guides. VK doesn't have a very big selection of stitch patterns.) Anyhow, I tried the purse stitch because I thought that it looked like fishnet. It does... but it stretches a lot & is very dificult to figure out an accurate guage for. It is a neat (& really easy) stitch... for some other use than the wristers. I think that I need a combination of ribby & lacy to give some stretch-factor.

3.) Wrong size. At first, I was aiming to make the wrister 6" around because that is the most narrow measurement of my wrist. I think that this was too big. I think if I make the wrister between 5" and 5.5" it would hug better. Also... this is wierd, but it might work. I was thinking of casting on & knitting a little bit on larger needles, knitting the middle in smaller needles, then knitting the end & cast-off with larger ones again.

We'll see what these experiments yield. And, despite the pain of faliure, I will take some pictures as I try to discover the perfect wristers for me.

2005-03-16T22:54:00.000-08:00

So, I was going to go home, but Travis had already come back to the library to work just as I was leaving, so I have been hanging out at the terminal next to him in the computer lab. In part, I think it is just nice to be with him, even if he is doing homework & can't actually talk to me. Another reason for staying is that I have had a wonderful time indulging in all the internet I can handle!

For someone who hasn't had the net at home for several years, this is a treat. My eyes were actually starting to get sore, till I took a study break with T.

I waded through the entire knitblog webring & added lots of sites to my sidebar that I would like to take a closer look at. I also found a very neat pattern for wristers that I really want to make.

There are so many amazingly creative people blogging out there. I got lots of good ideas and had a blast seeing all the gorgeous projects. What an inspiration!

Another cool thing that I discovered was a knitting librarians & archivists webring that I definitely want to join. Though I am just a lowly intern right now, I hope to be an archivist quite soon, if I get the job I am dreaming of. At any rate, as of May 7th, I will become at least an out-of-work librarian -- cause I'm graduating!

Whoo hoo!

2005-03-16T19:04:00.000-08:00

Mama mia!

I just spent 2 hours playing with my template. Do you notice any differences? They are all very minor changes. At the end of all my fiddling around I was really questioning my sanity; but I did really enjoy playing with the colors. I love colors, even in hex code!

So, this is the finished product. Now I really am going home. Honest.

2005-03-16T17:10:00.000-08:00

What a slow day it has been.
I was bored out of my mind at work today, for some reason. Spent a lot of time poking around on the internet in between scanning documents; but I could only look at things here and there, so it was rather unsatisfying.

I did find a really cool online knitting magazine that I didn't know about before.
MagKnits
I especially like this pattern. I think it would be fun to make a summer version to wear over a little tank. I really like yarn-overs in the raglan shaping.

The coolest thing about this magazine is that you can submit your own designs to it and it looks like they accept most thingsss, provided that you have a good idea and follow all their deadlines and guidelines.

That would be too cool to have a pattern published!

I was also lurking around a diy goth message board that I used to read a little too obsessively. I had been Antimony & Lace free for a long time, but I stopped in today out of the desperation of boredom. I was really impressed by the diy stuff that people on the site are doing. Makes me want to start sewing again. I can't believe how I just threw aside my sewing machine when I discovered knitting. The sewing is so much of a production that I never really take the time for it, anymore. I still wear all the skirts I've made that I haven't completely worn out & I get compliments on them all the time. For someone with as weird a body shape as mine, I really ought to sew more.

Now just in case you think I am all sad and depressed about my body image, don't worry! Just being a knitter and a seamstress, I have a pretty acute awareness of how my measurements NEVER match up with 'normal' sizes. But, since I know how to fix it, it's pretty much peachy.

Ah, so that was the very long way to say that I might make a skirt or two soon. Maybe over break.

On the knitting front, I am almost back up to the point I was before I frogged back to the wonky tension on my Cap-Sleeved top. Very good. I am happy that I did rip out the yucky little bit, even if it has cost me a couple days. I don't mind a little extra 'process' for my product. I have often read of the split between people who knit for the results and people who knit for the process. Well, I think that is sort of a wierd distinction. I love the process AND the products. If someone was really product driven, why would she bother knitting in the first place?

Oh, our dichotomous culture, always seeking to catagorize everything. Bah!

Well, I think I might return to my knitting. T. is sacked out at home now, recovering from an all-nighter. Just one more take-home final due tomorrow and he will be all mine for a week! He finishes up on St. Patty's day, so it will be like every Irish person in the world is celebrating with him!

That reminds me! I can't forget to wear my green demi-cardi tomorrow. I don't want to get pinched by any strangers.

2005-03-15T19:21:00.000-08:00

So the little wonky bit of stitching I mentioned last time. I started to get obsessed with it, so I frogged about 7 inches of the back to take it out. Actually first I tried to pull at some of the stitches on the back to sort of even things out in a quick and dirty way, but that made it worse.

So here I am, back down to the screwy tension part. I really don't mind frogging & reknitting. I don't want to end up with something that I don't like. I just don't think this multi-ply yarn can take too many froggings without getting all separated, so I better get it right this time!

I included a photo from the Interweave issue, so you can see what I am going for.

I was poking around on some knit blogs today and found a link to the new issue of Rowan magazine, with pictures of all the patterns. This is a pattern book that I would go back on my word about saving room for yarn to buy, if I had any money.

Another cool thing I saw in knit blog land was the 'Knit Your Bit wristlets' on this blog. (Scroll down the right hand side. The link was being screwy, so you'll have to do a tiny bit of work yourself if you want to see the picture. Sorry!

They look so fun & easy to experiment with. I made a lace scarf for my mom that was really fun & I enjoy really complicated lace and cable knitting sometimes... I just don't always want to commit to a whole garment in lace. Little wristers would be very cool, though. In fact, I may make some lacy wristers for a special event that I have coming up soon. (Mar. 27th & no, the event is not an Easter Egg Hunt!)

Pretty soon I think that I will be able to submit my blog to the knit blog web ring. I do kind of like the freedom that comes from no one reading my blog, but I think I would be happy to sacrifce that to be part of a knitting community!

2005-03-14T20:00:00.000-08:00

Even though I am broke, I splurged and bought some yarn on Friday afternoon. Nothing extravagant... just 12 oz. of mill-end Brown Sheep cotton/wool. It was only $13 and I am making a little cap-sleeve top from Interweave's Spring 2004 Issue. I was going to post a link to it & when I looked it up, I found out that they are sold out of back issues & they didn't happen to illustrate the particular pattern I am making, so it wouldn't have been of much use to any one. Lucky you if you have that issue -- you can't get 'em anymore and I think it is one of the best issues lately.

I was really worried about Interweave when Melanie Fallick left & Pam Allen took over. I hated the first couple issues that she edited. This one was the first that I liked. Then the 2004 Fall Issue was just amazing & now I am happy again.

I was neither here nor there on the latest one. Nothing it it really made my heart sing & I already have a backlog of patterns I want to knit that would take Kali several mortal lifetimes to complete. Lately, I have just been curbing my appetite for books and patterns, to save room for yarn.

Anyhow, I started the Cap-Sleeve Carmel Top on pg. 19 of the Spring 2004 Interweave. I'm making it with an Indian red 80% cotton/20% wool blend & I think I may eliminate the buttons on the front to make cleaner lines. I just want something really sleek & modern. It is a simple pattern, but it's not boring. There is a lot of shaping and detailing to make the stockinette stitch more interesting & fun.
So far, the yarn has been pretty agreeable, except in one spot where my tension got a bit wonky. It is on the lower back, though... I hope it won't show too much. I will post a picture when I am a bit further along.

I think that my biggest problem last time I tried to knit with cotton & got really sick of it was that I was knitting with a yarn that was too thin. This yarn calls for size six needles, but I was able to match the pattern's guage for size 4 needles and the stitches are nice and fat and full (good for a tee so your skin doesn't show through!) I think that I may try to make that lacy tank from Vintage Knits again with this lovely ballet pink & an ecru/cream trim in that cotton/wool yarn. It would be quite scrumptious.

Maybe when I get a job. I do so hope I might be able to get this fancy job that is coming up. I met with my advisor today and she gave me a lot of pointers. I am really excited, but also nervous. I think the experience that I have been building here might give me an edge, but the job market is so competitive, it is really hard. I have been doing a lot of research tonight to get prepared.

Grr. This is not soothing talk of yarn and needles, so it must stop. I think I better get away from computers and snuggle up with my yarn now.

2005-03-11T13:10:00.000-08:00

I promised a picture of the socks soon, and I try to keep my promises...

They are coming along. I'm knitting them on size 1 metal dpn's and the yarn is a blend of cotton, wool, and nylon that designed especially for sock knitting. I find the whold combination very rough on the fingers, though. The yarn is not scratchy, but it is almost more of a rope texture than soft texture & the needles are little pointy spikes that I have to poke around a lot. My pointer finger on my right hand is actually sore right now from knitting for a few hours last night.

I was wondering if you could use bamboo dpn's that small? It seems like they would break, but the metal ones are kind of cheapy and painful. I wish that addi made super hi-tech dpn's in addition to circulars. There are times that you really need a dpn.

I did try that "Socks Soar on Circular Needles" method for one of Travis' other pairs of socks, but I didn't like it all that much. I found the process of transfering from one set of circular needles to the other every half round to be as much, or more, laborious as having the sock on 3 dpns. I like 3 w/ 1 free better than a total of 5 because you don't have to change needles as much and you can easily keep track of the top vs. the heel of the sock. I split the stitches up so that 1/4 of the stitches are on the first needle, 1/2 on the middle needle, and the remaining 1/4 on the last needle. The one with 1/2 the stitches is the front or top of the sock. When I get to the heel, I shuffle things around so the front is on two needles (for flexibility) and the back is on one... Then, once I pick up along the sides of the heel and start knitting in the round again, I go back to the original division of stitches. Some folks say that 4 needles and one free is better than 3 because you can always try your sock on... but you can still try on a sock knit with a total of 4 needles if you just knit half way across the needle with 1/2 the stitches on it to divide the stitches evenly on 4 needles, temporarily. (And also, you won't lose the 5th needle while you are trying on your sock, if you only use 4! I am forever misplacing my free needle!)

Anyhow, I am progressing on the sock project, but I can't work on it as much as I want because it hurts me. I looked for my Vintage Knits book this morning to see if I might find a nice spring pattern that wouldn't cost too much to make... but I couldn't find the book! This is a bit of a mystery. I may have laoned it to my mom. That is all I can think of. I haven't taken it off the shelf for ages, so it doesn't seem like it could be hiding anywhere around the house. I hope I can find it soon.

Thank is about all that is new on the knitting front. If I manage to find my book, I hope to start a new spring project soon.

2005-03-10T16:44:00.000-08:00

I am having a scattered day at work today... feeling confused and overwhelmed. I am spending the last few minutes of the day blogging because I don't know how to proceed with my projects and everyone with any authority to help me is in a meeting.

No sock pictures yet, but the second one is on the needles and about 2.5 inches along. Getting started on dpn's is always my least favorite part of the sock making. I got through the ribbing at the top and now the stockinette rounds are just flying by. I forgot how great socks are because they are so tiny! I can just stick the whole project in my purse and I don't have to lug around a knitting basket or a plastic bag or anything. Today I even stuck a book AND a sock project in my purse. Fabulous!

The weather continues to dazzle, but the nights are still chilly... so there is some sweater wearing left in the season after all.

I finished making up the hours I missed when I was sick, so I don't have to work on Fridays any more. I am really glad! I'm just going to relax, clean house, knit, blog, and hang out. We might even go camping this weekend!

2005-03-09T13:58:00.000-08:00

So I lied. Spring is not here. I think the season has skipped directly to summer!
I wore a skirt, sandals and a tank top on my walk to work this morning and I was actually a bit too hot. I am almost sad that there is no spring this year, as I love the sweater weather of fall and spring and we seem to have transitioned from coat weather right into tank top weather. Global warming is starting to seem a bit more real every day around here.

Oh well, I guess that I will have a bevy of new sweaters to pull out in the fall & now I can transition into summer knitting. This is a relatively new development in my knitting career and I have yet to make any summer knits that I want to wear out of the house. I did make two cute cropped halter tops last summer that I enjoy wearing around the house & I designed one cross-back tank that covers my tummy, but I don't like it much. It is waiting to be frogged and turned into something better.

I made the two little halter tops out of a Brown Sheep yarn that is 80% cotton & 20% wool, which I would like to make some more things with. As you wash this yarn, it just gets softer and more wonderful. It doesn't have the saggy baggy unforgiving quality of 100% cotton yarn. I absolutely hate working with cotton yarn. I tried to make a tank on the cover of Vintage Knits. At my LYS, they didn't have the exact yarn that it called for, so I got the closest thing (which I think was a lower quality cotton, but I am not well-versed in this fiber) and it was a nightmare! I normally don't have tension problems with my knitting. In fact, I have been complimented by more experienced knitters for having especially nice and even stitches... but with this horrid yarn you could tell every time that I stopped and started work on the garment. The stitches were uneven and yucky, despite my best efforts. I just gave up after a while. It was really awful and put me off from making any summer stuff.

That Vintage Knits book has great summer shells and tanks, though. If I choose some good yarn, I would really like to make some summer stuff this year. I saw a girl at a bar last weekend wearing a knit shell with a really deep v-neck and raglan cap sleeves. She was wearing it over a strapy stretchy black dress and it looked really nice. A cross between sexy, comfy, and kind of urban-chic. I reminds me of a few patterns in that book that I would like to make & the greatest thing about summer knits is how fast they are... no sleeves or turtlenecks to slow you down.

As a prelude to summer knitting I returned to a portable project that I started about 2 years ago! A pair of fine guage (size 1 needles) cotton/wool socks for Travis. I just finished the toe of the first one last night and will cast on for the second sock this evening. I will post a picture soon. They are quite different from all the thick wool socks I made him for the Indiana winter. I have a little fantasy that one day he might only wear socks that I have personally knitted for him. Unfortuately, the ones that I have made so far (4 pairs) are so well loved and worn that they are already starting to get worn out. I better restock his supply this coming winter or his toes will get cold!

Oh, and just in case anyone ever reads me, I added comments today, so you can tell me stuff.

2005-03-08T18:24:00.000-08:00

The long and the short of it:

I finished up with the neckband of the burgundy sweater last night and sewed on the buttons. They are gorgeous deer antler buttons, 1" wide. As I was sewing on these buttons, I got inspired to sew different buttons on to the green demi-sweater. I had these wooden ones on it before, but had been meaning to change them for a while. I figured that while the sewing needle was out, I ought to go for it.

I finished this sweater when we were out in Alsea and the nearest place to get buttons was Wal-Mart, which doesn't have a lot of choices (especially not many non-plastic choices). I liked these wooden ones a lot when I chose them, but unfortunately (as you can see in this picture) they twist around and look a little off.

I found the new buttons at a thrift store, they are vintage glass buttons, circa 1950's or 1960's and I like them a lot. I just thought that I'd like to see what they looked like & it was fun to change up a sweater without any frogging or other drastic measures. I think it makes in seem less like an 1820's English countryside sweater and more like a 1950's Paris bohemian sweater.

I like this view of the back too, you can really see how the sweater is constructed from cuff to cuff.

And just to catch up everything, I also have a new picture of the front of the rainbow sweater.

I wanted to add those pictures because I'm excited about all these projects coming together at once; but I don't have much else to say right now.

It is a lovely evening; today it was in the mid-70's and sunny now there is just a little chill in the air but it is still warm enough to bask in & the light is all golden. This is the warmest spring that I can remember and rather than describe it any more, I am going to go outside and knit in the last remaining hour of golden sunlight.

2005-03-07T15:46:00.000-08:00

My best laid plans always go to waste. I ended up working on the button bands of the burgundy tweed sweater, rather than planning out the crazy amalgamation of fairisle and super-chuncky yarns.

I had a good reason, though. We got invited to an 'art jam' and I wanted something easy that I could work on while everyone painted & played music & talked. Unfortunately, lots of people came without any art or music, so it was basically just hanging around. I got a lot done on the sweater, though! The only thing holding me up right now is figuring out the spacing of the buttons to match the ribbing of the button band, since I made the body longer than the original pattern.

I pretty much have it figured out with the execption of the top button hole in the neck band. But I ought to be able to finish it up tonight.

I didn't actually do any work on the other project, but I did haul everything out and take a look at what could be done to bring it all together. I think it will be a great & very unique project. I am really enjoying these slightly insane projects that I have been doing lately. It really is knitting by the seat of your pants & at times you have to frog everything and start all over; yet the creative satisfaction is so great. I love the process of making a sweater from scratch without a pattern or a preconcieved idea. I just like to gather up yarns that I love, colors and textures that go together unexpectedly & make something that shows technical expertise, whimsy, and a little bit of fool-hardiness, as well. This latest idea to finish two projects with one sweater seems to fit right in.

I am torn between my original idea based on the sweater I saw at Cactus Flower & a somewhat different sweater because I think that a pullover would hold together better than a cardigan. I think (especially with the different weights of knitted fabric) that the fronts might tend to sag all over the place, especially if partially unbuttoned, which is how I nearly always wear cardigans. Also, if I did a pullover, it would open up the option of using the fairisle piece for the front, rather than the back. This is confusing me just a little, but I am tempted right now to put it on the front, as it is so striking and detailed. We'll have to see what sort of craziness I come up with. My operative goal, though, is to keep things as simple as possible within the craziness of the idea, so there is some cohesive feeling to the sweater. I had to really wrestle with that on the rainbow sweater... just because you can, does not mean you should.

2005-03-06T15:49:00.000-08:00

It is an absolutely gorgeous spring day today. There is no doubt anymore that spring is here early this year.

This morning I wanted to sit outside and knit in the warm sun, but I was experiencing such a great deal of indecision about what to work on next that I decided to read in the sun instead. I finished up the rainbow Noro sweater on Thursday & haven't settled on anything I am really excited about working on. The problem, I think, is that I have so many unfinished projects; but I want to start something new. I know this is a bad idea, so I won't let myself start anything new until I finish the old projects. Yet, since I don't want to work on any of them, I continue to make little progress toward being able to start new things.

Sometimes I just start something new anyhow, but this time I want to make a list of current UFO's in order to try to get re-energized to finish them or realize I hate them so much that I want to frog them.

ufo sightings:

1.) Tahki/Stacy Charles Burgundy Donegal Tweed sideways knit cable cardigan.

All I have left on this sweater is to pick up and knit the button band and decide what sort of collar to add to it. It is a modification of a pattern in the Fall 2004 issue of Interweave for an empire waist cardigan jacket. I made the pattern once without any modifications...

While making the first one, I realized that the pattern would really show off this burgundy Donegal tweed yarn that I loved, but couldn't find the right project for. The only thing was, I had enough for a full-length sweater & I wasn't sure how many demi-sweaters one girl really needs. So I just ribbed the bottom edge for about 9 inches, rather than 3.5 inches.
You can see how it has a collar in the above detail. I have been thinking of making another modification to the original pattern & just make the collar a crewneck band. I am not sure if I want to crochet the band or knit a little rib band, though. So, I have had sort of a block with this project, even though it is so very close to being finished.

2.) Variagated Rowan & roving sweater, ice blues and winter whites.

These are the beautiful yarns from Hell. They look so lovely and tempting wound in a ball & once you start knitting, your project starts looking awful. I knit 4 different things with that undyed roving & frogged every single one. I knit a little headband & fingerless mitt set from a Rowan Big Wool pattern book with the blue yarn, but one size did not fit all & I ruined them trying to felt them to become small enough to fit my head and hands (I wished I had frogged them, that yarn was expensive!) I don't think the roving will survive much more creative conflict. I have currently made half a stripped sweater body & I don't like it much. I thought I might just finish it and give it to my mom; but I don't know if she would really like it either & I have another crazy idea.

I made almost all of the back of a fairisle sweater when I very first learned to knit. It was a fool-hardy project. The kind you take on, not knowing enough to know that it's a bad idea. Last summer, I saw a cardigan in this trendy store in Bloomington that was fine-guage fairisle on the back & really chunky thick & thin yarn for the fronts and sleeves. It was a neat effect. I was thinking that it would be neat to make the fronts out of the Rowan variagated blue & the sleeves, button band & collar with the cream colored roving. Hmm... As I explain this one I am getting excited. Frogging & re-doing is sort of a new project; but it would be in order to finished my very very oldest ufo!
I am almost positive that this is what I want to do next.

3.) Stash sweater in desert colors for Travis.

This one, I just have to finish the first sleeve, remember what I did on the first one, so I can make the second one, make a neck band & sew everything together. The main block for this one, is that I haven't worked on it since December & I don't have the patience right now to go back and figure out what I was doing.

So... choice #2 has prevailed as the most interesting unfinished sweater I am working on right now. I will try to get started finishing it asap!

2005-03-05T15:21:00.000-08:00

Wow! I got a wireless card and it has opened a whole new world of blogging possibilities. I also got a bundle of new software from the university to make my computer faster, smarter, and happier. It is so much easier to do stuff now. I am quite pleased!

One of the processes that has been much simplified is posting pictures & I have been doing so much lately that I have not blogged about that I have a lot of catching up to do.

Without further ado... here is a teaser picture of the crazy Noro sweater!

I have to get Travis to retake some more pictures of me wearing this sweater. Silly guy thought that I wanted him to take nice pictures of me when I really wanted him to get the details of the sweater. This one turned out well, though, with more sweater & less me. It was fun to have a little photo shoot.

I got some of him in his rainbow fairisle sweater that I finished for him last fall. I still have to do something to stabilize the bottom edge of this sweater. It has solid color ribbing for an inch at the bottom and then switches to fairisle. The fairisle is a much heavier weight than the solid color ribbing, so the ribbing flaps up & looks dumb. I think that I might just turn in under and sew it to the back side like a hem to create a stronger edge. Otherwise, just steaming it right before wearing it seems to refresh the blocking a bit and work for the short term. Anyhow...

Clowns to the left of me...

...jokers to the right...

...here I am. Stuck in the middle with you.

Even though the bottom is a little tweaky, Travis still wears it pretty often. It is lighter than the other sweater that I made him the winter before. I guess I ought to post a picture of that too, but I don't have one right now. It's made of grey Lamb's Pride Bulky with lots of cables, so it is heavy, thick, and really warm.

This one is substantial because of the fairisle stranding & the yarn, which is a rather coarse shetland wool, but it's knit in the round on size three needles (288 stitches per round!), so it is light & warm at the same time. The body is a little scratchy, but the navy blue of the sleeves, yoke, and neckband is a much softer wool, so it doesn't scratch anywhere that it might touch his skin.

I am almost done with yet another sweater for Travis. It is a stash sweater of lots of blues, browns, and other neutral earthy color worsted weight odds and ends from my stash. Many of the neutrals are vegetable-dyed wools that are really interesting colors. On their own they are a little garish, but I like them with the blues and browns. This sweater reminds me of the colors of Eastern Oregon in the late summer.

I will do a complete update of all the projects that I am working on & have finished recently once I get satisfactory photos taken. It is difficult for me to figure out the best way to photograph knitting. It seems that every garment is different. Maybe it is also the time of day & the lighting too. Some are just tougher than others to capture & I don't want to just muck everything up with a lot of junk.

So, I think I will take my leave and explore the further wonders of my computer's new makeover.

2005-03-03T14:40:00.000-08:00

So I searched the many variant spellings of Kabbalah & knitting in Google and all I found of any relevance is this passage from the Knitting Goddess.

It sort of references Kabbalah & knitting in the same document, but doesn't really get into any sort of hands-on application. Maybe I do have an original idea after all!

2005-03-03T11:34:00.000-08:00

I finished my crazy Noro-Tartlette sweater!!!

I was severely traumatized for a few hours while working out some of the details. I had these side panels & a third color of tartlette on the collar that I had to revise; but now I am very happy with it. I looks like some of the crazy things you find in Vogue Knitting or the Japanese Noro sweater patterns. I am dying to post pictures, as I designed it from start to finish all by my lonesome, but I will have to wait a little while.

I am excited, though, because I have finally decided to shell out the $ to buy a wireless card for my computer, so I can start to do WAY more with my very own internet connection. Yes, I know that this sounds rather archaic; but I am a poor student. I can't afford $50.oo/month for high speed internet & I don't even have a land line with which to do crappy dial-up, so for the last year and a half, I've just used the internet at school or the public library. (Either on their terminals or with a now virtually obsolete cable connection to my laptop.) But I am getting sick of it now that I don't live right by school and the library... so the price of a wireless card is much cheaper than any of my other options.

On another non-knitting note (and then I promise I will get back to the crazy sweater) I had an awsome idea for a project to help improve my web publishing skills last night & with wireless, I could actually do it! I went to a talk on Aleister Crowley's Liber 777 last night and I had the idea to create a format for making a record of each column of Kabalistic correspondences. Basically, it would be like a MARC bib record with a title entry, an identifying number (the column #) and 35 fields to enter each Kabalistic correspondence for that particular subject (like Tarot card or Magical Stone or Hebrew letter etc...) If you made each field an XML tag, you could create a fully searchable index of all the correspondences.

This would be so cool on so many levels. But back to knitting now.

Okay. This sweater just blows my mind. It is reminiscent of a sweater that I made a couple years ago:

I actually used the left-over Tartlette ribbon yarn and Manos Del Uraguay to make the bottom of the sweater. It then blends into Noro Kuryeon in a sort or earthy rainbow colorway, with an other variagated yarn on the top & collar. (Can't remember the name right now but it is various shades of spring green. Will check skein label and report back) The sleeves start with green Tartlette and this variagated yarn copying the Tartlette/Manos Del Uraguay pattern around the bottom of the body & then switching to Tahki/Stacy Charles Donegal Tweed in the bright green color (with flecks of orange, purple, dark green, brown & other colors that echo the Noro colorway) & a Hollow Oak cable running up the center of each sleeve.

The collar is a split turtleneck with a crocheted placket and edging in the green Tartlette & Donegal Tweed & two little square green shell buttons.

There is a very fine line between amazing and horrifying & I do think this sweater is right there in the balance... but it is pretty damn awesome & nobody will ever have one like it. I am proud of it for the design, if nothing else. Making a sweater from scratch is really wonderful.

Usually I use a pattern with a similar guage and body shape as the sweater that I have in mind & then go from there; but this time I did it all from scratch... calculating the armhole & sleeve cap shaping, designing the collar, working out the crazy colorway. It is really an amazing process. So satisfying.

Another note on the 777 stuff... I wore my sweater for the first time at that meeting & I was thinking how neat it would be to design sweaters with Kabalistic correspondences in the colorway and in the numerical aspects of the sweater (like #s of stitches in rib and cable patterns & the actual measurements of the garment.) Each sweater that I knit has a personality & I think this is true for most knitters. I always think that this is why patterns get proper names so often. Rowan always names patterns with proper names like "Melissa" or "Ashley" & I love some of Knitty's sweater names too.

So you could actually sort of craft the personality of your sweater into a Kabalistic formula to give you a certain feeling when you wear it. It would be pretty neat to develop the concept of Kabala Knitting. I wonder if anyone else has already thought of that?

Probably!

2005-03-01T16:32:00.000-08:00

I have been a long time away from my blog...
Just when it was starting to get habitual, I moved across the country and everything sort of turned upside down.

But though I have not been blogging, I have been knitting quite a lot since the summer.

I always enjoy the increase in pace that comes with the winter knitting. There is so much less to do and more need for knitting that makes it lovely to curl up with a cozy ball of yarn & knit to my heart's content.

But guess what!?

The season is almost over because spring is coming early this year. It feels so good to be home in the Pacific Northwest, rather than Indiana where the weather is more extreme in all seasons.

Our spring is starting every so slowly, a crocus here a daffodil there & then a flowering plum or a sweet-smelling apple blossom. The earth just starts to smell alive and fertile again. I love that!

Spring is also a wonderful time for showing off all the sweaters that one has knitted over the winter because you finally don't ahve to wear a bundle of coats and scarves over them. I have three that are nearly finished now -- two for me and one for Travis. When I figure out the deal with ftp now that I am in a new place sans internet, I will try to put up some pictures and get back into the swing of blogging regularly.

2004-07-13T13:49:00.000-07:00

Well, I have been a bad girl when it comes to blogging. Busy on many accounts. I have been knitting, though, here and there. It is keeping me somewhat sane through a very hectic time. T. finally made it back, with his mom. She has been staying with us for the last week in our studio apartment, which is interesting. That's what I'll call it. We have had some good times; but I am really needing some personal space to be with T. and just relax. I have been under a great deal of stress on many fronts lately.

But back to the knitting. I made almost the whole alpaca cardie, I just have to make one more front and then, once everything is sewn together, make the button/neck band. I have not had good luck picking up stitches for plackets in the past... they are always a litte baggy or misshapen, so I am going to do it until I get it right this time.

I have been distracted by the alpaca because we were on a trip up to T.s grandparents' this weekend and went through a little town (Morgantown, IN) that has a fantastic yarn store called Sheep Street Fibers. I bought a few sale yarns and some addi turbos of the correct size and I am making a tank now. One skein is noro kureyon cotton and the other three are two different shades of a german yarn that is 50% wool and 50% some german word that I do not know... I think it might be silk; but I have already packed my german dictionary, so I'll just have to guess. Whatever it is, it has a beautiful sheen and softness to it. I really like the way it looks. Two of the skeins were a pale butter color and the other is slighly more copper. I made 7" in 3x3 rib in the butter color and am working on 2" of seed stitch in the coppery color (it reminds me of the color combination of black hills gold, minus the greenish color) I will also make little i-cord ties from either side to tie in the back as a little detail. Then, I will spilt for the shaping of the back/bust and change to the noro. The noro is very bold variagated: chartreuse, hot pink, peach, butter yellow, chocolate brown. It goes well with the solid colors... there are hints of both the yellow and copper in the noro -- only bolder.

I am going to make a v-shaped front and back, with criss-crossed straps in the back. I am looking forward to completing it. When it comes to summer knitting I have only made two midriff-baring little halter tops that absolutely cannot be worn out of the house... so this will basically be my first tank.

Don't want to sound like a broken record; but I apologize for the lack of pictures. Will do my best to post some soon.

2004-07-05T14:06:00.000-07:00

Hey, something's gone screwy with my projects in progress. They don't show the shapes, just big blocks of color. Huh? Maybe it is just this browser at the library. I will try again later.

2004-07-05T13:51:00.000-07:00

Though I don't have the pictures to prove it, I finished my Noro sweater on Saturday and am nearing completion of the Alpaca Cardigan. Step one of creating an alpaca twinset. I actually do have pictures taken; but I didn't want to trek all the way to campus to post them. I will tomorrow when I have class.

Lately I've had a lot of "me time", as my mother calls it, to knit. I do enjoy getting things accomplished so quickly but I dearly miss my chief distraction from knitting... my wonderful husband. But he comes home tomorrow! And you can bet I will give the needles a rest then.

Not too much else is new, except I am getting doubtful on selling the baby hats. My friend had talked about taking me up to meet her family, hang out and show the hats to her mom for the 4th weekend, but it didn't work out and I have a feeling that it wasn't really as serious an opportunity as I had hoped. But I am thinking of giving them to Caps for Kids or some other knitting charity instead(they may be too small for the Caps for Kids target audience)... or trying to sell them to Bambini, the chi chi baby store in my home town. We'll see.

But the biggest thing on my mind is the fact that T. is coming back tomorrow. I have missed him so much. I have tried to be a brave girl and not get lonely; but I will be so happy to have his company again. And the best part is that he will be able to stay with me till I'm done with the term now because his younger brother will come live with us in the fall. So I won't have any kind of bittersweet reunion just some uninterrupted quality time with my sweetie!

2004-07-02T15:07:00.000-07:00

I've made a lot of headway on the noro sweater; just one more sleeve to go. The body and other sleeve are at home blocking as I type. And I have brought you pictures of them.

And here is a close up of the body piece that I finished last night.

I like it better for the front than the other side; which is a little too colorful across the chest to be flattering, I think. Good for a back, though.

Also, you can see in the second picture that I sort of compromised on my sleeve idea. It is supposed to be a sporty kind of play on vertical and horizontal stripes with the noro and the ribbing. I couldn't decide which I wanted, so I did both! Who says you can't have your cake and eat it too, every now and then.

Oh! And I forgot to mention that I posted 2 new hats on red star baby in case you want more eye candy!

2004-07-01T14:45:00.000-07:00

Norobody knows the trouble I've seen...

Um. That was just a spontaneous (and bad) pun on the name of this picture:

This was the first body piece I completed shortly after frogging noro 1.0. I think it will be the back, because I kinda messed up the color transition on the top. (after frogging, some skeins were wound one way and some the other, so the color sort of fans out symetrically from the purple part where the arm shaping begins.)

The other body piece shown below is what I had started last night, when I took the photos. After knitting this morning, I am now a few rows away from shaping the arm holes.

This pattern is from the Yarn Girl book, as I mentioned a long time ago. The title is something like 'tempting turtleneck' or 'timeless turtleneck' -- an aliteration of some variety. Basically, I am using this pattern as a starting point from which to copy the measurements of an old favorite J. Crew sweater. I am still deciding about how to do the sleeves, though. As you can see from the pictures, the ribbing is done in a charcoal heather Lamb's Pride worsted. The ribbed turtleneck will also be out of the L.P. and I am making it extra long, so it will fold over. As for the sleeves, I was originally planning to make them all ribbed in L.P.

But now I am changing my mind a little... I actually have enough noro to make the bottom 5" L.P. ribbing and the rest noro stockinette. The body pieces from the arm hole down match exactly; but the sleeves would not be identical, if I did it this way because I don't have enough yarn to match them. I think a little asymetricality might be kind of cool... but it could also look stupid. I'll have to give it some thought tonight.

Last night, while reviewing the measurements I am copying, I was thinking how funny it is that I used to not know how to knit & thus had to wear store-bought sweaters all the time. I have always been a sweater girl through and through. I adore just about every type of sweater from super-dressy vintage beaded cardigans to moth-eaten 'boyfriend' sweaters from the thrift store to chunky fitted turtlenecks to plain cotton sweaters etc. In the pre-knitting era, I thrifted and bought a lot of vintage sweaters; but my favorite splurge used to be a sweater from J. Crew every so often. Now I just think they are over priced & under-quality. I can make such nice things for myself; it's wonderful! (When I manage to finish what I start!)

The only problem is that my tastes are on the simpler side and sometimes I want to knit something wild and challenging... but then I end up getting into a tangle like I did with Noro 1.0. I guess that is part of becoming a better knitter -- learning how to balance design and technique to get something fun to knit and equally fun to wear. Discovering cables has made this seem more achievable. And little things like socks and hats also let you get out some crazy design urges in a safe medium. We'll see. I think it's all part of the fun.

2004-07-01T13:17:00.000-07:00

Another quizical indulgence:

You are a masterful knitter! I don't know how you
got this result, but what the hell... Enjoy
your title, and try selling some of your
"unvented" patterns- you may make
enough for that bundle of qiviut you've been
drooling over...

Are you a knitter?
brought to you by Quizilla

I have to admit that I took this quiz twice. There were a couple answers that I was sort of wavering on and I thought my result was off the first time, so I took it again. I don't know if either result was very correct. But it's still fun!

I actually have pictures of my own that I will post this evening as soon as I get off work and bop over to the computer lab to put them on my server.

After attempting to tidy up the moving chaos, I made a little place for myself that's calm and tidy and settled down for the evening to work on a project... I decided on the Noro sweater. It's pretty mindless, just stockinette & ribbing, but the fibers feel great after they were washed from the first frogging and seeing the colors change is very exciting.

I was feeling a bit blue because I miss T. so I wanted a comfort project. Happily, he called me! He told me that there might be a change in plans and that there's a possibility that he wouldn't have to move back a month before me. But I don't want to get my hopes up. I REALLY REALLY want that to work out though!!!

Any other news? Oh, I saw the kitty yesterday. She is as tiny as can be. Very sweet. Maybe I will take her picture some time and put it on my blog. What is a knitting blog without a cat picture here and there, anyhow?

2004-06-30T14:34:00.000-07:00

Just passing the last few minutes at work... I finished organizing a major series in the collection I am currently processing and it feels really good! So, now I'm gonna goof off.

Found this on a recent addition to the knitting blog ring. I think this site has a great header too, really classy and original.
Okay, I'm gonna do the quiz-y thing now. I like this sort of stuff when I am bored at work. You'll have to indulge me :)

What was the last...
Book you read:
Hmm. I have read a lot of parts of books for school lately. The last whole book, I cannot remember. That is sad :(
Movie you saw:
Radio Days
Movie you saw on the big screen:
Farenheit 9/11
Show you watched on tv:
History Channel Documentary on Sexuality in the Middle Ages
Song you heard:
elevator-y music at the bagel shop
Thing you had to drink:
Water
Thing you ate:
Sundried Tomato Bagel with Roasted Red Pepper Parmasean Cream Cheese
Time you showered:
Last Night
Time you smiled:
Now
Time you laughed:
This morning, talking with my mom on the phone
Person you hugged:
August
Person you talked to online:
I don't talk online.
Person you talked to on the phone:
My mom

Do you...
Sleep with stuffed animals?
Yes
Play an instrument?
No. But I sing. (used to take lessons for 6 years)
Believe there is life on other planets?
Yes.
Read the newspaper?
Yes
Believe in miracles?
Yes
Consider yourself tolerant?
I try my best.
Consider police a friend or foe?
Foe, mostly.
Believe in astrology?
Sorta.
Believe in magic?
Not exactly.
Go to church?
No.
Have any secrets?
Yes.
Have any pets?
No. But I want a kitty!!!!
Go or plan to attend college?
Yeah. I can't seem to quit!
Talk to strangers?
Occasionally. You'd never meet anyone new, otherwise.
Have any piercings?
I guess my ears are still pierced, but I haven't worn earrings for years.
Have any tattoos?
No.
Hate yourself?
No, not anymore.
Wish on stars?
Yes
Like your handwriting?
It's alright.
Believe in witches?
No.
Believe in ghosts?
I dunno.

2004-06-30T12:42:00.000-07:00

I was so worn out yesterday that I didn't even knit one stitch!

But, I did have the surprise chance to go to Wal-Mart with my friends, so I got a zipper to solve my little purse problem. Yes, I know you are thinking... "a happy chance to go to Wal-Mart? But that place is so yucky!" Yes, it is pretty wierd; but I give it props for having a fabric section. I mean, can you imagine Target with a fabric section?

They were going to Wally World for a good reason too, though. They are getting a kitty! It's going to be named Simone after Ms. De Beauvoir. And they asked T. and me to be its godparents! Wow! I am a feline godmother :) I bought her a cute catnip toy and also a little kit called "Sweet Greens" to sprout fresh oat grass. Since she will be an indoor cat, I figured she might like that. Cats seem to adore eating grass. My mom was just telling me today on the phone about how our kitty ate all her expensive ornamental grasses. After hearing of this kit, she is going to try it for him too.

This morning I attempted to make some sense out of the half-packed stuff that T. was working on before he left. I packed up several new boxes and straightened up a lot of piles. I know we are in moving mode; but I really feel the need for some tidy order these days, so I think I am going to do a big clean-up tonight and then I will have a nice pristine and serene place to work on projects. (Which will, of course, create new messes of their own.) But crafty messes are much more aesthetic than other types of messes!

Okay, I'll be back when I actually have knitting stuff to say.

2004-06-29T12:37:00.000-07:00

T. arrived safely to his destination after a full day of planes, trains, and automobiles & I had a quiet bachelorette night last night, eating Chinese takeout & gummy candy, knitting and watching anime. Also experimented with creative hairstyles and danced around the house to indie rock. A pretty good night, all in all.

On the knitting front, I am frustrated with that tulle bag. I can't decide what shape it should be. I realized that I really like the way it looks with the garter stitch ridges running vertically, while the pattern I am basing my design on has horizontal ridges. So, I had cast on according to width, not height & if they are to run vertical my bag will be either smaller or larger than I planned. Larger would be okay, except that I don't have enough tulle & smaller would be okay, except that for a tiny purse, I think I would need to put a zipper in, or all my stuff will fall out. Either of these options requires a trip to a fabric store and they are all far away! And, I don't think that the tulle strips would frog very well. Bah!

I was thinking of making a button closure for a small purse, though. Not exceptionally effective, but better than nothing. I guess this will just be a little experiment & I can try again now that I have a better idea of the way that tulle works. It is a cool medium. I also really want to try making a plastic bag out of plastic bags. What, you say? That sounds like a no-brainer... but that Simple Knits with a Twist book had a neat bag knit out of strips of plastic cut from old grocery bags and tied together in a big ball. The bag is all veriagated and funky-chic, plus it's totally recycled! I am curious if it would actually hold groceries, though. Guess there is only one way to find out. But that is a project for another day.

I think I am going to actually start working on one of the sweaters that I have in progress; I am getting a little weary of baby hats for the moment. Still a great carry-around or social project; but with all this uniterrupted knitting time I have this week, I would like to work on something that requires a little more concentration and expertise. I am thinking of that Alpaca Raglan Cardie as a top choice. It is really chunky yarn; but a desgin challenge at the same time. This could be nice because it can get done quickly & still be interesting. We'll see what happens tonight.

2004-06-28T14:03:00.000-07:00

I've got pictures!
Here are the baby hats en masse:

If you want to see each one, you can check out my new gallery blog red star baby for a close up of each individual hat.

Also, the sweater set I made for my aunt is there too; but just 'cause I'm nice I'll post it twice.

And as for works-in-progress:

Here is a close up of the baby hat 'o the day:

and the cool tulle handbag project, in progress with all it's future trimmings:

I am really excited about the new gallery and also the fact that I figured out how to sftp from the PC computer lab in the union, instead of having to trudge all the way to the special mac lab at the library. That means you'll be seeing a lot more pictures from me from now on!

2004-06-28T08:41:00.000-07:00

I've had a busy week visiting with family, so I've neglected my blog & have yet to post pictures... Bad girl am I! But I had a great time and now my dad has gone home and T. is off this morning to his family reunion, so I'll be all alone this week.
I plan to spend a lot of time knitting and blogging & perhaps setting up a website with the little hats.
To make up for lack of pictures, I added some new links and a very spiffy project tracker that I discovered through the knit blogs site. There are a lot of great links there on html & other blog-related stuff that make it a double-interesting place. I like reading all the other knitting blogs. I am shy to try to add mine to the list, though. I don't think I post often enough and don't add enough pictures. One of these days after I get home & get internet at home, maybe I will work up the gumption to go public.

On the knitting front, I started a new project on top of the baby hats. T. & my dad and I were hanging out at Border's on Friday and I came across a new book that I haven't seen before: Simple Knits with a Twist. It has some really neat, quirky projects in it & one of them is a tulle handbag made from cutting tulle into strips then using it like yarn. I am going to line the bag with satin and sew satin straps for it, plus decorate it with wire ribbons and a faux flower made from the satin & tulle scraps. The pattern is really simple and flexible, so I didn't actually buy the book... but I would really like to get it at some point when I have $. I love the little ballet slippers on the cover too!

So, just makin' baby hats and the new handbag project. I will have lots of craft time this week, as it's just me at home. Stay tuned for pictures of all these projects at some point; I promise that one of these days I will put them up!

2004-06-22T12:38:00.000-07:00

Well, I suck. I didn't get the pictures up today. Long story of logistical confusion that is not really worth recounting. I will work on it though.

I gave the baby sweater/hat set to my aunt & also a summer hat too. I was scattered and forgot to take a picture of the little summer hat, but there are pictures in my camera of the sweater set right now and tonight I will take more pictures of the 5 more baby hats I have made as part of the assortment I want to show my friend's mom. Everyone in KY was excited about them & they confirmed my general thoughts on pricing too, which has been a topic on my mind lately. Right now I am just using bits here and there from my stash & it is hard to assign a price to these materials. It's hard to know what I ought to charge for labor too. I don't want to charge so high that they are too expensive to purchase, but I don't want to sell myself short either. I think I've almost figured it out though.

That's about all the knitting news. I started a new session of summer classes on Saturday with an 8 hr intensive workshop and today I started my other class. it has ton of reading; but it all seems interesting, which is good. I started this book, A Gentle Madness today at lunch.

Hey. Since I don't have any pictures of my stuff, check this out.

It's so cute; I want it!

2004-06-18T09:19:00.000-07:00

When it rains it pours... another quick entry today. I am bummed out because I took a quiz called "what yarn are you" that I saw on someone's knit blog & I turned out to be "dish cloth cotton" Behold:

You are Dishcloth Cotton.
You are a very hard worker, most at home when
you're at home. You are thrifty and seemingly
born to clean. You are considered to be a Plain
Jane, but you are too practical to notice.

What kind of yarn are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

I am NOT dishcloth cotton!!!!!!

So, I google knitting quizes and found another one:

You are "turbo" charged.
Fast moving and classy, you get things done with
power and grace. Your expensive tastes can be
deceiving, since what you really value is
quality and efficiency. As you're careening
around those corners in life, finishing a dozen
knitted objects each month, stop and smell the
roses. Don't miss the beauty of process!

What kind of knitting needles are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Now tell me this! Does anyone sit around and knit dishcloth cotton on Addi Turbos? Maybe I have a split personality. Or maybe I ought not put too much stock in quizzes!

2004-06-18T07:36:00.000-07:00

I have been such a bad blogger!
Mostly because I got busy with school, my knitting fell by the wayside temporarily. Also it's been hotter than Hades & sitting around with a wool sweater in-progress on my lap has not sounded too appealing as of late. But I have made a dramatic comeback! 'Member that my aunt was having a baby shower and I was puzzling over what to make? Well, I made a sweater and two baby hats... plus I have to finish one more hat that matches the sweater before we go visit her tomorrow. AND... I learned how to crochet edges and I even crocheted a flower to sew onto the sweater.

This crochet business is a big deal for me. I have been knitting for almost three years and can do just about every knitting technique if I just concentrate and set my mind to it; but crochet has completely alluded me. And not for lack of trying. But I just sat down and attempted to put an edge on the cuff of the baby sweater and didn't stop until I figured out the tiny little pictures in Yarn Girls Guide to Simple Knits how-to section. It took over an hour, but I eventually got the hang of it. Then, after mastering the single crochet edges, I tried my hand at a little flower from my Rowan Big Wool pattern book called "Bloom". It is pretty simple stuff; but I was happy with it. It really completes the sweater.

It's a raglan pullover from a Debbie Bliss baby book. The pattern has rolled edges and in robin's egg blue cashmere yarn, this looks really classy and modern. But with fuschia Lamb's Pride, the rolled edges just looked kinda crappy. I really don't know what came over me with this bright pink yarn. I thought it was more of a trendy heathery pink when I looked at it in the store, but it is basically just plain ol' hot pink.

See, I couldn't figure out what my aunt would like. She has a sort of flamboyant taste in color... really bold colors like true red, teal, and bright purple that are really hard for most people to wear look great on her. So I was staring at this wall of cheesy pastel baby colored acrylic yarns and I thought I had to choose something else. This stuff makes me gag and I don't think she would like it either. Looking around the store, I saw a lot of muted, earthy toned colors that I would like to dress a baby in, but they didn't seem right for her. In a moment of sheer folly, I bought two skeins of this pink worsted weight Lamb's Pride. It's cheap, soft, and natural fiber. It seemed like a good choice.

But as you can see, I had some second thoughts after sewing it up last night, so I decided to turn it into a sort of Jackie-O type sweater. With some extra bits of that dark charcoal LP worsted from the noro sweater, I added crocheted edges on the cuffs, hem and neck line & I crocheted a little flower to sew on the 'lapel' (it doesn't have any lapels, but I put it approximately where a lapel would be). Today I am going to make a little hot-pink hat with charcoal croched edges and a flower to top the whole thing off. It think it will actually turn out to be pretty cute.

I will post pictures on Tuesday... I am just too disorganized to get them up today.

In addition to the trial-and-error sweater, I also made two baby hats out of scrap yarns I have in my stash, adapting a pattern from another Debbie Bliss beginner's baby book. (Mostly I just needed to know the general measurements on baby heads -- as I have no babies around here to measure!) This is more charted territory for me 'cause I have made a lot of adult hats and it turned out that I LOVE making baby hats! They are so quick, they are a great way to use up extra bits of yarn, and they are also a fun way to experiment with color/yarn combinations.... kind of like socks, but faster and with more flexibility. I made one that uses a tiny bit of noro wool in pale & royal blues, browns & greens with a cream colored angora top & one with lavender Rowan summer tweed (from the now-defunct noro sweater 1.0) combined with a dusty lavender Cotton Ease. They are adorable and they may even be marketable too. Read on:

My friend's mom is opening a new-age type boutique for the growing number of yuppies in her community turning to yoga, vegetarianism, and all those wonderful earthy/alternative pursuits. She is a seasoned business-woman with another popular business in her town & she is partnering with a woman who owns a fancy & very successful woman's clothing boutique, so the new store will probably draw a lot of people and be planned and managed really well. (Unlike some of the fly-by-night stores that have opened and closed in my hometown.) So my friend saw the hats I made & thought they would be good for the store, so her mom is very interested in selling my hats! I have to make some samples and go meet with her; but it would be really cool to actually sell something I knitted. The hats are good because they don't take too long to make and they don't take too much yarn... both factors that make adult knits really expensive to sell profitably. It would not make me a millionaire by any stretch of the imagination; but I think it would be awesome to get a little mad money from such a fun pursuit as knitting!

Whew! Guess I am making up for lost time with the blogging. Will post pictures on Tuesday and write more then. I am gowing travelling this weekend, so no blogging till next week. I will try to keep up though!

2004-05-26T12:43:00.001-07:00

My Noro 2.0 sweater is going well. I have the back (or front... they are identical and I am going to decide which I want for front and back depending on how each color progression works out) almost done. I will post pictures tomorrow when I go to school and can upload them to my server. Speaking of that, blogging paid off for me academically yesterday. My teacher asked me to post a power point presentation that I had made to the server, so everyone could get access to it as notes. Now last semester, I would not have had the faintest idea where to begin on this; but it was easy peasy since I figured out how to post pictures!

Besides the happy reincarnation of Noro sweater, I have been contemplating making some baby thing for my aunt, who is adopting a baby girl from China and is having a shower for her before they go to pick her up. I actually hate making baby stuff. I've tried it before many times and have never actually given any knitted baby presents. I think if I were to get pregnant or adopt my own child, I would feel differently; but for some reason baby knitting just doesn't agree with me. But I love my aunt and I want to give her something... so I will try to find something good.
Another obstacle is that she has very particular tastes and they change frequently... her baby nursery has gone through several versions already... so I don't want to make something that doesn't match with her colors or style; but I don't have very much extra $, so I would like to just make something with the yarns in my stash. Arg! I am sure I will think of something.

On the non-knitting front, I am midway through a week of cleansing and feeling good. The second day, I felt like someone beat me up, my muscles were all achy and I was really tired... but this was just released toxins leaving my body. I went for a little run and stretching and felt better right away. I am using the Zand brand "Quick Cleanse" supplements and I am not eating meat (as usual) or processed foods and trying to reduce dairy and sugars to a bare minimum.
I think it is doing a lot of good!
After this week of general cleansing, I am going to do juice fast over Memorial Day weekend to cap the whole thing off. Then I will be ready to start a new wave of healthy eating habits. I love eating well. It seems so hard at first, but once you start it becomes natural and really satisfying. The only problem is that when holidays or other special social events role around, you think you'll just eat a little bit of unhealthy food and pretty soon, you're craving it again all the time. So, this cleansing and purifying my diet is just sort of a recharge to get back into healthy habits again. It feels really good.

2004-05-24T14:50:00.000-07:00

So the Noro sweater I was working on has come to some sort of closure. But not finishing... I frogged it! It was the first sweater I had taken apart so much work on. I have ripped out bits that had mistakes before or unfortunate beginnings, but never so much work. It was wonderfully liberating, though. The sweater progressed from mildly artsy to totally experimental and finally I lost control of it completely. I was working on the neck band for like four days, just hating every second of it and then I realized... this is not a good sign. I think I better rethink the whole notion of this sweater. It is quite a relief to be rid of the previous beast. And a bonus: I have mastered bobbles completely and also committed the 'Hollow Oak' pattern to memory!

As it was my first frogging experience & I haven't posted any progress pictures lately, I documented the process. I read about the nuances of relaxing the yarn after unravelling it in Stitch n' Bitch, which actually turned out to be a great book! I glanced at it at Border's when it first came out, but was broke. I liked a lot of the patterns, but didn't read too much of the reference part; but I recently found it at the library and read it more carefully. On top of the cute patterns, it has a really great reference that gives a lot of details on the little tricks your Grandmother was supposed to teach you... if only she had known how to knit. You don't find these little tricks in Vogue Knitting, you know. I think I'll have to buy SnB one of these days.

At any rate, T. helped me guide the unravelled yarn back into skeins and then I washed it and hung it to dry with weights on the really curly skeins (as suggested by SnB). We had a lot of trouble finding a good sized household obejct to make skeins around; but settled on his pillow from Thailand.

After washing them, I hung everything up in the shower and had another search for the best household objects to weight the skeins with. You can see the winners below!

And finally, once they dried and were wound back into balls, they looked so peaceful.

I was so excited to give them a second life that I woke up really early on Sunday to check if they were dry, wound them into balls and had already finished the ribbing on a sweater front before T. woke up!

I am making a turtleneck out of the Yarn Girls Guide to Simple Knits. More to come on the progress of the new sweater tomorrow. For now, I have to get back to academic reality and print out some stuff for my metadata course.

2004-05-21T08:49:00.000-07:00

I am going to stop setting any goals for finishing this Noro sweater. Then when I am not looking, perhaps it will finish itself! I am still finishing up the funnel neck and have the sleeves left. It has been so hot that I have been all sticky feeling and don't want to sit with an entire sweater in my lap. Also have been excercising more in the evenings, which takes time. It has been great, though.

I was reading one of the blogs from the knit blog ring and found a fun list activity counting down from 10-1. I thought, since I have been such a slack off with my knitting that I might just do this list project.

Ten artists I've been listening to a lot lately:
1.) Bob Dylan
2.) Bob Dylan. umm... there must be others!... Velvet Underground
3.) Women of Studio 1 (Feel Like Jumping compilation)
4.) Tori Amos
5.) Tiesto
6.) Air
7.) Dan the Automator & all the folks on Lovage
8.) Cat Power
9.) Hefner
10.) Paul Oakenfold

Nine things I look forward to:
1.) Not being in grad school any more
2.) Moving home to Eugene
3.) Seeing results from excercising, cleansing, & eating better
4.) Finishing my Noro sweater
5.) The weekend (EVERY weekend!)
6.) Travelling abroad
7.) Growing old w/T.
8.) Getting a cat someday
9.) Taking a nap

Eight things I enjoy wearing:
1.) Nothing
2.) black organic cotton Blue Canoe tank
3.) new flirty pink/white/black floral top w/black ribbons
4.) green cross-strap tank
5.) good long skirts, in general
6.) black wrap-front ballet style pullover
7.) most sweaters I make... but not in this weather!
8.) Danskos

Seven things that annoy me:
1.) Waking up to an alarm
2.) Keeping a schedule not of my own choosing
3.) Summer school
4.) Capitalism
5.) Cruel and insensitive people
6.) Being exhausted and having to do stuff anyway
7.) Unadventurous people

Six things I say most days:
1.) I love you
2.) I'm so glad that we are together
3.) Hi
4.) I'm tired
5.) Are you hungry?
6.) Do you want to watch something?

Five things I do everyday:
1.) Kiss my husband
2.) Drink water
3.) Eat
4.) Sit on the porch
5.) Brush my teeth

Four people I want to spend more time with:
1.) My parents (2 people, I know.)
2.) The young communists
3.) Anne
4.) T. -- just because :)

Three movies I could watch over and over again:
Cowboy Bebop
Spirited Away
Until the end of the World

Two of my favorite songs at the moment:
I Want You -- Bob Dylan
Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands -- also, Bob Dylan

One person I could spend the rest of my life with:
T. (I love him soooo much!!!!)

'Kay. I better do other stuff now.