knitting update a day late

It's Wednesday, I know. I tried to write yesterday, but it was a very busy day that lasted very long and involved zero breaks. Thanks for your patience.

I finished the Harry Potter bookscarf!! It is now sitting happily in The Goblet of Fire, which is probably pretty close to being overdue at the library (along with 2 or 3 other books...oops), and I'm slowly making my way through it.

I started a new project. Maybe I should actually FINISH one of my larger projects before starting a new one, but...hey, I was inspired, so what can I do? I'm making a wine cozy - it's going to be part of a gift for the winner of a game at a bridal shower for my long-time friend Amber. Not that I would normally make a wine cozy for anyone, but I was standing yet again in the Target dollar spot and decided that the fuzzy novelty yarn really was cute and I should make something out of it, and then other things from the dollar spot screamed out at me, and before I knew it I had a romantic-candle-lit-dinner-with-wine-in-a-box scrounged together for about $5 (without the wine and the dinner...). I stole the wine cozy pattern from the dollar pattern book (why buy a book that tells you how to make stockinette stitch scarves and a wine cozy that only has about 6 rows of increases when you can easily copy down the directions on a spare piece of paper?). Thus, the wine cozy is my new bus project. It's getting there quite rapidly, and I actually like novelty yarn. Never thought about using it for anything before now, but it's sort of cool. Scarf, perhaps? I could be so fashionable!

Worked some on my favorite sweater, Starry Night, while listening to various professors explain their research at the annual IDM Retreat Day on Friday.

Worked none on the Aran, although I'm thinking about buying another set of $1 4's from Target so I can transfer that sweater onto them and use the needle cables to start on the Wave Skirt in the round. Being that watches are on sale at Target this week and I have been watchless since mine broke at the end of the Habijax trip, I may be starting the Wave sooner than I thought since I've GOTTA go to Target! :-) Perhaps while I'm there I'll bother to drop off my film to get it developed finally so you wonderful people can see photos of my "stuff."

a surprise is coming

Knitting!! Just the word is so relaxing to me...

It would be great if I could write here about how wonderful the knitathon for victims of Hurricane Katrina was on Sunday at the Knit One store, but sadly I could not attend due to a serious amount of work that I needed to get done that day. How I would love to knit with some others, and soon!

I at least have been able to knit at all, albeit by myself. Most of my time has been spent on the Harry Potter bookscarf, which I work on mostly on the bus. This morning, before getting off the bus and running into my classmate Derek who was walking to where his fiance?/wife? had gotten into a car accident up the street (! - she's okay, although car is not), I finished the third (of five) set of stripes. I'm still not the world's best jogless jogger, nor am I especially skilled at counting to 16 (I have a row or two more than 16 between a couple stripe sets...), but at least the scarf is looking all right. I'm also encouraged that I am learning how to use the small yarn/thread and needles employed by this tiny project. When I first started, I thought the microscopic materials were most difficult to work with, but now it's not problem. Hooray for progress!

I was very happy to get some time to knit on Saturday afternoon. I put all my projects in a basket, took it down to my favorite chair in the living room and pulled out whatever suited my fancy at the moment. I worked a little bit on the Starry Night pullover and the bookscarf. OOH - and I also created a special surprise for some special people who shall remain nameless until they actually receive what I knit for them. Exciting (to me, at least)!

Other than that, my "knitting time" has mostly consisted of attempting to transform my hanks of Cotton Fleece into center-pull balls, which has taken on average of about 1.5 hours per hank. This is NOT encouraging. Well, it's not encouraging me to ball more hanks...but it IS encouraging me to buy a ball winder and swift... My birthday is right around the corner (October 12), so perhaps I'll see what that day brings me before rushing off to order. Besides, all my circular needles are in use at present, so I can't even cast on the skirt that goes with the Cotton Fleece (unless, of course, I buy more needles...).

Speaking of buying needles, I purchased some bamboo 4's from Target's dollar spot over the weekend. Kinda just wanted to see what the Target stuff is like, plus I tend to use 4's a lot (I actually need 4's for the skirt...but certainly not bamboo straights...). I used them to make the surprise. Fairly okay, although I'm no expert in needles.

all systems at less than sixteen percent!

I have a few works in progress at the moment, and none of them are very far along...

1. The Aran pullover continues to get little attention. I knit a few rows over the weekend while riding to Cape Cod, Massachusetts for Jen and Kevin's wedding. I learned that knitting cables on a bumpy road is not a good idea. I spent more time sticking fallen stitches back on the needle than I did doing actual forward-progress knitting.

2. The Starry Night pullover is my favorite project at this moment in time. So soft...so warm...so blue. Worked on it several days on the bus. It's at the boring state right now, just stockinette stitch for several more inches.

3. The Wave Skirt still hasn't been actually begun. After colorfasting last weekend and waiting for the cotton to dry, I have been procrastinating putting the hanks of yarn into balls. I have one and a half of the 7 hanks in balls, but the first one took 2 hours to do because I managed to create a gigantic mass of tangles and knots in the yarn. I am thus motivated to purchase/make a yarn swift and ball winder before I proceed. ...But I need to examine how much money I have before doing so.

4. The Monk's Travel Bag is now on size 2 needles and seems to be the right-ish gauge on them. I need to work on it some more. Not much progress.

5. I cast on the Harry Potter Bookscarf (see Knitting with Laura) for the Weasley-a-long in relatively authentic Gryffindor colors last Friday after purchasing the DMC Perle Cotton yarn in a hurried visit to Jo-Ann on Thursday night. So far I've gotten up to the first stripe - row 18 out of 112. This I also tried knitting on the drive to the wedding and learned that knitting with tiny yarn and needles on a bumpy road is not a good idea. Again, the stitches kept falling off as I went to put my needle in the stitch and we hit a bump. But, for some reason, knitting with tiny needles and yarn on the bus is not so difficult, and this morning I was able to weave in a new color, knit a round of it, and jogless-jog after the first round. It's a nice, simple project that teaches me how to use tiny double-pointed needles and do that jogless-jog technique and practice my color transitions and provisional cast-on. I'm not altogether pleased with the colors I selected. They look better in some lights than others.

I took pictures of all my knits to finish up my roll of film, so as soon I should get them online next week after they're developed. ...I'm getting really tempted to purchase a digital camera...!

And how can I forget the best knitting knews! The new issue of Knitty came out! Yay!!!

dell and the disappearing file

I finally sat down yesterday to answer Part 15 for my training grant proposal - Long Term Career Goal. I ended up thinking of something to say that would please my audience and make me still feel honest. And, interestingly, when I got home at night and read through my daily devotional, I was struck by the fact that sometimes what I want from life, although it may be noble and all that, may not be what God wants for me. Maybe God doesn't have it in His will for me to be a stay-at-home mother. Obviously that's not the case right now, since I a)have no kids and b)am not married. And maybe He doesn't even desire me to be a teacher. I don't know for sure, honestly.

Anyhow, back to the point... I wrote three paragraphs about what my goals are, and I was quite pleased with it as a piece of writing. Saved it, transferred all my grant files to the USB memory drive, overwriting the previously saved drafts of all these files, and then went to a computer that attached to a printer in order to print off my manuscript and be ready to hand it in the next day (which is now...today). When I stuck the memory drive into the Dell computer there were three "ghost" files - you know, those ones with numbers and letters in the title that don't mean anything - as well as the files I wanted. I opened the research proposal file and the information-about-me file (birthday, address, etc.) and printed those, but I had to switch to a different computer that was hooked up to a color printer to print off some of the figures to accompany my proposal. On this Gateway computer the ghost files weren't there. I printed the figures, and then all I had left to do was print the Long Term Career Goals page and I'd be done. But when I opened that file...it was my very first draft of the file, which said essentially nothing and was only 2 sentences long. AAAK!

What I had done was type up the REAL L.T.C.G. file directly onto the memory drive, so that meant that when I overwrote that file with the ones saved on my hard drive (e.g. the draft...) the real one went away - FOREVER!!! I tried everything I could think of to find temp files of the real file back on my original computer, but no - the computer doesn't save temps of files on external drives... I tried to trick MS Word into finding the real file for me, but it wouldn't. I tried to call my computer genius brother, but he was in the middle of driving from Grand Rapids to Columbus and didn't have a cell phone. I called the school help desk, but they said I was out of luck and there was nothing to be done.

I gave up, ranted on the Knitty board, and sat down to the worst task ever - trying to remember what I had written and then rewrite it. I absolutely abhor this... Maybe it's the writer in me, but I feel like I can never recapture the carefully selected words I had chosen in the original when I am forced to recall and rewrite. So...for the next hour I worked on that and was finally satisfied. I checked on the Knitty board to read some comforting replies, and one person suggested looking in the subdirectory where the real file had been stored to see if I could find the temp file. I had already done that, but then I remembered the ghost files on the Dell. ...Could it be...??

I ran to the Dell and plugged in my memory drive and - lo and behold the ghosts were still there... And when I opened one of them...IT WAS THE REAL FILE!! Yaaaaaay! I was so happy, although also so peeved because I had just rewritten and the files hadn't showed up on the other two machines I'd been trying to find the file on... Still don't know quite why only Dell will let me see the temp files, but I'm sure glad at least on of the three computers I was working with did. (Any thoughts???)

Amusingly, the words in the real file and the rewritten file were about 80% identical, which just goes to show that I guess rewriting isn't so inaccurate - but it's still hard because it's quite a strain to try to remember the exact words used.

Happy me printed that last page of the grant application, made copies, paper-clipped them together, and finally left from work to catch the 8p.m. bus... Blech. I had just enough time to grab a bag of greens and a container of blackberries, hop in the car, and drive off to find a Jo-Ann before it closed to purchase yarn to make a Hogwarts scarf bookmark for the Weasley-a-long. Then a stop at Target for contact solution, the grocery store for milk, and the gas station for finally cheaper gas...and then it was definitely time for bed.

What a day...what a week...this weekend will be also what-a, as it begins (and ends) with a 11-hour drive to Cape Cod (and back) with a lot of great food, time with seldom-seen friends, and a wedding in between!

fast, color fast - and some KALs

After my Wool-Ease find last week, I set to work swatching to get gauge for my next sweater - the Starry Night sweater from Sweaters from the Maine Islands. Only had to make two swatches - the first was on the recommended size needles and was too big; the second was on 2 needle sizes down and was just right. This is what normally happens to me. I don't know why I don't just start out swatching with the smaller needles...

I got out my graph paper on Thursday and worked out the instruction changes I need to make to get the sweater to fit me properly. Then, Friday night I cast on using the tubular cast on...and somehow for both the front and the back I cast on the wrong number of stitches - too many for one, too few for the other. Ugh. I redid the cast on and then did bottom-of-the-sweater ribbing and now am on the boringness of stockinette for 10+ inches. Hey, at least I can read (Harry Potter) and knit when it's stockinette! I do like how the piece is feeling - soft and warm!

I joined my very first knit-a-longs! One is the Another Weasley KAL in honor of Harry Potter. At present I'm probably going to make a small scarf as a bookmark for that KAL, although I am becoming more and more encouraged to shoot for making a Weasley sweater for Christmas. It sure is convenient that my first name starts with R just like the one on Ron's sweater...

However, I seem to be committed to the scarf-mark because Monday I purchased a set of double pointed needles in teeny tiny sizes, which will be good not only for the scarf but also for socks, which I hope to try out sometime soon.

I tried to find yarn for the scarf at Knit One over the weekend, but when I went in there, to my surprise nobody came over to help me, and all I could find was yarn too bulky for the scarf, so I left. I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and try again later - they're still in the process of getting things settled, and there seemed to be lots of people working on organizing, stocking, and even building shelves for yarn.

I also tried to find some scarf yarn while out to get the sock needles Monday, but I had no luck. I'm quite convinced that I should have been able to find something at Jo-Ann, but I didn't look hard enough. Too bad - the weekend and thus the sale is over, so I'll either have to suck it up and pay full price or...wait for another sale. If only I had given the Weasley KAL more thought a week ago, I could have purchased that on-sale Wool-Ease for the project. Boo.

The second KAL is the Black Sheep KAL. I read about it on the KnittyBoard and, having always wanted to do a KAL, signed up. I happen to have a semi-abandoned black bag in the works, so I resurrected that from a big pile in my bedroom. Alas, the curse of the changing gauge hit me as I re-began work on this seed-stitch piece. The few rows I did on the size 4's that the piece was hanging out on look so loose, I had to bump down to size 2's. I think it's better now. I can't figure out why that gauge changed, since I have been pretty consistent with gauge for many months now. I can't quite remember when I started the black bag, but it seems like it was after I had achieved a pretty steady gauge. Oh well. What is, is. The bag pattern is the Monk's Travel Satchel, which I ran across one day on the Interweave website. It's now published in a book.

And, finally, I worked on color-fasting the Cotton Ease for the Interweave Knits Spring 2005 Wave Skirt. Cotton tends to bleed a lot if the dye is not set into the yarn, so on Saturday morning I set to work first hanking (or at least my version of hanking...wrapping the yarn repeatedly around my outstretched feet...) and then soaking...and resoaking...and resoaking the yarn in hot water. Every single time I'd come back and hope the find clear water, but NO - some dye insisted on coming out after each and every soak.

This is the first time I've tried to colorfast cotton, so I'm not sure if this is normal or what, but I finally got sick of it and decided the color was better than it was before and the day was almost over (there were 5 different colors of yarn...each had to be soaked separately) so I was done. Now the yarn is drying (it's taking F.O.R.E.V.E.R. to dry!). And I'm sad that I might have to reswatch that whole thing, too, seeing the result I had with the Monk bag. Blech.

I certainly have enough knitting on my plate!!