sweater weather

Labor Day came and went. I spent it, as I mentioned earlier, camping......and hiking.That was the first indication that fall was on its way. It was also, I think, the first time in many, many months that I pulled on a sweatshirt at night. Mostly because I was outside, but still.

The next indication came when the temperatures started to drop. Yesterday boasted a brilliantly blue sky, sun sparkling down on the still-green leaves...and a high of 62 in Pittsburgh. Now that is what I like to hear. Because it can only mean one thing...The Starry Night sweater has made an appearance! It is almost autumn!! The autumnal equinox is Sunday...are you ready? It's...sweater weather!

To celebrate (? er...actually, just because I am), I've begun work on two sweaters. In a sudden convergence of yarn and magazine, I picked out two sweaters from the Spring 2007 Interweave Knits. For some reason, they are both raglans. The first is the Green Tea Raglan, which I'm making with Frog Tree Merino.The snake-like thing is the "belt" that goes around the waist. Technically, I made this in Frog Tree Alpaca, because it just so happened that I had half a ball of some of exactly the same color of that, and it managed to get thrown in with the merino, and I realized it but decided I might as well use it up to make the belt. I also decided to call this the Coral Tea Sweater since mine's not green.

The other sweater is the Cable Down Raglan, which I am making in Lion Brand Fisherman's Wool. Ages ago I began making an Aran sweater in this. That went through various iterations of disaster (gauge change...messed up parts...) until I finally decided that even if I ever did manage to make the crazy cabled thing, I'd never want to wear it because I don't like the way it is made to fit (and I have no inclination to alter it to fit the way I want). So now the wool is becoming a different cabled beast. I am sort of thinking this yarn is cursed in my hands, because no sooner had I gotten through the first repeat of the cable pattern, complete with very lovely shaping, when...I realized that there was an error in the pattern (because the next instructions made NO SENSE at all). Okay, so not a big deal, I just had to set down this until I had time to find the correction online (because of course Interweave decided in that issue that they'd no longer print the corrections in the magazines - and I do have the issue that said there needed to be a change in the pattern - and they are only available online). I set it aside and went to work on some socks I'm making with yarn I got in Vienna last year.I used the Round Toe from Charlene Schurch's More Sensational Knitted Socks and am doing a ribbing-ish pattern I made up.

I'm also making progress (slowly) on the Brioche Bodice from another Interweave. I have about 5ish more rows of unshaped knitting to do before I can start tackling double decreases, but at least it's brioche stitch and not ultra-boring stockinette. Although...brioche isn't that much more exciting.And finally I found the corrections for the Cable sweater. And that was when I really decided that there's something up with me+this-yarn. Not only were the original instructions for the next step I need to take with the thing incorrect...but so were the instructions for all I'd done up to this point. ! Gasp! Sigh! Grrrr...! It's a minor change, but I know it will make the garment look much better. ...But it also means I have to rip it all out and start over. Bleh...

I guess I won't be wearing that one anytime soon. Thankfully I have many other sweaters in stock in preparation for sweater weather!

i learned something new

No blogging recently; so sorry! I'm way, way, way behind on updating you with my knitting. Fortunately, there's not a whole lot to tell there, but I shall surprise you by revealing that instead of knitting, I've been...crocheting!

Don't ask me why. I tried to learn how to crochet at least two other times in the past year, but I never got it. Not that it was highly confusing, but when I looked at one instruction book and then compared it to another one, the two didn't seem to agree with each other, and I got very frustrated. However, thanks to the ladies at my "knitting group" (it's actually a crochet group, but most everyone knits) I learned that unlike knitting, there are many ways to crochet.

Now, if you're astute, you would notice that I have in the past stated that there are many ways to knit. Yes, yes, but they all end up looking the same. The same is not true for crocheting, as I'm told. It seems that some teachers think you should poke a crochet hook through the front loop of a crochet chain, others think you should poke it through the back, and others through both loops. I could be wrong on this take on crocheting, also, but one thing I know was that I couldn't get it when I was trying to learn because everything I read seemed to contradict itself. Plus, either I was really stupid (I'm a PhD student; I highly doubt this) or the illustrations in the books were really bad: I couldn't figure out how the text-instructions related to the pictures that were supposed to correspond with them.

For some inexplicable reason, on Saturday I woke up after a gruelling week of Much Stress and Work at the lab, and decided, "Today I am going to go buy some crochet hooks and really learn how to crochet." Not sure what got into me. However, I did just that. I ended up purchasing a learn-it-yourself kit from JoAnn - the one made by Lion Brand. This is the same kit I'd used to learn how to knit. I was pleased to find incredibly easy-to-understand pictures and instructions, and before I knew it...I had made this:Okay, well...that's not really so impressive. It is supposed to be a granny square, but as you can probably tell it's not exactly a square... But hey - it's the first thing I made, and I'm keeping it!

I was so enamored by this new skill that I started making something else...That's much better (it's the start of a washcloth), but technically it's supposed to be about 10.5 inches...and as you may notice, it's only 6. Hm... I will have to work on the gauge thing here.

And this is also something with a bit of a screwed up gauge, but I'm using totally the wrong yarn, so I can deal. This IS a square (and it's supposed to be):...although I did have to re-do a few parts of it multiple times and finally was required to put those colored marker things in where you see them because I kept crocheting into the wrong holes over and over again and ended up with a non-square several times. BUT - the point is, I figured it out. (If you happen to know which garment this is a part of, kudos. But please don't tell anyone! Thanks.)

AND...I've decided that crochet isn't really that bad. It's certainly not the same as knitting. There are many, many items I would never, ever choose to make with crochet that I would be very motivated to knit. But, crochet is really fast! People tell me it uses less yarn to get to the same dimensions as something knit. And you can make things that you can't make with knitting.

So, that's what I've been up to. And I have been doing some knitting, too. Like...I've been working on the Brioce Bodice.And I've been swatching a few things here and there. Maybe I should just finish one of my other projects that have been on the needles for a year...! Ho, hum...