update in brief

...The blog has not been a priority in Somebody's life of late... That would be me. Apologies to all who are longing for a peek into my life.

What can I say? My brain has been stuffed with Other Items, mostly people (and a rabbit) and work. An odd combination, considering that I am usually all about only one or the other - life seems to shift between being 100% for work, overcommitting myself to it 24/7, or 100% for other people, putting less thought into my work and more thought into being with others. I've been trying to learn (and apply) a balance between the two. It's tough! Both require a lot of time and effort if they are to be done properly and with quality. And, obviously, other things thus get pushed aside.

Including knitting! Can you believe it? I have not knit for over a week! I have not even wanted to!! I had finished the knitting construction of Joelle's stocking sometime during the Thanksgiving weekend, and then the sock with the un-closed toe sat and sat and sat in the Knitting Bag for about 10 days. Finally I decided to sew it up on Sunday and hang it. Of course, now I'm not truly satisfied with it - I should have used a different size needle on the stranded knitting part - but I'm too lazy to un-do it and reknit, at least for this year.

I also have concluded that I am going to give up on the Aran sweater I've been making zero progress on for the past year. I love the yarn, I love the cables and double seed stitch, but when I think about it, I actually really do not love the pattern. It is a "traditional" Aran design - a "square" body with unshaped arm holes, and the sleeves stick straight out to form a T. And, goodness knows why and when this occurred in my unfashionable mind, I just don't want that sort of dumpy sweater! I want something more fitted. Something like I know I saw in a Vogue Knitting from I believe last year - it's somewhere in my Pile of Knitting Magazines. ...And that means I'm going to rip out some 16 inches worth of ribbing, cables, and textured knitting, which pains me to think about, considering I also painstakingly tubular-cast on the bottom edge of both the front and back sides of this particular project - a first for me, and something which took an entire evening to do properly!

...When I will get to that is anyone's guess!

adjusting my needles

This weekend I decided to start the Wave Skirt. This required moving the Aran sweater onto different needles so I could use the cable on which it has been hanging out. At first I thought I'd pick up another set of 4's for a dollar at Target to put the sweater on, but when I went to Target to buy them, I realized that they aren't really 4's! They're more like 2's... In the end it was all fine because they Aran sweater wasn't even ON 4's to begin with, it was on 5's. I eventually made the transfer onto the other needles, whisked away the cable, and cast on the Wave Skirt...!

It's fun!!! It makes me want to wear a skirt. It makes me want to get new stitch markers because the ones I'm using are big and are making there be holes that can eventually be fixed, but it's annoying right now. It makes me happy about balling yarn, because it's so easy to toss the big pink ball into my huge purse and take the skirt-in-progress on the bus and I don't have to battle with the tangled yarn like I have been doing with the Starry Night pullover's yarn that is NOT in balls... It, thus, makes me want to even more get a ball winder.

The present for the upcoming bridal shower is nearing completion (which is good, since the bridal shower is about 10 days away), although I threw it aside in the middle of the week because the stupid stitches kept falling off the needle and I eventually had to spend an evening correcting all the fallen stitches this caused further down the work. Blah! Fixing furry yarn isn't so fun.

I keep debating whether I should buy some yarn to make a Weasley sweater. However, just as I was leaning towards "YES!" I got word from a good friend that relatives of one of his coworkers had been hit by Hurricane Katrina, and everything of value in their home in New Orleans had been looted, including all their clothing, which would have otherwise survived the hurricane in their dry upper story. Now I'm thinking I'd rather spend the yarn money on clothes for these people. Probably will hit the store tonight to go on a shopping spree for...not me! I'm convinced that this will be much more relaxing than shopping for clothing for myself, since nothing ever fits me.

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!!!

knitting "knews"

I'm going to attempt to give knitting updates on Tuesdays from here on out...

Many things on the knitting front this week:

After finishing the Good Bias shrug a couple weeks ago, I've worn it a couple times and have decided that it needs some help. The back is way to wide. I considered taking out the center back seam, ripping out a few rows from each side, and reseaming, but the sleeves are also a bit too short. Thus, I'm seaming up the sleeves a little bit more. Not the perfect solution, but I think it will work okay. I sewed a bit of one seam on the bus yesterday but haven't checked the new fit. Sleeves seem to be a continual problem for me!! Either the length is wrong or the armscye is incorrect.

Fortunately, the sleeves on the Fairly Easy Fair Isle cardigan sweater are pretty good. Maybe another inch or so would have been better, but it works (I just like my sleeves extra long). At least my arm fits into the armhole without getting squeezed! I finished knitting on the button and button-hole bands (added an extra button-hole because I added some length to the body of the sweater), wove in all the extra ends, and then headed out to find some buttons. The first store I went to didn't have what I was looking for...so I went to Jo-Ann on Saturday night. They didn't have quite what I wanted, either - I was looking for large periwinkle squares or circles - but I found some wood-look buttons that I thought would work well if sewn on with the periwinkle yarn. I was right! Another finished object for me! Below is a picture of my FEFI cardi in its new home - my freezing cold lab.



Also while at Jo-Ann to find buttons I decided to check out the price of Wool-Ease. I've decided to use Wool-Ease for a Maine Islands sweater called Starry Night which I fell in love with soon after I learned how to knit. Now I feel like I actually possess the skills to knit the beloved sweater! I was sooooo excited when I got to Jo-Ann and found out that the Wool-Ease (worsted) was ON SALE!!! I had been watchin the ads from Jo-Ann and Michaels for months lookig for a sale on Wool-Ease, and here it was, unadvertised. I felt so lucky. I grabbed the balls I needed and started swatching on size 8's aiming for 18 stitches/4 inches.

I had yet another experience with the Aran sweater that contributed to the love-hate relationship we have. I will really LOVE it when this sweater is done, and I hate that it's going to take forever. It takes extra long when I work the wrong stitch, as I did last week in the super-easy braided cable, and don't realize it until 4 rows (or more) up the pattern and then have to rip out the stitches. I'm getting better at weaving my needle into the row that I want to rip down to; however, it's still difficult for me to keep the needle on the same row the whole way across. After this unfortunate rip and do-over event, I've been going pretty well. Worked the Aran on the bus most days last week. I can get about 4 rows done per day that way...not very much, but every little bit matters.

And finally, the moment I've been waiting for...Knit One, the new yarn store by my house, is OPEN!!! I saw a huge "OPEN" flag outside their door yesterday on the bus home from work, and even though I still needed to go to the store, buy powdered sugar, make frosting, and frost cupcakes for my Bible study that was going to begin in an hour, I still hopped off at the stop near the store and dashed to their front door. They were not really open; the door was locked. They're actually closed on Mondays; the flag was more an in-general announcement. "We're open for business...the store just isn't open today..." But the nice lady unlocked the door and let me in. SO MUCH YARN. And it's spread out, too, so I don't feel like I'm going to knock over a whole case of skeins as I turn around. I am SOOOO looking forward to going there and hopefully just sitting and knitting. I hope they let people do that. I bought the latest Vogue Knitting magazine (I felt I should buy something since they'd opened the door for me!) and took delighted note of some cute totes made of recycled sweaters. I wanna make one...! Much joy and celebrating.

Oh, one last thing - I picked up Knitting from the Netherlands from the library today. My ancestors are Dutch, and I've always been intrigued by traditional patterns. I excitedly paged through the book over lunch today and found lots of things that will be neat to try out!

a new thing to do on the bus

Oh yes... I thought about starting a new take-along project for the bus rides to and from work. I had originally considered something that I was thinking of making for some friends who are getting married soon, but then I decided I didn't know if I really wanted to put forth the effort when I didn't know if they really wanted a knitted project from me. Then I considered that dratted Aran sweater again, but it sounded too daunting for the time being. I also tossed around the idea of learning to crochet and using the tons of leftover cotton yarn from the shrug to make a few dishclothes for said getting-married friends. But then I borrowed Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone from my roommate, and that is my new bus project.

I have watched all 3 Harry Potter movies and liked them a lot. Charming, fun, funny, suspenseful but not enough to make me scared - they also require thought because there's always a complicated mystery involved. I had never read the books before. Not being one who likes to jump on the bandwagon with all the fads that come along, I never picked up the books. I don't know what made me change my mind now, but I did. Thought it might be nice to actually read something, and those books seemed like they'd be enjoyable since everyone I know who had read them couldn't put them down, and even if they were boring I'd still stay intrigued because I knew what was going to happen (from the movie) and would want to read until I got to a familiar part from the movie (this is how I got through the Lord of the Rings series, which I am terribly regretful to say were...not outstandingly gripping to me). I'm in the midst of the Sorting Hat chapter, and I rather wish I had not watched the movies now, because it's actually getting boring reading without needing my imagination. Thus, motivation to read through the 4th book before that movie comes out...! Funny how that works.

can't think

I can't come up with anything very interesting to write in these few moments I have available to type. I'm getting to the end of my shrug, which is good news. Need to find a new project to work on while riding the bus. I could, I guess, pick up that dratted Aran sweater again. It hasn't gotten big enough to be hard to carry around...since I have to rip it apart every 2 weeks when I do work on it - grrr grrr. However, this weekend my roommates are bringing back to me the first Harry Potter book. I've never read any of them and decided I'd give one a shot. So possibly I'll be devouring the pages on the bus if it's a gripping as everyone says it is. We'll see.

knitting and knitting again

I took one of my two current projects with me to Jacksonville and worked on it v e r y slowly. It's an Aran sweater from the wrapper of Lion Brand Fishermen's wool. Aran sweaters originated in Irish fishing villages on the Aran islands, are traditionally made with virgin wool, and thus are good at resisting water (and smell like sheep!!!). Aran basically means a bunch of cables in a pattern. I read once that the cable patterns were inspired in part by the knots and ropes that the fishermen used. (Hm, maybe I could design a rock-climbing-knot Aran... Hee hee.) The point of the matter is that Aran sweaters are intricate and have lots of twisting, which makes them a little bit more difficult that your basic knit sweater. In my opinion, the difficulty of Aran sweaters is more a matter of patience than skill, although I suppose skill/technique would determine whether your cables looked even or all messed up. But then again, what does my opinion count - I've been knitting for less than two years, and this is my first cabled piece!

At any rate, my personal knitting of an Aran sweater is very slow-going, mostly because I don't work on it very often and there are a billion stitches in each row, and I have to think about what happens to each one of them individually. So it's quite frustrating when I'm sitting on the bus (where I do most of my knitting) on the ride into work and realize that I screwed up 2 stitches 6 rows back. This was the case on Thursday morning of this week.

What to do? My first instinct was to do what is called "frogging" where you weave the knitting needle into the stitches on the row before the messed up one and then rip (get it? - "rip it" = "ribbit" = "frogging") out the stitches in the rows before by pulling on the yarn (reminds me of the Weezer song "Undone": "If you want to destroy my sweater, hold this thread as I walk away." Very depressing to think of destroying my very own I-made-it sweater...). However, I also knew that I had made a couple little tiny mistakes way back 16 rows before. 16 rows before was, basically, the start of the Aran pattern.

I decided that, if I had to rip, I might as well rip it all out and start over. Waaaaaah! Starting over has occured quite frequently for this particular sweater... I was not excited to do it once again.

But I did. And honestly, it was a good choice. First of all, now I don't have to live with the knowledge that there were messed up stitches at the beginning that were tolerable but noticeable. (I did, however, once again make a mistake, but this one isn't even noticeable unless you're REALLY anal.) Second of all, I've nearly memorized the entire pattern, which spans somewhere around 150 stitches and takes 16 rows to complete. So in the end it's good. But it severly cuts down on my productivity... Good thing I don't have a deadline for this sweater.

My other project got left at home because it was getting way too big to bring anywhere. It's a cardigan sweater, and it's MUCH easier that the Aran. I kept exclaiming to myself when I started "Wow, I'm already a third of the way done with the bottom part! ...Wow, it's halfway done!" It is a very welcome change from the frustration of the Aran. This cardigan is the "Fairly Easy Fair Isle" sweater from the book Stitch 'n Bitch Nation. I chose it because I get freezing cold at work with the obnoxious air conditioning in the summer and wanted something that would be warm and snuggly but not hugely bulky. I also chose it because I want to learn how to knit with colors, and this project has a little bit of color work that requires two new techniques for me - stranding and weaving.

I am modifying the original instructions a little bit - I am combining two sizes (large body, medium sleeves, which might be a bad idea, but...too bad), and in an effort to reduce sewing requirements, I'm knitting the sleeves in the round instead of flat (flat would require me to sew the sleeves together when I was done). In addition, I want to make the sleeves the same, exact length, so I'm working them both in the round at the same time on the same needles. There's probably a better description of how to do this, but I got it from the straight-laced sock pattern from Knitty. I'm trying to decide if the "extraspicy" designation of difficulty on this pattern is just because of the two-needles-two-socks-same-time technique or what. Having never really knit an entire sock, I'm not one to make the call. The 2n2s@st technique isn't so much hard as it is...stringy. There are needle cables and yarn all over the place, and when you add in Fair Isle knitting, that's even MORE yarn, so it gets a little messy-looking.

I started the Fair Isle part of the sleeves last night, and I was happy with what happened. I think that by the end of this sweater I'll have gotten the tension of the weaving and stranding all straightened out. I'm doing my Fair Isle with one yarn in each hand, and the hardest part for me thus far is wrapping the yarn with my right hand (English style) as I normally knit continental.