One Down, One to Go

Finished Moss Grid Handtowel


When I dried it, it got all wrinkly. I think I need to dry it with other towels.


Here are close ups:

Un-blocked:



Blocked (and wrinkly):

It did tighten up quite drastically in the wash.

Start Date: August 19, 2007
End Date: August 30, 2007

Yarn: Louet Euroflax Originals-1 100g skein
Needles: Sz 5 Addi Turbos

Mods: I could only do 10 pattern repeats vs. the 12 that the pattern called for with the amount of yarn I had. It turned out long enough though so I'm happy.

Notes: This is a quick knit and the pattern varies enough so that it's not boring to knit a square. The pattern is easy but written horribly. I ripped back at least 5 times because I was confused by the pattern. Now that I have the pattern memorized by heart I could probably whip one of these out in a week. That's a good thing since I'm making this one a mate to give to my sister-in-law for her birthday on September 25th. First I have to finish the mate to this:

which is a birthday present for my sister. Her birthday is on the 17th of September. I cast on last night and I'm on the first part of the pattern. It's going much faster than this one did :)

cap'n! she's run aground!

Ah, the sea... she's a cruel mistress.

After dinner, I sat down for a little pre-soccer-game knitting. I pulled out the skull-a-riffic chart, gave my marking Post-it note a reinforcing rub, and tucked into the next row. About 10 stitches in I felt that something was amiss. "Woah! This is totally the wrong row! I almost skipped an entire row!"

Glad that I discovered my mistake only 10 stitches into the row of 128, I tinked my way back to the beginning. *phew* After adjusting the Post-it (silly, slippy Post-it!), I tucked in yet again.

... Fast forward to stitch 116.

"Humph. Funny how I'm knitting the same sequence as the previous row, like, almost the whole time. Oh... actually for all of these stitches. And those ones too...? Funny, I didn't really notice that in the chart. And don't really see it in the chart now, either..."

And, uhm, yes. I did not, in fact, almost skip a row. Rather, I almost didn't make the mistake of repeating the last row I'd knit. But instead I did make that mistake. In fact, I made a huge, conscious point of making that mistake. Hooray for me!

Most fortunately, I've thoroughly scrutinized the pattern and think I can get away with repeating this particular row. It'll just make my skulls a bit taller (adding a row between the nose hole and the eyes). It will also turn my diamonds a bit wonky and create an irregular square on the border at a regular interval. I think so long as it's consistent I'll be okay. Plus I'm making it my own. And pirates aren't governed by rules. *additional disclaimers and justifications as well!*

Due to brother-in-law's aforementioned large head, I think the resulting extra three rows will be okay. Oh, did I say extra three rows? I meant extra two rows. Because although the skull pattern repeats three times, I inexplicably left out a solid row of main color knitting early on in the pattern. I think I was just overly excited to get going on all that fair isle goodness.

Lessons learned:

• stockinette is rolly, and those stitches on your needles really do count as a row
• don't be so excited to start the fun part of a pattern that you forget a crucial boring part (my skulls are growing directly out of an ornamental border now, like some sort of preternatural Viking overlords)
• pirates don't need rules
  

Aaaaaaaaaaaaar!

bootees and photos and pirates, oh my!

First up, I finished the bootees. Super cute and very easy, but I have two complaints:

• button loops are very flimsy (or at least mine were with the Baby Ull).
• no advice was given on how to seam... I would have loved to know what technique the designer used.

If I had it all to do over again, I think I'd stop at the right strap and make these into lil' Mary Janes. I'm not thrilled with the criss-cross straps, because I think it puts emphasis on the gaps where I cast on the strap stitches.

All that said, they are still mighty cute:


In other news, I cast on We Call Them Pirates (a Hello Yarn freebie). This is my first fair isle effort, and it's superfun. Observe the fun:



I had to put in an emergency call to McR to learn how to do invisible/provisional cast on. I tried to muddle through with the videos on KnittingHelp.com, but this was the first and only time that lovely Ms. Finlay confuzzled me with her technique. McR suggested the technique described in the unfortunately dated-looking Knitting from the Top she loaned me some months back, and that made a lot more sense to me. It was this nifty little wrist flick movement that went very quickly, and it didn't even result in twisted stitches like the KH.com method. I may have been doing something wrong, as I found the cast-on very loose to work, but I was able to tighten it up as I knit onto it.

I'm lurving the Cascade 220. It's so sturdy and forgiving, and it's making my first experience with colorwork a breeze. Let's just hope my brother-in-law's massive head is going to fit (I'm allowed to say that because I'm married to his identical twin, whom I love beyond the measure of his huge head... plus it doesn't look huge... and while I'm still in the parens, I'd like to add that Anthony should under no circumstance go ruining his birthday surprise by snooping around). Otherwise I'll have to shrink it to normal human size and keep it for myself.

*mwaahahaha*

Last but not least, I finally updated Ravelry with all my sexy stash photos. I had way, way too much fun taking those.


Yarn porn. Total yarn porn.

holy complicated clan, batman

Bwoof. So I had this idea about making my grandmother (Irish-born) an Aran sock for Christmas. Then I had another idea about how neat it would be to somehow fashion it after the Moran clan sweater (Moran is her maiden name).

Well... that was until I saw the damn sweater pattern:

That would be one busy, textured sock!

Gift Update

Sweatpea socks for my sister-1 done and 1 to go. Her birthday is in a little over 3 weeks, so I'd better get cracking!

Linen Hand Towel fro my SIL-1/4 done of 1, 1 and 3/4 to go. This, I'm hoping, will be a pretty fast knit now that I've deciphered the pattern. The pattern is easy but the way they wrote it up is super confusing! I think I'm done tinking for now.

Modern Log Cabin Baby Blanket for childhood friend-it's going along swimingly. I'm going to have NO troubles finishing this by January. YAY! Or even December as I imagine that Lisa will be here for the holidays (but maybe not since she'll be 3 weeks from her due date...hmmmm)

Anything for me? Well I cast on the stockings again but that's about it. I want to focus on the socks and hand towels before I do anything for me =D

too booteelicious

i made you a bootee...


...but I eated it.



Seriously. My impulse is to eat this thing rather than to make another. So cute! Off to knit the second one...

I'm in! I'm IN!

That sounds vaguely dirty. SF will know what I'm talking about. Think "cow tunnel."

Not to rub it in or anything, but I got my Ravelry invitation today! SQUEE! I should really be working since I'm, well, at work, but instead I'm adding books and yarn and projects! *click* *click* *click*

I love the interface so far. It's easy to use (SF and KB can comment on the finer points of the UI very soon!), and is so comprehensive! It's obvious to me already that this site is designed by knitters who are just about as obsessive as me. It's organized in the same way as my knitting brain! Except it's, you know, organized.

I can't wait to go home and start adding all of my projects!

It looks like they're really stepping up the invites, so I KNOW all of the skeinks will be on there in no time, and when you are, look me up! i'm knittingadrienne.

woo hoo!

knitty and the geek

Bad thing: Despite my near certainty that I had a game tonight, upon my arrival at the soccer arena, fully decked out in uniform, I discovered that I did not . Boo.

Good thing: The Knucks are DONE! Wheeeeeee! As per my geeky husband's request, there are two Lisp commands on the front and a set of parens on the inside of each thumb. Not sure which of us is the bigger loser, really.



This is no small feat, especially given my sentiments earlier this week:

"I swear to the knitting gods, I'm about to retire. These Knucks have
given me nothing but heartache, and it's taking every ounce of my self
control not to burn them, buy new yarn, and start fresh...

My ribbing is way too loose. There is no snug taper whatsoever, and I'm
noticing that this Rowan Wool Cotton doesn't snap back as much as some
other yarns. Even less so post-blocking...

I was contemplating trying to find some very thin elastic and weaving it lightly through the top and bottom of the ribbing. I was also thinking of burning the MOFO. Instead of FOs I get MOFOs. Why is that?"

Things worth sharing:

1. I'm happy to report that my crazy elastic idea actually worked. I used Stretch-Rite elastic sewing thread, and it pulled the ribbing together very nicely. The gloves are still a bit looser than I'd like, but my husband's reaction to this concern was, "Pish."
   
2. I didn't use any of the recommended embroidery techniques. I used this one, which I found very easy and quick: http://community.livejournal.com/weasleysweaters/104527.html. The only step I skipped was the paper printout. It felt more hassle than it was worth given that I was just doing letters. I was genuinely and pleasantly surprised at how fast the letters took shape... it only took me about 2 hours to do. The gloves were ready before his birthday (tomorrow), which was my ultimate goal. You can see that he managed to get them early. :0)
   

I'm somewhat paralyzed by the freedom to start anything I want now. As luck would have it, the two things I most want to start require needles that are still in the mail: a Widdershins sock for my mom (two of them, even!) and the Saartje's booties that everyone and their sister seems to be knitting at present. Alas.

I feel like this FO in particular is a small step for knitting-kind, but a giant step for Snoop Frog.

I Has a Stocking!

Yesterday, I had MOST of a stocking:
and today, I have a WHOLE stocking!


(Sorry it's sideways... can't figure out why or how to turn it around... the original was fine.)

This stocking went lightning fast. And I enjoyed every minute of it.

I'll make a full report when I'm done with the pair, but I have to go cast on the second one now...

LURVE!!

KBULL Tinkerbell Titus

A middle name has been added. It boosts my street cred, right?

The story behind the new name:

Saturday-I'm done with the snowflake pattern on the Norwegian Stockings and onto the pink colorwork. I was about 8 rows in when it became evident that I had made a mistake and this wasn't a mistake like the first (wrong color stripe) or the second (read the pattern the wrong way and didn't include a stripe) that could each just be my own interpretation of the pattern. Oh no, this was a snowflake that looked like a pile of poo. Tink. Tink. Tink. Oh this yarn isn't easy to get back on the needles. Tink. Tink. Tink. Oh crap it really isn't easy to get back on the needles TINK TINK TINK. Until all I had left was 3 piles of badly tangled yarn and no stocking. It was sad. Adrienne and Elaina both witnessed the horror, they can attest. It was no fun.

Sunday-Working on the log cabin thinking I'm a genius because I figured out a way NOT to do intarsia and still make the blankie look good. OH one problem as I was picking up a stitch (vertically mind you) at the end of the row I didn't take into account that I was adding a stitch every row. Didn't figure it out until the "square" was done. Tink. Tink. Tink.

Monday-Working on the Sweet Pea socks, turning the heel, listening to Adrienne's voice in my head saying "trust the pattern, trust the pattern". Well then how come the pattern is telling me to knit when there's nothing left to knit? OH it seems I mis-read the pattern. Trust the pattern but don't trust your reading skills, right, I forgot. I don't k2tog, tbl, k1. I k2tog tbl (no comma), k1. Tink. Tink. Tink.

The bad news? I tinked alot.
The good news? I know how I messed up and fixed it on everything except the stockings, which I'll tackle after the socks (a gift) are done.
The even better news? I have a new middle name KBULL Tinkerbell Titus.

It has a nice ring to it, no?

It's too good not to post

KBULL, m.c. rib, and Snoop Frog looking HAWT.

One down...

I finished the left glove of my pair of Dashing last night while watching the animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie! (I must say I preferred the live action movies better. I mean, TMNT 2 had Vanilla Ice in it!!) I fixed my problem of holes around the base of the thumb by picking up stitches in better locations and knitting looser. Feeling somewhat proud of myself, I immediately started the second glove to prevent the one glove syndrome.
Hurray for productivity!

Edit: Oh, the magic loop was great for the thumb too!

magic loop: p0wned

Slowly but surely, I'm beating those Knucks into submission. I even have a grand plan to eradicate the chubby webbing and save the Quasimodo pinkie from certain doom. More on "the plan" once I've utterly failed at executing it. :0b

Last night I finally reached the point where I'm supposed to do my final ribbing on the cuff of each glove (the textured cuff doesn't feel quite manly enough for my hubby). I have a lot of trouble doing continental on double points, and the idea of doing English-style ribbing on two ten-point monsters wasn't all that appealing. As such, I decided to give magic loop a try for the first time. I adopted a "leave no glove behind" attitude, so I decided to transfer both gloves to a 60" circular and do all the rounds together. Part of me thought I was a little mad for being so ambitious, but I am, after all, from the street.

I transferred my stitches, wound up two beautifully manageable little center-pull balls, and went in for the kill. And you know what? I did really well. Not only did I find the magic loop thing pretty intuitive, but I've gotten good enough at continental that I'm able to do ribbing pretty quickly (quickly for me, mind you... Glampyre can still knit me into a full-body cocoon in the time it takes me to do one round). Finally! My general aptitude for things has applied to something in the knitting world. w00t!

can't get no satisfaction

Dangit, dangit, dangit.

I spent an hour or so tonight working on the Knucks. Just 18 more rounds per glove before I go into the final ribbing. I'm hoping to dust those off this weekend during our "Knitterday", during which we'll be watching Clueless and Jane Eyre. God, I love my friends.

Just as a gesture, I decided to knit a row on the Sizzle. I don't want the poor thing to languish. At the end of my row, I reached for my handy-dandy kacha kacha. To my horror, it had somehow ticked itself off a row in my knitting bag, thus raping me of the exquisite delight of hearing that "kacha kacha" sound.

I retire this evening feeling wholly and utterly dissatisfied.

my cheating heart

Madly in love with her though I may be, my little KBull didn't prime me for success. I fear I won't be posting an FO any time soon. I'm trudging ever-so-slowly through my current projects, and feeling a bit mentally defeated by Ye Olde Knucks. I'm about 4/5ths of the way through, but I'm so dreading the embroidery that I've started to drag my feet a bit. Add to that a very keen frustration at dealing with the "gaps between the fingers" that Ms. Grossman talks about so nonchalantly in her pattern. Indeed. Now the gloves have big, fat webbing in-between the fingers... all because of my clumsy stitching efforts. A renewed interest in reading isn't helping matters much.

As such, I decided to cheat and post a picture of my last FO. Mwaaahahahahahahahahaaaaa!


In all fairness, this will be the last stuffed toy I knit for a great long while. And he's lovely, really... isn't he? He needs to have his time to shine, bless his little bunny heart.

Pattern details:

The Bunster's pattern came from Last-Minute Knitted Gifts by Joelle Hoverson. Note that at two weeks to complete there was nothing last-minute about it, but at least I made my deadline. This was in the 6 to 8 hour gift section of the book (divided by time...genius!), but with the frog factor it took me more along the order of 14 hours to finish.

I substituted the altogether lovely but ridiculously expensive Blue Sky Alpaca sportweight (doubled!) with non-doubled Rowan Calmer that knit up to the same gauge. I used Calm for the main and Sugar for the ears. It wasn't so much the expense that drove me to choose another yarn as the fact that the recipient is an infant. If it turns out that this baby latches onto Bunster (e.g. drools and vomits on, drags around, etc.) I want it to be washable for mom & dad. Also, alpaca can be kinda itchy for some folks.

Other variations: I knit most of this on a set of double-points rather than on two circulars like it suggests. This was only slightly more confusing during the increase and decrease rounds, but not too terrible. I also discovered that something I heard speculated on KnittingHelp.com is true: if one double-point is one size smaller or larger than the rest, it does not show up in the work. Neato, huh?

Lastly, I stuffed the bunny with scrap yarn rather than getting filler. The consistency is great, but you can see the color of the yarn through the work. Keep that in mind if you're thinking of doing something similar. I used a reddish-maroon yarn, and my husband quickly pointed out that it was "like guts". Which he thought was cool.

As a final touch, Bunster's "tatt" is custom-work, too. Cause he's all street.

sytycd, stockings, cats

Yeah, I know I said I'd post fo pics and flash some stash for my girls, but instead, I spent the evening watching So You Think You Can Dance (LOVE that Sabra!!!) and working on this:
I love colorwork! It's going really fast, and it's easier than I thought it would be to keep the tension even.

Here's a slightly closer-up pic:
I'm using the technique described by She Ewe Knits. The pattern color is in my left hand, continental style, and the background color is in my right hand, English style. I tried to do Eunny's way, holding both yarns in my left hand, and that was... um... not pretty.

Oh, and the number one reason to mark the beginning of the round, even though you KNOW you'll never miss it? I only did half of the last round of ribbing before I started the colorwork. Oh well. With something like 8 rows/inch, who's going to notice?

Will flash stash tomorrow... if I can step away from the stockings.

My First Christms FO*

What: House Hat from Charmed Knits
Cast On: July 19, 2007
Cast Off: August 7, 2007
Mods: None

I'm a Gryfyffindor and PROUD of it!

I'm making three of these beanies for my 3 nephews. The next one will be mainly red with 2 small yellow stripes and the last one will be stripy but starting with yellow instead.

This is a good mindless project. It was my first with any color work (and I know this isn't really color work) but I did have to figure out how to carry the yarn up the back. I had issues at first, it kept coming out the front of the knitting...but I finally figured it out. YAY! Fun to do, easy to do, and quick to do. While this was on the needles I finished the CPH, almost finished my first sock, and started my first log cabin. This is the best kind of Christmas knitting!

Oh and my husband is the biggest ham ever! I asked him to be my model and he agreed BUT only after he got on his robes (read: a black hoodie), he posed with his Nimbus 2000 (read: a broom), and he smiled like a goober:

Hi! I'm a goober!

NO REALLY. A BIG Goober!!!

I actually learned and practiced Continental on this one. I can safely say that it is faster. I can also safely say that I need to work on my grasp on my right hand because it hurts my hand.

It fits well.

I love the detail on the top.

Hello uneven stitches

Can't wait to block it! Now it's off to start my first real colorwork. The Norwegian Stockings!

I also got the Fall Issue of Interweave yesterday. I'm in love. I physically hugged it a few times yesterday!!

*For those non Knitters a FO is a "Finished Object" And this isn't technically a finished object since I still need to weave in the ends and block it but hey-it's August and Christmas is 5 months away!!!

Ma Would Be So Proud

It's finished! My first sweater, my first cable project is DONE! I'm so excited and proud. I'm wearing the thing even though it's 100% wool and it's like 70 degrees out.

My grandma (who we called Ma) was an amazing knitter. I would sit and watch for hours while she knit. I always wanted to know how to do it but I was a little too uncoordinated as a kid to pick it up. I could crochet but knitting always eluded me. About 2 and half years ago I was given a "Learn to Knit" kit from a friend. I picked it up
Well I screwed the courage up to knit the Central Park Hoodie from the Fall 2006 KnitScene. I used 4 skeins of Araucania Nature Wool in teal. It's a beautiful hand died wool that was great to knit with and showed the cables off nicely.

Start Date: May 2, 2007
End Date: July 29, 2007

CPH and my new cute hair

2 comments

Mods: I knit the button band in one piece and hated it. The natural variegation of the yarn flipped from being horizontal to vertical on the ribbing for button band and it broke the sweater up and made a very flattering piece very unflattering. So I ripped out the button band (ripping 312 bound off stitches IS NOT FUN). Re-Knit the ribbing on the hood and then knit 2 pieces 10 stitches (7 in stockinette, 3 in garter to stop it from rolling). I also knit a one row button hole vs. the 2 row that was called for in the pattern.

CPH Back

I love the cabling and I love the color!

CPH Front

That picture doesn't do it justice-it's really quite slimming.

CPH Back 1

My cables don't look like someone on crack did them (not that I'm on crack)!!! I can really knit! YAY!

During the construction of this sweater I discovered my love of mattress stitch-it's ingenious!!! It lets you seam things together without seeing a seam-SO COOL!

I'm so glad it's done. Now excuse me while I go swelter in this sweater.

The Itty Bitty Knitting Group Blogs!!!

Knitting posts coming to you soon, from:

-m.c. rib||-||-||
-lil' purl
-Snoop Frog ~~~@
-KBULL ::8::8::
-kidmonkey
-TnQ (Thick 'n Quick)