the little skeink that couldn't

There's been nothing but silence from the Frog House, and for good reason. The Widdershins have broken me. After weeks of knitting, frogging, knitting, tinking, knitting, tinking, and frogging some more, I finally reached the end of my tether. I'm only barely able to talk about it. The wounds are still too fresh. I feel like a jilted lover, and I'd rather be crying into a cup of hot cocoa while watching Sense and Sensibility than reliving my pain.

In spite of all my care and caution (read: lifelines, measuring, and counting stitches like a Gringotts goblin would galleons), I still got bitten. I turned the heel only to find that these socks wouldn't fit my mother unless A) she's been secretly binding her feet for the last ten years, or B) I found a way to travel back in time and give them to her as a gift for her 5th birthday rather than her 50th. How the hell did this happen? I'm flummoxed. I followed that f'in pattern to the letter, and yet somehow things went terribly awry.

And now... I can't even bear to look at them. It took every ounce of my willpower not to set fire to the unfinished socks, needles and working yarn still attached. I might have even tossed in the pattern and Ziploc baggie for good measure.

Ever since the incident, I'm finding it difficult to be enthusiastic about knitting. I've worked a bit on my long-lost Mr. and Mrs. Dashing, but to no avail. My knitting heart is tender, and wonders if it can ever love again.

tales from the frog pond: my first lace

Harumph.

I frogged my very first toe of which I was so exceedingly proud. I realized once I went to start the main body of the sock that I had somehow completely botched the increases and ended up with too few stitches. Like... "enough to notice" too few.

I was undaunted, and frogged without a moment's hesitation. I was only 14 rows in, after all, and figured it was good practice at working the toe of a toe-up sock.

Well. I re-did my work last night, slightly under the influence of pain killers and High Victorian drama. I realized this morning that everywhere I was supposed to do an M1 increase, I instead did a yarn-over. Note that this is 4 times every round. For 14 or so rounds.

Perhaps third time will be the charm...

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.

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...

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.

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!

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.