An experiment in yarn

After last weekend's frantic knit-sprint to the finish of the ravelympics I'm in the mood for some WIP work this weekend. I really need to churn out the second sleeve for my Quidditch/Rugby sweater before I forget what I did with the first one. It helps that I wrote down everything from the first sleeve, but only in a such a way that I'm left puzzling a tally on a post-it and wondering why I thought this would be helpful. Sigh.

Now for the good news: my LYS [Side Note: Local Yarn Store, Gail Knits] is having a big sale this weekend and I'm ready for some experimentation. All the yarn in the sale bins is 50% off, so I think I'm going to take $20 and see what I can come up with. I'm sure there will be plenty of other things to tempt me too! However, for experiment purposes, I'm going to see just how far twenty bucks goes these days, literally. You know, in grams and yards. Expect a report on my findings :-)

There's no avoiding it any longer

I knew I was going to have to get back to it eventually. Yes, the monster afghan that will take an eternity to finish. I'm making it my downstairs/couch project and not starting other new things until it's done. Maybe.

It's the Embossed Diamonds pattern from Spin Dye Knit [Side Note: I probably mentioned this before, but it has been in hibernation so long that I've forgotten.] Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the finished product, it's just the dimensions that are getting to me. Perhaps making it, oh, twice as wide as the pattern called for was overly ambitions. Perhaps.

Crossing the finish line!

Yay!!! I've crossed the Ravelympics finish line in the Scarf Stroke!

My Cable Bobble Scarf was great fun, probably because of the Ravelympics. I enjoyed the pattern a whole lot and the finished scarf is great! It's soft, has good stitch definition, and is warm but light.

Each pattern repeat ended up being 4" in length, so I did 10 pattern repeats + 2" of garter stitch on the ends for a 42" scarf. Now let's give this yarn a bath!

It's going to be close

I haven't been watching the real Olympics very much at all. I don't feel like I'm missing much since I don't know the rules for, well, any of the obscure sports. Which is all of them. Of course, I watched Mr. Phelps in his quest for Epic Hero status, but nothing else really caught my eye. [Side Note: I was watching water polo for a good 20 minutes. Until I realized that I was only watching the players (and all their muscles). I felt a bit shallow so I turned it off. Ditto for men's beach volleyball.]
Anyway, I have been dutifully plugging away on my Scarf Stroke project for the Ravelympics and I think I might end up being that French guy who missed the gold medal by 00.0000000000034 seconds.
I suppose that I can just bind off wherever I am when time is up and call it a scarf, but that's not the point of the games. I'll just have to ramp it up at the end here and hope for the best.
I love the scarf so far, pattern, yarn, width and all. It's really light but very warm and I think I'll get a lot of wear out of it if it doesn't become a gift instead. Also, it is in dire need of some quality blocking time and doesn't really look all wonky and strange in person.

Random Public Service Announcement!

This is of dire importance, believe me. [Side Note: Our water heater exploded all over the garage. The havoc that ensued has kept me busy busy busy.]
"Water-Heater Maintenance" on the DIY Network Web site:

http://www.diynet.com/diy/pl_water_heaters/article/0,2037,DIY_14194_2277696,00.html

http://diynetwork.com

A Scarf With Cables and Bobbles Too

Well, I tried the "permission" thing first because I was sampling from another knit pattern, but I haven't gotten a response. I believe that I have changed the pattern/chart enough from the original that a) you probably won't know what it was before and b) there's no way you could reverse engineer what it was before from what I've created.

So I'm sharing the chart from the Ravelympics project that I took on, but I'm not going to say which pattern it mimics (just in case). Please click on the image to make it bigger!
Notes:

• The four stitches on either end of the pattern are all knit stitches, i.e. the garter stitch border.
• I used six rows of garter stitch to begin (and end) the scarf.
• My bobble construction method was:
  
• K, P, K into bobble stitch; turn
• P row; turn
  
• K row; turn
• P row; turn
  
• pass 2nd and 3rd stitch over 1st stitch and knit into the back of the 1st stitch.
  
• Use as many repeats as you desire until you get to scarf-length.
• On size 6 (4 mm) needles with a slim DK weight yarn each pattern repeat ended up being 4".
• Also, you should probably have a cable needle at the ready for this project, unless you are superfancy and don't need one. In which case, nobody likes a show off.
  

Now, if you are the person who I tried to contact and you believe that I shouldn't be putting this chart on my blog you'll have to let me know! I respect your intellectual property and will pull it ASAP. And ask your forgiveness. [Side Note: In real life, I'm a firm believer that both permission and forgiveness are overrated. Bah, silly human social constructs. I try to avoid situations that involve either of these things. And moral turpitude. I try to avoid that too.]

I am all Raveled up at the moment

I've been so busy (knitting and otherwise) that a whole week has slipped by without a blog post! And this one isn't even going to be very good because I haven't taken pictures of the things I've been working on.

This is going to be a huge Ravelympic weekend for me though! No word yet on whether or not I'll be able to post the chart for my scarf (I don't want to infringe on anyone's intellectual property you know).

I was right on top of the Opal Harry Potter Yarn pre-sale at Simply Sock Yarn thanks to my avid blog reading and scored the WHOLE SET at a discount! Yay me! And Yay Allison + Simply Sock Yarn.com. [Side Note: YAY!]

In other, more horrible news, the money grubbing bastards Warner Bros. executives decided to push the Half-Blood Prince film all the way back to July 2009. If this delays my yarn in any way I will be forced to make daily aspersions on their character and insinuate that they maintain inappropriate relations with goats. [Side Note: You know they do.]

And because I can't leave well enough alone ...

I'm ready for Ravelympics now! I found all sorts of scarves I liked, but ultimately I decided to pull my favorite elements together and make up my own pattern. [Side Note: This is because I simply cannot leave well enough alone and just knit someone else's perfectly good (and tested) pattern.]

I'm pulling the main inspiration from another knitter's chart though, so I won't publish it here without their permisson (which I intend to e-mail them to attain). Suffice to say that it involves cables and bobbles (which are waaay more fun than they look like they will be). The swatch was very fun and I figure that if I knit at full speed I could do one pattern repeat (32 rows?) every day. 17 repeats might make a monstrously long scarf though, so I'll start with one repeat every two days and pick up the pace at the end if I feel like it won't be long enough.

Contributing to society

I uploaded my USC chart to Ravelry today, officially becoming a contributing member of the community! Yay! I haven't done anything else with said chart in a long time though. [Side Note: I stand by my assertion that it would make a lovely blanket/afghan of many squares. I'm just too lazy to do it.]

In hindsight, I hope I'm not infringing on some USC copyright of the interlocking SC image... I think it's fair use, you know, for knitting research purposes :-) That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Dark Knight = shorter days

We went to see the new batman movie in IMAX late late Saturday night. Originally we had planned to attend the 7 o'clock showing, but our customary half-hour-before-the-movie-starts arrival time was not enough to ensure our seats. I couldn't believe it! We had to go and get our tickets exchanged for the 10:30 showing which let out around 1-ish. The movie was worth the time and money spent, and if you get the chance to see it on an IMAX screen go for it!
The downside was that I slept the day away today. I'm done with the back of the Quidditch sweater though! And I started on one of the sleeves before we went to the movie.

I still haven't picked a pattern for my Ravelympics project (Scarf Stroke) yet. I wonder if it's possible to have knitters block. Only five days until the start. I had better get on this if I'm going to be a serious competitor :-) [Side Note: This is me psyching myself up.]