Hey, I can blog with photos too.

So, the camera was located under my nightstand. Of all the places it could have been, why there? Oh well, I found it. I also dug out the book it came with to see if I could "adjust" the settings. I think I should have read the booklet a long, long time ago. It would have prevented much camera related angst. [Note to self: Read the instructions. Really.]Now there will be an inundation of photos. This set is documented proof of the Golden Snitch ornaments I constructed (courtesy of Charmed Knits, once again). They don't have a hanging string yet, but I'm not in any rush.
Haha, don't they look like they'd rather be out in the yard, zooming around in the air?
I really like the 3-toned effect (though knitting with yarn that thick was a real challenge), and the colors aren't quite as true as they could be. But hey, this is as good as it gets without professional photography knowledge.Here's a little sample of the three colors together, though the 'white' is actually butter yellow, the 'uber-golden' color is really goldenrod, and the 'brown' is much brassier in real life.

As you can see, my Sophie bag is complete! It felted marvelously and is super thick. I'm enamored with the charcoal gray color as well as the small-ish size of the bag. It's going to be very useful and get a lot of wear, I can tell already! Joy!
I put a fabric-covered piece of cardboard in the bottom for stability and it's just perfect! I might stitch the straps together to help them stay more balanced in their twistiness, because the twists have a tendency to congregate to one side of the bag or the other. I would make this project again in a heartbeat! Love (1)!

My Sophie Bag

Knitting round after round.
Loving the yarn for it's fluffiness + sturdiness.
Hoping it will felt. It is mostly merino after all, but I have my doubts.
Wondering just how long the handles/straps are going to need to be.
No sign of the camera yet. I may have to resort to using my phone again. Sigh.
That is all.

Where have the pictures gone?

The pictures will be back soon, because I will find that darn camera. For now, how about a quick update? I went to the USC vs. Ohio State *cough* overrated-every-year *cough* and watched my Trojans dispatch them with ease. [Side Note: So that's how the SEC feels every year. Pretty nice!]

It was wonderful to have a little weekend vacation, but now I'm sicker than ever and have been without a voice since Saturday. Joy. [Quote my brother "I think I like you better this way."]
I will say that Ohio State has the nicest fans I've ever sat next to (even when I was obnoxiously dancing in aisles and giving high fives over 3 rows of people). All in all, I imagine Ohio must be a great place to live with all these happy, polite, friendly people around. [Side Story: One of the fellows I sat by informed me that Buckeyes are poisonous, which I'm not sure about, so I'll google it sometime when I'm bored.]

I got to see a few of the LA people I love, but it makes me miss my adopted home city and my Trojan family that much more. To be honest, I'm not that attached to Las Vegas and would gladly be back in Los Angeles forever, but alas that's not going to happen any time soon.

In other news, I got my replacement DPNs from Webs today, so now I have 9. Huh. I guess that enables me to knit a pair of socks at the same time now.

ACHOOO!

I have a cold. Again. And it's making me miserable. Again.

On the upside, it means plenty of couch time for knitting. On the downside, it means I'll have to Lysol any Finished Objects. And the couch.

I knit up a couple golden snitch ball ornaments (out of Charmed Knits. Yes, I realize that this is becoming an obsession. No, I don't mind.) I held together three golden shades of scrap acrylic; light yellow, goldenrod, and a brassy brown that would look gold if it were really shiny. It's a beautiful effect I think. [Side Note: 3 x worsted weight is GIGANTOR! And really hard to knit with. Thankfully I'm out of scraps.]

And I got my box of yarn and stuff from webs today, so I immediately cast on for a footie sock version of my Patriot Socks to use up the leftover yarn. [Side Note: One of the new needles was broken when it arrived :-( the little plastic tip on the end had broken off, but I've made do with just 4 dpns.] I don't know if there's anything webs can do about things damaged in shipping, but it can't hurt to email them, right?

And I'm using one of the Karabella balls to make a sweet little felted purse based on the popular MagKnits Sophie pattern. Mine will be much smaller than the pattern suggests, because I just don't need that much space. If it's too big I probably won't use it. As a matter of fact I could get by with just my wallet, cell phone, and keys. But I love this pattern and the results it has produced (ala ravelry).

Well, the cough medicine just kicked in so I guess that's it for zzzZZZzzz

Too bad I don't have anything interresting to say

Well, the knitting projects have ground to a halt. Grad school nonsense stuff has taken up all of my free time and drained me of any productive energy. Plus, I'm waiting on yarn. I'm waiting on yarn to finish my Quidditch/Rugby sweater. I'm waiting on my Harry Potter Opal Sock Yarn that I have lusted after for so long. I'm waiting for this Karabella fluff to decide what it wants to be.

I guess this is just a natural lull in knitting. It's still 110 degrees when I go to get in my Jeep, forgive me if I don't feel the urgency to knit warm things. Once 'fall' kicks in I'll get back into the groove. [Side Note: Las Vegas doesn't have 'fall' per se, but we have a brief period of 'less hot' followed by many blustery months of chilly and windy directly followed by Easter (when it rains) and then 'hot' again. Once every 5 years or so it will snow here. That is when all hell breaks loose on the roads.]

Oh, I tacked a set of US 1 dpns onto my Webs order, the Pony plasticky kind that I like so much. If I'm going to commit to this sock thing I'm going to need the cavalry (a.k.a. properly sized knitting needles.

I don't know if I want to make all of the HPO yarn into socks, but I had to have a smaller set to get gauge etc. I thought it would be quite poetic to turn the Lupin and Tonks skeins into an object together. Perhaps a simple scarf? I'd like to know why there isn't a Dobby colorway though. Nobody loved socks like Dobby!

Oh well, I've rambled on long enough. I'll try and get it together around here so there can be some quality posts.

Results and Conclusions

I can't find my camera, but I know it's around here somewhere. Frustrating isn't it? I nabbed this picture off of Ravelry for illustration purposes.

Anyways, as you can probably tell I purchased some lovely Karabella Souffle (Four balls for less than $20!) in my little experiment. That's 200 grams and 400+ yards. The color caught my eye because it's a beautiful smoky grey, and then I touched it. I didn't want to put it down, so I figured that was a pretty good litmus test for yarn love.

I haven't the slightest idea what to do with this, but I love it. According to the people at Gail Knits that's all that really matters anyway :-) [Side Note: There's a name for people like this, they are called enablers. Yay enablers!]

The real beauty of research like this is that you find out all sorts of things you weren't even seeking. Like the fact that a two-at-once-sock-class is being taught less than a mile from your home. [Note to self: Remember to look into that.] I also discovered that this is how a "stash" starts. The other knitters at Gail's informed me of this with all-knowing nods. Up to now I am pretty much stashless and buy yarn for immediate consumption, but when I am complaining in 5 years from now about having a stash that might be visible from space I can definitively point to where it all began. Right here. Must tread carefully around tempting fibers. Must retain will power and closet space.

Grr.

Well, so much for a WIP weekend. I ran out of the yellow "Butternut" color for my Rugby/Quidditch sweater midway up the second sleeve. I probably won't have enough of the red "cranberry" either though, so now I've got to track down my dye lot. Groan. Let's hope Webs can help me! [Side Note: I don't know how I ran out of yarn though. I ordered what the pattern told me to. I'm consistently getting gauge. Why must the knitting gods smite me so? Why!?]

Also, I've discovered that the crochet gods might be trying to tell me something too. But since it involved stepping on a crochet hook, I don't think it's anything nice or constructive. It didn't go through the skin or anything, but I have a G-hook sized bruise now. Must tidy up room.

P.S. I will report on my Experiment in Yarn soon, but not in this post because it's late and I haven't taken pictures.

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.]

Bye Bye July!

Tuesday and Wednesday got away from me this week, bloggingly speaking. In other news a lot of knitting has been going on around here, as well as other home maintaining endeavors. [Side Note: Mom, if you're going to hit all of the sprinklers, please let me mow the lawn instead. Or put that bum I call a brother to work.]

I have been working away on my Quidditch sweater and I'm up to the armhole decreases on the back now. Yay! The stripes match up from the back to the front, which had me concerned. (By "concerned" I mean "I didn't think about that until I had already completed both stripes on the back part and the idea hit me like a lightning-bolt of panic.")

I decided to enter the scarf 'competition' in the ravelympics and I'd like to use the yarn I harvested from an old sweater. I have to pick a pattern pretty soon here if I'm going to swatch before the event kicks off, but I don't know what I'm in the mood to knit. What would my hands (and the yarn in question) like to work on in a mad dash of 17 days from start to finish?

Ravelympics 2008

I'm very interested in participating in the Ravelympics 2008 knit party going on over at Ravelry! I just don't know what event to pick...
Afghan Marathon
Amigurumi-n-Toys Toss
Baby Dressage
Bag-n-Tote Backstroke
Balance Beads
Cable Steeplechase
Colorwork Cross-Country
Cowl Jump
Designers Discus
Fantasy DecKnitathalon
Felted Freestyle
Free-For-All Freestyle
Fleece to Finished Fencing
Glove Decathlon
Gift Knits Pentathlon
Hand-Dyed Hurdles
Handspun Heptathalon
Hat Dash
Holiday Handball
Home-Stuff Hammerthrow
Itsy Bitsy Bikini Breaststroke
Laceweight Long Jump
Mitten Medley
Pets Pommel Horse
Scarf Stroke
Shawl Relay
Sock Put
Sweater Sprint
Synchronized Flirty Skirts
Vest Vault
WIPs Wrestling

As you can see, there are many many things that might pique my interest. At the moment I'm thinking of a scarf/shawl project that would be a gift. And that falls under 3 events, maybe more. It might be laceweight, it could have cables, and matching mittens or gloves would be great.

I'm going to ponder this some more.

One quarter of a sweater

This is the front of the quidditch style sweater I'm making for myself.

I like the Plymouth encore worsted a lot! It's a step up from the
cheapo acrilics that I like to use when trying new things/learning but
it's not expensive at all. It's got just enough wool to be warm and
soft without being hard to care for or causing me to have an allergic
reaction! Yay! Must keep knitting!

How about fully clothed blogging?

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

"I'm thinking of trying new things."
[Other guy disrobes]
"I mean like knitting."
"Naked knitting?"
hahaha

Sweater Carnage! (not for those who get squeamish about that sort of thing)

I found an old sweater in the "Stuff We're Sending to Goodwill" bag that my mom no longer wants/wears/loves. It was coming apart a little along one of the seams and lo and behold, there were actual sweater construction methods employed in the making of this sweater! Which means that sweater destruction methods (rip, rip, rip!) can be used to reclaim the yarn.

I really liked the look and feel of the sweater (its made out of a varitable zoo of animal fibers) so I decided to inflict some sweater carnage and harvest the yarn for my own purposes. I'll spare you the pictures because this sort of thing can be unsettling (and because I didn't take any).

The sweater came apart with remarkable ease and the yarn is quite lovely. It's rather thin, only a fine 3-ply and I have oodles of it now. It takes a whole lot of fine yarn to make a sweater apparently. [Side Note: I lost some yarn to the carnage. Not much. Just when I missed the seam and cut through the working yarn. Idiot. I kept these short strands because they could come in handy later for strategic seaming purposes.]


I doubt that this yarn will be reincarnated back into sweater form (because there is a bit less of it now and the original was a bit snug to begin with). This reclaimed yarn hasn't decided what it wants to be yet, so it will hang out in the stash for a bit. [Side Note: 'Stash' is a bit of a joke. It's just the odds and ends of left over yarn I've accumulated. I buy what I'm going to knit with and then I start as soon as the yarn is legally in my possession. What I really have is a large WIP collection.]

Justification Plz?

I wanted a rugby style sweater, cardinal and gold with USC pride in every stitch, to wear to homecoming this year. I have hoodies and jackets and my Gryffindor SC scarf, but my jerseys are getting worn out. And they have acquired a beer smell that won't come out.

[Side Note: My mom tossed them in the wash just before the Stanford game last year. Their first washing since the National Title. Collective gasp anyone? Her argument was "I can't even wash the smell out, how can you possibly belive that I washed the 'luck' out?!?". Coincidence? I think NOT.]

Besides, ol' #11 and #5 have long since moved on to NFL careers, but haven't reached the epic status that allows alums to wear #34 around.

It's ok though because I am coping with my Paranoid Sweater Phobia quite well and ordered yarn from Webs for the project. It's the Quidditch Sweater from Charmed Knits (because the more I knit, the more I love this book cover to cover). $34 including shipping and I will have a great sweater by November-ish. {Insert plot twist here}

But then I found this:

For the low low price of $27.99! And it got me to thinking. Yes, dangerous 'thinking'. Even with shipping, it comes out the same as the yarn + notions and involves Zero work on my part. I never should have signed up for the damn e-newsletter at Whimsic Alley.

>:~[ (That's my scowling Snape smiley, haha)

Yes, I'm still making my sweater, believing that it will be far superior to the mass produced model in quality, durability, and warmth. And because denial isn't just a river in Egypt anymore.

Just because I can ...

... doesn't mean I will.

I saw these knitted pillow covers in a catalog for a store (new to my area) called West Elm. My immediate thought was "I could knit that." And I very well could. But I'm not going to. Because I don't need (or particularly desire) these pillows. It's just nice to see that knitty things can make it in this post-modern loft-style hipsters catalog. :-)

P.S. They have a bazillion other things that I do really want and definitely can't knit. Like a desk chair.

When yarn attacks

:-D

Olive this hat!

I love puns. They're witty and cheesy and they pop into my head all the time. When I saw the cute Olive hat on The Blue Blog the other day I chuckled to myself at the cleverness. Then I realized that I have olive green yarn lying around from a yarn project my mom started in about 1975. [Side Note: My mom doesn't knit but I think she did a reasonable crochet impersonation on a throw blanket for my grandparents. (I've never seen it, probably because it was made of olive green, Brady Bunch kitchen orange, and brown.) Also, my mom has forgotten how to crochet since then, I've asked.]

I pulled out my trusty hat pattern and made a size small hat in under a few hours out of the old olive acrylic. It's too bad the ancient acrylic makes my forehead itch like it's made of steel wool. This will need a lining, which I've never done on a hand knit hat (just a store bought one). No rush though, it's JULY.

I used duplicate stitch to put the pimento on (and stitched around it to even out the border). Sometimes it looks like a green hat with a red dot, but if you get the right perspective it looks just like a manzanilla olive. My dad got the joke right away, "Oh, is that a cocktail olive hat? Olive it! Haha get it?" yes dad, I get it ;-)

My Practice Sweater is actually finished. No really this time.

Yeah, I know I've hyped this sweater waaay too much. But it's a personal victory. Yay me! [Side Note: My camera has stopped being 'difficult' and has begun an all out mutiny. Sorry for the lacking picture quality.]
And this is the neckline that gave me so much grief. Sure, it looks harmless now ...

It's not invisible if you make it out of red yarn.

As I've added more knitting content to my Google.reader I've noticed all of the wonderful lacy things that people come up with. Fancy shawls, scarves, and even socks. The thought of knitting them conjured up images of dental floss yarn and toothpick size knitting needles though, so I was content to just admire the work of others for a long time.

Then I started paging through Charmed Knits (I was looking for good instruction on how to finish the neck of my Practice Sweater, and the Quidditch Sweater method worked well) and came across the Invisibility Shawl which mentions that it's an easy project to learn lacework on. Also I would get to solidify my ability to perform the Provisional Cast-On. It was a win-win really. AND I used the red sock yarn that I have hanging around from my One Red Sock. (It's definitely not getting a mate now.)

Yes, I know that it isn't exactly 'invisible' when I go and make it out of RED sock weight yarn.

I am absolutely enamored with lace construction now. [Side Note: It uses BIG needles. Huh.] There are only a few repeats left to do before it reaches the 40" size mentioned in the pattern (plus the finished edge) so clearly I'm falling down on the blogging in order to knit. Talk about your vicious circles huh?

Really, all the progress on this came as I sat in Jury Duty. 5 hours of uninterrupted knitting time before they called my number. I was actually concerned that I would finish it there in the smelly, hot waiting area before they got to me! I didn't bring anything to read and my iPhone was low on battery (and nary an outlet in sight). This could have quickly deteriorated into a lesser known circle of Dante Alighieri's hell construct, so I did what any rational person would do and I knit slower. [Knitted more slowly ... knitted slower ... knit slowly ... where's my 6th grade English teacher when I need her?]

Has it really been that long?

The days seem to slip by so quickly between blog posts! It's not like I'm short on things to blog about either; I started my first piece of lace work (now just a few repeats from being finished), I finished the neckline on that pesky practice sweater (it turned out just great once I stopped being a spaz about it), I made a pun into a hat, I ordered some yarn from Webbs, and I worked on the Never-Ending Afghan. I'm going to write about all of these things in detail right away. As soon as I can take some pictures. It's dark now.

"Why don't sheep shrink when it rains?" - George Carlin (RIP)

They only shrink if you put them in the dryer afterwards ;-)

[Side Note: Never ever try to put a sheep in a dryer. Ever.]

**EDIT** For all of you who find your way here through google, looking for an actual answer to this question: It takes very hot water to relax wool fibers and then cause them to contract (shrink) and rain just doesn't reach those temperatures. Also, sheep don't get terribly wet anyways because their wool is coated with greasy skin secretions (lanolin). For more information, check out wikipedia.

:-)

50th post! Already?

I'll admit that the blogging has been slow around here lately, but this is due in large part to the fact that it's rather difficult to blog from one's cell phone (no matter how iAdvanced it may be).

Still, I've made it to 50 posts! I have finished objects to share and new things already on the needles! (No, mom, your afghan is not one of the finished objects. Simmer down, it's only June!)

I have finished my first* sock. One Red Sock. My brother immediately commented that it reminded him of the Red Sox's red socks, so I don't know if I'll bother making a second. Don't get me wrong, I'm no Yankees fan. I just resent that my little brother thinks it's ok to have a backup team. What is this nonsense! "But they're in a different league, and all the way across the country" he says. Like that's some sort of a defense. I am a True Blue Dodgers fan (I bleed BLUE during baseball season. No really.) Occasionally my mom will threaten to defect to the Padres or [shudder] Giants, but we don't take her seriously. Sorry mom.

My practice sweater is all but finished because I am having quite a bit of trouble with the neckline ribbing. First I picked up stitches like a maniac (some 120 when the pattern called for 78, I lost count) and it had a hilariously ruffled collar look. Not quite what I was looking for, really. So, on the second try I picked up exactly 78, made it through 3 or 4 rounds and realized I had dropped a stitch somewhere, messed up the ribbing twice, and had some unsightly gaps along the neck edge :-( So, I ask you, is there anything inherently wrong with leaving the sweater as is? I mean it may be a little uneven, but being completely honest with myself, this sweater wasn't intended to be worn, you know, outside of the house. Perhaps I've reached some sort of frustration quotient and just need to give it some time. My inner scientist is urgently reminding me that failed experiments are how we learn. [Side Note: It's platitudes like that one that make me want to plunk her in the head with an Erlenmeyer flask.]

And I've got a new sock project going! This one is flying off the needles, I've already got the first sock finished and I immediately cast on for the second sock (fearing that I would lose the inspiration). I found some Opal sock yarn to play with and practice on and I'm impressed with how easy it is to work with. It may not be the softest, squooshiest, or most lovely yarn I've ever worked with, but it's German; utility before frills, I get it. I'll bet that a little blocking and some fabric softener will work wonders. This colorway (don't ask me what it's called, I don't read German) struck me as particularly patriotic for some reason, I'm going to call these my Patriot socks. [Side Note: Not to abuse New England teams today or anything, but I'm most certainly NOT a Patriots fan either. It's the Steelers for me, thanks!]

Socks and the great outdoors

Here's how that first sock is coming along...
Yep, it looks sort of day-glow out in the sun, but it's really a nice
red. I'm not loving the simplified heel, but I sure do like it as a
friend and I'll finish the toe in the same manner ... sooner or later.

Practice does make perfect!

The front of my practice sweater is complete (blue, raglan style,
source of low-level panic, you remember the one.) I am in the process
of seaming everything up so I'll have some Finished Object pictures
later on, I promise!

In other news: it's hot as hell here, and count yourself lucky if
you've never woken up to find a banana slug in your shoe, blech!

Pictures and Text: is it really too much to ask?

If you can see my feet and read this, it means I've worked out this
email posting thing.

Ulterior (Sock) Motives

I have a confession to make: I have only soldiered on in my sock attempts to prepare myself for some Opal yarn in the Harry Potter colorways. They come out in the fall, sometime before the movie. Since I've decided that I must possess them all, I feel a little obligated to actually make them into something. Though the prospect of just keeping the lovely skeins around (or having them framed) is quite appealing to me :-)

This got me thinking about the role the HP series has played in my knitting. After reading the books and having myself sorted (via sortinghat.com or something like that) into Slytherin I decided that I must have a scarf. [Side Note: Again, I'm not a bad person; though I suspect that my ambition can sometimes set my moral compass spinning, it does find itself again eventually.] I put aside the fact that I seldom visit latitudes North of, oh, Southern California or so, and sought out a Slytherin scarf for myself.

When I finally found a store selling them I couldn't bring myself to pay some $27 dollars for it. The USC bookstore sold a lovely Gryffindor 'SC scarf that fall for the bargain price of $10 and I caved, but it still wasn't the same. I felt like I was misrepresenting myself by wearing it to the movie premier. Weird huh? I found plenty of other things in WhimsicAlley to amuse me for hours on end (including a quill pen and ink, and a Dark Mark temporary tattoo), but the crafty part of my brain was whirring along at full tilt. "How are scarves made? They look woven together, not sewn up patches of color. Gee, I wonder how they do that. OH, knitting would do that ... right?" is how my internal monologue went. TO THE INTERNET!

After some brief googling I discovered that people can, in fact, knit these things themselves! I dashed out to Michaels, bought a skein of green and one of grey and a pair of needles. I had no regard for the type of yarn, it's gauge, or even the size of the needles really, so you probably know how this turned out. I worked diligently on my very first project and once I had mastered the Knit and Purl stitches (and realized that Knitting on BOTH sides means you end up with garter stitch) the scarf seemed to fly off the needles. Of course I was using US 10s (because 10 sounded like a nice round number at the time). I was very proud of my efforts, but not so much of the scarf. I had picked up reading a few knitting related sites and had learned so much that, despite the lacklustre scarf, I was hooked (or knitted, rather, as this isn't crochet afterall).

The scarf eventually ended up being ripped out and used to make Salazar the Bear. And I've never gotten around to making myself a proper Slytherin scarf either, but this doesn't trouble me much anymore because of a) the climate I live in and b) the fact that my halloween costume robe is Gryffindor too. [Side Note: this is because I could not find a suitable green lining fabric last year to save my life, but red was everywhere and on sale!]

Speaking of Sal though, I've found that his neck is a bit floppy which makes him look as if he's puzzled by something. Rather than busy myself with reinforcing his neck I decided to take a page out of Nearly Headless Nick's book and make him a scarf to hold his head up instead, haha! I took the book scarf pattern as it was originally posted and just kept knitting it until it was long enough for Sal. I'll have him try it on when I get home. [Imagine him with his head cocked to the side as if to say "For me?"]

$#(!*&% holes

After previous sock attempts were abandoned I began to feel some crafty-person remorse. I went and bought sock yarn (lovely red Cascade) and even itty bittier DPNs [Side Note: 'bittier' isn't a word, but I'm going to use it anyway. HAHA, actually the spell checker doesn't have a problem with it, but "itty" and "DPNs" it doesn't approve of. Go figure.] I vowed to try again, especially since socks are so portable and I'm driving myself up the wall with my practice sweater [Another Side Note: I finished the back of the sweater last night, forgoing my self-imposed break].

I picked the most generic sock pattern that I could find and cast on, worked down the leg, turned the heel in short row and realized that there are $#(!*$% holes along the short row. This was not supposed to happen! I used a much simplified method of short row that didn't involve all that befuddling yarn wrapping that I haven't developed the skills to accomplish yet. It worked out just fine and simplified my project immeasurably, but there are tiny spaces! ARGH!

Don't get me wrong, I can live with the holes. I live in a desert and socks are not necessary for more than perhaps 2 months of the year. It's just the idea that my first* (I'm not counting the discarded projects, Finished Objects only!) socks won't be *perfect* that bugs me. Scratch that, it's the idea that I followed the directions and played by the rules and it did work out that bugs me even more. If I don't know what went wrong, how am I supposed to fix it in the future? Grr.

In other news, I'm not sure where all of this angsty, self-reflective knit-blogging is coming from lately, but I'm sure it will subside soon. Also, blogging from one's iPhone isn't conducive to picture posting, sorry! If I can figure out how to send a picture AND the accompanying text together and have them appear as a single cohesive post the pictures will return.

Paranoid Sweater Phobia

I have the back of my practice sweater with me for some easy stockinette worsted weight knitting and it's been causing me all sorts of grief. I'll admit that I possibly have a Paranoid Sweater Phobia which is really the root of all my sweater knitting insecurities. I find myself compulsively holding up my knitting for size after every row and pestering people (Excuse me, does this look too long? Is is too soon to start the armhole? And so on.)

I am now of the opinion that knitting patterns should not include inch/cm measurements because they give me permission to bring along my seamstress style measuring tape and let the inner scientist have free range to obsess over sixteenths and millimeters. I probably look like one of those crazy architecture students* in labs full of foam board, measuring every conceivable angle over and over again: measure, scrutinize, measure, check pattern, measure, decide to knit another row, measure, decide that row has pushed us over the line, scrutinize removing row, measure, and so on.

I am also guilty of trying on the two completed sleeves and wearing them around to scrutinize. I'm quite glad that I didn't bring them with me because it has stopped me from compulsively trying them on every time I check the back piece for size (that's every row). The prevailing concerns I have right now are 1) the arms are too long because the raglan decreases at the top seem to come up higher than I think they should and 2) that the arm hole decreases started too soon, or maybe too late and the thing is too long.

It's time for a break.

*I use the term "crazy" to denote an extreme devotion to detail and quality that probably keeps buildings from falling down on my head, so it is a term of greatest respect and thanks.

Is knitting weird?

I just had a long conversation with my brother that went something like this:
"You knit too much, it's weird. I get the whole 'dexterity' thing, but you like it too much." Bro
"Yes, I like to knit, so what's wrong with that?" Me
"It takes up all your free time though. Go do something more social." Bro [I'm plenty social, but I like my quiet time!]
"I only knit on the evenings when I'm watching TV instead of reading!" Me
"No, you sneak in knitting time whenever you can." Bro [damn, I didn't think anyone noticed.]
"Hey, there are plenty of knit-bloggers out there who are waaay more into it than I am!" [Yes, I'm rationalizing now.] Me
"You read blogs about knitting when you're not knitting. Wow." Bro [Hmm, this isn't going the way I planned.]

Am I too young for all of this? I'm 23, SWF, in graduate school with intentions of medical school. I've noticed that a lot of other knitters are mature, married, mothers, and a slew of other words that don't alliterate (or describe me in any way). I've always enjoyed swimming against the current, so to speak, not for the sake of being different but just by being me. [Or sanding against the grain, if you've seen any of my earliest refinishing projects.] But have I crossed some invisible line between different/uncommon and weird without knowing it? Now I'm feeling self-conscious about my knitting! That is going to put a crimp in finishing WIPs. I'm going to continue to ponder this for a while ...

I'm not lost, just roaming.

A quick update just to say that I'm out traveling the world and that posting may be limited or sporadic for a while, but I'll focus on quality instead of quantity :-)

Knit Wits

This is so funny. No really, it's the Sopranos + knitting. Watch and laugh, go ahead!

Socks. Yes, socks.

My LYS, a place called Gail Knits is a wonderful find! It may also lead to problems such as falling in love with every yarn ball in the store. I was just a little awestruck on my first visit, but something about the place made me believe I could make anything.

That is how I came home with a great big ball of Cascade merino/nylon sock yarn in red. I'm not ready to admit defeat (hehe, or should I say defeet) on the sock front. Other people can do it, why not me? Short row heels, that's why not. But I'm willing to work on it! I'm doing what I do best now, exhaustive research, and I hope to build up the confidence to get out the tiny DPNs and start. Until then, I have a beautiful ball of yarn (they wound it at the store for me too!) that can sit on my desk and encourage me, or gather dust waiting.

I have a LYS?!

In one of those moments of sudden realization it occurred to me that the term "LYS" might actually have a meaning. I only read a select few knit-blogs on a regular basis and the authors are all located in the North Eastern US. This is significant because for the longest time I believed that "Lys" might be a craft store chain that only had stores in the NE. My train of thought often went like this "I wish they would hurry up and build a Lys out here!" I realize now how laughable that sounds, but would it kill anyone to write out "Local Yarn Store" every now and again?

Once this dawned on me I searched for yarn stores in my area and found one not more than 2 miles from my house! I must have driven past it a million billion times without ever noticing. That's where I'm going now, and hopefully I will come back with some fun things and broader knitting horizons :-)

Two Sleeves; usually necessary for a sweater.

The sleeves of my practice sweater are complete! They are even seamed, as per my seam-as-I-go edict. Although I didn't lay them out very carefully for the picture, they are exactly the same size and shape with lovely, even gauge. This "practice sweater" is turning out to be just what I needed to build my sweater confidence.

Now raglan seams are something I'm not familiar with, but after extensive internet searching I believe that it works the same as the mattress stitch, just along the diagonal sleeve line. Am I wrong? That step is still a front and a back away, so I won't worry about it for now.

So what else do I have hanging around on the needles? Let's see: that world record afghan, the tweed stitch dishcloth, part of my First Sock that's waiting to be ripped, and the Gryffindor pillow that still needs seams.

Happy Birthday Little Brother!

There wasn't much craftiness going on here this weekend due to my brother's birthday celebrations. Unless gift wrapping counts ... I do enjoy wrapping gifts :-) And everything was made easier by the massive spring cleaning that happened to the gift wrap related storage area. My own personal stroke of genius was using my clear plastic over-the-door shoe caddy (from college dorm days) as ribbon and bow storage. It's even still sorted by color and type! I don't know how long it will resist the entropy of the universe though :-/

[Side Note] The entire universe is constantly moving from a state of order into a state of chaos, this is called entropy. Yes, it's a scientific fact that the entire universe is working to thwart our best efforts at organization.

World Record Afghan.

The afghan/throw that I started knitting for my mom in a somewhat finicky Embossed Diamonds pattern is starting to feel like the largest afghan in the history of afghans! I'll bet I'm not the only one to feel this way about a large project either.

I'm starting to think that I was a bit overzealous in casting on close to 400 sts on my large circular needles. I've successfully completed about a foot of knitting that's about 5 feet wide, so there's no way I'm ripping out and starting again. That is definitely off the table because I don't know if I would be able to pluck up my resolve to start knitting again from the beginning. Besides, I'm pretty sure that the finished project will be just the right size (though it seems gigantic right now).

It's a good thing that I started it right away because it will probably be winter again before I finish it! I'll include a picture of it when I can stand to look at it again, I promise.

Just Keep Pedaling!

I'm sticking to my vow to seam as I go, which meant putting down the needles and seaming up the first sleeve of my "practice" sweater. Happily, everything went smoothly and I'm so glad that I can finish projects in a neater, more professional way now :-)

[Side Note] I love that acrylic doesn't have to be blocked. I don't like blocking either. Fancy yarns are nice, but there's all sorts of extra involvement (added cost, swatching becomes necessary, the blocking, the careful washing, etc.) I like some acrylic instant gratification sometimes! That sounded dirtier than I meant it to ...

Today the training wheels come off.

I don't derive any joy from seaming things. I actually avoid projects with lots of seaming because I know that they will lay in finished but not-yet-sewn-together pieces for an eternity and I don't need that kind of guilt. That all ends today. From this day forward I hereby vow to seam as I go whenever possible.

I finally learned how to properly seam knitted objects with the mattress stitch, which is surprisingly simple and has nothing to do with mattresses (at least as far as my instructions went). I'm sure that the way I used to seam things violated several deadly sins of knitting, so this is a vast improvement. The way that the stitches pull together to create a new row along the seam is nothing short of a miraculous event to me right now.

Practice Makes Perfect

I'm not making a sweater. I'm just practicing by making all of the parts :-D Like today for instance, I knit a raglan sleeve in Cape Cod Blue. It turned out just right thanks to a fancy sweater calculator I found online at Knitting Fool. Just to make sure it wasn't an accidental success I will repeat the sleeve exercise tomorrow and then move on to practicing the front and back of a round neck raglan sweater. You know, they say practice makes perfect ;-)

That site again was http://www.knittingfool.com/pages/sweater_wheel.guest.cfm

Sweater Weather?

There's something about the 90 degree weather we're having that makes me want to start a sweater project. I'll chalk that up to heatstroke, but I'm going to start looking for a pattern anyways. My earliest sweater projects were a comedy of errors combined with a general in-over-my-head-ness, so I've been reluctant to begin another one. It's a shame too, because I love sweaters, just not my sweaters yet :-/ I believe my skills have progressed considerably since my last sweater attempt many months ago, so let the pattern perusing begin!

Happy Mother's Day Mom!

No actual posting today, just brunch making and spending time with Mom!

Book Scarf: for keeping books warm

I once saw a sweater pattern that was double-knitted so that it would be reversible and thought to myself "That's like knitting two sweaters at once! Who would do that to themselves?" And I've never had any desire to double-knit anything since.

Until now. I saw a cute idea for a bookmark scarf somewhere in the blog-o-sphere and decided that for an object no more than an inch wide I could make an exception and give double-knitting a try. It was surprisingly easy to keep track of, more efficient than knitting something so small in the round, and turned out great! I don't think I'll be making any reversible sweaters, but I'd sure make this little project again and again (it only took an hour, and that includes the time I spent pondering the long-tail purl cast on).

P.S. As I was tagging this post I decided that this project could be related to the Tiny Weasley Sweater because they are the same scale and would probably go well together :-)

Oh, this is nifty!

Mugglenet is reporting that the German based yarn company Opal has released a new fall '08 line of Harry Potter yarn! It's too bad the dollar is so weak (in comparison to the Euro, we seem to be holding our own with the Yuan for the moment), or I'd order myself some right now! I've got a powerful urge to get the Dumbledore yarn and make warm woolly socks out of it ;-)

"Half-Blood Prince Sneak Peek by way of Yarn company RupertGrint.net has spotted these new spools of yarn from German yarn company Opal. They have a new Half-Blood Prince collection with 8 color themes to be released Fall 2008. Each of the themes represents one character from the sixth Potter film and includes a picture.

Those characters include Harry, Ron, Malfoy, Lupin, Tonks, Dumbledore, and Hedwig. Tonks most notably has a new, much shorter, haircut. Check 'em out in our gallery!"

It's a Chart Maker, like a recipe card for knits...

I like this simple text based chart creator from Inna Zakharevich. It's text based, so you type in your pattern and it generates a chart for you. I've seen other sites that allow you to drag&drop stitches into a graph area, but once the initial novelty wears off it's just more time consuming. I prefer this one:

http://www.innaz.com/cgi-bin/makechart/makechart.cgi

Aran with it.

I've said before that I like to take on challenging projects in order to a) improve existing skills or b) acquire new ones and this Aran pattern was certainly challenging on both fronts! I may not have the length of attention span necessary for all of this cabling, but it was a joy to finally finish it. This piece is without a purpose for now (mostly because I can't imagine making another one in order to have a pillow). It's just the trophy for my triumph over Aran patterns.

Fight On!

Fight On for ol' SC
Our men Fight On to victory.
Our Alma Mater dear,
looks up to you
Fight On and win
For ol' SC
Fight On to victory
Fight On!

There's nothing like that Trojan Spirit! A hundred thousand fans in the Coliseum cheering, standing, and throwing up the two-finger Fight On! salute. It gives me chills! I'm getting so stoked for football season to start up again that I thought I'd created an SC embossed pattern. I worked the gauge so that it's a square, but you can knit it into anything/everything with just the graph (at the bottom).
I used b&w in an effort to show more detail on the embossing...
Here's another angle. It becomes more visible up close. I haven't decided what I'm going to make with this logo yet, but it could become a checkerboard blanket of Cardinal and Gold squares.

Hats off to me!

I've finished knitting that hat for my brother, and to top it off I'm pretty sure that he likes it!

It did have to spend a few days in the BIN OF UNFINISHED KNITS, which is just fine because he won't get to use it for quite a while. The "House Hats" pattern from Alison Hansel's Charmed Knits was amazing once again! It has earned a place of honor among my knitting patterns because I've used it twice with the same satisfying results. Remember, experimental results are only valid if they are repeatable. So this pattern is a homerun, scientifically speaking.

The Last Knit

I'm not sure if this was meant to be funny, but I certainly laughed at how this cartoon woman was completely consumed by her knitting "hobby". Sometimes projects seem to take on a life of their own and demand to be finished ASAP!