Focus on the positive

Ta da! Finally, pictures of my lovely FOs. First: Paris Rain Pedicure Socks (pattern from Knitty, yarn is Artyarns Paris Rain from Yarn Market. As you can clearly see, I did not purchase the two skeins at the same time, so the colors are quite different. I am trying not to care, but I do have to say that sock number 2, the one where the stripes are closer together, is by far my favorite. Very pretty.

Unfortunately the heels are very saggy and it's driving me crazy. I guess it doesn't matter given where I will be wearing these, but I am still kind of depressed. Also, I am concerned about making these for my mom. Her feet are even smaller than mine so if the heels are too big on me they will also be too big on her. :oP

But, even so....they are very pretty.



Next up, the completed Urban Necessity Tam.



Next time hopefully there will be pictures of my sock in progress and the beginnings of an Urban Necessity glove-mitten-thingy.

P.S. The yarn for the tam is KnitPicks Swish Superwash DK in Wisteria.

Done, done, donnidy done done

The Urban Necessity tam is finished! But due to the late hour at which I finished it I do not have a picture yet. I will post one because when I was considering the pattern I really wanted to see what it looked like and I had trouble finding it.

I made a mistake in one panel in the cable pattern so there's one single line that's kind of broken, but I decided not to go back and fix it since I was several rounds past it when I found it, and very close to being done. I am vexed, but...too bad. It won't be noticeable when worn and you'd really have to look for it to see it anyway. So I keep telling myself, anyhow.

Next up are the gloves, which I am unreasonably afraid of. I don't know what it is that makes me so nervous - fear that they won't fit? I really have no idea. My friend's hands appear to be about the same size as mine based on the trace she sent me. Her fingers are longer, but in width and palm length we are basically the same, so I think if I aim to make it fit me, it should be okay for her. I'll just make the gussets a teeny bit longer than they would be for me.

This weekend I took a break from the hat knitting and cast on a sock from Sensational Knitted socks. This will be my first real sock-sock (as opposed to a worsted weight pedicure sock). I chose the garter rib 4-stitch pattern since I wanted to keep it simple for my first sock. The sock itself went well right up until the gusset decreases, where I screwed up something rather badly and ended up tinking back round after round trying to figure out why I had more stitches on one needle than the other (I work on 2 circs). In the end I decided in frustration that I must not have picked up enough stitches on one side, which explained both why I had a gap on one side at the top of the gusset and not on the other, and why my stitch count was wrong. I grabbed the stitch and laddered it up, and continued on my merry way. I got through the gusset decreases and now I'm on the foot.

I hate the yarn. Not the yarn itself (Lornas Laces Shepherd Sock), but the colorway, the Yarn Market exclusive colorway "Irises" from their impressionist collection. It looked so pretty in the skein, but knit up in this pattern it looks like something your kid would throw up the day after a trip to the circus. :oP

I don't really care. I liked this skein the least of all the ones I purchased, which is why I chose to use it for my first sock. I figured it would bother me less if I messed up.

The plain stockinette section looks better than the garter rib section, but the colors are still too riotous for me. It is just a personal taste thing I think - someone else might love this yarn.

I am really looking forward to knitting the Starry Night pair; I think that color will be very pretty.

I got a shipment from KnitPicks yesterday that included Wrapped in Comfort. I looked through it and I love it. I love the way the shawls are displayed - each one is shown on a person and spread out, so that you can see both the drape and the lace pattern. There is a story for each pattern, some touching and some humorous. I'm excited and looking forward to working something out of that book.

Only you, baby

I have worked all week on the Urban Necessity Tam and nothing but the Urban Necessity tam. It is a fun little project and it flies along until you get to the chart. I'm six rows into the chart now, and it is actually starting to look like a hat. When I try it on it isn't quite as snug as I wish it was, but the fit isn't bad. I guess maybe I overachieved a little on keeping my cast-on loose!

I had a few false starts when I got to the chart - things that didn't quite make sense, etc. I think I have it figured out now. The speed on this isn't nearly what it was when I was cruising along on the stockinette, but I might POSSIBLY be able to get it done by the end of the weekend.

Then I'll start on the gloves, which are really scaring me. I have fear issues with gloves. One of the first projects I loved was the cigar gloves from knitty, which I thought would be great for photography trips in cold weather. There've been others, too, but somehow I am just horribly intimidated by gloves. And now my first pair won't even be for me, so the fit is going to be a bit of a guess. I have her hand traced on paper. I haven't put mine up against it yet but I will be very surprised if we are the same size since she is a head taller than me and then some.

Even as I knit like the wind I cannot keep from thinking about what I want to do next. I do want to finish my cape, but - it does kind of feel like the passion is falling out. I'm just not sure I'm satisfied with the way it is knitting up. I'm thinking maybe I should have gone with another bulky yarn, but I was determined to knit something in 100% alpaca so there you go. Maybe I should have tried Cadena in Mohogany? I don't know. Anyway, I'm still determined to finish that before the cool weather becomes permanent.

I would also like to get a couple of requests done - the Imperial Armwarmers and the fingerless gloves (damn, another pair of gloves - they are stalking me). The armwarmers should be a fairly quick knit, I think (famous last words).

Plenty to do - but first, back to the hat!

Facing the music

I have avoided blogging because I have not bothered to upload any of the pictures that I took, and I am ashamed. I know that text-only blogging is really boring for craft blogs. I guess I am just lazy, and I need to buckle down and put down the knitting long enough to get the pictures uploaded.

BUT for today, we will just have to muddle through.

This weekend was extremely productive. I finished the Paris Rain pedicure socks, and sock #2 went very quickly with no problems at all. Sock #1 still looks droopy and pathetic...I am hoping that it is just stretched out from all the reknitting and that if I wash it it will pull itself together. The two socks look pretty different in color too since the skeins were from different dye lots. The color itself is not that different, although the dark colors are a little deeper and more jewel-like on Sock #2. The real difference is in the width of the stripes. Sock #2 is much more heavily striped that Sock #1. I actually like Sock #2 much better than Sock #1, but don't tell #1 that. It might sulk even more and then I will never get it back into shape.

I also worked on the charity scarf that I have begun calling my chocolate waffle scarf. I cast on kind of an arbitrary number of stitches and have been working it in seed stitch, alternating short stripes of Nutmeg with wider stripes of Truffle, and it really looks like those ego waffles that are half chocolate. Working on it makes me hungry. Anyway, some friends and I went to Starbucks to hang out and chat and I worked on it the whole time we were there, so that was pretty good.

Lastly, Sunday night I cast on for the Urban Necessity tam...but about half an inch into it, I wasn't satisfied with my stitches. Ladders everywhere! Finally it hit me - I had picked up my KnitPicks Option needle without even thinking about it...and the shortest "Option" is 24"! I grabbed the pattern and sure enough...I was supposed to be working on a 16"!

I hemmed and hawed and tried to decide whether the problem was due to my very large cast-on (rather than get a size larger needle, I just held my two needles together and cast on over both, because I really wanted a loose cast-on...and I was too lazy to find the size 8). I really didn't know what to do. I tried to tell myself it would be fine and to keep working...but it wasn't fine and I didn't like it. Last night I got out my 20" Addi Turbo (the pattern calls for a 16" but I am knitting one of the larger sizes so I decided on the 20" instead) and cast on (again, over 2 needles, being too lazy to find the size 8) from a second skein of yarn, knit for a while and compared the two. The one on the 20" does look much better, except at the bottom, where the wide cast-on DOES stretch the stitches. I have decided I can live with this, since my cast-ons are often much too tight. I'd rather have it loose so it does not impede actual wearing of the hat.

One thing I didn't work on is the cape for me. It doesn't require a whole lot of concentration, but it does require some, and the weather is cooling significantly. I'd really like to get this one done.

I added a few projects to my 'future' queue...at my tabletop gaming group on Friday, a couple of the younger players requested knit items, and I happily agreed. This was probably not wise, but then, if I were wise, I would not have failed to check the needle length I needed for the tam. :oP

So many projects I want to do, and so little time. I am now dying to knit the Moonlight Sonata Shawl - I'm thinking in Kidsilk Haze in Nightly. I just think the halo would add a nice touch of romance to an already romantic shawl. At least, I think it is romantic. I am easily sucked in by pretty names.

Ha HA!

I feel like I got away with something. Or maybe just that I'm a smart consumer, which is a feeling I don't have very often that I could easily mistake for something else.

I bought Meg Swanson's A Gathering of Lace today. I feel like I got away with something because I managed to zip over and get it and still make it to my doctor's appointment on time, even though I made a wrong turn. I am happy.

I feel like a smart consumer because I started to buy the book on Amazon, saw all the reviews about mistakes in the patterns...and stopped. I didn't buy it. I admitted to myself that ten pages of errata would drive me INSANE, and I DIDN'T BUY THE BOOK.

Sometime later I sent an e-mail to the publisher asking if the paperback release had corrected the mistakes, and got confirmation that as of the most recent printing (2007) all of the errors currently on the errata page had been corrected. Rather than buying the book on Amazon, which showed a printing date of 2005, I went to the bookstore, checked the date on the front flap of the book and confirmed that it was from the most recent printing...and finally bought the book.

It is a small triumph in the face of many, many larger disasters, but I am pleased none the less.

Low-yield Weekend

This weekend was so busy that I had hardly any time to knit. I put a little over a round on the Witterings Hat on Friday, and then didn't pick up the needles until Sunday, when I worked on my cape. I got about two inches done on it, which was nice. However, I think the fact that I have ripped out the heel on my pedicure sock for the third...no, I think it's actually the fourth time. Last time was the third, wasn't it? I don't remember anymore. Anyway, I ripped it out again. It was too long, it didn't fall in the right spot on my heel - I just wasn't happy with it. I haven't been able to touch the thing since.

Instead, I knit a swatch from KnitPicks Essential in Riverbed Multi. I was unreasonably pleased that my guage came out to exactly 8 sts to the inch on #2 needles. I like exactitude. Of course, we'll see how exact it is after it's been washed.

I got my friend's measurements for the Urban Necessity pattern, so I am pleased that I can start that soon too. I do think I will swatch this one as well, too. I hate taking the time to swatch because I would rather just get on with the project, but...better safe than sorry in this case, I think, since she is not here to try it on in progress.

I wound a ball of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock that I also plan to swatch and wash. I have enough for a pair of socks each in the YarnMarket exclusive colorways Irises, Snowscapes, and Starry Nights. I actually gasped when I saw the Starry Night yarn. I am not really a fan of Van Goph in general or that painting specifically, but the yarn is so beautiful!

Block busted

I finally knuckled down and pulled back the heel yesterday, then reknit it, turned it, and got back on to the plain old stockinette just in time for book club this evening. I feel nifty.

I wish I'd taken a picture but it's been a nutty week and when I looked up from the sock it was after 10:30!

Happily my Yarnmarket order will be arriving this evening, so if I finish the first sock, I can cast on the second.

One thing I am a little concerned about, though...I think I made the heel flap too long somehow. I did lose count of my rows and had to go back and count them again...maybe I counted wrong and did too many? Or it could just be that my small feet needed a shorter flap than the standard...or that I went too far on the bit before the heel...I'm really not sure. I'm hoping that once I get far enough into the stockinette portion, that area will tighten up. It looks like it might...but I'm just not sure.

I also feel like I am stretching the sock out when I put it on, but I am not sure how much of this is real and how much of it is imagination. We'll see. I wish my cast-on was a little looser so I could pull the sock up a bit more. Will I never learn this lesson??

We'll see how it comes out I guess. I am glad now that I did the pair for me before another gift pair. This is definately a learning experience. Also, I am still not very good at picking up the stitches for the guesset. Everybody says 'pick up stitches' like it should be obvious, but I cannot seem to find clear instructions with pictures (preferably not a video, but step by step photos) to tell me how to do this. Clearly, I am just, you know..."slow."

Knitter's Block

I'm stuck and frustrated. Not on any particular project - on ALL of them, it seems like.

1. Pedicure socks - I am going to run out of yarn. I have resigned myself to this fact, and ordered another skein, fully aware that it probably won't be the same dyelot. I don't care. They're pedicure socks. They're a treat, and something I'm doing more for fun than because it will be useful. However, this means I will have to frog the heel for the second time. The first time I messed up and lost my place, and decided it would be less confusing just to rip it back and start over. The second time I am doing it because I had stopped the leg part at three inches instead of five, because I was afraid of running out of yarn. Now that I know there is no way I will get two socks out of the one skein, I can do it right. So, rather than have a pair that are two inches shorter than ideal and have a bunch of leftover yarn, I'm frogging the heel. I have accepted it, I tell myself I am okay with it...but I am not in a hurry to DO it.

2. Homespun Cape. I'm just frustrated at my inability to count on this one. It hasn't really done anything wrong, other than shed all over me. The shedding does bother me, though, and it's really quite warm out. My room is roasting in the evenings despite the fan running full blast. I can't handle sheddy alpaca until it cools off some.

3. Witterings Hat. It hurts my hands. :oP And I just don't have a fire under me for this project at the moment, for some reason. But mostly it's the hand hurting. I can't work on this every day for a week without having a claw on the end of my right arm at the end of it all.

3. Charity hat. Acrylic.

4. In my infinite brilliance I picked up a couple of skeins of Lionbrand Homespun thinking I would make a quick scarf for charity. I loathe it with the fire of a thousand suns. Considering just calling it a loss and putting all my acrylic in the church garage sale. I was okay before I knew what I was doing. Now I can't stand it anymore. Arylic, thou art dead to me.

Still waiting on measurements for Urban Necessity; she mailed them to me yesterday so hopefully I should get it in the next couple of days. Maybe this will bring meaning to my life again, I don't know.

I also have new yarn arriving...of course when I went to order more of the Paris Rain, I couldn't just do that. I ordered enough Snowscapes to make my mom a pair of pedicure socks to go in her Christmas stocking, and some Lorna's Laces to try out.

I really want to try making a real sock, but the math is kind of scary for me. What if they don't fit? What if they shrink? And most of all...I don't WANNA knit a guage swatch. Do I HAVE to?? (Yes, yes, I know...the answer is without question a yes...but I still don't wanna.)

I may end up getting Getting Started Knitting Socks. I've heard it's good from multiple sources now...I wonder if the B&N down the street has it?

Takebacks

I may owe Witterings an appology. It was mostly cooperative last night, except that now I have started the increase rows again, and I am frequently finding myself short a stitch at the end of the round. I don't know how I consistently manage this, but I do. :oP

Still, I'm getting a little enthusiasm back for the project, which I think is a good thing. I've got a crazy schedule this week so between that and working on my slowest project there is not much in the way of progress, but I'm going steadily round and round and round.

Besides, I'm still mad at the alpaca shawl.

I will not be defeated.

I forgot to mention that I also worked on the Witterings hat yesterday during our Labor Day cook-in (the cooking was out, but it was hot, so the eating was in).

The thing is totally kicking my butt, and I am severely annoyed about it. It's taking forever, the yarn, while plenty soft in the skein and once knit, wears out my fingertips during the process of knitting.

I got through all of four and a half rounds yesterday. I was so not pleased. 2 of those rows were knitted through the back loop. I like to think this is why they took so long and bothered me so much. I don't really understand the purpose of doing this, but I have faith that it was important.

I kind of expected that leaving the hat and then coming back to it would make it seem easier, but it hasn't. It's still an annoying PITA. Is all cotton yarn this obnoxious or did I just choose poorly? Maybe it is the texture of the yarn. It is kind of wierd and pebbly.

Regardless, I am deeply vexed. I plan to soldier on and finish the stupid thing (I WILL NOT BE BEATEN) but I'm definately not having the time of my life. :oP

Woohoo!

It is with immense glee that I move the columns scarf from the "On the Needles" list to the "Completed Projects" list. It's done!!

It is actually a few inches short of my goal of 5 feet...but I ran out of yarn. Not the nutmeg, which is what I thought would happen, but the moss!! The pattern requirements said I would need 2 balls of each to make a 72" scarf. LIES. It took 3 balls of the moss (main color) and 2 of the nutmeg, and even with the third ball, again, I only made it to about 57 inches or so. I didn't really measure once I ran out of yarn.

Anyway, it is finished and put away for the opportune moment. I didn't bother to take a picture since it pretty much looks just like the picture I posted earlier, only longer.

Once I finished it I worked on my cape. I immediately discovered that I had misread the directions, and ended up having to rip back twenty rows or so. I continued to have problems with it throughout the evening, almost entirely due to my inability to count. I'm a little concerned now that the finished border section will look wierd, because my increases are not all in the right place, but...I'm not going back and doing it again, so I'll live with it. :oP It's really frustrating to have nobody to blame but myself. Lessons I have learned during this time:

--I am too stupid to follow directions that say 'do this 9 more times' without assistance. From now on, I will acknowledge my stupidity immediately and write out next to each line of instructions the row numbers on which I am supposed to follow that particular instruction. I do think it is especially mean of the pattern designers to nest these things by saying things like 'row 5-6 repeat rows 3-4' and then 'repeat 1-6 nine more times.'
--I don't work well with the rowcounters that you have to turn to increase. I am better off with the ones you hit on the top that make a fun clicky noise.
--I need to take better notes when walking away from a project for a while.
--Alpaca sheds like a mofo.

The last is kind of disappointing...wearing my fetching cape will be a lot less fun if I have to have a lint roller in my pocket to use every time I take it off. I am trying not to think about this for now.

I'm waiting on some measurements for my friend for her Urban Necessity set and then I will get started on that. I was seriously tempted to start the Dimple Shale scarf because that yarn is so luscious, but I am afraid of another bout of scarf boredom. I hope it wouldn't be as big of an issue since this will be lace which should be more interesting...but I fear that it will still be a problem. :oP Maybe I will just make it a short little thing that she can tuck in her jacket. We'll see.