My Headaches Now Come in Multicolor

Yes, it's Halloween, but I don't have anything interesting to post on that front. Last year, no one came trick-or-treating at our apartment complex, so we don't expect anyone this year, though we do have a smallish stock of candy just in case. No parties for us, no neat costumes. I do plan, however, on trying to pick up cheap candy on sale tomorrow, and possibly a pumpkin just for the seeds to roast. I love pumpkin seeds!

On with the knitting content. Sadly, I have now proven that my camera battery just will not hold a charge anymore, so I have no pictures today.

I have been working on the FI vest like a speed demon. In the past three days, I have watched this, this, this, this and the first four episodes of this, which is, by far, the best children's show, from a storytelling point of view, that I have ever seen. Sesame Street and all iterations of the Muppets are wonderful, of course, but this show is incredible. My husband brought it home from work (he works at Blockbuster) because he was intrigued by the idea of a kids' show based on Irish farm animals....well, it's just enchanting. Enough about that though, I was only listing them to point out just how much time I've spent knitting on the vest, since that's what I was doing nearly the entire time I was watching all of that. (Sometimes I was folding laundry or eating lunch. Sue me!)

I'm more than halfway up the armhole depth. I got out the measuring tape earlier today because I was suspicious of something and did some number crunching (the hard math I will spare you, it troubled me) but what it works out to this: I'm not decreasing fast enough. Rather, the pattern isn't, since I'm following the pattern.

Here's the logic without the numbers:

1. I'm supposed to be decreasing one stitch on each side of the V-neck steek every other round until X sts at the start becomes Y sts at the shoulder.
2. The V-neck shaping began just after the armhole decreasing.
3. I'm more than halfway through the listed armhole depth, but I'm not even close yet to having decreased half of the stitches I'm supposed to to reach Y at the shoulder.

From these things, it follows that if I continue as I have been, I will not reach Y sts without making the armholes too deep.

ARRRRRRGH!

I got gauge before I began this. However, the listed gauge is 7sts/inch in stockinette on #1's. That bears NO relation to the actual working of the sweater, which is in stranded knitting on #3's. And row gauge was never listed. So, apparently, my rows are too big. This wasn't an issue for the body, since it was knit without shaping. It is an issue for the neck.

Am I frogging more than 6 inches of fair isle? No way!

First change: The number of stitches I'm supposed to have left at the shoulders is 33 for the size I am knitting, which is not the largest. However, the number of stitches left for the largest size is only two more at 35. I'm shooting for 35 instead of 33. Heck, I'll be happy with anything less than forty...if the shoulders are a bit too wide, I can knit the neckband narrower to compensate.

Second change: I'm sneaking in extra decrease rounds. Instead of two dec rounds every four total rounds, I'm going to shorten that to 2 per 3, then 2 per 4, and alternate. This will change the slope of the neck slightly mid-neckline, but even if my rows are too big, well, they're still small, and I think I can make this work.

Problem: I won't know if it works, for sure, until I steek it. I can approximate how it will lie by folding it in half along the steek, and I will see how closely the numbers work out with the new decreases but...once I cut the steek, there's no going back.

Brave, or wishful thinking?

Borrowed Pr0n

For those of you who were wondering about the ice cream, it was Super Chunky Cookie Dough. Not only were there the normal chunks of that delicious unbaked cookie goodness, there was a "cookie batter ribbon"...mmmm, semi-liquid cookie dough!

I think I might go have some after I post, it's a gray and miserable day, and I have a bad headache, both of which are the contributing factors to the fact that I borrowed pron from Turtlegirl this week.

I didn't have to go far through her stash of pics to find a million I liked, but this one jumped out--must be the vivid colors, since my day here is anything but vivid.



Cherry Tree Hill Supersock in Country Garden. I actually have some of their silk eyelashy stuff--forget the name of the top of my head--in the same colorway, and I have no idea what to do with it.

A Random Thought

I just got myself some ice cream out of the freezer, and I noticed the "new Fresh-Lock" packaging on this brand, which is one I'd never tried before, but it was on sale yesterday so I got it.

Is it just me, or is that a bit unnecessary? Who on earth doesn't finish a whole container of ice cream before it gets freezerburn?

When my dad and brother used to get the Edy's Peppermint every Christmas, that gallon of ice cream was lucky if it even made it back into the freezer!

Temptation

Despite feeling compelled to get my mother's vest done by Christmas and beginning a new design project, I couldn't find it in myself to resist the vile, wretched siren that is the Threepenny Pullover, from IK Fall 04. Yes, 04, two years ago. That's how long I've been waiting to make this!

I suppose that having the yarn finally sitting there, just waiting for me to cast on, was too much.

Here's the shot I took yesterday morning with the intention of posting it then:



And a detail of the stitchwork:



The color is not actually that bright, but I had a devil of a time trying to fix it--for some reason, no amount of playing with the color balance got me the nice deep berry-red that my sweater actually is. But look at that stitch definition. I just love it. Absolutely love it.

Darn it, now I want to work on it all day instead of the fair isle. Must...resist...

Old Dog, New Tricks!

Lots to share today. First, my highest priority project, the only Christmas knitting I'm doing this year. I've learned my lesson, finally, on trying to knit too much for too many people. So, of course, the one project I am doing is one of the most challenging things I've done to date.



It's that fair isle vest for my mother that I've kept mentioning ever since I joined YPF, but failed repeatedly to show.

Now, I've never really been happy with fair isle before. I've tried, oh, how I've tried, but the first time was back in my youth (ha!) when I only knit with acrylics because that's what Mom bought me. How was I supposed to know that FI in acrylics was never going to look right because the fiber doesn't block? So I became convinced that I was doing something wrong, and I stopped trying.

Then, later, when I met wool, I tried again. I could get the finished piece to look not-too-bad with blocking, but it was a serious pain in the ass to actually knit. Since I taught myself to knit way back when, I taught myself "wrong" on a few things, one of which was how to hold the yarn. Lots of knitters and crocheters twist the yarn around one or more of their fingers on either hand--in fact, when one of my crochet friends in high school saw that I didn't, she was aghast, and asked, "But how can you get consistent tension if you don't?" Well, that might explain why I'm such a loose knitter, wouldn't it? I always, always have to go down 2-4 needle sizes from the recommended for any given project.

So, as this relates to FI, I had no idea how to handle two yarns at once neatly. I slogged on holding both in my left hand (which is what I do when I knit normally) dropping one and picking up the other whenever I needed to switch. The two strands got hopelessly twisted all the time, and it was horrendously slow-going.

This brings us up to the present, when, in the fall Knitpicks catalog, I see and fall in love with this vest, not for myself, but for my mother. She loves seasonal clothing. The woman has at least twenty-five turtlenecks that are only appropriate to a certain time of year--I can think of three distinct ones from the cute autumn leaves category, and easily a dozen cute winter snowflakes or penguins or snowmen or bears sledding or whatever. And that's not including her sweatshirts...you get the idea. So I knew, as soon as I saw it, that she would adore it. And I so rarely get to knit for my mother, because she swears she's not a "sweater person". I showed it to her, and whaddaya know, she thought it was the cutest thing ever.

And here I am, knitting it, conquering the fair isle skeletons in my closet. How? I learned to hold the two colors in different hands! Because I typically knit with the yarn in the left, every row I use that hand for whatever color that has more stitches, so the work goes faster. It's still slow compared to my non-FI work, but I really think I'm getting the hang of it, finally.

For example, the first two pattern bands:



The snowmen look terrible. Part of that is a function of the long color stretches--EZ said, of course, something along the lines of "Avoid patterns with more than five stitches of one color in a row." (I'm sure I don't have the quote verbatim, it's been a while since I read Knitting Without Tears. But I know she said that.) Now, I see why. I tried so hard to get the floats woven in periodically at the same tension as the knitting...but as you can see, they're puckered. I'm crossing my fingers that blocking will help enough so that I don't feel like I should have started over.

But the blue snowflakes look better than the snowmen...no long floats, and that's when I really started getting my groove on with the two-handed color changes.



The next two bands look even better. The houses are a little sloppy because the pattern was a bit harder to memorize for each row than the ones that came before, but my gray snowflakes are practically flat!

I'm trying to stay excited about this, even in the face of that KP order with the laceweights I showed a week back...those are for a project I'm designing in hopes of getting it into the Spring Knitty. I've started working on it, but even though it's got a deadline, I really should try to get my Christmas knitting done first. Lace is so easy for me, and so seductive...if I set the vest down and do too much of any other project, I'm afraid I won't pick it up again!

Wow, longer post than I planned. I was going to talk about the other new project I started (yesterday, when the rest of my KP order called to me) but I think now I should save it for tomorrow.

Did I Really Take a Week Off?

Oops. So much for being diligent in blogging...I've been too busy knitting and cleaning!

Here is this week's pr0n, I have three balls of Trendsetter Aura (the two pictured and another idenitical greenie) that my MIL gave me as part of my annual Christmas bag of randomness maybe two years back. She doesn't particularly believe in buying big gifts, she'd rather spend all year slowly accumulating little ones. While I don't disagree with this in theory, most of what she gets me isn't terribly thoughtful, as this wasn't. I mean, great, she got me yarn! It's thoughtful as far as that goes. But it's yarn unlike anything I've ever wanted--I can't imagine what to do with it.





The true nature of this yarn is a bit hard to photograph accurately, since it's so....sparkly. Though, I have a mental aid to letting you get to know this yarn; Easter basket grass. Yep, I said it, it's yarn made of Easter basket grass.

In knitting news, the fair isle vest that I have yet to show you (oops) is just past the beginning of the armholes, and I am cheerily decreasing on either side of the center steek for the V-neck. Decreasing is definitely my favorite stage of any knitting project--the buzz I get from seeing the rounds get smaller and smaller is enough to replace my long-lost caffiene addiction. Of course, I still currently have about 340 sts/round...so it's not to the whizzing off the needles stage just yet.

More on this later.

A Quickie

That's all I have time for.



Look, they're spooning. It's cold today!

KP Gossamer in Carribbean and Alpaca Cloud in Tide Pool.

Random bits and pieces of happiness

1. I've asked the kindly, generous, lovely ladies of the Knittyboard for scrap ribbon donations for my ATCs, and I've gotten a few responses from people that will! I asked because I went off in another direction with my ATCs, using the three samples of Cherry Tree Hill ribbons that got sent along with the grab bag I bought last year. Here you can see why I want more to play with:





2. I'm eating, right now, for the first time, a strawberry cheesecake Klondike Bar. Heaven. Scrumptious. Scrumptious Heaven, even.

3. My Knitpicks order came today! It's a surprise what's in it, though, I'm saving it for YPF! I will tell you this, though, there are yarns for two projects in there, both of which I'm anxious to start, and one will be of my own design. If it turns out well, I'll submit it to Knitty or Magknits! It's been too long since I published a pattern anyways.

4. This morning I watched Jet Lag, and it was so incredibly cute. It's tough to make a good romantic comedy these days--or so it seems, since there are so few good ones--but this was just adorable. As one of the IMDB reviewers said, the characters actually talked to each other, got to know each other a little, before falling in love under wildly improbable circumstances. How unreal is that?

5. To wrap it up, it's an absolutely stunning fall day. Word is, snow on Thursday--awful early, but not impossible--but today, the air is crisp, the leaves are beautiful, the sun is shining, and the breeze from the open window is cooling down my often-stifling upper-floor apartment. I swear my lower neighbor never turns his heat off!

Finished: Arisaig

Your pardon for the headless shot: terrible, terrible glare on my glasses.

Project Specs:

• Pattern: Arisaig, free from Knitty
  
• Yarn: Peruvian Baby Silk in Cedar and Black
  
• Size: L (40")
  
• Yardage: 14 balls Cedar and 2 Black
  
• Needles: Size 0 and 1
  
• Gauge: 7 sts/inch
  
• Modifications: Altered finishing directions

The trials and tribulations of knitting something avidly for a month, setting it down for nearly a year, then finishing it in another month. The first thing I knit was the sleeve, followed by the back then one of the fronts. I kept notes on how I dealt with little things not explicitly stated in the pattern, mostly about partial lace motifs and keeping track of how many pattern repeats I did before I did some sort of shaping.

Then, when I started up again and went to knit the second sleeve...I didn't look at my notes. At all. Consequently, the sleeves were different. How different? Up to the cap shaping, it was only a yo here or there that wasn't the same, and since it was all right next to the edge, which would become the underarm seam and thus be practically invisible....well, not worth starting the sleeve over.

The caps, on the other hand, were radically different. On my first sleeve, there were five stitches on either edge for the length of the cap that didn't have any lace patterning, because I couldn't fit a full motif there neatly. On my second sleeve, I put in partials, I didn't even think about it, it just came naturally. I bound it off and dug out the first sleeve to make sure they were close enough to the same length (blocking will solve any slight differences, thank god, or we'd all be frogging sleeves left and right) and only then realized what I'd done.

After a close inspection, a few sips of a stiff drink, and an internal pep talk, I frogged the cap of the first sleeve and reknit it to match the second.

From then on, it was relatively smooth sailing. I never checked my math on the fronts to figure out why the number of decreases specified gave me fewer stitches left at the shoulder than I was supposed to have...I honestly don't know whether the pattern is wrong for the 40" size or if I'm a loon and did something wrong somewhere. At least when I went to knit the second front, I remembered having that problem with the first, and decided to count rows on the first to figure out where my decreases actually were, and do the same adjustments again.

Now, the changes I made. The finishing directions, like many I've seen, have you do the shoulder and side seams first, then "set-in" the sleeves. (Disclaimer: the following rant is not intended to be a criticism of Ysolda for designing it this way. It's intended to be a criticism of whoever thought this idea up in the first place.)

Why on earth is this a good idea?

I realize that with some types of sweater construction, you have no choice, you must sew up the sleeve seam then insert that into a finished armhole--anytime you knit a sweater in the round from the bottom and divide for the front and back, for example. Or when the body is knit sideways in one piece, like Sonnet, which I've made.

But when you have separate fronts and backs, why wouldn't you join the shoulders, THEN join the sleeves, then do the underarm/side seams together? Most of the purchased sweaters I own (or have taken apart to recycle) have been constructed this way.

I guess it just doesn't make sense to me to do a seam in the round when you can do it flat.

Anyway, instead of the dreaded mattress stitch, I used slip-stitch seams, except for joining the ties to the body, those I whipstitched. And instead of sewing hooks and eyes all along the inner side seam, I just did three right next to each other at the top, like a bra closure. It pulls just a little bit, causing this tiny wrinkle when I'm wearing it, but honestly, I'm thick-waisted, and the ribbing just doesn't want to stretch that much at the bottom.

I Take Full Credit For How Pretty This Is!

Because I dyed it myself. Used to be plain ole KP Palette in Sky and Peach. Now it is wondrous to behold!






I have a finished project and some more ATCs to blog about as well, but Wednesday I was without internet for most of the day because of the incredibly prolonged thunderstorm--I'm sure it didn't last seven hours over the entire Midwest, but that's how long it was here--and then yesterday, when I had internet again, I also suffered from an incredibly painful headache that didn't bother to respond to painkillers until I had no light left to photograph anything. Figures.

When I Can't Sleep, I Edit Photos

As I promised the ArtSoMoFo peeps...lots of pictures today.












The series is "Addictive", and they're shown in descending order, 1-10.

Also, the collage I did:



The images are cut entirely from the most recent Knitpicks catalog. My regularly scheduled knitting readers ought to get a kick out of that!

Artsy Fartsy

Today I completed 11 ATCs: one collage I did on a dare over at theArtist Trading Cards Forum, and 10 that I cut down from the finally-finished-and-colored drawing seen a few posts ago. My estimated time to complete the drawing = 26 hours. Time to cut the cards down = 2 minutes. There's entropy for you...

Anyway, I was absolutely dying to show everything off, but the batteries in my camera died. The last time I switched them, I switched from the rechargeable one that came with it to regular ones, because I was on vacation and didn't have the dock with me...so, of course, when the regular ones wore down, the rechargeable one hadn't been recharged. Blah blah blah, pictures tomorrow.

In the meantime, I'm off to finish a quickie project I hadn't mentioned here yet, a pair of loooong legwarmers I'm doing on commission. They're on 13s, so the second one should easily be done tonight, and then I'll get paid and buy some yarn with my spoils!

Finished A While Ago: Luna Skirt

Here she is. I'm tempted to make another one in a different lace pattern, I like her so much. She's swingy. She looks good with my new heels. She's got a great personality, and she's fun at parties.



(Worn over gray bike shorts...I really have to come up with something better than that, though.)



A close-up of the picot bind-off. No, it's not really that shiny, but the rayon content of the yarn does give it a little glitz in the right lighting.