oops.

So I haven't updated in a while. Darn finals.

Right now I'm with the fam on vacation in San Diego, where my dad's brother lives.

Some momentous knitterly moments to occur on the trip: yesterday I finished the second sleeve for Thermal! and the button placket. So now I need to pick up stitches and knit the collar, and weave in approximately 11,232,435 ends, block, and I'm finished! Wild!

I also tore out the Thermal-patterned kneesock I was working on. As I got further up the leg it became clear that I had a tighter gauge on the Valley Yarn Franklin than I did on the Gloss from KnitPicks, and that the way the pattern stretched out around the leg was pretty dissastisfying.
So I yanked that sucker out and am going to do something else with the yarn. A LOT of something elses, because I have a hell of a lot of yarn in that colorway. And maybe I will knit the Thermal socks at some point. I'd certainly like to, Candice's are super cute.

In the meantime, though, yesterday we were wandering around La Jolla and I just happened to stumble upon a knitting store. (and when I say "just happened" I mean that I looked up all the yarn stores in the San Diego area before we flew across the country.) Anyway, they had the Kureyon Sock yarn and it looked SO PRETTY. I mentioned to one of the women working there that it was so beautiful but I didn't really like the way it felt, and she told me it softens up when you knit it, and pulled out a half finished fingerless glove made out of the stuff, and it WAS softer! It was really nice!
Then I blacked out, but when I left the store I had a ball of it and some vintage Susan Bates doublepointed 1s. (they had a basket of vintage knitting needles selling for the original price, so these were $1.35, and also PINK.)

...picture quality is crap, for which I apologize.


Anyway, I'm thinking Jaywalkers.

tam!

I'd been planning on knitting a tam for a friend before the December Knitty came out. Then Knitty came out and there were three tams there! Perfect! And they were designed to be a little smaller than the elephant tam that I knit for Ari, and since Naj is a pretty small person, this seemed perfect!



I knit Tam B using Noro Kureyon and Valley Yarns Sheffield (the exact same color Sheffield I used for the last tam, incidently) and it was super fun and fast! Started it yesterday, finished it today!
Mmmm, knitting. Especially instant gratification knitting.

Now, back to Thermal. (SIIIGH)

Ssh! Don't tell Thermal!

But I'm working on SOCKS too! Tasty cute beautiful kneesocks made from Valley Yarns Franklin in Pinecone - they look like earth! They are what would happen if you took earth and turned it into yarn, and then knit that yarn into socks! (The color's prettier in reality than in the picture)

Plus, they're with the Thermal pattern. I can't seem to get enough of that pattern. Hooray kneesocks!

Also, still working on Thermal, about ready to divide for the armholes! Holla!

Oh, and last post when I said the math on Thermal didn't add up? I was totally wrong.
It does. Way to not read ahead, me.

progress! and finally a picture!

I made it to the neckline placket!
I know for my size it said "at 13 inches" but...I may have slightly less than 13. But it's okay, I'm short, and I've heard that the combination of the yarn and the stitch pattern means the piece grows significantly on blocking.

I was doing so well up 'til now with following directions. Well...I did do the decreases on the sleeve differently - I waited until around the elbow to work most of the decreases, then worked them slightly faster, so the sleeve was more fitted to my arm.
But anyway, I tend to not-quite follow directions for things. I always end up making adjustments or modifications.

Where this tangent is going:
I was none too fond of the idea of working two different rows of the stitch pattern at once on each row, plus sometimes working the pattern starting with the RS and sometimes with the WS (aka sometimes doing two purl rows in a row!) so instead of placing the placket 59 stitches in, I made it the eight stitches before the beginning of the round.

However this led to some alarming math...I'm knitting the 36" Thermal. 252 stitches.
252 / 2 yields 126 stitches for the front and 126 for the back.
Subtract 8 (the number of stitches initially bound off for each underarm) gives 118, the number initially given for the back, but the pattern calls instead for 110 on the back and 126 on the front (minus the 8 for the placket that is) but why would it be uneven? That makes no sense to me...
so instead here's my plan:
When I get to the armpits (armscye? I can't remember how to spell the fancy word...don't judge me!) I'll knit across 55 in pattern (the ...left front? right front? I can't remember), bind off 8, knit across the 118 of the back in pattern, bind off 8, and go across the last 55.

I haven't yet decided if I'm going to work all three pieces of the top of the sweater at once or seperately.

But either way once I get to the armpits I'm putting the body down and knitting the second sleeve. Otherwise I might be inclined to have a one-sleeved thermal, haha.
Well, probably not. But who knows.

hooray for finishing things!

Yesterday I finished the Elephant Tam for my sister (although my friend Chelsea made noises implying that she might be keeping it for herself). I even blocked it!
I have this bad habit of not blocking things. I can't really explain why it is. It's like, I know that stuff looks super nice when you block it. It always makes knitted stuff look better. And yet, somehow, I rarely do it anyway.
But the tam definitely needed the blocking, so block it I did. The best part about it was that it called for being blocked on a dinner plate. I had a little trouble understanding what that meant, but it was AWESOME - you pull the hat around the plate, and the plate gives it the right shape! How cool is that?
So anyway, without further ado,
the top of the hat:


side panel closeup:


and here it is again, looking super cute on Chelsea:

Funny joke, past me.

Did I say "once I hit the placket?" Because what I really meant was "right now." and when I said "chullo," I meant "one really bizarre and questionable tam, and one (hopefully totally adorable) tam with elephants on it for my sister."

On that note, I started the questionable one last night, and it looks like this:


It is from a lot of stash yarn - I think the black is Rowan Felted Tweed i meant to knit a hat for my dad out of last year or so, and the green and blue are Valley Yarns Amherst, and the pink is Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran. I love stash adventures.

I got the yarn for the second one today, and immediately cast on (well, I'm in the process of casting on.)
It's Noro Silk Garden and Valley Yarns Sheffield. I've never used Silk Garden before, though on principle I love all things Noro, and let me just say: it is SO SOFT. I cannot believe that I get to knit something that looks like Noro (only maybe even a little classier) but that is also so soft I just want to swallow the stuff instead of knitting with it. ...is that weird?

So I'm still working on Thermal, don't think I'm not. I'm just also taking sanity breaks, and my sanity breaks are expressed with the instant gratification of fair isle hats. Specifically, tams. Apparently.

oh, thermal.

No new pictures. The thing about thermal is, while I really am loving knitting on it, it is pretty slow going...I feel like I knit and I knit and I don't really see progress happening. This is probably because I knit one of the sleeves first, and honestly it went by faster than I was expecting it to.

So I'm bribing myself: First off, I will knit to the buttonhole placket. Once I get to the buttonhole placket, I will reward myself in two ways: I will allow myself to use the leftover lopi from my yoke sweater to knit a chullo (at Hampshire College the other day I saw a girl wearing a really neat one, and I spent dinner reverse engineering it - my plan is to knit it in the spare lopi, then knit it again in a super soft solid color at a tighter gauge to use as a lining, so it would have the organic look of the lopi and also be soft, and also be double warm.)

Secondly, once I hit the placket, I will knit the second sleeve.
This is part reward but also sort of Becca-Sensible - once I finish the body I'll probably be exhausted and will just want to be able to sew in the sleeves and finish, so by completing the sleeve before then I'll prevent that. Muhuwahaha.

So that's what's going on. Not the most interesting of posts, I know, but it's all I have to offer.

!

oops...so maybe I should have posted before now, but...I finished the first sleeve for Thermal! I cast on for the body today, but ... a gajillion teensy little stitches means I'm probably going to have pretty slow going. Ah well, it's a good thing I'm completely enamored of this pattern.

Here's the sleeve less than half done:


and here is is, finished:


wild color difference, right? the first one was taken with my computer's webcam, the second was taken with a real and actual camera (borrowed from a friend), and the second one is waaaay more color accurate.

also, it turns out my gauge wasn't off! It was spot on, 7sts / inch! (Sure, I preemptively went down half a needle size to get there, but...you know. these things, they happen.)

But seriously, I am THRILLED. I am so in love with this so far.

my gauge is ridiculous.

I mean, I haven't measured it or anything, because...well...I have no idyllic reason. But my room is a mess and I can't find my tape measure.
However, the fact remains that I'm pretty sure my gauge is too big, even though I'm knitting this on size 2 needles instead of 2.5s. I don't think it's terribly off, but it is just a little big, and since Thermal is meant to be a fairly fitted sweater I don't know how I feel about that.
Also, I apparently don't believe in swatches this week, so my evidence of this gauge problem is in the form of the three and a half inches of sleeve I've knit today.

thermal!

My KnitPicks yarn for Thermal arrived today! I picked it up from Mail Services before my class and wound one hank into a ball during Data Structures and another into a ball during my lunch meeting thing for my Software Design class. Which means that instead of doing the sensible thing of winding more into balls so I won't have to stop and start my progress, I cast on!

I'm not going to swatch this one. Here's my train of thought: I'm knitting on size 2 needles instead of 2.5s, since nowhere I've been seems to carry the 2.5s (damn American system), but I'm thinking that since I tend to get a larger gauge than most people do for their needle size, that going down half a needle size should give me around the right gauge. And it's a fitted sweater, so if it's a little tighter than I might have wanted, hopefully that'll be okay too.

And now...to knit!

"if i only had...courage?"

Can't remember how that song line went...anyway, here, have a riduculous picture of my ridiculous finished hat! Just in time for Halloween!


hilarious halloween, HERE I COME!

(also, I'm trying my hand at crocheting! Not sure how it's going so far!)

any good excuse for a new knitting project...

I ordered KnitPicks Gloss in Dusk for Thermal (seeing as how I've linked to all of those before, I'm going to hold off this time...bad practice, maybe, but oops.), so while I wait (and since apparently claiming to have become relatively project monogamous seems to have jinxed the whole practice) I've been knitting on a few things:

I started out with the intention of the whole 'two socks at once' game, using double knitting, but it broke up my rhythm too much and I abandoned the attempt not long after the toes and divided them into two seperate socks in the middle of a Data Structures class (the professors all seem to be fairly indulgent of the whole knitting-in-class thing...I think they realize just how much more focused I am when I'm knitting...awkward.) Anyway, I'm working my way up the leg now.


I'm knitting a second jellyfish, but I sort of abandoned it in favor of other things...I think I knit three of the tentacles before I got bored, and while I do intend at some point to finish him, I really can't quite convince myself to do it now.

Especially because of what I'm doing right now.

I kicked my feet about it, a little, because the idea of working with acrylic made me really uncomfortable (I know, I know, call me elitist but I just prefer wool! It's soft and nice and natural and it smells good!)

I'm being the Cowardly Lion, from the Wizard of Oz, for Halloween, so...I'm knitting his mane! Hilarity abounds!
Hopefully I'll be done in time!

On Sock Knitting and Project Monogamy

For some reason I can't seem to take flattering pictures of the hansigurumi I've knit recently. They go by super fast, because they're tiny, and they're fun, because it's pretty much just mindless pattern-reading, but I can't seem to take pictures of them that don't look ridiculous.
So for now they will go without, I guess.

But in the meantime, here I was, not really wanting to knit another hansigurumi just yet (next on my list of hansigurumi to-do is the jellyfish) and wishing I just had a little mindless knitting, so I picked up a pair of socks I'd started sometime last spring.

I wasn't sure how much of the yarn I would have when I started them, because the yarn is part of a collection of sock weight yarn I inherited from a friend of a friend (when people find out you're obsessed with knitting and on a college-student budget, they are thrilled to give away stash yarn they haven't touched in ages. I love it because I feel like I'm ridding them of stash they won't touch, and then my friends and I get all sorts of beautiful mystery yarn to play with...I once knit a whole sweater out of mystery yarn...it's one of my favorite sweaters and I know NOTHING about the yarn itself, except that it smells like wool.).

But anyway, the yarn. I have a TON of it, in all different colorways, and almost every colorway has enough yarn for a pair of socks...a few of them more than one pair. So last semester I started on a pair of ribbed socks - knitting from the toe up I knit about an inch past the heel on one, put the sock on waste yarn, and got to just before the heel of the second before getting bored and moving onto something else.

I picked them up again on Friday, desperate for something to knit, and I finished one yesterday at dinner and picked up the stitches for the second one, but I can hear the call of other knits beckoning me.

Historically I'm not terribly project monogamous - I've tended to have several projects going on at once, which is not all that uncommon, but for some reason lately I haven't been doing that...I've been knitting one thing until I finished it, then picking up another project, which I'm finding I quite like...projects finish faster and I never feel torn about what to knit.

So even though I have every valient intention of finishing this sock, I can still daydream about the next thing to cast on.
(I'm giving up on holding out for Thermal since I don't know when the color cards will get here, and after that I'll have to wait AGAIN once I decide on actual yarn. Sad, sad day.)

The first pair of socks I ever knit were for a friend and I knit them one inside the other, using double knitting. It was a fun experience but also exhausting, I think because I couldn't get into the groove of it because I was constantly moving my yarn from the front to the back and vice versa and trying not to get tangled up.
So here's my idea: knit two socks at the same time in the same way, but knit the outer sock purlwise and the inner sock knitwise, so you'd never have to move the yarn. I have no idea if it would work or how it would come out, but wouldn't that be neat?
To avoid mixing up which stitch I was on, I think I'd use two different colorways, and do it twice, so at the end of everything I'd have knit four socks but out of order...it just sounds like fun and I'd really like to try it.

KnitPicks is higher tech than ever imagined?

I ordered two color cards from KnitPicks yesterday, Gloss and Palette, for Thermal from Knitty, and I got an email today saying that my order had been shipped on 10/22/07. Now, unless I'm mistaken, today is 10/19/07, so...KnitPicks has a time machine? This is a fascinating development. Does this mean I can expect my yarn in 5-14 calendar days from today, or 5-14 calendar days from Monday? Will the people shipping my yarn also have a time machine, and I'll suddenly realize I already have the yarn, that it actually arrived two days ago?

*grumbles*

Maaaan! The Harlot is going to be in New Jersey tomorrow! And I'm going to be in Western Massachusetts (which is especially ironic considering that I was in New Jersey last time she was in Western Massachusetts, bitterbitterbitter.)

In other news, I knit a seahorse today. It was delicious.

hooray!

Computer is returned, sans damage! I'm so happy!

Plus, on top of that, it means it's PICTURE TIME!

so without further ado, here's the finished sweater:

I'm really happy with how it turned out. Plus, it was super windy today, and I wore it out and it withstood the wind beautifully.

Next for display, mittens! They went by SO FAST. For serious!



Lastly, a picture of the fingerless gloves - I just started the first one today and I'm at the gusset already, so that's nice. Plus, after knitting a whole sweater out of Lopi, knitting with Malabrigo (especially with pink malabrigo) is such an exceptional treat. It's just soooo soft. It surprises me every time I take it out to knit on. Mmm.

finished mittens!

I was not kidding about them being super speedy...I finished them last night.
So next on my list of things to knit are fingerless gloves for a friend...I've already knit one pair like them and they took approximately a minute and a half. They're good fun though, malabrigo worsted on 7s.

But I think I want something to knit that'll take a little longer to knit...instant gratification is nice and I love buying new yarn and coming up with fun new projects, but I think I'd like something to really sink my teeth into, something that I can just knit on for a good long time. I'm thinking thermal from Knitty.

the easiest mittens alive

In an act of utter cruelty, I finished my sweater last night. Why is this cruel? Because I finished it only hours after there was an incident involving my computer and a can of diet coke...so my computer, and hence my camera (AKA webcam, since I do not posess an actual camera of picture-takingness) are unable to be used at current, which is a serious shame because I FINISHED! And I want to show off, gosh darn it!

I do think it came out rather nicely, though. It's just the right size, too. I love it when that happens.

Last night after finishing I cast on for a mitten...I had made HelloYarn's pirate mittens last year, and they served me dutifully, but somewhere along the way I lost one of them, and then forgot to even bring the other one with me to school this year, so...I needed mittens.

At WEBS the other day I found some sale yarn in the warehouse, Nature Wool Chunky, in a really pretty blue color, for just five dollars, and I thought it would make nice mittens, and since I was feeling uncreative in the denoumount of finishing the sweater, the mittens are seriously the simplest things alive.
I finished the first one in my Computer Graphics class today, and cast on for the second one directly after, but haven't touched it since.

Anyway. Hopefully the computer folks will fix my computer soon, and I'll be able to post pictures. Fingers are crossed.

Tasty, tasty fair isle

I just got back to my dorm after a crazy contra dancing weekend - since we have Monday and Tuesday off for "Midsemester break," which is not actually in the middle of the semester, a friend and I decided to spend our time contra dancing in relatively random places, which led us to Philadelphia on Thursday night, Providence, Rhode Island on Friday, and back to our home dance, Greenfield, tonight. There was a whole lot of driving involved in the crazy trek, though, so while I was not the person driving, I got to knit like a fiend. It was delightful.

Sometime in New Jersey (where we spent Thursday night) I found to my surprise that I had finished the second sleeve, so Friday found me starting the yoke, which is extremely pleasing. I'm using Elizabeth Zimmerman's percentage system, and there's something nervewracking about decreasing 60 stitches over the course of just one round, even if I know it will all (hopefully) work out in the end.

The sweater is completely addicting. Now that I don't have to be knitting miles of stockinette anymore, the fair isle flies by because it's so entertaining. Except that now I've reached the point where the end is almost within reach and I'm wondering if I should take breaks and knit on something else because I know I'll be so sad when it's finished.

Here it is:


and here's a little yoke detail:


But anyway, now it is late (or is it early in the morning at this point?), so that is all.

I guess I finally took the plunge!

It appears that this will be my very own little knitting blog. Kind of exciting. Well, for me it is, probably not as exciting for anyone else.

Since it's a knitting blog, I guess I'd better talk about knitting, or something.

Right now I'm knitting on a really, really enjoyable sweater - it's going to be a fair isle yoke pullover, knit out of Lite Lopi, main color brown, with five other colors for the fair isle.
It started out a little rough, since my gauge swatch turned out to be a rotten little liar, and I ended up casting on 45" around instead of the 38" I intended. So I had to tear out five inches or so...but once I got going again, it went much faster! Funny how that happens.


At this point, I've finished the body up to the armpits, and one of the sleeves.
The sleeves are neat - they've got fair isle up to the elbows, sort of like the Equinox Pullover from Interweave Knits. I'm a little worried that there's too much yellow in the sleeves, but I think it'll be fine as long as I use less in the yoke.
The best part about it is that I'm sort of winging it, you know? I couldn't find a pattern I liked that matched my gauge, so I've been stealing little bits of fair isle from other patterns and for the most part making it up as I go. It's FUN.