Pic-less, sort of

My digital camera is broken.  I have procrastinated the fixing of it for no good reason.  

I could chat you up about all of the stuff I’ve been making.  I finished Sonar X5’s Ravenclaw-ish socks.  Started a pair of ballet slippers for me.  And have worked nearly a foot of the red mohair scarf.  I’ve recently decimated the mending pile, made a pair of shorts (also for Sonar X5), and will today cut fabric on a dress for me (Simplicity 3877, the sleeveless v-neck style).  

But there is nothing more boring than crafty chat with no pictures.  I can tell you about the fabulous floral print for the dress, with it’s splashy combination of orange and red and hot pink, but without a picture to catch your attention, to show you just how yummy it is, well…  *sigh*  It’s not even any fun to write about without the pictures.  

Ok, so, actually, I do have a picture of the fabric (and my reading stack from last October).  You may have seen it before.  Halloween costumes must have intervened.  

This fabric came from Hawaii, purchased by my grandmother, and shared begrudgingly a few years ago.  

I will take 12 pattern pieces, cut no fewer than 30 separate bits of fabric, and magically assemble them into a smoking hot dress to wear—well, perhaps to the grocery store or the library?  I hope I have enough fabric.

Now, I just need to clean the drying fennel blossoms off the sewing table.  Either that or make a fennel-scented dress. 

Licorice anyone?

I have nothing good to say, so I'm saying it*

*From a song-in-progress by Brother-in-law (songwriter/guitar player)

The house is quiet just now.  After a chaotic weekend involving hot dogs, water balloons, watermelon and a wading pool filled with children under 9, only Sonar X3 and I remain.  Partner is at work.  The other two Sonars  abandoned us to spend a week being spoiled by Grandma and Granddad.  Sonar X3 could have gone too, but was daunted by the idea of getting in a car with his sibs and driving away to leave us here alone for a week.  Perhaps he thought I wouldn’t know what to do without him?  

With only one child in the house, I find that there is a lot more time in my day.  It is unnecessary to do a load of wash every day.  And there are half as many dishes.  Ditto half as much crap strewn on the floor.

So I’m working on Ravenclaw-ish socks for Sonar X5, and also started a lace scarf just for the heck of it.  I finished reading The Girl With No Shadow by Joanne Harris (her sequel to Chocolat).  Seriously, if you haven’t read any of her books, go find one.  Her development of character is great, and she is a master at pacing a book so that I am slowly pulled along, with the tension and the emotion increasing incrementally until she just blows me away in the last quarter of each book.  I find myself dabbling with her books for the first half, just reading a bit here and there, savoring her attention to the details of smell and taste.  But by the time I get to that last quarter, I can hardly put them down wanting to know how this complicated tangle of humanity works itself out.  Good stuff.  Really good stuff.  

Next on the stack is The Good, the Bad, and the Undead by Kim Harrison, and then Lavinia by Ursula K. LeGuin.  

This weekend we will retrieve the Sonars.  Partner has one more week of work before his six week vacation.  Just today we contrived a plot to visit family in New Mexico the last week of June.  Gas prices, hash smices.  If we can drive the whole fourteen hours in one day, we won’t have to dish out for hotels.  That’s right.  I said fourteen hours of driving with the three Sonars in a car that is equipped with neither personal DVD players nor video gaming of any kind.  

I’ll try to remember to pack the sedatives.  For me.  

Gryffindor

Scarlet, KnitPicks Essentials
Gold, Bernat Sox

US Size 2 dpns
My basic sock recipe, worked over 56 stitches, with ribbed cuff and foot-top
Made for Sonar X7 for no reason except that he had no homemade socks that fit him anymore.

Stashtastic

Sharpsticks has been talking about my yarn stash. Apparently it’s meager relative to many knitters, and it’s true, I don’t tend to hoard yarn excessively. I find it very difficult to purchase yarn without a project in mind. Oh, sock yarn, sure, now and then. But that’s easy. 100 grams of sock yarn will make a pair of average socks for most people with enough left for a couple of pairs of baby socks, or perhaps a few pairs for little kids. Lace weight is pretty easy too. The average shawl takes a couple of average hanks of lace yarn.

Then things get more grey. If I see a yarn I like, how much should I buy? A skein or two might only make a hat or scarf. If it’s sweater-worthy, should I get ten balls? Fifteen? Will the imaginary sweater be long-sleeved or short? It really flummoxes me, decisions like that, so in general, I only shop for yarn when I have a specific project, or even a select pattern in mind.

That said, I made the claim to Sharpsticks that all of my yarn fit into a single filebox, which used to be true. A recent purchase of a huge bag of discount yarn, and the gathering together of all of my WIPs (works in progress) proves that the collection has expanded a bit.

I’ve spread it out a little bit in this photo to aid in description.

The pink fluffy sweater is hanging from the doorknob. The plastic filebox in question is at the left, currently filled with sock yarn: an undetermined number of pairs, plus a gallon-sized bag full of ends, a cone of cotton yarn with one knee sock, two hanks of crochet thread for snowflakes, some lace-weight remnants from the Mystery Stole 2007, and five skeins of pink alpaca leftover from the sweater that would make a nice small lacy something.

The dark green flower pot to the left of the sweater in my Current Project Bucket, and usually sits under my computer desk. The two OIP (owls in progress) are here on the desk and were forgotten for this picture, but there is yarn in there for future OIPs. The bucket also contains a plastic bag filled with bamboo yarn and its partially completed moebius wrap, as well as most of my knitting needles and tools and a few random patterns.

The three blanket bags to the right and below the pink sweater contain (clockwise) 1. Katia Mexico, 20 skeins destined to be sweaters for partner and at least one Sonar, 2. and 3. Random bits of mainly acrylic yarn that I used to craft various things (like owls and storytellers and marble bags), plus some fifteen-year-old granny squares, a doll blanket in progress (at least ten-years-old), and a Loomette. The white grocery bag at center right is usually in bag 3.

The white plastic bag at the front contains wool yarn used in various felting projects. The clear gallon bag all the way on the right is probably going to end up as a pot hanger. It’s a bag of yarn and twine I found for a quarter at an estate sale last fall. The bag against the wall with the bright red yarn isn’t actually mine (ahem). That is a bag of red and blue yarn belonging to two of the Sonars.

Not pictured is a missing skein of white acrylic yarn and a skein of black yarn that belongs to the other Sonar, and a wee bag with SIP (socks in progress) that is out in the car.

So, ok, I fess up, one bin, three blanket bags, and a bucket. And No, I don’t usually keep it on the floor in the hall by the front door. But I am very unlikely to buy any more yarn until I use a good deal of this. And at the rate I’m going here in Phase One, that should take about four days. ;)

So fess up, what’s hiding in your closet? Yarn? Fabric (I’m guilty there too)? Salt and pepper shakers? Empty candy wrappers? Eels? The parts for your latest evil-genius machine?

Pink and Fluffy

I saw this sweater pattern in Vogue Knitting Fall 2006, and fell in love with the luscious gigantic cabled collar (it’s called Cable Trim Pullover). Doesn’t it just look like you could sink yourself into its yummy squishiness? There was also a curiosity factor, in that I’ve done some small cables, but never a gigantic Cable 20. So I started to hunt up yarn and came up with AlpacaWare Superfine Alpaca in light pink, cheap on eBay.

I knit the pieces of the sweater many months ago. I’ve lost track how long. Probably more than a year ago, truth be told. I was very very careful in my preparation. I swatched (i.e. made a test square), in the totally proper way with the recommended number of stitches, plus a non-rolling border. Then washed and shaped and dried the swatch before measuring and adjusting needles sizes at least three or four times. I was good, and for me, incredibly patient in the preparation. I ended up going up several needle sizes to get the correct gauge (essential when one wants to produce a sweater that approximates the desired size), but I *did* get the correct gauge.

Then I knit the thing.

It took me a few weeks, as I recall, and then the pieces sat around the house, moved from surface to surface, stuffed into a bag, then into a closet. The knitting was done. Completed. Finito. I just had to seam together these pieces into the yummy sweater. But the sweater I had such a fatuous crush on had lost it’s allure. I was already worried then that it had come out a bit too small. The yarn is really rather fussy and delicate, not wanting to be tugged or pulled or pushed too much this way or that. And I really dreaded trying to set in those sleeves without doing some wacky stretchy damage to the whole thing.

A couple of weeks ago, in a fit of “Let’s finish some damn knitting already!” I pulled out the pieces and seamed them all together. To be sure, my sleeve joins are really shoddy. But I thought maybe some of that would relax out in the steaming and blocking.

All seamed, I put it on. Hm. WAY too short. Which was weird, because I measured carefully and, as I recall, added a few extra rows in the middle to make it a bit longer than the pattern called for.

Deep breath. I decided I could fix that by—those of you who might be slightly squeamish about knitting might want to look the other way—cutting off the bottom band, picking up the stitches left raw, and knitting some more bottom onto that thing. I have to say that the idea of cutting the yarn, with the inherent risk of the whole thing, all that work, being reduced back into a wad of string, really did make me feel queasy. But I braced myself and convinced myself that it would be a good adventure.

The bravest knitters would cut first and ask questions and pick up stitches later, but this being my first foray into knittacide, I decided to place a lifeline—two actually—before I cut. That’s the bluey/yellowy/greeny stripe. I put two so that I could save the ribbing and reattach it when the sweater was long enough. As it turned out, I decided to make a bottom hem rather than a ribbed hem and tossed the ribbing into the stash bucket.

Knit knit knit knit.

I could have just folded over and SEWN down the knitting to make the bottom hem, but the yarn fumes went to my head and I decided I’d kitchener the hem in place, which was stupid. It took FOREVER and required me to pick up stitches along the place where the them would join so that I didn’t twist it and make it weird. Ahem. I still twisted it and made it weird. But you can’t tell now unless you turn it inside out and look really closely and are generally picky and rude. Shame on you.

Finished (finally), I tried it on again. Gr. Still TOO SHORT.

Then I put on my knitting thinking cap. This was really weird, because I measured the sweater, measured myself, measured the length from armpit to hem on a top with a flattering length, and these numbers all matched up. When the sweater was on the table. When the sweater went on me….. no more matchy.

I decided to measure the sweater the other way. Turns out it’s a teensy bit smaller than me. Like more than four inches around less than me. Some sweaters can support that degree of negative ease. Not this one and not on me. When the sweater stretched out to cover my circumference, the yarn had to come from somewhere: the length. Mystery solved.

There’s really no way I can make this pretty little sweater fit me, so, in honor of Sweater Day, I am offering it up, to anyone who would love it or who knows someone who would love it. Price negotiable.

Here are the specs: Chest 31” Waist 27” Hip 32” Neck-to-hem 21.5” Armpit-to-cuff 18”

I will mail the sweater, complete with a handful of spare yarn (in case of catastrophe or the desire to reconnect the sleeves in a less shoddy manner).

I don’t even like pink. ;)