Month: June 2004

Yee-Haa!

I finished knitting the pieces to the ice blue sweater. Or, rather, reknitting them. This time the decreases turned out pretty nicely.  Not perfect, but good enough.   Now I just have to block them, sew them together, and knit the turtleneck collar on.

My timing is a bit off for finishing this project.  I leave town tomorrow for several days for a family reunion in North Dakota.  (This is why there are no pictures of the finished pieces; the camera is already packed.)  Blocking and seaming on the road just doesn’t sound like it will happen.  So I guess it will have to wait till I get home.

And you all know what that means.

A new project!!

I dithered quite a bit about what I will knit next.  God knows I have enough yarn to choose from.  I think it will be the Audrey sweater, from the Rowan # 35 magazine.  I have the yarn and the pattern already, so I think this one will go in the carry-on to start swatching on the airplane.

This will be our first real family reunion.  My mother had seven siblings; there are three surviving, and a multitude of cousins from my generation.  We are meeting in the little town where my grandfather homesteaded, and are planning a whole long weekend of fun activities.

I’ll be back in a week!

That Damned Ice Blue Sweater

I can explain. I really do think I will like this sweater once it is done.  I could have titled this post “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”.  It’s the decreases this time that are giving me fits.  Normally I do increases and decreases reasonably neatly.  This pattern does a slip-knit-pass-stitch-over type of decrease for one side of the garment piece.  They just look sloppy in this bulky shiny yarn.  The real b***h of it is that I didn’t decide this until I got to the sleeve cap on the first sleeve.  After I had finished the front and back pieces and put those stitches on holders.  I re-did the sleeve and like it much better, and then looked at the finished front and back pieces, and my gut just says I need to rip those back to where the decreases start and re-do them.

Here are a few pictures.

I don’t have “before” pictures of the sleeves, and I am not taking close ups of the big pieces to show the sloppiness.  I’ll just say that I am not pleased.  It doesn’t help that this is a long sleeved wool turtleneck sweater, and it has been in the high 80’s here.  I want to be knitting a snappy little cotton tank.  I know if I set this aside that I will forget what the hell I have changed when it’s time to pick it up again.

Just for some fun, try the Essay Generator.

Here is what I got when I put today’s blog title in:

Download Essay.html

Gadgets

Here are a few of my favorite knitting gadgets.  I have a whole room full of the usual knitting stuff; some of my “indispensable” gadgets are the usual ones you would find in a knitting store.  Others are not so usual.

This is my current knitting project notebook.  I have separate tabbed sections for each project, with a copy of the pattern, and loose leaf paper to take notes.  I keep a ball band from each project in the pocket in the front, and I have a zippered canvas pocket that fits into the binder to keep a pencil or anything else that I need to carry around.  I’ve looked at some of the ready-made knitting journals that are available, but this is just more functional for me.

This is my favorite row counter.  It’s a “clicker counter” from the office supply store.  I have 4 or 5 of these, so I have them in every project bag.  They are cheap, and count up to 9999, in case you have a project with that many rows.

Pins.  I have lots of these.  My favorites are the no-coil safety pins, though I like the plastic ones also.

String tags are a great way to keep track of what you are doing.  If I want to mark something on my knitting that I did differently from the pattern, I’ll write it on one of these and pin it right to the spot.  From the office supply store, and cheap.

I made these.  They are probably not as practical as just plain ring markers, but they sure are pretty.

These are the more garden-variety kind of markers.  My favorites, hands down, are the flexible rubber ones.

And a box in which to keep everything.  This is from the hardware store…another great place to find knitting notions.

John’s Sweater

Yarn: Classic Elite Provence, in mariner blue and ivory shades. The pattern called for the blue stripes to be 2 different shades of blue, I just used one. The yarn is 100% mercerized cotton; very nice to knit with.

Pattern: Seaside Stripes, from the book A Close Knit Family, by Melissa Leapman.

Started: I think I started this in about 1999, when I first started knitting.

Finished: June 12, 2004

For: My husband, John (the model)

Knitting Update

Not a very imaginative title, I know.

I am finished with the knitting parts of John’s striped sweater.  Here are a couple of photos (this is before I knit the collar on):

Sew the thing together, and I’m done.

I also worked on this sweater yesterday.

The second photo is the beginning of one sleeve.  It has about 7 inches of ribbing on each cuff, which I didn’t think I would like, but so far it is OK.

What I have learned so far from this sweater is to take notes as I knit.  I modified the cable down the front, as well as the raglan increases.  I set this aside a couple of months ago to work on John’s sweater.  Fortunately I had written about the increases in a previous post, so I could look that up.  I didn’t write down anywhere what I had done with the cable; I couldn’t remember if it was an 8 row cable or 10.  It looked more like 10 so that’s what I did for the top half of the sweater.  I think there is a rule somewhere that if you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, you will pick the wrong answer 100% of the time.  Ripping ensued.  I have no idea why I didn’t figure this out until I had 3 separate cable crossings done.  I tried to just rip out the cable part in the middle, but decided quickly that it was more fiddly than just ripping it back to where I goofed.

I’m in a bit of a project-finishing frenzy.  I have a zillion things I want to start, but I think I want to finish both of these sweaters first.  Of course I won’t be able to wear that blue fuzzy thing for a few months, but at least it will be done and ready for the first cold fall day.

The National Pastime

No, I’m not referring to knitting, but to baseball.  I screwed up somewhat today.  It was (still is, actually) a glorious day in the Puget Sound area.  In honor of my first day off in 7 days, my husband and I went to the Tacoma Rainiers baseball game this afternoon.  It was in the mid to high 70’s, clear skies, a hint of a breeze, and just a perfect way to spend the afternoon.

I really love our local minor league ball club.  It’s close to home, and just seems more like what baseball should be.  There is the really cute mascot, Rhubarb the Reindeer, who is all over the stands for the whole game.  There are the cute boys dressed up in baseball outfits running all over the field.  It’s more unpredictable than going to a Mariners game.  When a major league batter whacks a pop fly into left field, the guy out there almost always catches it.  Boring.  With AAA ball, sometimes they catch them, sometimes they don’t.  They don’t always get the obviously “easy” double plays either.  Our home team won today, which made it even sweeter.

Then there are the between-inning activities to keep people glued to their seats rather than out at the beer stand.  My favorite is the one where all the little kids line up on one side of the field with Rhubarb, and they race across the field to the next exit.  The kids love it, and occasionally there are a few adults too.  A close second is the Chicken Dance.  Those of you from the Midwest know what this is:  I’m originally from North Dakota, and you are not legally married there until they have played this song at your wedding dance.  The college age kids working as ushers etc. get up on the dugout roofs and lead the crowd in performing this very dignified dance.  They do this every game, all season.  I certainly hope they get paid well.

The tickets are cheap; a beer costs more than the price of admission.  Heck, a hotdog almost costs more than the ticket.  All in all, a great way to spend an afternoon.

So how did I screw up?  I forgot my camera.  What a perfect blog photo shoot!  I took my knitting bag and did a little knitting off and on during the game.  Here is a photo of my DBKP  (Designated Ballpark Knitting Project):

And a close up:

This is Schachenmayr Rainbow, in White Rainbow (from Elann).  The pattern is the Bottoms Up Bucket Hat from Chicknits.

Of course, now we have to go to another game soon, so I can get pictures.  There really is very little that is more fun than sitting at the ballpark on a beautiful afternoon, beer in one hand, knitting needles at the ready.

Knitting Books, Part 1

I decided to do a post about my favorite knitting books.  Part 1 will be about my current two favorite books; who knows if I’ll ever get to Part 2 or beyond.

June Hiatt’s Principles of Knitting is one of them.  At 571 pages, this is at one extreme of the knitting book spectrum.  You can find just about anything in here, and if you want to know nearly all the ways to do a particular knitting task, this is the book for you.  Unfortunately it is out of print, though there are frequent rumors on the knit lists that it is going through a re-write.  It is not casual reading, but more of an exhaustive (exhausting?) reference work.  If you have friends who refuse to take your knitting seriously, this book on your coffee table might just impress them.  I do love this book, even though Ms. Hiatt can be very opinionated when it comes to the best way to do something.

If money is no object, you can buy this on Ebay or other online sellers at exorbitant prices.  Or check your library.  If you decide to spring for it, look at a copy first.  She illustrates her work with line drawings rather than photos.  I actually find this helpful; I’m not distracted by the color and texture of the yarn used and can focus on the technique illustrated.  Others just don’t like this and work better with actual photos.

At the other exteme is Nancie Wiseman’s The Knitter’s Book Of Finishing Techniques.  This is short and sweet, at 128 pages.  The title is somewhat misleading.  This is much more than a book about buttonholes and hems.  She discusses selvedges, seams, picking up stitches, grafting, casting on, and binding off, as well as other techniques.  I use this book all the time; it has a permanent place in my knitting bag.  It has a spiral binding so it opens flat in front of you while you are working, and the photos and instructions are clear and direct.

If I could only have one knitting book, and money was no object, I would get the Hiatt encyclopedia.  If I could only have one book, and only had $16, I would buy the Wiseman book.

Well of course you all know I don’t have just one knitting book.  I would post a picture of the knitting book library, if it weren’t so danged embarrassing.  And I would have to collect them from all corners of the house for the photo shoot; there is that, as well.  That’s too close to housecleaning for me.