Knitting – Page 22 – The Knitting Doctor

Fires of Mount Doom

The Evenstar shawl project almost bit the dust last night. I’m behind, as usual. This is a “mystery shawl”, and the clues come out every other Friday. Today clue 5 is due to be released, and I’m just starting clue 3. Every other row so far has been a plain knit row, and on the last row of clue 2, I put in a lifeline in case of trouble. In this case the lifeline was the trouble. I’m using a very fine crochet thread in white, as I was a little nervous about my usual dental floss cutting the near cobweb yarn I’m using.

Anyway, I had done the lifeline on the last row of clue 2, done the first row of clue 3, and set it aside a couple days ago. I picked it up last night, knit around the second row, then set it down while we had dinner. After dinner is where the trouble began. Actually it was after a couple of glasses of wine and a long phone conversation with my sister, so I could probably blame her, though I suspect it was more the wine. I picked it up and looked at it, mind you this was in a dark TV room with only a reading light, I noticed a long loop of yarn back a whole row or two. I’ve done this before, somehow getting a loop of yarn not pulled all the way through, so it leaves a loose loop just hanging there. Crap crap crappity crap. I tinked back, messing up a couple of repeats in the process, and got partway around the row, thinking that I was royally screwed.

Some Knitting Angel must have been sitting on my shoulder. Instead of continuing to tink deeper and deeper into the Mines of Moria, I decided rather wisely to set it aside and go to bed. I woke up this morning thinking about it, and reluctantly pulled it out of the bag to investigate. In the light of day, what I thought was a mistake loop of yarn back two rows, you guessed it….it was my long loop of lifeline hanging there. Nope, didn’t need to tink at all. This, as you might imagine, resulted in some well-deserved self-head-slapping. And now I was still left with the mess from tinking. On a couple of the repeats, I dropped a couple of stitches down to the lifeline. I counted around carefully, marking the offending repeats with pins, then had a bit more coffee before proceeding.

After a serious consideration of going out on a quest to cast this whole thing into the Fires of Mount Doom, I decided to suck it up and fix it. Armed with teeny tiny crochet hooks and teeny tiny double points, I got those blasted fracked up repeats fixed. Here’s a photo.

And here’s a photo of that lifeline.

I’m leaving it in, of course. It might just save my sorry knitting-butt yet.

We’re off for the weekend. Dorothy and her husband have invited us and the mutts up to Whidbey Island for the weekend for a local spin-in. I need to go get packed. I’ve got the camera packed, so you might even get to see some photos!

Blue

As I was rummaging through projects this morning to take photos, I noticed a striking similarity.

Really, I’m generally more eclectic in color choices than this would lead you to believe.

From the top: Baktus, in a lovely merino silk blend DK; Evenstar Mystery Shawl; and my latest spinning project. This is Yarn Chef fiber, I’m too lazy to get up and find the band, but it’s a silk blend of some sort. I’ll post more about it some other time.

I had a little dust-up with those two knitting projects the past few days, both stupid bone-head knitting mistakes. Making an error and having to tink back on a near-cobweb weight shawl is a little more understandable, at least. I got stuck on one patterned row where the stitch markers shifted one stitch sideways all along the row. On one repeat my count was off. I counted, recounted, tried to figure out where the error was, and finally tinked back the whole patterned row, then back the preceding plain knit row until I got to the repeat where the count was off (almost all the way around the row, I might add). By the time I got it tinked back, the count was now right. I counted, recounted, said a few choice swear words, and proceeded forward again, holding my breath and counting every single blasted repeat as I went. There was no error, I just think I can’t count. Or perhaps one of the stitch markers had migrated temporarily under a stitch. Or who knows, the Knitting Goddess might be trying to teach me a lesson. There wasn’t even bourbon involved in this one, I swear.

The blue scarf mistake is really bone-headed, though, almost enough so that I don’t want to put it out here for all of you to laugh at me. I figure it’s my civic duty, however. If you click on over to the pattern, you’ll see that, after the initial set up rows, it’s a simple 8 row pattern repeat. Simple, simple, simple. I got 24 repeats done correctly earlier this week, did a couple more repeats, then picked it up to knit again yesterday. The repeat basically is the lace yarn over row with 3 garter stitch ridges in between. On the last two repeats, there were only 2 garter stitch rows. Damn. Out it came, and I reknitted another two repeats, and noticed that I still only had 2 garter ridges. Out it came again. I’m embarrassed to say that I did this drill one more time before I figured out the mistake.

If you’ll look at the pattern, the last two rows, rows 7 & 8, are plain knit. Because of the way the pattern formats, it printed out on two pages, with rows 7 & 8 on the second page. You can see where this is going, can’t you? I did the first 24 repeats with all 8 pattern rows, then inexplicably just changed the pattern to a 6 row repeat, omitting those last 2 rows. I figured this out last night during about the quintillionth NCIS rerun I watched, at about 1 AM, and just cracked up. If I was Tony DiNozzo, Mark Harmon would have smacked me hard on the back of the head. It’s now fixed, and I’ve hand-written those last two rows on the first page so the pattern is all together, and hopefully I won’t do that again.

It’s late, I’m off to bed. I’ll try to find some other idiotic knitting goofs to regale you with next time!

Okayyyyyy….

I didn’t mean to just disappear like that for almost a month. You all must have thought that I ran off with a banjo player at Wintergrass. Let’s catch up, shall we?

Wintergrass was swell. It’s hard to pick my favorite artist of the festival, though the Swedish group Väsen was right up there. Not traditional bluegrass by any means, but great Swedish folk music. Dry Branch Fire Squad, a more traditional Appalachian style group, was another favorite. You can’t beat a guy who sings great gospel, tells great stories, and plays hambone like a pro. We don’t have tickets yet for next year, but we’ll surely go again.

We also did a quick three day weekend trip to Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago. Round about January it dawned on me that we had neglected to plan a winter vacation this year to someplace with sunshine. If you live in the Pacific Northwest, and if you tend a bit towards letting the undertoad get to you in the dark rainy months, this is not a good plan. So we did a little get-away. I even won a bit of money, though we undoubtedly spent it all on food. The best thing we did there was eat at Joel Robuchon’s French restaurant. Yum. Just yum. It was seriously one of the best restaurants I’ve ever eaten at.

Otherwise the winter’s been about work, knitting, spinning, reading. Work is going well, just the usual winter busy-ness. I’m still loving the not-so-new job.

Knitting: I still have pretty much the same projects going. I’ll try to update them here over the next week, but here’s a new one. I joined the Evenstar Mystery Shawl KAL on Ravelry, and I’m partly through the second of three clues. Of course you all know that photos of lace at this stage look like crap. This one’s a circular shawl, which I’ve never done before. There was some serious swearing that went on over the circular cast on, but after a couple of tries, I got it going.

The yarn is from Colourmart, and it’s a silk/cashmere blend, in a 28/2 light laceweight. The color is Aquamarine, and it’s pretty much finer than anything I’ve knit with. The finished shawl will have beads on the edging, and I’m planning on using clear silver lined beads. At least that’s the current plan.

OK, that’s enough for one post. I don’t want to overwhelm you. I have more to say about knitting and spinning, as well as an upcoming blogiversary, so stay tuned!

New Beginnings

Oops. I forgot to post for almost a month. I blame it on stupid Facebook games. Somehow I got sucked into both Farmville and Mafia Wars, and not much exciting has happened around here since. This weekend I plowed up the crops and I’m giving up the farm and the family (the Mafia family, not the real one) for Lent.

In honor of all the regained knitting time, I started a new project. Actually, this falls in the category of “Finish It Or Frog It“. I bought some lovely yarn a couple of years ago from Shelly of Butternut Woolens. It’s a 50% silk, 50% merino DK blend, in a gorgeous ice blue. Right after I got it, I cast on and started a ribbed scarf, got about 6 inches done, and just wasn’t loving the pattern-yarn combo. So it has been stuck in a bag for a couple of years. This morning I dragged it out, ripped it out, and started something new.

Here’s the old:

Here’s the new:

The pattern is Baktus, and I’m doing a modification that has rows of yarnover holes every 8 rows, on a garter background. It’s as simple as it gets, but will be a much better match for this lovely yarn. I will end up with a small triangular shawl out of this. The beauty of this pattern is that you can use any yarn. You start from one narrow end of the shawl or scarf, knit until you have used half your yarn, then decrease away to the other tip. It will be perfect for those handspun skeins. I read about this pattern over on Knitorious, go check out what Vicki is doing with sock yarn.

There are more New Beginnings, and one or two Finishings, but I’ll save them for another post!

Rescued Off The Back Burner

This WIP update is brought to you by the True Blood Faery sweater. This one has been on the back burner since before Christmas, and I was starting to have a few doubts about it. I’ve gotten the bottom cable done, and am about 4 inches or so into the body of the lower part of the sweater. The whole thing is knit in one piece up to the armholes, then split at that point. So now it’s this big unwieldy mess, and I’m in a morass of stockinette until I hit the lovely cables of the bodice part.

This Faery almost bit the dust this week. I’m sure it was that huge expanse of stocking stitch that got to me, but I started squinting sideways at it sitting over there innocently in its bag, having second thoughts about it. It looks so…huge. The other thing that’s been bugging me is the sleeves. The designer did the initial pattern in smaller sizes, then due to popular demand, sized it up to include 3 larger sizes. That version still isn’t complete, since she hasn’t added the instructions for upsizing the sleeves. I’m pretty sure I can figure that out by using one of the smaller pattern sizes and adding stockinette stitches to make up the difference, but still. It annoys me. So I’ve been putting off getting back at it. Two days ago, on my way home from work, I just figured, OK, I’ll get it out tonight, make a decision. Rip or not, but just do it.

I got home, dragged it out, and got out a coat that fits me that’s roughly the same length and shape, and compared.

It’s a little hard to tell from the photo, but I think it will be perfect.

Back to stocking stitch. I’ll think about those sleeves later.

Spinning With Friends

I had a wonderful time last weekend, though I’m just getting around to posting about it. Dorothy (Missouri Star) and her husband Bill came to visit us over the weekend. They live just a few hours from here, though we rarely get to see one another, for one reason or another. Now that she’s retired, and I have a more sane work schedule, I hope that situation changes!

Dorothy and I both used to say that we would never take up spinning. Ha! I fell hard last summer, and it was only a few months later that she was asking questions about spindles and wheels. When she joined the Beginning Spinners group on Ravelry, I knew that it was all over. She bought a spindle, then got a wheel last month. She brought her wheel with her, a nice Ashford Traveller, and some pretty hostess gift Romney fiber from a neighbor’s sheep, named Rainbow! We did a little spinning, a lot of chatting, eating, and generally having fun. John & Bill hit it off, and managed to find things to do that didn’t involve spinning or talking about spinning. They brought their Corgi, Maggie, along with them, and after a bit of jousting amongst the dogs to figure out who the biggest alpha bitch was, everybody got along just fine.

Dorothy is a natural as a spinner. Go look at what she’s been spinning on her blog (but come back!). After just a few weeks, she’s spinning nearly laceweight, very evenly.

I managed to finish spinning a whole pile of Cormo (that insulation yellow stuff from several posts back, though it hasn’t been washed up yet, so it’s not ready for a photo op). I did start a new spinning project while Dorothy was here.

The fiber is from Chasing Rainbows Dyeworks, in the color Forest. I bought 2 ounces of this color in a merino-bombyx silk blend, and another 2 ounces in the same color in merino-tencel. I have the silk blend all spun, and I’m about half way through the tencel, then plan to ply them together. We’ll see how that works out. I did do a little couple yard sample, and I think I’ll like it. Here’s where I bought the fiber. The colors really are that rich.

Last but not least, here’s one of my spinning helpers. Lewey tends to sit right under my feet while I’m spinning, and Will is just pretty sure this is where he belongs.

And this is probably why he’s so friendly lately. When the weather’s better, he’s outside a lot, but he’s not a big fan of rain.

Come to think of it, I’m getting a bit tired of that rain myself!

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If you haven’t done so already, go here and read Stephanie’s post about Haiti. She’s said it much better than I can. If Doctors Without Borders isn’t your favorite charity, pick another one, but dig deep and give. If we can all afford to have computers and yarn and fiber toys, we can certainly sacrifice a bit of cash to those affected by this horrifying disaster.

Another WIP

This is just a quick post from my office desk in the few minutes I have left before the afternoon patients start to arrive. I have another new WIP to show you that I’ve been working on awhile, but neglected to post.

Want a little closer look?

Mittens! How exciting! The most exciting thing about them is that it’s my own yarn, that I spun myself! Yee-hah! The photos don’t really do justice to the sparkly goodness that this fiber is. Click the photos to get a little better look. The fiber is a merino/silk blend with some Firestar added to the batts for sparkle. It comes from Anna at Corgi Hill Farms, and it’s just delicious. This is one of my earlier spinning efforts, so it’s a bit uneven, but it turned out to be roughly all the same gauge, so it works for me. The pattern is a combination of one of Ann Budd’s mitten patterns from her book The Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns, and my own jerry-rigging. I used her numbers to get the thing started, then just adjusted on the fly. I’ll post general directions as to my modifications when I get the things done.

I’ll post more later, but I just had to get this up here. I pulled them out to knit a bit after lunch and thought, why, I’ll show the blog world what I’m up to!

Happy New Year!

A day late, but better late than never. At least I have an excuse. Over the weekend, that would be last weekend, I developed something I’m calling Ebola virus. I got both flu vaccines earlier in the fall/winter, but the symptoms are quite flu-like, and I’ve now had it for 7 days. I took two days off work last week, then fortunately have the 3 day New Year’s weekend off, so hopefully I’ll mostly be recovered by Monday when I have to go back to work. I actually went in to the office on Wednesday, but the nurses quarantined me, then sent me home as soon as they could get the patients rescheduled. So, Happy Fracking New Year! I’m having so much fun so far! I have a relentless cough, a squeaking voice, and today I got to add Imodium to the lineup of pills I’m taking for this! What fun!

We did sort of celebrate the New Year, though I was out cold long before midnight. If there were any fireworks on the lake this year, I missed them. We had clam chowder and champagne for NYE dinner, then blackeyed peas yesterday for supper for good luck. Today I’m thinking tea and toast, since my tummy is a little iffy.

Now, on to New Year’s knitting resolutions. They’re pretty much the same as last year. I want to knit more of everything, knit more of my stash, learn to be a better spinner (a new resolution this year!). First up is to go through all the WIPs and UFOs and clean house. It will be finish or frog around here.

Here’s the first UFO/WIP. It’s now officially a WIP again. This is the Froot Loops Morning Glory stole, which according to the blog and Ravelry, I started in May of last year. Who knows why it got sent to the UFO pile, since the pattern is a lot of fun, and the yarn is delightful. Here’s the non-Rav link for those of you still in the dark ages. The yarn is Brooks Farm Harmony, which has been discontinued. It’s a mohair, wool, and silk blend that is very lustrous and just a little bit on the fuzzy side.

The stole is knit in two pieces, then grafted down the center. I’ve finished the edging and the mesh border on the first piece, and am in the first repeat of the main part of the stole.

I’m off to find more cough syrup. Stay tuned next time for the next WIP/UFO!

More Cables….

Or, Why The Major Is Way Ahead Of Me:

I do have an excuse, of sorts. I had a little malfunction involving some exciting episodes of NCIS (Mark Harmon, anybody?? He’s quite distracting!), along with an apparent ability to follow a cable chart as written. I’m currently at 16 of 20 repeats of that pattern, and somewhere back at about repeat 12, I goofed. There are these nice center cross cables, and I noticed that I’d forgotten to cross one of them about 12 rows back. After some judicious use of swear words, I bit the bullet and ripped back to fix it. Somewhere along in repeat 13, I took a look again, and noticed that not only had I crossed the cable like I was supposed to, I’d apparently made up for the earlier lapse by crossing it twice.

I did consider just leaving it, but my better knitting angels took over, and out it came again. That time I ended up tinking back a little further than I’d intended, since I had some trouble tinking the cables without screwing them up. Honestly, there wasn’t even any whiskey involved in all this.

I’m now making forward progress, at least for the moment. The Major has finished the bottom cable, and has picked up all those stitches along one edge for the hem. I’m hoping to get that far this weekend, which I have OFF from my new job! Have a good one, all of you!

Lunch Time…

…at my new office:

Update

Catchy title, eh? What can I say, at least I’m posting.

First up, work. I started the new job this past week, and I couldn’t be happier. (Happy, Happy, Happy, that’s the new motto around here.) I think it will be a good match all the way around. Of course, so far it hasn’t been particular grueling. The first day was “on-boarding”, or assimilation* as we call it around the Knitting Doctor household. I learned all sorts of stuff essential to the new practice group, and got a nice gift basket at the end of the day.

Notice the wine. I think they’ve heard about me.

The next two days were computer training. The new practice is all computerized, so I had to get up to speed quickly with their electronic medical record. Fortunately I’m a nerd and can play on the computer for days without getting bored, so that’s been easy so far. Thursday and Friday was more orientation in the local office where I’ll actually be practicing, and I got a warm welcome from the nursing staff that was quite encouraging. I actually saw a few patients, and that went well. Next week is more of the same. I’ll spend the first few weeks seeing just a few patients a day in the office, so I can get comfortable with the computer stuff, then I go into the regular rotation of both office and hospital work. I’ll be at the same hospital that I’ve been at for the last nine years, so that shouldn’t be too much of an adjustment. I’ll keep you all up to date!

On the knitting front, I’m not posting any photos. I’m working on those Peony socks, but slowly. This past week hasn’t been particularly busy, but I have been distracted by the job change. I’ve also done a few more repeats on the Faery cable, but it really doesn’t look any different than the last time, just a little longer.

Shopping update: I went to the office supply store today to get a few things for my new office desk, and found these.

I don’t have the receipt in front of me, but they were under $10 for the stack. They are about 3 or 4 inches across at most, and lock shut, so you can put little knitting gadgets in them. I’m sure they were intended for paper clips or something.

Finally, the spinning update. I haven’t burned the wheel and spindles in the back yard in frustration, though there was a bit of alpaca a couple of weeks ago that made the thought cross my mind. Then I made this. It’s still wet from the finishing process, so looks a bit bedraggled, but I think it turned out OK.

It’s about a worsted weight, and the fiber is Barrister Lane Fiber Rococo, I can’t find the band at the moment, but John has dubbed this Squashed Frog. I got it from Kris at Sonny & Shear. Click on that to make it bigger. I’m getting better at this, really.

Last but not least is a purchase I made in Ireland that I forgot to show you. Click on this one too.

Seamus the wheel got his own sheep. Doesn’t every spinning wheel need a good-luck sheep?

I’m off to rescue the sweet potatoes from the oven.

*”We are Borg, resistance is futile You will be assimilated.”

8 Repeats!

Before I get to the knitting, let me show you one of the things I cooked this week. I love fall for cooking, all the turnips and beets, and pumpkins! They’re not just for jack-o-lanterns anymore! I’ve had a couple of small sugar pumpkins in the pantry, waiting for the right moment (get the pie pumpkins, not the field pumpkins grown for gigantic size). We made pumpkin curry with it. Here’s the details and photos. This isn’t a recipe as such, but if you know how to put together a stew, you can figure this one out.

First, whack up the pumpkin, the hardest part. I generally get it cut up into big sections, then about two-inch squares, then cut the rind off. It’s pretty hard to peel the thing whole. I keep the pieces rather large, since they tend to melt into the curry when fully cooked.

Once you get that part done, you’re home free. Slice some onions and garlic, and saute, then add your curry blend.

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I buy curry spices whole and grind them. I’ve made my own blends before, but now I just buy them locally here. They’ll ship, too. This particular blend was the Sri Lankan curry blend. I don’t think we’ve ever tried this before, and it was very good. Here’s everything cut up and ready to go. This process makes all the world of difference in a dish with lots of parts. If you get everything chopped before you start cooking, it’s a piece of cake. Mise en place, the French call it.

After I added the spices, I tossed in some chicken stock, a bit of white wine, part of a can of chopped tomatoes, 2 cans of garbanzo beans (rinsed), and the pumpkin, then cooked it till the pumpkin was done. This really doesn’t take long, and if it’s overcooked it turns to mush, so watch it. At the end, I threw in a bunch of baby spinach we had lingering around. Oh, I also added one chopped hot pepper in at the same time as the garlic, it was a yellow pepper that looked like a serrano and had some heat. And salt to taste.

Serve over rice, and dinner is ready.

On the knitting front, I have 8 repeats of that True Blood Faery band done. I thought I had royally screwed up my gauge, but it turns out I was wrong. The bottom cable chart is 40 rows, and the pattern calls for knitting 20 repeats of chart A. I finished what I thought were 4 repeats, meaning 160 rows, measured, and was horrified to find that the piece was twice as long as it was supposed to be. After I calmed down, I searched Ravelry, read the pattern (now there’s a novel thought), and discovered that each chart repeat is two pattern repeats. It measures out perfectly. Whew.

True Blood

No, not the books or the TV show of the same name. I’m talking about the newest WIP, that Red Faery sweater. I have started the thing, and here’s where I am. Click to super-size it so you can see the beauty of the cable!

I’ve been calling this color “lipstick red”, but in reality, it’s blood red. So, True Blood Red Faery it will be. The color on my monitor is pretty danged close to the real thing.

The construction of this sweater is different than anything I’ve knit before. It’s a hooded long cardigan, with a bottom cable that is knit from side to side; i.e. center front around in a long strip. You then pick up a gazillion stitches along one long edge, knit some, then hem it, then pick up another gazillion stitches along the other edge, and knit upwards for the body of the sweater. Ingenious! That photo up there is two repeats of the bottom cable. Only 18 more!

If you’re on Ravelry, here are the project pages. Note that there are two separate pattern pages for different size ranges, just in case any of you want to join us in the KAL.

And don’t forget to go vote if you haven’t already. John and I always vote by absentee ballot so we have time to carefully read through the voter pamphlet, and the saved newspaper clippings. Do your civic duty!

Red Faery Time!

Well, tomorrow, anyway. It’s finally here! Jennifer, AKA Major Knitter, and I are starting the big Faery Ring KAL November 1st! Of course, in true Knitting Doctor fashion, I’m not even close to ready. She’s been over there, madly finishing up WIP’s, and I think she’s even done a swatch. Me, not so much.

I did get all the sewing done on John’s True Blue sweater. I’ve picked up the neckband stitches, and plan on finishing that hopefully tonight. Does anybody else hate knitting neckbands as much as I do? I can do mattress stitch seams till the cows come home, but if I could pay somebody to finish the neck for me, I’d be there.

John says “thanks!” for the birthday wishes, by the way. We went out to celebrate last night. Our local performing arts company is trying something new this year, and is showing a series of old movies. They chose three Cary Grant screwball comedies for this coming season, and last night was Arsenic and Old Lace. I’ve seen it on the small screen, but it was truly hilarious on the big screen in a theater full of people. We went out for a nice steak dinner afterwards. It was a nice way to celebrate the big day!

Here’s the yarn, with the first hank all wound up and ready to go. It really is that red!

I’m off to finish that neckband.

They Say It’s…

Your Birthday?

No wait, I did that already. But it’s my sweetie’s birthday today. It’s sort of a special one, and there’s a You Tube video at the end of the post just for him. First, here’s where I am on True Blue, the plain blue sweater I’ve been knitting for him for decades*.

OK, never mind. My camera is being recalcitrant, and won’t upload the photos. Just imagine it, OK. I’ll try to post it later.

Updated. Here are the photos:

And Lewey, supervising the sewing.

I’ve finished all the knitting except for the neck band, and have the sleeves attached. I’m sewing up the first side. I’m hoping to have this finished by Sunday, since that’s November 1st, when the big Faery Ring Knit-a-long starts!

And here’s the video. Note that there is knitting content in the song.

Happy Birthday, Sweetie!

*OK, it only seems like decades. Whatever, it’s almost done.