Category: Knitting

This is so not my fault.  I really had every intention of not buying yarn for yet another project when I have so much perfectly good yarn upstairs.  But between Bonne Marie and Becky, I just had to have yarn for a Bottoms Up Bucket Hat for the Bucket-along.  And I really looked in all the yarn boxes for something appropriate before I bought this:

Here’s another picture:

And a closeup:

This is Interlacements Seeds yarn, which is a rayon/polyester blend, in the Summer Fruit color.  I haven’t swatched it yet, but the stated gauge says it will work for the hat, and that color just screams summer.

The astute reader will perhaps note that there is significantly more yarn than needed for a bucket hat.  (My husband, not easily fooled, looked at this and said, “That’s a lot of yarn for a hat.”) There were only 2 hanks of this yarn in this color left, and I figured if by chance it doesn’t work for the hat, I’ll have enough for a sweater.  Even with the hat, there will be enough for maybe a vest, or a shawl/stole.  You all just need to check out their website…I want more yarn in many varieties and colors.

I’ve been working on that blasted striped sweater still.  I swear I am not starting another project before I finish it.  So does “not starting another project” specifically mean I can only work on projects already on needles?  Or can I stretch that definition to mean projects for which I actually have patterns, needles, and yarn, and have taken pictures of and talked about on my blog??

Jeesh, this is supposed to be an easy pattern.  Big needles, bulky yarn, mostly stockinette stitch.

I didn’t like the second version of the cable on the blue sweater either.  I realized that what it needed was a purl stitch on each side of the cable to set it off.  It was just too smushed into the stockinette stitches surrounding the cable.  Instead of taking the whole thing back to that damn garter hem, I just undid one stitch on either side of the cable and let it unravel (ravel?) down.  Just like running a nylon.   Here is what it looked like on the second side:

Then I used a crochet hook and purled that stitch back up.  Now here is what it looked like:

This, I like.  I might do this cable up the sleeve with a garter hem instead of the wide ribbing.  We’ll see.

Someone asked about the stitch markers.  Yes, I made them.  I went sort of nutty in the bead store and bought a bunch of beads along with the necessary tools and hardware and spent an afternoon making a bunch.  They are quite festive; it takes little to amuse me, as you can see.

I said I wouldn’t show a picture of John’s Sweater until I got to the front shoulders, but this is just to prove I actually have been working on it.

I was worried that I was going to run out of yarn on this project, but I think I’ll make it with a skein of each color to spare.  Now that I don’t have that to worry about, I’m finding new things to fret over.  Like seaming.  I have learned a few things since I started this sweater…I began this about four years ago, right after I had learned to knit and purl.  I didn’t have a clue about selvedge stitches, which would make seaming this thing a lot easier given the slip stitch pattern.  When I did the fuschia baby sweater, I put a selvedge stitch edge on it because of the eyelet pattern.  It made seaming much easier.

I have gotton a bit bored with this, so for relief I did some knitting on this:

This is where the wonky stitches come in.  The back is knit straight up until you get to the raglan decreases for the sleeves.  The pattern calls for a K3tog on the right edge of the sweater, and a sl1, K2tog, psso decrease on the left edge.  I ripped this sucker out twice last night because it looked like this:

I think this is a combination of which decrease is going on which side, and the bulky nature of the yarn.  After the first rip out, I tried the left side decrease with a slip 2 knitwise, knit one, pass the slip stitch over decrease.  It looked just as bad.  The K3tog on the other side wasn’t bad, but just looked messy.  So I switched them.   It makes more sense to me to put the left-leaning decrease (the slip-knit-pass decrease) on the right garment edge, and the K3tog on the other side.  I’ve only got 2 sets of the decreases done, but I think it will look a little neater.  I hope so, the yarn is starting to get a bit on the fuzzed up side from ripping and re-knitting.

I finally found a picture of what this is supposed to eventually look like:

Except, of course, blue.  I’m not sure I like the sleeves either but will knit them and see.  What’s with the down-to-the-fingertips sleeves on every published pattern these days?  These girls must never eat.

Easter is my favorite holiday.  I’m not referring to the religious aspects of the day; I’ll leave that to those who are more qualified than I am in that department.  I’m talking about the leaves popping out on the trees, and anticipating the baby ducks on the lake.  I love the tulips and daffodils outside my window, and planning an egg dyeing extravaganza.  And Peeps.  I admit it, I love Peeps.  I even admit to putting them in the microwave for a few seconds, then putting hot fudge sauce on them.  I have been known to serve this for dessert for spring dinner parties.

I’ve done considerable web research for this post.  I have searched numerous Peep sites.  You have no idea how many there are.  Here are just two:

Marshmallow Peeps:  The Official Just Born Site

Big List of Peeps Links

In my extensive research, I have not found any knitting related Peep sites.  So I did a photo shoot of my own, with the assistance of my husband/accomplice.  No Peeps were harmed in this activity (though a few were eaten).

Yes, gin was involved.

Here they are!

I think it’s going to be a sweater.

I did actually knit today, on a real garment.  It’s just that it looks the same as the previous picture. You guessed it, just more rows.  I might promise to post a picture of it tomorrow just to give me some motivation to knit more tonight.

The UPS guy stops by our house regularly; so much so that the dog recognizes his truck and goes into that total body wag that only a happy dog can do.  She has learned to expect a dog treat from him, so makes a point of running out, giving him a friendly nudge with her nose, then tries to get into his truck.  Me too.

This is what he brought Friday:

This is from Beaverslide Dry Goods, a wool company in Montana.

Colors from left to right are: Nightshade, Snowberry, Swift Current, and Hidden Lake.

Here is a close-up of the Snowberry:

It looks like strawberry ice cream to me.  I am planning on eventually making Rogue with this color.  I just have a few things in the to-do list before I get to that though.  I think the other colors will be heavy winter socks or maybe hats.  I have a couple other colors of this in my stash and swatched for Rogue with one of those, and I think it will be perfect.

I am still working on John’s sweater; you know, the one with the blue and white boring slip stitch pattern.  Rather than taking up bandwidth with another picture, refer to below.  It looks exactly the same, just more rows.  I’ll wait to post a picture of it until I get to the shoulders of the front.
I almost ripped the whole 4 or 5 inches of the front striped section out yesterday.  I measured it against the back piece, and  just eyeballing it, it looked like it was about an inch wider across.  I said a few bad words, then checked the needles to make sure I hadn’t started the body on the wrong ones, which wasn’t the case.  Jeesh, how the heck could my gauge be so wildly different?  The ribbing section was exactly the same width as the back, it was just the striped part that was wider.  I just calmly folded it up, put it in its little bag, and went to bed.  Today when I took it out and measured it, it was fine.  Who knows.  I think I must not have had the edges of the back all straight and uncurled when I looked at it the first time.

Time to go knit…the sooner I finish this sweater, the sooner I can start a new one!

It was way too nice in the Pacific Northwest to be inside knitting today.  So I sat outside on the deck to knit!  Here is what I have to show for it:

And a close-up of the stitch pattern:

This is the front of the endless sweater, for those of you who don’t want to bother with reading older posts.

And the mailman was very nice to me today.  He brought this:

For Audrey.

I ordered this from here.  Honest to God, it was here from England in 5 days.  I couldn’t drive from here up I-5 to Seattle and get it that fast.

Last but not least, here is a picture of Lucy doing what she does best:

Let’s hear it now; aaawwwwww, isn’t she cute??

I found something to do with the dead squirrel yarn from yesterday’s entry.  I wrapped a bunch of catnip in paper towel, sewed the piece of squirrel fur around it, and gave it to the cats.

Remember the Star Trek episode about the Tribbles?  This reminds me of one of those.  Predictably, sometime during the night one of the cats tore it up and there was catnip all over the floor this morning.

In the comments yesterday, someone asked about the heel stitch for the Strawberry Waffle Socks on my Finished Projects page.
It’s called the Eye of Partridge stitch.  There are apparently a number of variations for this, but this is the one I use:

Heel Pattern (on an even number of stitches):
Row 1: *Slip 1, k1*, repeat across from *
Row 2 and all even rows:  Slip 1, purl across
Row 3: Slip 1, *slip 1, k1*, repeat across from * until the last 2 stitches,  k2.

Basically it is the same as the “regular” heel stitch, except that on every other “public” side row, you offset the stitch pattern by one stitch.

And the back of John’s sweater is finished.  I short-rowed the shoulders, which was interesting, given that the pattern stitch is a 2 color slip stitch pattern.

On to the front.

I have done little knitting today.  I have changed my “Finished Projects” page, and added several old projects from photos I had stored.  I have done a number of items that either never got photographed, or the photos are lost.  We’ve only had a digital camera for about a year, so anything before that was hit or miss as to whether I got it on film.  Several of these were gifts so I can’t go back and get pics.
Then there are the items for which I just do not want a photographic record.  My own “Little Shop of Knitting Horrors”.  Someday when I’m truly bored and have nothing to do, I’ll take pictures of some of them.

Oh, OK, here is one:

Knit from this:

I finally got tired of calling this a WIP today and took it off the needles.  The cats wouldn’t even play with it.  It feels a little like a dead squirrel.  Anybody have any ideas of what I can do with two and a half balls of this stuff?  It was cheap, so if “throw it away” is the most common vote, I would not be opposed to that.

I’m working on pictures of a few other WIP’s (none that are THAT butt-ugly), and will have them up in a day or two.  My goal today is actually to do some knitting…I want to finish the back of John’s striped sweater and get started on the endless front expanse.  At least it’s an easy pattern stitch so I can listen to an audio book or watch a movie.

My next blog challenge is to get pictures of my pets in the sidebar.  If they are there, I’ve succeeded.  If not, back to the drawing board.  The orange cat is Lucy, the dog is Riley, otherwise known as the pure-bred brown dog.  The 3rd pet is Willie the cat, who thinks he’s a dog.  He was not feeling very photogenic today; maybe another day.